CSDE Affiliate Scott Allard‘s and CSDE Trainee Lizzy Pelletier‘s co-authored paper “Spatial Patterns of Poverty, Hardship & Nonprofit Safety Net Provision in the U.S.” appeared in the Journal of Social Security Research this week. Their analyses describe the geography of poverty across urban, suburban, and rural areas. The authors draw connections between the presence of community-based non-profits and their uneven presence across the urban-rural divide, finding that these social-supportive institutions are more commonly present in urban areas.

In early August, CSDE Affiliate Mark Long published, “Altruism and the Statistical Value of Human Life for Policy and Regulation,” in Social Indicators Research. The paper interrogates the current measurement of the ‘Value of Statistical Life’ used to evaluate the relative costs and benefits of policies in the US and how they affect mortality.  Long proposes an alternative metric that is adjusted for altruistic sentiment.  Long’s analyses reveals that by not accounting for health altruistic sentiments current VSL’s are underestimates of the valuing of life in policy and program regulatory review.  These underestimates are particularly dramatic for child health altruistic sentiment, yielding altruistic adjustments by a factor of three.