SPECIAL STUDIES & RESEARCH • Oct 2012 • Volume 1 / Number 14
A comparison of college attendance and high school coursework from two cohorts of youth
Since the 1980s, school systems in the United States have made efforts to increase the rigor of high school coursework. Following the 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,� which decried the status of primary and secondary education in the United States, most states instituted tougher graduation requirements. Recent reforms have made higher level courses mandatory for graduation.
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Recent articles
Who has benefits in private industry in 2012?
Health, retirement, and paid leave benefits made up more than three-fifths of private industry employer-provided benefit costs in March 2012. Although employers in most states are not required to offer these benefits, they often make some form of each major benefit type available to their employees, especially to full-time and high-wage workers. For example, paid holidays are offered to 77 percent of private industry workers overall and about 90 percent of full-time and high-wage workers. Medical care and retirement benefit availability show similar patterns.
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Consumer Price Index data quality: how accurate is the U.S. CPI?
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is an estimate of the average change in prices over time paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services in the United States. The CPI is used extensively in many different ways: to adjust historical data, to escalate federal payments and tax brackets, and to adjust rents and wages. It directly affects the lives of Americans, so it must be as accurate as possible. But how accurate is it?
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How parents use time and money
The time pressures faced by working wives have led economists to predict that market goods and services would be substituted for those produced at home. Earlier research using Consumer Expenditure data found that a wife’s employment status (full time, part time, or not employed) had some influence on her family’s purchases of market goods and services, but other factors, such as family income and the wife’s education, were more influential.
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