This article studies gender-specific concerns that may be associated with conflict escalation and intimate partner violence (IPV). The authors draw on the life course perspective, which examines how an individual’s experiences affect them as they age, as background for assessing conflict areas related to men’s and women’s actions during the young adult period, and subsequently the association between such concerns and the odds of reporting IPV in a current/most recent relationship. The authors administered surveys that assessed whether disagreements about potential conflict areas – including but not limited to infidelity – related to male or female partner’s actions. Concerns about women’s and men’s actions were both related to the odds of reporting IPV experience, but disagreements about male partners’ actions during young adulthood were actually more common, and relative to concerns about women’s actions, more strongly associated with IPV. The authors conclude that additional attention should be given to specific areas around which couples’ disagreements develop and conflicts sometimes escalate.

Juvenile justice systems are in crisis. Juvenile corrections and probation agencies have long struggled to recruit and retain front-line staff. But since the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic, these challenges have reached unprecedented levels. As a result, public agencies are struggling to provide youth with even basic supervision and services and to safeguard the well-being of their staff and the youth they serve. Staffing shortages extend to public defenders and prosecutors, forcing youth to go without counsel and causing court delays. Additionally, service providers cannot maintain adequate staffing—with some even going out of business—which results in overcrowding, waiting lists, or leaving youth and families without viable options to get their critical needs met. Historically, jurisdictions have adopted short-term, reactive measures to address staff turnover such as hiring bonuses or providing overtime pay. However, this approach is not sufficient to mitigate the current crisis, nor will it prevent its recurrence. This brief details findings from a national survey conducted in 2023 by The Council of State Governments Justice Center, Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, and University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute, as well as listening sessions with juvenile justice agencies across the country, which reveal the scope and consequences of this crisis. In response, the authors call for states and locales to use these staffing challenges as an opportunity to engage in a fundamental rethinking of their juvenile justice workforce, as well as where and how youth are best served, to protect public safety and improve youth outcomes more effectively. Recognizing that jurisdictions face immediate staffing pressures, the authors complement this brief with fact sheets that detail shorter-term hiring and retention best practices.

Perceptions of law enforcement ineffectiveness, injustice, and illegitimacy are prevalent among individuals living in Black communities in the United States. Prior research links these attitudes with differential orientations toward cooperation with police. The current study used data collected from a representative sample of 522 Pennsylvania residents to measure public perceptions of police. Analyses examined racial differences in perceptions of police and determined whether normative (i.e., perceptions of procedural justice) and/or instrumental (i.e., perceptions of police effectiveness) assessments of police could explain racial differences in anticipated cooperation with law enforcement through perceptions of legitimacy. Findings revealed the presence of a significant indirect relationship between race and perceptions of legitimacy through perceptions of police effectiveness and procedural justice, as well as a significant indirect relationship between race and cooperation through police effectiveness, procedural justice, and legitimacy. Theoretical and practical implications stemming from these findings are discussed.

This report presents data on public elementary and secondary education revenues and expenditures at the local education agency or school district level for Fiscal Year 2021. Specifically, this report includes the following types of school district finance data: (1) revenue, current expenditure, and capital outlay expenditure totals; (2) revenues by source; (3) current expenditures by function and object; and (4) revenues and current expenditures per pupil. For the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the report shows a total membership of 334,261 students and expenditures of $11,231 per student in Fiscal Year 2021, which is a 4.3% increase from the previous fiscal year. Florida’s current expenditures per pupil is reported as $10,401 which is below the national average of $14,019 expenditures per pupil.

The Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools (P-TECH 9-14) involve three-way partnership among a high school, a community college, and an employer partner. The schools enroll students from grade 9 through two years of postsecondary education. While each of these schools is somewhat different, the basic elements of the model are the same, where each school has one or more employer partners and offers one or more college degrees at the affiliated community college in fields related to the work of the industry partner, creating a pipeline of talent into specific, high-demand industries. This evaluation provides the first rigorous evidence about the effects of the P-TECH 9-14 model on student outcomes. The study uses a lottery-based random assignment design that takes advantage of the nature of the New York City high school admissions process, in which students were randomly offered or not offered an opportunity to attend a P-TECH 9-14 school. Overall, this study found that by the end of three years of postsecondary education, 13% of students in the P-TECH 9-14 group had completed postsecondary degrees, compared with 8% of the students in the comparison group, a statistically significant 5% impact. This overall impact, however, primarily reflects an impact among young men. Seven years after entering high school, 13% of male students in the P-TECH 9-14 group and only 3% of male students in the comparison group had earned a college degree. In contrast, female students in the P-TECH 9-14 and comparison groups earned college degrees at approximately the same rate. This difference in impacts suggests that the P-TECH 9-14 model seems to have provided an additional level of support for young men that they did not experience in other kinds of high schools, allowing them to succeed at similar rates to young women. This study also found that students in the P-TECH 9-14 group participated in internships at much higher rates than students in the comparison group, and were 26% more likely to participate in dual enrollment than students in the comparison group. There were not significant differences between the two groups in the percentages who graduated high school after four years.

The authors conduct an impact analysis on a unique technology certificate and apprenticeship program offered by LaunchCode. LaunchCode is a non-profit organization that helps people enter the technology field by providing free and accessible education, training, and paid apprenticeship placements. The authors merge administrative data containing entrance exam scores with survey data for individuals that were (a) not accepted, (b) accepted but did not complete the course, (c) completed the course but not the apprenticeship, and (d) completed the course and the apprenticeship. Using entrance exam scores as an instrumental variable, the authors conduct an intent-to-treat model, finding that program acceptance was significantly associated with increased earnings and probabilities of working in a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) profession. Then, by using machine learning-generated multinomial propensity score weights, the authors conduct a treatment-on-treated analysis, finding that these increases appear to be primarily driven by the apprenticeship component.

For the first time the U.S. Census Bureau tabulated information from questions about race for the official counts of 22 detailed groups that are classified as Some Other Race. Many of these detailed groups are usually tabulated from the ancestry question in the American Community Survey but these data come from recently released 2020 Census detailed data files. The Some Other Race category includes non-Hispanic groups (such as Mauritanian), Multiracial and Multiethnic responses (such as “Biracial”) and Hispanic responses (such as “Mexican”) to the race question. The three largest non-Hispanic groups (excluding Multiracial and Multiethnic responses) were Brazilian, Guyanese, and Cabo Verdean. Each of these three groups were concentrated in the Northeast region of the United States and Florida. The vast majority of race responses (90.8%) that are classified as Some Other Race were from people who were classified as Hispanic in the ethnicity question (45.3 million out of the 49.9 million who identified as Some Other Race alone or in combination). Brazilian was the largest Some Other Race group reported in the 2020 Census race question (excluding Hispanic responses and Multiracial and Multiethnic responses such as "Biracial"). Among the Some Other Race alone groups, Brazilian was followed by Guyanese, Cabo Verdean, Belizean, and Mauritanian.

The U.S. sugar program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), provides substantial benefits to sugar producers. Because the program guarantees relatively high prices for domestic sugar, sugar farmers benefit significantly, and sugar farms are substantially more profitable per acre than other U.S. farms. This report examines the benefits of the U.S. sugar program and groups likely to benefit; the costs of the U.S. sugar program and groups likely to bear the costs; how agreements with Mexico on sugar affect imports and the overall U.S. economy; and how other trade agreements affect the U.S. sugar program and how they are implemented. Research reviewed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggests the U.S. sugar program results in an increase in domestic sugar production and higher profits for farmers, totaling an estimated $1.4 billion to $2.7 billion in additional benefits annually. The U.S. sugar program creates net costs to the economy, because higher sugar prices created by the program cost consumers more than producers benefit, according to research GAO reviewed. According to some studies, the program costs consumers an estimated $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion per year, yielding net costs to the economy of approximately $1 billion per year. Other studies estimate that the program leads to declines in U.S. employment in industries that rely heavily on sugar, such as confectionery manufacturing. In 2022, U.S. consumers, including food manufacturers, paid twice the world price for sugar. The GAO recommends that USDA evaluate the effectiveness of the current method and alternative methods for allocating raw sugar tariff-rate quotas; that the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) evaluate alternative allocation methods for consistency with U.S. law and international obligations; and that USTR use the results of these evaluations to validate or change its quota allocation method.

The COVID-19 pandemic threatened the ability of public transportation providers throughout the United States to offer the comprehensive, effective service millions of people rely upon every day. Though the federal government provided aid that prevented massive cuts during the pandemic’s first two years, many transit agencies are now facing a fiscal cliff because that funding is ending and ridership has failed to fully return to pre-pandemic levels in most places, limiting fare revenues. For many agencies, this cliff is only the latest challenge to emerge from decades of unstable, varying funding levels that have threatened their ability to provide reliable, effective, desirable service. This report explores why transit agencies—unlike many other public services—continuously face these unsteady conditions and presents federal, state, and local level policy options. En route to fiscal stability, transit operators face several obstacles, which are largely caused by policymakers not assembling an adequate set of diverse funding sources for transit. Agencies that previously raised much of their revenues from passenger fare collection face an uncertain future as ridership continues to recover slowly post-pandemic. Most agencies rely on just one major external source of local revenue—usually sales taxes, themselves notable for their instability—exposing them to varying levels of funding as local economies shift over time. These circumstances explain why agencies seem to face one funding emergency after another, the current pandemic-induced crisis being the most recent. Local and state leaders can support transit agencies through leveraging federal highway funding and developing a diverse and more stable set of external subsidies for transit. Transit agencies can identify ways to increase transit service to encourage additional ridership; increase operational efficiency by investing in improvements that speed operations and reduce energy costs; and create rainy day funds.

This report describes emergency department visits related to mental health disorders among children and adolescents and compares them with visits by children and adolescents without mental health disorders. From 2018 to 2021, an annual average of 1,026,000 visits were made by children and adolescents with a diagnosis of a mental health disorder, representing 14.0 emergency department visits per 1,000 children and adolescents. Visit rates related to mental health disorders were higher among adolescents ages 12–17 (30.7) compared with children younger than 12 years (5.3), among girls (16.1) compared with boys (12.1), and among Black non-Hispanic (20.8) compared with Hispanic (13.2) children and adolescents. Mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and behavioral and emotional disorders were the most frequent diagnoses at mental health-related emergency department visits. Medicaid was the primary expected source of payment at 60.2% of the visits. Approximately one-quarter of the children and adolescents visiting the emergency department with any diagnosis of a mental health disorder received at least one psychiatric medication.

This report examines adult use of three components of health information technology: using the Internet to look for health or medical information, communicating with a doctor (but not to receive direct care), and looking up medical test results. Health information technology is the use of electronic systems to store, share, and analyze health information and is considered separately from telehealth, which is the use of medical and telecommunications technology to provide direct patient care. This report found that from July to December 2022, 58.5% of adults had used the Internet in the past 12 months to look for health or medical information and that women (63.3%) were more likely than men (53.5%) to have used the Internet to look for health or medical information. Additionally, during this period, 41.5% of adults had used the Internet in the past 12 months to communicate with a doctor or doctor’s office and 46.1% of adults had used the Internet in the past 12 months to look up medical test results. The percentage of adults who used the Internet to communicate with a doctor or doctor’s office was higher among White (45.0%) and Asian (42.3%) adults compared with Black (36.7%), Hispanic (32.0%), and American Indian and Alaska Native (30.5%) adults. Overall, adults ages 30-44 showed the highest rates of health information technology usage, with a subsequent decline observed as age increased.

This infographic provides information on certain subgroups of veterans — including female veterans, veterans aged 18–34, multiracial veterans, and bisexual veterans — who experienced past-year serious psychological distress at rates significantly higher than the overall veteran population. Serious psychological distress is nearly 3 times higher among female veterans than among male veterans. Serious psychological distress is more than 6 times higher among veterans aged 18–34 than among veterans aged 65 or above. Serious psychological distress is 1.4 times higher among multiracial/other race veterans than among White veterans. And serious psychological distress is more than 2 times higher among gay/lesbian veterans and nearly 3.5 times higher among bisexual veterans than among heterosexual veterans.