Location Cubed

Author(s):  
Douglas S. Massey ◽  
Len Albright ◽  
Rebecca Casciano ◽  
Elizabeth Derickson ◽  
David N. Kinsey

This chapter talks about the importance of location in human affairs. Naturally the quality of a dwelling has direct implications for the health, comfort, security, and well-being of the people who inhabit it, and matching the attributes of housing with the needs and resources of families has long been a principal reason for residential mobility in the United States. When people purchase or rent a home, however, they not only buy into a particular dwelling and its amenities but also into a surrounding neighborhood and its qualities, for good or for ill. In contemporary urban society, opportunities and resources tend to be distributed unevenly in space, and in the United States spatial inequalities have widened substantially in recent decades. Where one lives is probably more important now than ever in determining one's life chances. In selecting a place to live, a family does much more than simply choose a dwelling to inhabit; it also selects a neighborhood to occupy.

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 323-343
Author(s):  
Matthew Thomas Clement ◽  
Chad L. Smith ◽  
Tyler Leverenz

Much sustainability scholarship has examined the environmental dimensions of subjective and objective well-being. As an alternative measure of human well-being, we consider the notion of quality of life and draw on a framework from the sustainability literature to study its association with ecological impact, specifically the carbon footprint. We conduct a quantitative analysis, combining zip-code level data on quality of life and the carbon footprint per household for the year 2012 across the continental United States ( n=29,953). Findings consistently show a significant, negative association between quality of life and the carbon footprint. Our findings point to the potential advantages of utilizing robust objective measures of quality of life that extends beyond economic well-being and life expectancy alone. Furthermore, our findings question the conventional wisdom that sustainability requires sacrifices, while suggesting opportunities for how increased levels of sustainability may be achieved while retaining high levels of quality of life.


2021 ◽  
pp. ASN.2020111636
Author(s):  
Kurtis A. Pivert ◽  
Suzanne M. Boyle ◽  
Susan M. Halbach ◽  
Lili Chan ◽  
Hitesh H. Shah ◽  
...  

BackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic’s effects on nephrology fellows’ educational experiences, preparedness for practice, and emotional wellbeing are unknown.MethodsWe recruited current adult and pediatric fellows and 2020 graduates of nephrology training programs in the United States to participate in a survey measuring COVID-19’s effects on their training experiences and wellbeing.ResultsOf 1005 nephrology fellows-in-training and recent graduates, 425 participated (response rate 42%). Telehealth was widely adopted (90% for some or all outpatient nephrology consults), as was remote learning (76% of conferences were exclusively online). Most respondents (64%) did not have in-person consults on COVID-19 inpatients; these patients were managed by telehealth visits (27%), by in-person visits with the attending faculty without fellows (29%), or by another approach (9%). A majority of fellows (84%) and graduates (82%) said their training programs successfully sustained their education during the pandemic, and most fellows (86%) and graduates (90%) perceived themselves as prepared for unsupervised practice. Although 42% indicated the pandemic had negatively affected their overall quality of life and 33% reported a poorer work-life balance, only 15% of 412 respondents who completed the Resident Well-Being Index met its distress threshold. Risk for distress was increased among respondents who perceived the pandemic had impaired their knowledge base (odds ratio [OR], 3.04; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.00 to 4.77) or negatively affected their quality of life (OR, 3.47; 95% CI, 2.29 to 5.46) or work-life balance (OR, 3.16; 95% CI, 2.18 to 4.71).ConclusionsDespite major shifts in education modalities and patient care protocols precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, participants perceived their education and preparation for practice to be minimally affected.


2017 ◽  
pp. 1415-1429
Author(s):  
Michelle Lee D'Abundo ◽  
Stephen L. Firsing III ◽  
Cara Lynn Sidman

Education and health are among the most salient issues facing Americans today. The field of public health has moved away from a physical health medical model to a more well-being focused quality-of-life perspective. K-20 curriculums in the United States need to reflect this ideological shift. In this chapter, content-focused curriculums with process-focused health behavior change-oriented learning are proposed as a strategy to promote well-being. Other issues that need to be addressed in the current education system are that the delivery of health-related curriculums is often inconsistent and taught by untrained personnel. Well-being-focused curriculums delivered online can provide consistency to improve the quality of health courses. This innovative approach has the potential to improve educational and health outcomes for K-20 curriculums while addressing public health issues by promoting well-being and quality-of-life for children and adults throughout the United States.


1971 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 282-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Duncan Powell

The rate of modernization in Venezuela over the past forty years has been rapid, even startling, if attention is focussed on the more conspicuous institutions and processes. During this period an agrarian, patrimonially ruled, backward society has been transformed into a highly commercialized urban society governed by a political party system based on widespread popular participation in the electoral process. However—and this is a phenomenon of which social scientists in the United States have become increasingly aware—modernization does not affect people in an evenhanded, uniform manner. While the great transformation in economy and society which we call modernization improves the quality of life for many people, some groups or individuals are bypassed in the process, and some even come to suffer as a consequence of it. Therefore, the level of modernity and personal well-being achieved in the most advanced sectors of a society will often be irrelevant as an indicator of welfare in those pockets of deprivation left behind or created in the general march of progress.


HortScience ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 513E-514
Author(s):  
Donald N. Maynard

The Citizen Ambassador Program was initiated in 1956 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower founded “People to People.” His vast perspective as a military and governmental leader led him to believe that individual citizens reaching out in friendship to the people of other nations could make a significant contribution to world understanding. From 14–28 Aug. 1998, ASHS took part in the “People-to People Mission to China.” Our delegation was composed of six ASHS Members and two guests. Delegates were from Canada and Brazil and the United States. After meeting in Los Angeles for a final briefing, the delegation departed for Hong Kong, where we immediately boarded a flight to Beijing. Our China experience began in Beijing, then on to Hangzhou, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong. All of these locations are in the densely populated eastern portion of China. (China has approximately the same area as the United States, but it has 1.25 billion people compared to only 270 million in the U.S.) Our time at each location was about equally divided between professional and cultural activities. Our Chinese horticultural colleagues were enthusiastic and well-trained. As in the United States, the quality of the facilities and the equipment varied somewhat among locations. Operating funds, never sufficient for research and maintenance of facilities, commonly were supplemented by sale of horticultural products.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 342-346
Author(s):  
Carl E. Taylor

It is time to apply in the United States' principles that are emerging from a series of World Summits and United Nations Conferences on Children, Environment, Population, Women, and Social Development. After years of top-down programs supported by international agencies, which have made some significant contributions in promoting activities such as childhood immunization but are having problems of sustainability, we need to focus now on integrated human development. The past tendency in international assistance to concentrate on economic development has not helped the people in greatest need. There is growing realization that what improves the quality of life most is what people do for themselves. Sustainability requires social mobilization at the local level. There are thousands of integrated, social development projects around the world that demonstrate the power of community-based, participatory approaches and we know how such local programs can be made to work under any political or economic system. What we haven't learned is how to "go to scale" in extending such projects to cover larger populations. A promising approach11 seems to be using successful local projects upgraded into Centers for Action Learning to promote the adaptation of science-based innovations to everyday life in a whole region of a country.


Author(s):  
Julia E. Rusk

This afterword presents a vision for well-being policies and actions in the United States, focusing on the experience of the City of Santa Monica, California. The purpose of data is to put it into action. The goal in Santa Monica is to make this a reality, with benefits accruing regularly to every resident, neighborhood, business, and contributor to the community. This was the idea behind Santa Monica’s local Wellbeing Index: harnessing the power of data for the commonwealth that would reveal the story of the people and the community in new ways, and that would help to transform city government. The goal of the Wellbeing Index was to expand the measures of a community far beyond the traditional and economically-focused gross domestic product (GDP). Going forward, the Wellbeing Index will be the tool used to evaluate whether policies, programs, and other City investments are in fact improving community well-being. The chapter also looks at Santa Monica’s programs, such as the Youth Wellbeing Report Card and the Pico Wellbeing Project.


Daedalus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 150 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-90
Author(s):  
Ellis P. Monk

Abstract For many decades now, social scientists have documented immense ethnoracial inequalities in the United States. Much of this work is rooted in comparing the life chances, trajectories, and outcomes of African Americans to White Americans. From health to wealth and nearly every measure of well-being, success, and thriving one can find, White Americans remain ahead of Black Americans. What this focus on ethnoracial inequality between “groups” obscures, however, is long-standing skin tone inequality within groups. In this essay, I trace the trajectory of colorism and skin tone stratification in the United States over the past century. Next, I high-light the contemporary persistence of skin tone stratification, not only among African Americans, but among Latinx and Asian Americans as well. I conclude by arguing that future research on colorism will be essential to understand comprehensively the significance of race/ethnicity in a demographically shifting United States (such as immigration and “multiraciality”).


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana K. Donohue ◽  
Juan Bornman

The purpose of this research was to explore the relationship between university students’ perceptions of the overall quality of instruction (PQI) they experienced since COVID-19 and their academic well-being. This relationship was examined in the context of a moderated moderation with students’ household income and the cultural value of power distance (PD), which measures the extent to which less powerful members of an organization expect and accept that power is unequally distributed. Two countries with societally moderate levels of PD (South Africa and the United States) were assessed. Moderated moderations between PQI, income, and PD were found for the academic well-being of students from both the United States and South Africa. The patterns of interactions were in some ways similar and other ways different, highlighting the complexity of how students may react to potential stressors in their academic environment. Potential explanations and implications of these results are discussed.


2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Carr ◽  
Michael A. Friedman

We investigate the frequency and psychological correlates of institutional and interpersonal discrimination reported by underweight, normal weight, overweight, obese I, and obese II/III Americans. Analyses use data from the Midlife Development in the United States study, a national survey of more than 3,000 adults ages 25 to 74 in 1995. Compared to normal weight persons, obese II/III persons (body mass index of 35 or higher) are more likely to report institutional and day-to-day interpersonal discrimination. Among obese II/III persons, professional workers are more likely than nonprofessionals to report employment discrimination and interpersonal mistreatment. Obese II/III persons report lower levels of self-acceptance than normal weight persons, yet this relationship is fully mediated by the perception that one has been discriminated against due to body weight or physical appearance. Our findings offer further support for the pervasive stigma of obesity and the negative implications of stigmatized identities for life chances.


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