Personal Finance

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 storm with maximum winds of 125 mph, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The cost of the ensuing damage to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast was more than $80 billion; it is generally considered to be most destructive tropical storm in U.S. history in terms of property damage, followed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and Hurricane Ike in 1998.

Massachusetts’ statewide healthcare reform, implemented in 2008, served as a model for the national Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Both the state and federal legislation mandated coverage for the previously uninsured and, among other goals, sought to reduce the risk of personal medical bankruptcy.

Between 1994 and 2006, subprime lending grew from $35 billion to $600 billion a year in the United States, amounting to 23% of all mortgage dollars lent. The ensuing subprime mortgage market crash led to severe disruptions in the global financial markets.  By the third quarter of 2007, about 25% of subprime loans were either delinquent or in foreclosure.

Social science research has focused extensively on rising income inequality and the consolidation of household wealth in the hands of the top 1% of U.S. households over the last 30 years. Recently, some policy makers have also been examining the causes and implications of this dynamic.

Estimates of the prevalence of childhood depression range from 1% to 2% of all children in the United States, and for adolescents this figure may be as high as 8%. While public awareness of this issue is growing, the long-term economic costs of childhood psychological trauma are largely unknown.

Scholars at the University of Virginia, University of British Columbia and Harvard University sought to make sense of a seeming contradiction in the way some people relate to money: “When asked to take stock of their lives, people with more money report being a good deal more satisfied. But when asked how happy they are at the moment, people with more money are barely different than those with less.”

Beginning in 1999, New York City enrolled the majority of its welfare recipients in the Employment Services and Placement (ESP) job training program. Participants spent 14 hours a week in the ESP program, focusing primarily on skills such as resume writing and interviewing.

The fact that smoking has direct negative effects on health is well documented.  Smoking could also adversely impact the health of others in a family through substitution effects within a household’s expenditures.

Having accurate knowledge about financial products and services is widely perceived to be advantageous, especially for low-income communities.  However, empirical evidence of this assertion has been relatively scarce.