Dead Horse Flogged
Will I ever get tired of blogging about gas prices? No.
In the wake of Katrina, average retail gasoline prices in the US just jumped above $3, nearly reaching their all-time, inflation-adjusted high. Two graphs tell the story. First from gasbuddy.com:
Next from the Wall Street Journal (temporary link), with a graph of inflation-adjusted gas prices since the late 1970's (click to enlarge). It's a few days out of date, so it doesn't account for the most the recent price increase to $3.09 per gallon, which is what gasbuddy.com now says is the national average -- roughly the same inflation-adjusted prices that caused such panic, and such a profound shift in energy consumption habits, in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Update: More and better on the subject here. (This was posted by Clark, by the way...)
Friends for Life
There's no question that our social environments help determine how healthy we are. In fact, I have now in front of me a small mountain of studies to that effect. Rather than bore you with the particulars of their findings, I'll simply summarize this way: study after study shows that close social relationships--a spouse, loved one, or a close friend--help people live longer.
Interestingly, social bonds don't appear to prevent the onset of a disease. There's no association, for instance, between social isolation and sudden cardiac death. But for survivors of a life-threatening event or disease, social connectedness significantly increases average longevity and functioning. One study even suggests that the effect of social isolation "is comparable to the effect of cigarette smoking on total mortality reported in some studies."
In other words, close relations with friends and family are really, really good for your health. Or--stated in the converse--loneliness kills.
Perhaps more intriguing, an emerging body of research is pointing out that suburban sprawl is an impediment to social networks. Does sprawl erode social networks which are critical for health? Is sprawl bad for our health because it diminishes our personal relationships? Well, that's where things get confusing.
High Stakes Testing: There is No Free Lunch
The newest Washington Assessment of Student Learning--the tests that the state uses to gauge students' academic achievement, as well as schools' success or failure under the US "No Child Left Behind Act"-- was just released. And as I was perusing this Seattle Times data supplement, I couldn't help but notice the correlation between income and achievement -- namely, that elementary schools with a large share of students signed up for free or reduced-price school lunches (a sign that the school serves a low-income population) also have a small share of 4th graders who pass the test.
This should come as no real surprise; by now, it's been pretty conclusively established that poverty impedes academic performance. But just to amuse myself, I played with the numbers a bit this morning -- and was astonished by just how strongly incomes predict school performance.
Take a look at the graph to the right: on average, every 10 point increase in the share of students in a given school who receive free or reduced lunches correspondsto a 6 point decline in the share of students who passed all sections of the WASL. In other words, the poorer the student body, the worse the school does on WASL.
