NREL calculates lost value of landfilled plastic in US

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY

With mountains of plastic waste piling up in landfills and scientists estimating that there will be more plastics by weight than fish in the ocean by 2050, the growing environmental challenge presented to the world by plastics is well understood. What is less well understood by the scientific community is the lost energy opportunity. In short, plastic waste is also energy wasted.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) calculated the energy value of landfilled plastic waste in 2019 was enough to supply 5% of the power used by the country’s transportation sector, or 5.5% by the industrial sector.

They also provided a look at how much plastic waste has been deposited in landfills, on a regional, state, and county level, and the problem is bigger than previously believed. NREL estimates the amount of plastic waste in the United States is 44 million metric tons. Using a slightly different methodology, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency puts the figure at 32.2 million metric tons.

“For us to tackle plastic waste pollution, we really need to understand better where those resources are,” said Anelia Milbrandt, a senior research analyst at NREL and co-author of a new paper, “Quantification and evaluation of plastic waste in the United States,” published in the journal Resources, Conservation & Recycling. “We would like to bring awareness to communities about the potential for these materials.”

Her NREL co-authors are Kamyria Coney, Alex Badgett, and Gregg Beckham. A senior research fellow, Beckham heads the BOTTLE Consortium, a collaborative launched last year in an effort to address the waste-plastics problem.

By identifying areas with large quantities of plastic waste, the scientists are hoping to highlight the economic opportunities that could arise by recovering their value through different processes. Only about 5% of the waste plastic in the United States was recycled in 2019, while 86% was left in landfills. The rest was burned to generate electricity.

NREL’s analysis of the discarded plastics examined seven materials—variously used to make bottles, CDs, milk jugs, take-out containers, and bags, among other items. Communities across the country spent about $2.3 billion on plastic waste disposal in 2019.

The researchers noted the amount of landfilled plastic waste in the United States has been increasing because of several factors, including low recycling rates, population growth, consumer preference for single-use plastics, and low disposal fees in certain parts of the country. The problem has been exacerbated by China’s refusal beginning in 2017 to import nonindustrial plastic waste from the United States.

Developing new recycling techniques for plastics would create incentives for a circular economy, where what once was discarded would be reused instead of virgin plastics. The market value of landfilled plastic ranges from $4.5 billion to $9.9 billion, or $7.2 billion on average, the researchers estimated. The embodied energy in the waste plastic—an indicator of how much energy it took to manufacture the materials—equates to about 12% of the country’s energy consumption by the industrial sector.

Some types of plastic are separated and recycled, chiefly polyethylene terephthalate (commonly known as PET), used to make soda bottles; and high-density polyethylene, used for milk jugs and shampoo bottles, but these still represent a significant percentage of plastics found in landfills.

The filmy plastic used for bags is among the most prevalent type found in landfills.

The researchers pointed out two possible solutions for the plastics not being recycled: Develop new products that rely on these plastics to encourage their sorting and collection, and develop advanced sorting technologies that could eventually lead to increased use of recycled materials.

“I'm hoping this paper also increases awareness for industry and investors to look for opportunities,” Milbrandt said.

The amount of plastic waste correlates with population size. California, Texas, and Florida are the three most populous states and also have the largest amount of landfilled plastic waste. New York, however, is fourth for population, but it ships much of its waste outside of the state.

“Plastic waste is not just an environmental issue. It’s a waste management issue. It’s also a land use issue because landfills are closing in many areas,” Milbrandt said. “What do we do with all that waste? It has to go somewhere. I believe local governments and industry developers will see a benefit of this report by providing them information to support decisions.”

DOE’s  Bioenergy Technologies Office funded the research.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for the Energy Department by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.

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JOURNAL

Resources Conservation and Recycling

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Quantification and evaluation of plastic waste in the United States

Studying wealth inequality in animals can reveal clues about how their societies evolved

A new review creates a framework for learning about animal societies by drawing inspiration from studies of inequality in humans.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT

 

IMAGE: ACROSS ANIMAL SOCIETIES, SOME INDIVIDUALS BENEFIT MORE FROM GROUP-LIVING, WHEREAS OTHERS ARE LEFT OUT. view more 

CREDIT: LAURA SMALE

Wealth inequality is a research topic typically reserved for humans. Now, research from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests that studying wealth inequality in animals can help shed light on social evolution. Adapting approaches from the study of wealth inequality in humans, the researchers show how wealth—in the form of material goods, individual attributes, or social connections—occurs broadly across animal species and can be distributed equally or unequally. This framework offers the opportunity to unite different corners of evolutionary biology under the umbrella of wealth inequality, exploring the idea that the unequal distribution of value, whatever form that value may take, has important consequences for animal societies.

Inequality is one of the greatest challenges of modern society and plays a prominent role in social and political debate. In the fields of economics and sociology, scholars study inequality in order to understand where it comes from, what are its consequences, and how we might implement policies that produce more productive, healthy, and equitable societies. An insight from this work is that inequality can have potent consequences for those of us living in these societies. 

It was this finding that captured the attention of Eli Strauss, from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany (MPI-AB), and Daizaburo Shizuka, from University of Nebraska-Lincoln—two behavioral ecologists who study social evolution in non-human societies. “Reading these fascinating sociology and economics papers, it struck me that this work shares a common goal with my work in animal behavior, which is that we both want to understand how inequality arises and affects outcomes for individuals and groups,” says Strauss, first author on the paper and a post-doctoral researcher at MPI-AB.

A new framework in the study of social evolution

It’s not that inequality hadn’t been studied in animals before. Animal researchers have long explored differences among animals in their physical traits, the territory and resources they acquire, the structures they construct, or the social power they wield. However, what was missing was the overarching view that these different dimensions of animals’ lives are linked under the umbrella of inequality. “As we read, we wondered how the scholarship on the causes and consequences of inequality in humans could help biologists like us better understand animal societies,” says Daizaburo Shizuka, an Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In a review paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Strauss and Shizuka gather work from different academic fields to bridge the divide between inequality research in human and animal societies. Their focus was on what might be learned about animals by drawing inspiration from studies of inequality in humans. Their review is among the first studies to unite these different areas of research as a means to understand how the unequal distribution of value—in whatever form it takes—shapes animal societies.

Can animals have “wealth”?

First, however, the researchers had to find common ground across humans and animals. In humans, “inequality” exists when something of value is distributed unequally among individuals. Usually, that value is defined as their wealth.

“Animals don’t have bank accounts, so how can they be wealthy?,” says Strauss. To answer this question, the scientists turned to research in evolutionary anthropology that explores inequality in hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, and other small-scale human societies. “These societies show varying degrees of wealth inequality, but wealth isn’t limited to bills and coins,” he adds. Instead, anthropologists view wealth as more broadly made up of material goods, individual characteristics like knowledge or hunting ability, and social connections. For instance, a woman could be wealthy by owning many cows, being skillful at growing crops, or having influence in her society.  

The review highlights the ways in which these same human dimensions of wealth very clearly operate in animals. Territory ownership and access to food are types of material wealth that are widespread in animals. For instance, squirrels and acorn woodpeckers build food caches and stock them with hordes of nuts and seeds. In dolphins and New Caledonian crows, tool use techniques are valuable chunks of information that open up new foraging opportunities.

Social relationships are also a critical source of wealth in many species, such as in spotted hyenas and ravens, which form alliances with their group-mates that help them rise through the ranks in their societies. Interestingly, like wealth in humans, wealth in animals is sometimes transferred from parents to offspring. Just as money can vary in how unequally it is distributed among people, these types of wealth can be spread fairly evenly among individual animals or can be concentrated in the hands of just a wealthy few.

CAPTION

Figure from the paper demonstrating how wealth inequality (center circle) in animals arises from different types of wealth (top left). This inequality can have consequences for individuals that are independent of wealth (top right), and both behavioral processes and ecological processes can shape the amount of inequality in societies (bottom left). Social mobility, or changes in wealth in individuals and lineages over time, is predicted to impact individual and group traits (bottom right).

CREDIT

Proc B

Shedding light on social evolution

Armed with this broad view of wealth inequality, the authors then explore the ways that inequality research in humans can help us better understand how animal societies work. They discuss theories about what make some societies more unequal than others, the consequences of inequality for individual health and group success, and the ways that individuals and lineages change in wealth over time through social mobility.

Says Shizuka: “The structure of a society has a lot of different influences on all individuals that live within it. In many cases, the differences between individuals arise from the various ways in which unequal societies affect them. In turn, individuals try to exert control over or navigate these unequal systems in different ways. The biology of animal societies includes these types of dynamics, and we can’t understand the evolution of social animals without recognizing this feedback between the individual and the society.”

“Our hope is that this paper will guide future research into wealth inequality across species, which will ultimately lead to a better understanding of the evolution of traits that help animals get the most out of living socially,” adds Strauss.

The authors acknowledge that studying inequality in animals could also shed light on how inequality operates in human societies, but advise that caution is needed when looking to animals to understand ourselves. Humans are a particular animal species with unique social and cognitive traits. While it’s unlikely that inequality operates completely differently in humans than in other animals, there are also no other societies that operate at the scale of the modern human global economy.

“We can look to other species to understand the general evolutionary processes that produce all animals, ourselves included,” says Strauss, “but the question of what makes an ethical human society is fundamentally a moral question where the social lives of animals can’t guide us. This is something we need to figure out on our own.”

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2022.0500 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

The ecology of wealth inequality in animal societies.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-May-2022

Seashell-inspired Sandia shield protects materials in hostile environments

Environmentally friendly coating outperforms conventional materials

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

 

IMAGE: PHYSICIST CHAD MCCOY AT SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES’ Z MACHINE LOADS SAMPLE COATINGS INTO HOLDERS. WHEN Z FIRES, RESEARCHERS WILL OBSERVE HOW WELL PARTICULAR COATINGS PROTECT OBJECTS STACKED BEHIND THEM. view more 

CREDIT: BRET LATTER, SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Word of an extraordinarily inexpensive material, lightweight enough to protect satellites against debris in the cold of outer space, cohesive enough to strengthen the walls of pressurized vessels experiencing average conditions on Earth and yet heat-resistant enough at 1,500 degrees Celsius or 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit to shield instruments against flying debris, raises the question: what single material could do all this? The answer, found at Sandia National Laboratories, is sweet as sugar.

That’s because it is, in fact, sugar — very thin layers of confectioners’ sugar from the grocers, burnt to a state called carbon black, interspersed between only slightly thicker layers of silica, which is the most common material on Earth, and baked. The result resembles a fine layer cake, or more precisely, the organic and inorganic layering of a seashell, each layer helping the next to contain and mitigate shock.

“A material that can survive a variety of insults — mechanical, shock and X-ray — can be used to withstand harsh environmental conditions,” said Sandia researcher Guangping Xu, who led development of the new coating. “That material has not been readily available. We believe our layered nanocomposite, mimicking the structure of a seashell, is that answer.”

Most significantly, Xu said, “The self-assembled coating is not only lightweight and mechanically strong, but also thermally stable enough to protect instruments in experimental fusion machines against their own generated debris where temperatures may be about 1,500 C. This was the initial focus of the work.”

“And that may be only the beginning,” said consultant Rick Spielman, senior scientist and physics professor at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester, credited with leading the initial design of Sandia’s Z machine, one of the destinations for which the new material is intended. “There are probably a hundred uses we haven’t thought of.” He envisions possible electrode applications delaying, rather than blocking, surface electron emissions.
Aiding the nuclear survivability mission

The coating, which can be layered on a variety of substrates without environmental problems, was the subject of a Sandia patent application in June 2021, an invited talk at a pulsed power conference in December 2021 and again in a recent technical article in MRS Advances, of which Xu is lead author.

The work was done in anticipation of the increased shielding that will be needed to protect test objects, diagnostics and drivers inside the more powerful pulsed power machines of the future. Sandia’s pulsed-power Z machine — currently the most powerful producer of X-rays on Earth — and its successors will certainly require still greater debris protection against forces that could compare to numerous sticks of dynamite exploding at close range.
Chad McCoy loads sample coatings at Sandia’s Z machine

Physicist Chad McCoy at Sandia National Laboratories’ Z machine loads sample coatings into holders. When Z fires, researchers will observe how well particular coatings protect objects stacked behind them. (Photo by Bret Latter) Click the thumbnail for a high-resolution image.

“The new shielding should favorably impact our nuclear survivability mission,” said paper author and Sandia physicist Chad McCoy. “Z is the brightest X-ray source in the world, but the amount of X-rays is only a couple percent of the total energy released. The rest is shock and debris. When we try to understand how matter — such as metals and polymers — interacts with X-rays, we want to know if debris is damaging our samples, has changed its microstructure. Right now, we’re at the limit where we can protect sample materials from unwanted insults, but more powerful testing machines will require better shielding, and this new technology may enable appropriate protection.”

Other, less specialized uses remain possibilities.

CAPTION

Mechanical properties of representative high-strength materials versus natural seashell and Sandia National Laboratories-developed coating.

CREDIT

Data provided by Hongyou Fan and Guangping Xu, Sandia National Laboratories

The inexpensive, environmentally friendly shield is light enough to ride into space as a protective layer on satellites because comparatively little material is needed to achieve the same resilience as heavier but less effective shielding currently in use to protect against collisions with space junk. “Satellites in space get hit constantly by debris moving at a few kilometers per second, the same velocity as debris from Z,” McCoy said. “With this coating, we can make the debris shield thinner, decreasing weight.”

Thicker shield coatings are durable enough to strengthen the walls of pressurized vessels when added ounces are not an issue.
Dramatic cost reduction anticipated

According to Guangping, the material cost to fabricate a 2-inch diameter coating of the new protective material, 45 millionths of a meter and microns thick, is only 25 cents. In contrast, a beryllium wafer — the closest match to the thermal and mechanical properties of the new coating, and in use at Sandia’s Z machine and other fusion locations as protective shields — costs $700 at recent market prices for a 1-inch square, 23-micron-thick wafer, which is 3,800 times more expensive than the new film of same area and thickness.

Both coatings can survive temperatures well above 1,000 C, but a further consideration is that the new coating is environmentally friendly. Only ethanol is added to facilitate the coating process. Beryllium creates toxic conditions, and its environs must be cleansed of the hazard after its use.
How testing proceeded

The principle of alternating organic and inorganic layers, a major factor in seashell longevity, is key to strengthening the Sandia coating. The organic sugar layers burnt to carbon black act like a caulk, said Sandia manager and paper author Hongyou Fan. They also stop cracks from spreading through the inorganic silica structure and provide layers of cushioning to increase its mechanical strength, as was reported 20 years ago in an earlier Sandia attempt to mimic the seashell mode.

Greg Frye-Mason, Sandia campaign manager for the Assured Survivability and Agility with Pulsed Power, or ASAP, Laboratory Directed Research and Development mission campaign funding the research, initially had his doubts about the carbon insertion.

“I thought that the organic layers would limit applicability since most degrade by 400 to 500 C,” he said.

But when the carbon-black concept demonstrated robustness to well over 1,000 C, the positive result overcame the largest risk Frye-Mason saw as facing the project.

Seashell-like coatings initially tested at Sandia varied between a few to 13 layers. These alternating materials were pressed against each other after being heated in pairs, so their surfaces crosslinked. Tests showed that such interwoven nanocomposite layers of silica with the burnt sugar, known as carbon black after pyrolysis, are 80% stronger than silica itself and thermally stable to an estimated 1,650 C. Later sintering efforts showed that layers, self-assembled through a spin-coating process, could be batch-baked and their individual surfaces still crosslinked satisfactorily, removing the tediousness of baking each layer. The more efficient process achieved very nearly the same mechanical strength.

Data table Mechanical properties of representative high-strength materials versus natural seashell and Sandia National Laboratories-developed coating. (Graphic by Alicia Bustillos and data provided by Hongyou Fan and Guangping Xu)

Research into the coating was funded by ASAP to develop methods to protect diagnostics and test samples on Z and on next-generation pulsed power machines from flying debris.

“This coating qualifies,” Frye-Mason said.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia Labs has major research and development responsibilities in nuclear deterrence, global security, defense, energy technologies and economic competitiveness, with main facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Livermore, California.

CAPTION

Sandia National Laboratories researcher Guangping Xu employs a digital optical microscope to examine the unusually hard coatings his lab has produced. The aim is better, cheaper protection of instruments and drivers in danger of fast-moving debris flung by Sandia’s Z machine when it fires. The coatings offer many other possibilities as well.

CREDIT

Bret Latter, Sandia National Laboratories

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JOURNAL

MRS Advances

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Bioinspired synthesis of thermally stable and mechanically strong nanocomposite coatings

Efforts to take fake news and misinformation in Africa must take account of the continent’s unique “pavement media”, study shows

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

The spread of fake news through “pavement media” in Africa means the continent needs unique techniques to tackle the spread of misinformation, a new study says.

Discussions about current affairs in marketplaces, places of worship, bars, and other social spaces, and through songs, sermons, and graffiti form a key part of the media ecosystem in Africa.

This – combined with traditional media – means information from social media quickly crosses into offline spaces. New research carried out in Ghana says this means efforts intended to combat the spread of misinformation need to move beyond Western-centred conception of what constitutes “media” and take different local modalities of media access and fact-checking into account.

The study, in the journal African Affairs, says social, traditional and pavement media are all used to spread fake news and misinformation in the country. Those using social media are usually able to independently assess the accuracy of information they read. They are keenly aware of the prevalence of misinformation on social media and generally more suspicious of social media content.

Those who hear about misinformation on social media second-hand, or via pavement radio are less likely to question it, leaving them more vulnerable. They usually hear about this information from people they trust, and through existing social hierarchies, so are more likely to take it at face value.

The study was carried out by Professor Elena Gadjanova from the University of Exeter, Professor Gabrielle Lynch from the University of Warwick and Dr Ghadafi Saibu from the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies.

Dr Gadjanova said: “Africa’s interconnected media spaces and multiple, intersecting, digital inequalities, have significant implications for citizens’ patterns of exposure, relative vulnerability, and response to social media misinformation.

“The interconnected media space means that misinformation originating on social media travels through multiple channels simultaneously, significantly increasing its reach. Efforts to battle misinformation should take this into account. There is a need to harness multiple information channels to debunk misinformation: local and national media, common information diffusion spaces, such as markets and high-status individuals who enjoy high levels of trust locally.”

The study says social media literacy campaigns are unlikely to be effective unless they have influence in wider society. Beyond encouraging fact-checking on an individual level, governments and civil society should strive to normalize it as social practice, which would empower indirect social media users to exercise more agency in responding to suspected misinformation.

In Africa social media, and the mobile phones that it is usually accessed through, have become a part of everyday life. The study describes the social divide between the highly literate and well off, and those with low literacy skills; between citizens with unlimited access and those with limited opportunities to browse online and those who are offline, but have access to newspapers, TV, and informed social networks, and those who are offline, but have limited access to traditional media and whose friends and family members are similarly disengaged.

 

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JOURNAL

African Affairs

DOI

10.1093/afraf/adac009 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Misinformation across digital divides: Theory and evidence from Northern Ghana

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

29-Apr-2022

Survey of LA homeless finds few want group shelter beds

Most surveyed have been unsheltered for years and have been offered housing in the past

Reports and Proceedings

RAND CORPORATION

A unique study conducting counts and surveys of unsheltered people in three parts of Los Angeles found that nearly half had been offered housing in the past, but they cited the housing intake process, desires for privacy and concerns about safety as obstacles they face in efforts to get off the streets, according to a new RAND Corporation report.

The count of unsheltered people conducted over four months in downtown’s Skid Row, Venice and Hollywood found a rising number of unhoused people in those neighborhoods, and most of those surveyed reported being continuously homeless for more than three years.

Around 80% of the unhoused people surveyed said that they would accept a private room in a shelter or hotel, a permanent stay in a motel- or hotel-like setting, or permanent supportive housing. About half would accept interim housing with access to services, shared housing or safe camping. Less than one-third would accept a group shelter or a recovery/sober living housing offer.

“We found a near-universal interest in obtaining housing among our survey respondents, but about half of those we spoke to remain unhoused, despite reporting being offered housing in the past,” said Jason M. Ward, the report’s lead author and an economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

Those surveyed by RAND researchers indicated that they strongly prefer private housing, suggesting that increasing funding for congregate shelters -- as has been espoused by some policymakers -- might have a limited ability to effectively address street homelessness.

“The type of housing offered to unsheltered people matters a lot,” Ward said. “Our findings suggest that large expansions in shelter capacity in the city may do little to move unhoused people off the streets.”

The RAND project is the largest count of unhoused people in Los Angeles outside the annual point-in-time tally managed by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

The county-wide count, largely conducted by teams of trained volunteers on one evening each January, was cancelled in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results from the 2022 count, delayed until February, have not yet been released.

The RAND study, called the Los Angeles Longitudinal Enumeration and Demographic Survey (LA LEADS) Project, was conducted by the research organization’s professional survey staff. Counts for this ongoing project were conducted roughly every two weeks in Skid Row and monthly in Hollywood and Venice since late September 2021. The current report presents results of these efforts through January of 2022.

The RAND study found the total number of unsheltered people, vehicles, tents and makeshift structures averaged 1,358 in Skid Row, 685 in Hollywood and 523 in Venice. Over the four months of data included in the report, the total across these three areas increased by about 17%.

Researchers also conducted a survey that randomly sampled more than 200 unsheltered people across the three neighborhoods the study focused on.

The share of respondents in the RAND survey who identified as Black or African American  was 38% higher than the results of the 2020 demographic survey conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority in these three locations, while the share of respondents identifying as Hispanic was 24% lower. Black people have been consistently overrepresented among the county’s unhoused residents and the results of the RAND study suggest this disparity may be growing.

Among the unsheltered people surveyed by RAND, more than 75% had been continuously homeless for more than a year and more than 50% percent had been continuously homeless for more than three years.

More than 75% of respondents had spent six months or longer living in the neighborhood where they were surveyed. Nearly 75% reported residing within California before their current location.

About 90% of survey respondents indicated interest in receiving housing, with nearly half reported being offered housing in the past and one-third indicating that they were currently on a housing waitlist.

The most commonly reported factors that prevented respondents from moving into housing in the past were never being reached to complete the housing intake process (41%), privacy concerns (38%) and safety concerns (32%).

“We hope that the unique methods being used in our count, as well as the results from our detailed survey of unhoused people, will help policymakers in developing effective strategies to addresses homelessness in Los Angeles County,” Ward said.

The LA LEADS project is ongoing and will publish future reports, including more-detailed results comparing the RAND findings to the annual count by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

The report, “Recent Trends Among the Unsheltered in Three Los Angeles Neighborhoods:

An Interim Report on the Los Angeles Longitudinal Enumeration and Demographic Survey (LA LEADS) Project,” is available at www.rand.org.

Support for the project was provided by the Lowy Family Group through its funding of the RAND Center for Housing and Homelessness in Los Angeles. Other authors of the report are Rick Garvey and Sarah B. Hunter.

The RAND Social and Economic Well-Being division seeks to actively improve the health, and social and economic well-being of populations and communities throughout the world.

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Recent Trends Among the Unsheltered in Three Los Angeles Neighborhoods An Interim Report on the Los Angeles Longitudinal Enumeration and Demographic Survey (LA LEADS) Project

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-May-2022

Does the Earned Income Tax Credit encourage college enrollment?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WILEY

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)—a cash transfer program aimed at helping low to moderate income workers by giving them a break on their taxes—is not intended as a college subsidy, but the eligibility criteria for it incentivizes families sending children aged 19–23 years to college as this can increase EITC benefits by as much as $4,000 per year. An analysis in Economic Inquiry by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that in general, EITC recipients are not responding to this incentive as it does not appear to be increasing the rate of college enrollment.  

The results suggest that complex subsidies like this one embedded into the EITC may be ineffective at altering college going.  

“Both our study and past work suggest that tax credits are simply an ineffective way to encourage college enrollment because they are too complicated and involve a long delay between college enrollment and benefit receipt,” said corresponding author and PhD candidate Shogher Ohannessian. “Research suggests that if the tax credits were provided as grants instead of tax credits, we could substantially increase college enrollment rates at no additional cost,” added co-author Ben Ost, PhD. 

URL Upon Publication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecin.13087 

Additional Information 

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JOURNAL

Economic Inquiry

DOI

10.1111/ecin.13087 

ARTICLE TITLE

Do EITC Eligibility Rules Encourage College Enrollment?

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-May-2022

Affirmative action bans had ‘devastating impact’ on diversity in medical schools, UCLA-led study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES HEALTH SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: THE STUDY’S FINDINGS ARE TIMELY IN LIGHT OF MEDICAL SCHOOLS’ INCREASING EMPHASIS ON HEALTH EQUITY, INCLUDING A PUSH TO ENSURE GREATER DIVERSITY AMONG PHYSICIANS IN THE WORKFORCE. view more 

CREDIT: UCLA HEALTH

Link to abstract

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4312

New UCLA-led research finds that in states with bans on affirmative action programs, the proportion of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups in U.S. public medical schools fell by more than one-third by five years after those bans went into effect.

The findings are particularly timely given medical schools’ increasing emphasis on health equity, including a push to ensure greater diversity among physicians in the workforce.

The study will be published May 3 in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

“We know that a more diverse physician workforce leads to better care for racial- and ethnic-minority patients,” said Dr. Dan Ly, the study’s lead author, an assistant professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “But we have made such poor progress in diversifying our physician workforce.

“Our research shows that bans on affirmative action, like the one California passed in 1996, have had a devastating impact on the diversity of our medical student body and physician pipeline.”

The researchers examined enrollment data from 1985 through 2019 for 53 medical schools at public universities, focusing on students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups: Black, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. The authors studied medical schools at public universities, not private ones, because states’ bans on affirmative action applied to public postsecondary institutions.

Of the medical schools, 32 were in 24 states without affirmative action bans. And 21 were in eight states that banned affirmative action during that period — Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington. Those states’ affirmative action bans were enacted from 1997 to 2013; Texas’ ban was reversed in 2003.

In the year before the bans were implemented, underrepresented students made up an average of 14.8% of the total enrollment of those states’ public medical schools. By five years later, the research found, enrollment of underrepresented students at those schools had fallen by 37%.

The authors note some limitations to their analysis. The data may have also captured the indirect effects of affirmative action on undergraduate admissions, public discussion of affirmative action bans may have affected medical school enrollment even before the bans were implemented, some students may not have fully identified with the mutually exclusive racial and ethnic groups defined by the study, and the researchers did not assess the possibility that some schools without bans did not consider race or ethnicity in their admission decisions.

But the findings could lead to a better understanding of the lag in diversifying the medical student body and the physician workforce.

“As our country has spent the last two years weaving through the twin pandemics of racial health disparities amplified by COVID-19 and structural racism at large, our findings are critically important,” said co-author Dr. Utibe Essien, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. “As we observed, affirmative action bans have resulted in a loss of underrepresented physicians, who could have been at the front lines of caring for vulnerable populations throughout the pandemic and helping to alleviate disparities in care.

“My hope is that our findings will help provide policymakers with the tools to push back against affirmative action bans, not just for the diversity of the physician workforce, but for the equal and just health of our society.”

The study’s other authors are Andrew Olenski of Columbia University and Dr. Anupam Jena of Harvard University.

 Affirmative action bans reduce diversity

in physician workforce, impact health

equity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS

Affirmative action bans reduce diversity in physician workforce, impact health equity

Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4312

A study of U.S. medical school enrollment data found that state bans of affirmative action policies significantly impact the percentage of underrepresented minority students enrolled in medical schools, which has important implications for the diversity of the physician workforce. The authors suggest that efforts to improve medical equity for patients should consider medical school admission policies an important target. The findings are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Increased diversity in the U.S. physician workforce can improve the health of patients from historically underserved communities. However, the percentage of practicing physicians who identify as being from these groups is low relative to their proportion in the U.S. population. Contributing factors may include state-level bans on the use of affirmative action policies. Few studies have evaluated the impact of these bans on public medical schools, and none have examined their longer-term effects and take into account more recent bans.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Pittsburgh, Columbia University, and Harvard University used publicly available data on state affirmative action bans to examine the association between such bans and the percentage of enrollment from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups at 21 public medical schools between 1985 and 2019. The schools were compared to public medical schools in states without affirmative action bans. The authors tracked the reported proportions of four mutually exclusive racial and ethnic groups that are underrepresented in medicine: Black, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. They found that affirmative action bans were associated with a 5.5 percentage point decrease in enrollment of underrepresented students relative to control schools. Because underrepresented students accounted for approximately 14.8 percent of medical students in ban schools in the year before ban implementation, the 5.5 percentage point reduction implies an approximately 37% relative reduction in underrepresented students. According to the authors, these findings are important for understanding the overall lag in diverse representation of the medical student body and physician workforce. They also suggest that despite national efforts to improve enrollment diversity, state-level policy related to admissions is a critical factor.

Media contacts: For an embargoed PDF, please contact Angela Collom at acollom@acponline.org. To speak with the lead author, Dan P. Ly, MD, PhD, MPP, please email Enrique Rivero at ERivero@mednet.ucla.edu. To speak with the author from the University of Pittsburgh, Utibe R. Essien, MD, MPH, please contact Sarah Katz at katzsb@upmc.edu.

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Also new in this issue:

Association Between SARS-CoV-2 Messenger RNA Vaccines and Lower Infection Rates in Kidney Transplant Recipients A Registry-Based Report

Ivan Zahradka, MD*; Vojtech Petr, MD*; Istvan Modos, MSc, PhD; Maria Magicova, MD; Ladislav Dusek, PhD; Ondrej Viklicky, MD, PhD

Original Research

Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-2973  

 

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JOURNAL

Annals of Internal Medicine

DOI

10.7326/M21-4312 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Affirmative Action Bans and Enrollment of Students From Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Groups in U.S. Public Medical Schools

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

3-May-2022