Reports:

Debunking the brainy baby industry

Women, work & wages:

For college-educated women, wage gap sets in one year after graduation

WAGE Project reports national survey results

Labor Bureau finds little change in married mothers' workforce participation since 1997

More notable news and commentary on women and the workforce

Women's issues:

Selected articles on what's happening with women and
why we still need feminism

Reproductive health & rights:

Abstinence-only education has no impact on teens' sexual behavior

More reproductive health & rights news

Poverty & health care:

NWLC releases issue brief on women's health care coverage

Recent articles on income & health inequality

Debunking the brainy baby industry

In the last decade, the market for products and programs designed to boost baby brain power has grown into a multi-million dollar industry. But a new report from Education Sector suggests parents might be better off putting the money they spend on pricey educational baby toys into a college savings account or using it to meet other family needs.

According to "Million Dollar Babies: Why Infants Can't be Hardwired for Success," the popular theory that early exposure to an intelligence-enhancing environment will hardwire babies for a lifetime of success has morphed into the new conventional wisdom. Parents and lawmakers "have been swayed by the argument that if they invest in building brainier babies, they'll collect dividends later in kids' lives," writes Sara Mead, author of the report. "State and federal governments have poured millions of dollars into programs focused on children from birth through age three, many of which have little evidence of effectiveness. And many parents are in a state of near-paralysis over whether they are sufficiently stimulating their babies' brains."

The danger of overestimating the importance of brain development from birth to age three is that it can lead parents and governments to neglect the importance of providing high-quality learning environments for older children. This is especially troubling, Mead explains, because the conviction that kids can be failure-proofed by strategic early intervention is based on "misinterpretations and misapplications of brain research:"

While neural connections in babies' brains grow rapidly in the early years, adults can't make newborns smarter or more successful by having them listen to Beethoven or play with Einstein-inspired blocks. Nor is there any neuroscience evidence that suggests that the earliest years are a singular window for growth that slams shut once children turn three. To the contrary, the social programs with the strongest evidence of positive long-term impacts, including high-quality preschool programs, take place outside the zero-to-three window.

Which is not to suggest that babies do not need -- or derive benefits from -- normal attentive and responsive care. But the assumption that providing extra stimulation will promote better brain development doesn't hold up under scientific scrutiny. As the "Million Dollar Babies" report points out, the myth that children's learning ability is "hardwired" by age three can be used to justify dismantling essential programs like Head Start -- by the time children enter preschool, critics argue, it's already too late to "rewire" their brains for maximum achievement. In reality, Mead writes, "research has shown that the human mind is supple and continues to develop well into old age." Noting that programs with the strongest evidence of positive effects for at-risk children include high-quality pre-school programs for four-year olds, she proposes that learning interventions should be funded based on proven results, not on the misguided belief that children must receive educational enrichment before a certain age -- or else. "Researchers have shown that achievement gaps are not merely a function of irrevocable cognitive deficits or 'bad brain wiring' but the outcome of ineffective schools, low-quality curriculum and bad teaching."

Education Sector is an independent education policy think tank devoted to developing innovative solutions to the nation’s most pressing educational problems. The "Million Dollar Babies" report is the latest addition to the organization's Evidence Suggests Otherwise series, which "uses unimpeachable data to knock down some of the pervasive myths that stand in the way of needed education reform."

Education Sector
www.educationsector.org

Million Dollar Babies: Why Infants Can't be Hardwired for Success
Sara Mead, Education Sector, April 2007
Introduction
Full report, 8 pages, in .pdf

Related articles:

Undervaluing Teachers
Dick Meister, TomPaine.com, 9.apr.07
"Americans and their political leaders claim to highly value the teachers who are the key to meeting the unrelenting demands for improved public schools. Yet they continue to deny teachers adequate compensation."

Day Care Debate Misses the Point
Ruth Conniff, The Progressive, 28.mar.07
"Here is the real news, obscured by the flap over the NIH study: there aren't enough good preschool teachers. The chaotic center environment that the researchers postulate might account for children's anti-social behavior is the norm in this country. So much the norm, in fact, that it would be hard to find a significant number of truly high-quality child care settings even in a group of 1,364 children."

The Kids Are Alright:
What the latest day-care study really found
Emily Bazelon, Slate, 28.mar.07
"It's useless to rail at the press for leading with the bad news and for ignoring the researchers' caveats that no cause-and-effect conclusions can be drawn from their data. Still, coverage like this feels designed to twit working parents. And it turns out that in the case of day care, the headlines and the stories really were alarmist -- even wrong."

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For college-educated women,
wage gap sets in one year after graduation

A study of earnings of male and female college graduates found that one year out of college, women earned 20 percent less than men who graduated at the same time; ten years after graduation, women earned only 69 percent as much as men earned. The report, published by the American Association of University Women, found that even when work hours, parental status, college major and other factors normally associated with pay were taken into account, college-educated women earned less than their male peers. The study evaluated the 2001 earnings of men and women who received a four-year degree in 1999-2000, and earnings of 1992-1993 graduates who were employed in 2000.

Other highlights of the report:

• Women who attended highly selective colleges earn less than men from either highly or moderately selective colleges and about the same as men from minimally selective colleges.

• Ten years after graduation, women are more likely than men to complete some graduate education.

• Men and women remain segregated by college major, with women making up 79 percent of education majors and men making up 82 percent of engineering majors. This segregation is found in the workplace as well, where women make up 74 percent of the education field and men make up 84 percent of the engineering and architecture fields.

According to the authors of "Behind the Pay Gap," "the portion of the pay gap that remains unexplained after all other factors are taken into account is 5 percent one year after graduation and 12 percent 10 years after graduation. These unexplained gaps are evidence of discrimination, which remains a serious problem for women in the workplace." Ideally, the report states,

Women and men should have similar economic opportunities and equal opportunities to enjoy meaningful unpaid work, such as parenting. Improving women’s earnings could have positive consequences for men who would like to spend more time with their children but who can't afford to reduce their work hours. Likewise, workplace accommodations for parenting could be valuable for fathers as well as mothers. Other groups may also benefit from greater flexibility in the workplace, including older workers seeking "partial retirement," students hoping to combine work with study, and workers with other kinds of caregiving responsibilities.

The AAUW recommends strengthening federal equal pay laws, greater workplace flexibility and creating more opportunities for meaningful, part-time work.

American Association of University Women
www.aauw.org

Pay Gap Exists as Early as One Year out of College, New Research Says
Press Release, with summary and links. Full report (in .pdf) available on request.

Pay Gap Among College-Educated Women and Men, State by State:
Median Wage and Salary Earnings for Women and Men
Working Full Time, Year-Round, 2003-2005
Interactive Map

Related article:

Colleges Go Light on Women's Pay Inequity
Hannah Seligson, Women's eNews, 23.apr.07
Some female college grads may be in for a rude awakening. Although they have enjoyed some key measures of parity with men while on campus, new data show they can expect to earn less than male counterparts immediately after graduation.

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WAGE Project reports national survey results

Women Are Getting Even (WAGE) released the findings of its first national survey on gender wage gap on Equal Pay Day (April 24, 2007). Out of 700 women who volunteered to take the survey, 70 percent reported a recent experience with unfair, inequitable treatment and pay. According to Evelyn Murphy, President of the WAGE Project and author of "Getting Even," two thirds of the women surveyed believe gender bias and discrimination accounted for the inequities. Around 20 percent of those who reported unfair treatment at their current job planned to leave. Over half intended to take no action with their employers out of fear of retaliation or because they were convinced there was no chance to improve their situation.

The survey sample was not random, but the participants represented considerable diversity in age, race, educational attainment, occupations and earnings.

More information about the 2007 WAGE survey and key findings is available from the WAGE Project web site.

WAGE Project
www.wageproject.org

WAGE Survey Of Working Women: Highlights
April 24, 2007

Related articles:

Women Catch Up With Men's 2006 Earnings Today
Heather Boushey, AlterNet, 24.apr.07
Today is Equal Pay Day -- an anti-holiday that marks how far into 2007 a woman must work to earn as much as a man earned last year.

Give Women A Fair Pay Day
Martha Burk, TomPaine.com, 3.apr.07
"Some people say pay disparities between women and men are an illusion -- women just like to choose jobs that pay less because they’re not as risky or have shorter hours. But the data don’t back up these claims. Even when researchers take into account such factors as part-time work or time out of the work force to care for kids, the numbers show that men make more. Another problem that just won’t go away is that so-called 'men’s jobs' like plumbing, pay more than 'women’s jobs,' like nursing. That tells us something about what we value as a society, and it’s not women’s work."

Money Advice Runs Low for Minority Women
Sandra Guy, Women's eNews, 13.apr.07
April is financial literacy month. Numerous financial-planning Web sites and groups have sprung up to cater to higher-income women but advisers and advocates for lower-income women's retirement planning say they have the field to themselves.

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Labor Bureau finds little change in married mothers'
workforce participation since 1997

A new compilation of data from the U.S. Current Population Survey indicates that while workforce participation rates of married mothers of infants fell by 6 percentage points between 1997 and 2005, the overall labor force participation rate of married mothers of older children remained relatively stable, declining by only 2 percentage points. Labor force activity for mothers of infants declined across all education levels and, for most groups, at about the same rate.

A report in the February 2007 issue of the Monthly Labor Review (Bureau of Labor Statistics) analyzes trends in labor force activity of married mothers of babies younger than 12 months old. As might be anticipated, labor force participation rates were lowest for mothers of infants in very low-income and very high-income households. Based on mothers' educational attainment, authors of the report speculate that college-educated women tend to marry men with similar levels of education, and husbands' relatively high earnings may provide their wives with "more financial resources to draw upon and more choice about whether to work after the birth of children." The authors also cite the relatively long work hours of women with advanced degrees, suggesting that their heavier-than-average workload "may give women an incentive to step back from the workforce once they become mothers." For mothers with less education, the cost of child care and the lower opportunity costs of not working may discourage employment. However, why some groups of mothers have seen a marked decline in labor force activity over the last few years "cannot be answered fully by economic measures." Other factors that contribute to variations on labor force participation include mothers' race and ethnicity, whether they are foreign or native born, mothers' age, and the number of children a woman has. Married mothers whose husbands' earnings were in the middle range were most likely to return to work before their baby's first birthday.

But other factors that may contribute to married mothers' employment patterns are difficult to measure. "A decline in participation rates such as that experienced by married mothers of infants in the late 1990s can reflect a variety of factors, including weaker labor market conditions (such as slow earnings or job growth, employers having fewer job openings or offering fewer family-friendly policies); demographic changes (such as a shift in the group's age, ethnicity or foreign born composition); changes in cultural or societal attitudes (a society might begin to place a higher value on stay-at-home moms, for example); and shift in personal preferences." Other studies suggest that changes in husbands' work hours and job characteristics can also be a factor, especially among college-educated couples.

Before we get sucked into to yet another pointless debate about the "opt out revolution" and why it's bad for women, it's essential to note that the largest decline in labor force activity was seen among mothers with the youngest children, while rates for mothers with school-age children (age 6-17) remained relatively unchanged. This suggests increased funding for full-day kindergarten and pre-kindergarten -- which have been shown to improve children's social and educational outcomes -- could potentially increase work opportunities for married mothers of 3-5 year-olds. The BLS report also suggests that most mothers who take time out of the workforce to care for their children eventually find their way back in.

Bureau of Labor Statistics
www.bls.gov

Married Mothers in the Labor Force:
Trends in labor force participation of married mothers of infants
Sharon R. Cohany and Emy Sok, Monthly Labor Review, February 2007
8 pages, in .pdf

Related articles:

Scaling the Maternal Wall:
Recent court cases give moms hope against a common job bias
Justine F. Andronici and Debra S. Katz, Ms. Magazine, Winter 2007
"As Joan Williams, a leading expert in the field of women and work, and director of the Center for WorkLife Law at University of California Hastings College of the Law, explains, 'Family responsibilities discrimination, especially against mothers, is pervasive. While the glass ceiling still exists, most women hit the ‘maternal wall’ long before they ever hit the glass ceiling.'"

Turning Stay-at-Home Skills Into a Career-Track Advantage
Sue Shellenbarger, Wall Street Journal/Career Journal, 9.mar.07
"For decades, gap moms -- women returning to work after a break for child-rearing -- have tried to hide the holes on their resumes or worse, apologized for them. Now, the tide is turning."

Family Leave Under Fire?
Susanna Schrobsdorff, Newsweek, 26.mar.07
"As the clock ticks down on the Bush administration, labor advocates fear there are plans afoot to scale back family leave."

Europeans Do It Better
Katha Pollitt, The Nation, 15.mar.07
"Getting a better deal for mothers has been at the forefront of the feminist agenda for decades, although you'd never know it from the way the women's movement is always being accused of attacking women with kids. So it's ironic that what is finally driving at least some governments to act is the desire to boost fertility rates."

Housing holds back moms in college
By Marilyn Gardner, Christian Science Monitor, 26.apr.07
To live independently, single mothers need an education. But to get one, they also need a place to live and child care – needs that colleges are waking up to.

The Feminine Mistake
Leslie Bennetts, Huffington Post, 31.mar.07
"Naively, I assumed that once women were offered more accurate information, they would be eager to get it. After all, women aren't stupid; it's true that they've been deserting the labor force in record numbers, but surely the problem was just that unfortunate information gap. Wouldn't they want to protect their own interests by educating themselves about the dangers that lie ahead -- and to plan accordingly?

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More notable news and commentary on
women and the workforce

Pay Data Dispels Pop Myth of Pink-Ceiling
Kara Alaimo, Women's eNews, 9.apr.07
A contestant on "The Apprentice Los Angeles" is the latest to promote a story about the horrors of working for women. But research shows women don't actually hold one another back; when they become senior managers, women's salaries rise.

Spirit-Crushing 'McJobs' Are Putting an End to Upward Mobility
Margy Waller and Shawn Fremstad, AlterNet, 12.apr.07
"The media and the pundits spend a lot of time focusing on the massive increase in compensation for top jobs. But if we really care about strengthening the national economy, it's time to focus on the other side of the story -- what's happening in the low-wage labor market."

Circuit City Slaughter: Seniority Means a Pink Slip
Barbara Ehrenreich, AlterNet, 10.apr.07
Not so long ago seniority was rewarded with higher pay and other perks. But that higher pay now carries a lethal risk, as Circuit City has just demonstrated.

A modern tapestry of assistance
Maggie Jackson, Boston Globe/BostonWorks, 22.apr.07
"We're an aging, diversifying country that's becoming more committed both to lifelong work and to spending our last years at home, not in institutions. Increasingly, caregiving will demand a tapestry of solutions that will respond to the needs of work, family, and culture."

Day Care: An Office Affair
Business Week Online, April 2007
An online debate about the values of employers providing on site-day care

Paying dues is so old school: Why pay toll if you're not traveling?
Penelope Trunk, BostonGlobe/BostonWorks, 15.apr.07
"What you get from paying your dues is top-of-the-ladder positions that force you to give up almost all your time with your family. In ruminating about what she found from talking with CEOs, [author Eve Tahmincioglu] said, 'This is a ridiculous job. If you're going to get to the top, you need to make sacrifices. You need a spouse at home and you should expect not to spend a lot of time with your children.' …[She] echoes what most people today feel about the job of a CEO: Ridiculous. The 80-hour-plus work week is nothing to aim for, and once you decide that you're not going to climb that ladder, why pay dues?"

Falling Behind:
Working Women in Germany Grapple with Limited Child-Care Options
Knowledge@Wharton, 28.mar.07
"Although the German government provides citizens with a generous family-leave policy, being a working mother in Germany is harder than in many other industrialized countries, according to faculty members at Wharton and German business schools, as well as German corporate officials. This is partly because the culture still, to some degree, frowns upon the idea of mothers not taking care of their small children at home. ..The lack of an extensive day-care infrastructure is partly due to the government itself, according to Katja Seim, a German native and professor of business and public policy at Wharton. 'Until very recently, German laws were geared to enabling women to stay home with more children for extensive periods of time at the expense of having a widespread day-care system for young children. Statistics show that fertility is lowest among college graduates. The opportunity cost of being a working mother is high.'" Free registration required to read.

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Selected articles on what's happening with women and
why we still need feminism

Full Frontal Feminism
Laura Barcella, AlterNet, 24.apr.07
Jessica Valenti's new book aims to make women's rights cool again -- to make feminism a lifestyle as well as a movement. Read an excerpt from the book and her conversation with AlterNet.

Men who hate women on the Web
Joan Walsh, Salon, 31.mar.07
"I've never admitted the toll our letters can sometimes take on women writers at Salon, myself included, because admitting it would be giving misogynist losers -- and these are the posters I'm talking about -- power. Still, I've come to think that denying it gives them another kind of power, and I'm trying to sort that out by thinking about the Kathy Sierra mess in all its complexity."

Sexism and Racism Run Deep
Kim Gandy, National Organization for Women, 17.apr.07
Despite the advances that women and people of color have made as working members of the media, their presence in top management and as owners is still minuscule. The news can't help but reflect the lack of diversity and inherent privilege of its ownership, and the power imbalance that persists in our society.

Beyond Imus -- It’s the Hypocrisy, Stupid!
Robin Morgan, AlterNet/Women's Media Center, 16.apr.07
"After a lifetime of activism -- from the civil-rights movement through antiwar, antipoverty, the birth of lesbian and gay rights, the founding and flowering of the contemporary feminist movement in the United States and globally -- I am still a racist, a sexist, a homophobe. How could I not be? How can any of us -- no matter our sex or ethnicity -- not be sexist, racist, and all the other -ists? Our society sowed these seeds in our formative consciousness."

Shock Jocks Wield Dangerous 'Stereotype Threat'
Caryl Rivers, Women's eNews, 14.apr.07
Don Imus may be just a shock jock. But Caryl Rivers says stereotypes are like little microbes that enter our pores, get under our skin and hinder the abilities of actual individuals. That's why his mocking of female college basketball players mattered.

Selling Anxiety
Caryl Rivers, Common Dreams, 24.apr.07
"A strange paradox affects the American news media today. The more that women advance in the worlds of business, academia and law, the gloomier the news about them and their achievements becomes."

Do Women Enjoy Chocolate More Than Sex?
Danielle Egan, AlterNet, 29.mar.07
Author Joan Sewell says so in her new autobiography where she embraces her low libido. The media have hailed her book as "brilliant" but scientific literature disagrees with her theory.

Scaring The Pants Off Men
Paul Waldman, TomPaine.com, 28.mar.07
"If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, we can expect a virtual explosion of sexist rhetoric, every last drop of it based in fear and anxiety. She already gets described with a whole series of derogatory adjectives that don’t seem to ever be applied to male politicians—she is “ambitious” (unlike the men running for president) and “calculating” (unlike every other politician), to take just two."

Hillary Moves Women to Campaign's Front Burner
Allison Stevens, Women's eNews, 12.apr.07
While Barack Obama, John Edwards and other 2008 presidential contenders touch on issues such as reproductive choice, care-giving and women's wages, Hillary Clinton is giving them higher priority.

Women's Leaders Put ERA Back on Agenda
Allison Stevens, Women's eNews, 29.mar.07
After a weekend meeting in Washington of key figures in the women's rights movement, federal lawmakers reintroduced the long-dormant Equal Rights Amendment. Supporters of the ERA say its time has finally come.

Stepmom Says Judith Giuliani Is Too-Easy Target
Elizabeth Mehren, Women's eNews, 17.apr.07
"Stepmotherhood, as I know all too well, is such an easy-target archetype. Medieval fairy tales presented stepmothers as so wicked that usually they were stoned to death or pushed off a cliff by story's end. In 2007, that depiction ought to be shockingly anachronistic. And yet ever since 21-year-old Andrew Giuliani told the New York Times in March that 'there's obviously a little problem that exists between me and his wife'--meaning Judy--she has been symbolically stoned as the new ogre of blended families.

Services Converge for Battered, Addicted Women
Marie Tessier, Women's eNews, 25.mar.07
Domestic violence agencies that once screened out women with substance abuse problems are beginning to open their shelters and work with addiction authorities to help women reach safety and sobriety at the same time.

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Abstinence-only education has no impact on
teens' sexual behavior

A study funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that middle-school students who received abstinence-only sex education were no more likely than students in a control group to have abstained from sex. Among those who reported having had sex, youths who attended abstinence-only programs had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same age. Slightly over one-half remained abstinent 42 to 78 months after completing abstinence-only instruction; of the 45 percent of teens who were sexually active, 40 percent used a condom "always" or "sometimes." Rates of condom use were identical to those of students in the control group.

The study was conducted by Mathematica (the 164-page report is available online in .pdf). Links to several press summaries are provided below.

Abstinence-Only Education Ineffective in Preventing,
Delaying Sex Among Teens, Study Says
Kaiser Network, 16.apr.07
A congressionally-commissioned report followed 2,057 U.S. teenagers in late elementary and middle school who participated in four abstinence programs, as well as students in the same grades who did not participate in such programs. Teens who received abstinence-only education and those who did not were found to have identical patterns of sexual activity. News brief includes links to full report.

Report Underscores Need for Comprehensive Sex Ed
Deb Price, AlterNet, 23.apr.07
A congressionally mandated study that tracked 2,057 kids for several years found that most (51 percent) started having sex regardless of whether they'd been taught "abstinence only."

Lies We Teach Teenagers
Julie Sternberg, TomPaine.com, 21.mar.07
"This isn’t about the government encouraging teens to delay becoming sexually active until they are mature enough to make healthy choices -- without a doubt a wise message. Rather, these programs use an eight-point definition of abstinence that claims that abstaining from sex outside of marriage -- at any age -- is the expected standard of human activity, and that sex outside of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects."

Also:

ACLU Take Issue, Take Charge
Support Responsible Sexuality Education

Since 1997, Congress has allocated more than one billion dollars for unproven, medically inaccurate sexuality education programs that focus exclusively on abstaining from sex and censor information that can help young people make responsible, healthy and safe decisions about sexual activity.

There is no conclusive evidence that these programs reduce the rate of unintended pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, yet there is credible evidence that they deter sexually active teens from using condoms and other contraceptives. Nevertheless, the Bush Administration continues to push for increased federal spending on these misguided and harmful abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

ACLU's Take Issue, Take Charge Campaign offers resources and tools for activists who want to ensure students in their states are getting responsible sexuality education.

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More reproductive health & rights news:

Court's Abortion Ruling Undercuts Roe
Stevens and Bowen, Women's eNews, 19.apr.07
The Supreme Court's decision Wednesday upholding a law banning some abortions after 12 weeks, without a health exception, dismayed reproductive health advocates.

Miscarriage of Justice
Lynn M. Paltrow, American Prospect Online, 19.apr.07
The federal "partial-birth" abortion ban "has grave implications for all pregnant women, not only those seeking to end pregnancies. If the government can choose to advance fetal interests over the pregnant woman's health in the context of abortion, why can't so-called 'fetal rights' prevail in the context of birth?"

Clinics Say Funds Strained by Deficit-Cutting Law
Nadia Berenstein, Women's eNews, 6.apr.07
The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 is making it harder for some women to qualify for Medicaid, reproductive health clinics say. This in turn is squeezing Title X grants that ensure services each year for about 5 million women.

Editorial Pages Nix Toons Mocking Abortion Foes
David Wallis, Women's eNews, 21.mar.07
Most topics are fair game for editorial cartoonists, yet David Wallis says artists who dare to draw pro-choice cartoons face barriers. He notices the same timidity in other editorial areas and says silenced female cartoonists are not amused.

Pioneers Push Prenatal Environmental Health Care
Molly M. Ginty, Women's eNews, 18.apr.07
Hospital prenatal programs about environmental safety are mainly grassroots initiatives with independent funding. Advocates hope they will pioneer a more established place in mainstream prenatal practices.

No Hail Caesarean
Lauren Smiley, SF Weekly, 25.apr.07
Expectant mothers are losing an option to birth babies naturally and activists are charging it is more about money than safety

Umbilical Cord Cells: Godsend or Gimmick?
Stem Cells Offer Life-Saving Treatment, but Private Storage Remains Expensive
ABC News, 22.mar.07
"As the trend of banking cord blood continues to grow, critics say those who bank umbilical cord cells at private banks will most likely never use it. And with an initial price tag of more than $1,000 to store the cord blood -- and yearly storage fees in the hundreds of dollars -- the cost of this biological insurance policy may outweigh the actual benefits for most."

Outsourcing Breast Milk
Jennine Lee-St. John, Time Magazine, 19.spr.07
"Wet-nursing (hiring a woman to breast-feed your baby), which most of the Western world abandoned in the 19th century, is making a minor comeback among young moms. So is cross-nursing, in which mothers breast-feed one another's babies."

Wrenching politics surround stillborns
Ilene Lelchuk, San Francisco Chronicle, 10.apr.07
Bereft moms want birth papers, but abortion complicates issue. "The national discussion about birth certificates for stillborns, which are being pushed by bereaved parents working with the MISS Foundation, has been mingled with the abortion debate. Pro-choice advocates have opposed the laws on the grounds that they could fuel the anti-abortion cause by acknowledging that an unborn fetus is a person."

Quick cancer mandate raises health concerns
Daniel C. Vock, Stateline.org, 2.apr.07
None of the dozen or so inoculations widely required for children — from polio to chickenpox — has stirred as large an outcry as has the new cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil.

A growing culture of fatherlessness:
The legal dilemmas of erecting a wall between sperm donors and mothers
Kay S. Hymowitz, LA Times, 16.apr.07
"While the number of kids born as a result of the procedure (about 1 million so far in the United States) is still quite small, [artificial insemination] is having a disproportionate cultural and legal effect and is advancing a cause once celebrated only in the most obscure radical journals: the dad-free family." (Commentary)

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Poverty & health care:

NWLC releases issue brief on women's health care coverage

A new briefing paper from the National Women's Law Center reports that although U.S. men and women are at similar risk of not having health insurance, women -- whether insured or uninsured --are more likely to report cost-related access problems. Women are more likely to need and use health services, but on average have lower incomes than men and less financial ability to pay for their greater health care needs. Women are less likely than men to have insurance from their own employer and, regardless of what kind of coverage they have, they are more likely to have to make substantial out-of-pocket payments for health care services.

The issue brief, "Women and Health Coverage: The Affordability Gap," is supplemented by a separate technical brief providing an evaluation of various policy approaches to address women's unmet health care needs.

National Women's Law Center
www.nwlc.org

Women and Health Coverage: TheAffordability Gap
Elizabeth M. Patchias and Judy Waxman, NWLC, April 2007
12 pages, in .pdf

Women and Health Coverage: A Framework for Moving Forward
April 2007. 20 pages, in .pdf

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Recent articles on income & health inequality

The New Suburban Poverty
Eyal Press, The Nation, 23.apr.07
"Stories of downward mobility in America's suburbs have not exactly cluttered the headlines over the past decade. Gated communities of dream homes, mansions ringed by man-made lakes and glass-cube office parks: These are the images typically evoked by the posh, supersized subdivisions built during the 1990s technology boom. Low-wage jobs, houses under foreclosure, families unable to afford food and medical care are not. But venture beyond the city limits of any major metropolitan area today, and you will encounter these things, in forms less concentrated--and therefore less visible--than in the more blighted pockets of our cities perhaps, but with growing frequency all the same."

America Gone Wrong:
A Slashed Safety Net Turns Libraries into Homeless Shelters
Chip Ward, AlterNet, 2.apr.07
A dirty little secret about America is that public libraries have become de facto daytime shelters for the nation's street people while librarians are increasingly our unofficial social workers for the homeless and mentally disturbed.

Medicare Policy Keeps Door Shut on Disabled
Prema Polit, AlterNet, 11.apr.07
In an attempt to cut costs, Medicare has been denying coverage of power wheelchairs to people with disabilities who can't leave home without them.

A Healthy Health Care Debate
Jacob S. Hacker, TomPaine.com, 26.mar.07
"Just 12 short months ago, health care was nowhere on the political agenda, and pundits were confidently stating that, after the failure of the Clinton health plan a dozen years prior, Americans continued to be wary of serious action. Affordable, quality health care for all Americans was a pipe dream… [Today] health care is the number one domestic policy issue going into the 2008 presidential race."

Unhealthy Inequality
Brian D. Smedley and Alan Jenkins, TomPaine.com, 10.apr.07
"As the nation debates ways of affording all Americans health coverage, it is time that we seriously addressed health care inequality as well. Otherwise, we may end up with a system of universal access to grossly unequal services, to the detriment of all Americans."

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