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The Agency for Health Care Research and Quality has released Statistical Brief # 399 - "The Long-Term Uninsured in America, 2007-2010 (Selected Intervals): Estimates for the U.S. Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population under Age 65".  Despite the long name, it only 7 pages of data - describing the characteristics of the population that went without health insurance for long periods.

It seems like an analysis that will have value, regardless of the affordable care act.  A couple of the more significant findings were: "Adults ages 18 to 24 and 25 to 29 were the most likely to be uninsured for at least one month", and "Individuals reported to be in excellent or very good health status were the least likely to be uninsured for at least one month during 2009 to 2010."

At seven pages, this provides a lot of information that would have been nice to have a couple years earlier, but is still very relevant.

Mike McCurry, Ph.D.

Population re-categorization In Roberts County

In an effort to collect the most precise and correct information pertaining to the population, the Census Bureau formed the Count Question Resolution Program (CQR) in which state, local and tribal officials may contest the original 2010 Decennial count. With the understanding that geocoding or geographic boundaries for a housing unit or group quarters may be established incorrectly (and therefore presented in the wrong block), or mistakes may arise when processing the data; the CQR reviews challenges and rectifies any errors.

Recently the CQR made a change within Roberts County concerning the population count. Specifically, a correction was made regarding the Sisseton City and Sisseton Township totals. Sisseton Township changed from a total population of 453 to a total population of 483 while the city of Sisseton changed from a total population of 2,470 to a total population of 2,440. The change of thirty does not indicate a collection of new data, or a new count, but rather a reclassification from the city count to the township.

Mary Killsahundred-Research Assistant

Sociology and Rural Studies

In October, the Census released "School Enrollment and Work Status: 2011" (http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-14.pdf ).   It's based on the American Community Survey - so we can't really take the data down to just SDSU, or anything very particular to South Dakota, but it does have some interesting data at the national level, and some hints at the state level.

It shows that over 20 percent of South Dakota undergraduates are working full-time when they attend college.  I doubt if that's a great surprise for any of us teaching here - but it is a heck of a statement (Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Montana and Oregon have the fewest undergraduates working full time).  If you're interested in student work status, check it out.

Mike McCurry, Ph.D.

World Life Expectancy has posted violent crime rates, by state, at www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/violent-crime-offenses .  From the same page, you can also see their posts on motor vehicle death rates and firearms death rates.  It's kind of nice to have this sort of data available - with the ease of electronic publishing and the amount of data available, I'm seeing both sides of some issues picking their data to show correlations that, while real, don't show the entire story.

I'd encourage everyone to check my comments (and anyone else's) - the chart shows that the violent crime rate is about 4 ½ times as high in Washington D.C. as in South Dakota, the firearms death rate is 1.8 times as high in DC, but the motor vehicle death rate is 2.74 times as high in South Dakota than it is in DC.  I might feel safe in offering speed and distance traveled as the reasons for DC's lower motor vehicle death rate - but it's more responsible if I just share access to the data.         

The other day, we got the question of how many South Dakotans retire each year.  It seemed like a good question - it is a good question - but we've learned that it's hard to answer.  

After several hours of searching, I realized that I'm part of the problem - technically, since I receive a small annuity from Montana's Teacher Retirement, I retired in 2009.  On the other hand, I remain in the workforce, so I'm not retired.  On the third hand, my research showed that nearly three fourths of folks eligible for social security retire at age 62.  In short, by researching the topic, I learned that retirement isn't all that well defined.

It's only a six page read - but the trends look fairly significant.

Mike McCurry, Ph.D.

Table 4.2. shows child fatalities - and I'd prefer to see South Dakota's numbers replaced by Montana or North Dakota's.  There are a lot of tables that show victims and perps - if you're working with child maltreatment data, you should probably keep this one around.

Mike McCurry, Ph.D.

National Results On
Adolescent Drug Use: Overview of Key Findings: 2012 (http://monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/mtf-overview2012.pdf ) is available.  This study, sponsored by Sponsored by The National Institute on Drug Abuse at The National Institutes of Health, fills 90 pages with tables and data.

If I were to give a capsule review, it would be that Marijuana use continues to grow, LSD has gone down, and Vicodin/Percocet misuse seems to be dropping as new regulations and controls are being recommended.  (I am really glad to deal with numbers rather than policies).  At any rate, if adolescents and drug use is a topic of interest, the current data is available.  The trends really are too inconsistent to make a simple condensed version usable.

Mike McCurry, Ph.D.

As I went through the University's health screening, the nurse confidently explained that since I had scored over 30.0 on the Body Mass Index, statistics showed that I am obese.  I didn't shake her confidence when I explained that the index becomes far less reliable as it moves away from the mean.  She explained that the government accepted it, and that I should too.

What she didn't realize is that the equation has been around since 1832 - when it was published as Quetelet's Index.  Adolphe Quetelet was an early sociologist, statistician, and demographer.  Congressman Garfield (later to become President) consulted with Quetelet on ways to improve the US Census.   

Quetelet was one of us - not part of the medical profession. He developed the equation not to measure obesity, but to find the characteristics of  norm, the average man.  He didn't care if the index lost accuracy at the extremes - Quetelet's Index was developed to gauge the middle, not the tails.

In 1972, a gentleman named Ancel Keys cabbaged Quetelet's Index and renamed it "The Body Mass Index."  (Some of my older readers may appreciate Keys' earlier accomplishment as the man who developed K rations.)  At any rate, Quetelet developed an indicator to find the norm, Keys changed the name, and used the same equation to measure the extremes.

Personally, I've found the MBB index more helpful in reminding me that its time to lose weight - My Belt Buckle.  If I can't see it, I need to do something.  If you'd like to learn more about Adolphe Quetelet, the article "Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874)-the average man and indices of obesity" is at http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/1/47.full.pdf+html .