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This analysis of data from the Health and Retirement Study estimated that the prevalence of dementia among people older than 70 years of age in the United States in 2010 was 14.7% and that the total costs attributable to dementia were between $157 billion and $215 billion. Dementia, a chronic disease of aging characterized by progressive cognitive decline that interferes with independent functioning, 1 affects a large and growing number of older adults in the United States. 2 , 3 Citing the growing effect of dementia on patients, families, and the health care and long-term care systems, President Barack Obama signed the National Alzheimer's Project Act into law in January 2011. One goal of the law is to improve the ability of the federal government to track the monetary costs incurred by individuals and public programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, that result from dementia. 4 Accurately identifying the monetary costs . . .

This paper distinguishes between the human capital and signaling theories by estimating the earnings return to a high school diploma. Unlike most indicators of education (e.g., a year of school), a diploma is essentially a piece of paper and, hence, by itself cannot affect productivity. Any earnings return to holding a diploma must therefore reflect the diploma’s signaling value. Using regression discontinuity methods to compare the earnings of workers who barely passed and barely failed high school exit exams—standardized tests that students must pass to earn a high school diploma—we find little evidence of diploma signaling effects.

Providing remedial (also known as developmental) education is the primary way colleges cope with students who do not have the academic preparation needed to succeed in college-level courses. Remediation is widespread, with nearly one-third of entering freshmen taking remedial courses at an annual cost of at least $1 billion. Despite its prevalence, there is uncertainty surrounding its short- and longer-run effects. This paper presents new evidence on this question using longitudinal administrative data from Texas and a regression discontinuity research design. We find little indication that remediation improves academic or labor market outcomes.

This article estimates the relationship between students’ psychosocial and academic outcomes during their first 3 years enrolled at public, 4-year institutions. Our sample comprises students from low-income backgrounds who applied for a competitive scholarship and enrolled at a 4-year public institution. We follow two cohorts of entering students throughout their first 3 years on campus. We observe their cumulative grade point average and persistence decisions each semester, and have annual measures of four psychosocial outcomes: mattering to campus, sense of belonging to campus, academic self-efficacy, and social self-efficacy. We find that psychosocial outcomes are moderately predictive of academic outcomes, with sense of belonging and academic self-efficacy emerging as most predictive of both cumulative grade point avaerage and persistence.

This paper provides revealed preference estimates of the monetary value to workers of a lower unemployment rate at the time of job separation. By examining the decision between reenlisting and exiting the military, we find that service members would sacrifice 1.5–2 percent in earnings to avoid a 1 percentage point increase in the home-state unemployment rate during job search. Comparing these quantities to realized earnings losses for those who separate suggests that the value of nonwork time and other factors (e.g., private and public transfers) offset less than one-third of the earnings losses caused by exiting the military into a weak labor market.

This paper reports results from a resume-based field experiment designed to examine employer preferences for job applicants who attended for-profit colleges. For-profit colleges have seen sharp increases in enrollment in recent years despite alternatives, such as public community colleges, being much cheaper. We sent almost 9,000 fictitious resumes of young job applicants who recently completed their schooling to online job postings in six occupational categories and tracked employer callback rates. We find no evidence that employers prefer applicants with resumes listing a for-profit college relative to those whose resumes list either a community college or no college at all.

To the Editor: Hurd et al. (April 4 issue) 1 use data from a subgroup of participants in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) (the Aging, Demographics, and Memory Study subsample) to estimate the annual Medicare cost per person with dementia at $2,752 (in 2010 dollars). This finding closely approximates the results of our earlier study, 2 based on the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, in which we estimated an average annual cost of $2,629 (adjusted to 2010 dollars); our findings were within the range of statistical error of the estimate by Hurd et al. We also reported that the average duration of . . .

This study assessed alternative course delivery for developmental education (DE) math and student outcomes in community colleges in Texas. We examined 2 innovative interventions: (a) study skills courses offered alongside DE math and (b) DE math courses that are shorter than a full semester. Our model leveraged detailed demographic information and DE placement exam scores to compare students in these interventions to similar students in traditional DE math. We found that students in shorter courses were 12% more likely to pass DE math and 2% more likely to pass a first college-level (FCL) math course within a year. Likewise, students also enrolled in a study skills course were 4% more likely to pass DE math, 1% more likely to pass FCL math within a year, and 4% more likely to persist to the next college year. These findings suggest that emerging reforms to DE show promise and deserve further study.

This article examines the impacts of summer instruction and test-based grade retention in New York City. We use a research design that exploits test score cutoffs used in assignment to these treatments. We find modest positive effects of summer instruction on English language arts (ELA) achievement for students assigned to summer instruction because of poor ELA performance but find little evidence of positive effects of summer instruction on math outcomes. After netting out estimates of differential test score growth within grades across years, the estimated effects of grade retention are substantial and positive through seventh grade on both math and ELA outcomes, suggesting that the additional year of instruction in fifth grade leads to improvements in subsequent grade achievement.