Showing posts with label Social policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social policy. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Mental health of populations should be an indicator in measuring a countries gross domestic productivity, GDP


 Here is an interesting short article on Conversation.com about the addition of "mental health" as an indicator of well being in a country's GDP.

While Indonesia’s economic prospects seems promising, an essential factor of productivity needed to sustain growth is often overlooked: mental health.


How mental health affects the economy


People with moderate to high distress levels typically demonstrate reduced productivity and need higher levels of healthcare. This increases the societal economic burden.

The World Health Organization (WHO) found a 25% increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide in 2020, the first year of the pandemic.


Thursday, February 7, 2019

Cannibis use disorder lower in states with liberal policies on cannibis availability


Adolescents and young adults living in states with more liberal policies reported higher average rates of past-year cannabis use than those in states with more conservative policies, according to a new study conducted at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. However, the rates of cannabis use disorder -- abuse or dependence on the drug -- were significantly lower in states with more liberal policies compared to states with more conservative policies, for ages 12 to 17, and marginally lower for ages 26 and older. These results remained significant even when controlling for the presence of medical cannabis laws. This study is one of the first to assess the relationship between policy liberalism and health outcomes, and specifically cannabis use-related outcomes. The findings are published in the International Journal of Drug Policy.

For more click here.

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Is there a significant difference in fatal police killings from state to state?

There are huge differences in the number of people killed by police by state.

Click on image to enlarge.


From Peter Moskos' blog, "Cops In The Hood" on 01/01/19

"The national annual average (2015-2018) is 0.31 (rate per 100,000). And yet New Mexico is 0.98 and New York is 0.09. This is a large difference. 

Or take Utah (because of this story in the paper). Utah has a murder and violence rate below the national average, a low poverty rate, and is 90 percent white. And yet people in Utah are almost 5 times as likely an in New York to be killed by a cop. Utah has murder rate lower than NYC, 1/5 the poverty rate, far fewer cops, and Utah is 90% white. In 2018, the rate of people shot and killed by police in Utah is multiple times higher than NYC. 

I'd speculate significant variables are (in no particular order) training, fewer cops per capita, fewer cops per mile (no backup), one-person patrol, more guns, gun culture, more meth, more booze, and race (with more white states having more police-involved shootings). 

The ten leading states -- as in cops most shootingest states -- in rank order, are New Mexico, Alaska, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, West Virginia, Montana, and Idaho. It certainly seems like if we were to focus on the states that have the highest rates of police-involved shootings (and by far), we could find some low-hanging fruit to reduce the number of said shootings. But to do this we'd have stop thinking of police-involved shootings as primarily related to race. 

Collectively the top-10 states are 4.9 percent African American (compared to 13 percent nationally). These are the cowboy states out west. The 10 states with the highest percentage of black population (collectively 25%) have a rate of police-involved homicide (0.24) that is below the national average."

For more click here.

Editor's note:
I have added the bolding.
Another factor which Moskos does not mention is politics. The high shooting states are red states while the low rate states are blue. Political orientation while not a cause does seem to be correlated.