Economic Circumstances in Childhood and Subsequent Substance Use in Adolescence - A Latent Class Analysis: The youth@hordaland Study

The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between longitudinal registry-based data on family income during childhood and self-reported substance use in adolescence, including potential alcohol- or drug problems. Data from the Norwegian population-based youth@hordaland-survey was employed, and the analyzed included n = 8,983 adolescents aged 16–19 years. This information was linked to registry-based information about childhood family income for seven consecutive years prior to adolescents’ participation in the youth@hordaland-survey. Latent class analyses (LCA) were used to examine associations between patterns of family economic circumstances in childhood and subsequent substance use in adolescence. Based on the LCA, we identified four distinct patterns of family economic circumstances: a ‘never poor’ (89.3%) group, followed by two groups characterized by moving in (3.0%) or out (4.6%) of poverty, and a final ‘chronically poor’ (3.1%) group. Several findings were of interest: the chronically poor reported less daily snus use, fewer had tried alcohol, were less likely to report frequent intoxication, and less prone to have potential alcohol- or drug-related problems compared to all other groups. They were also less likely to have tried any illicit drug compared to those moving in or out of poverty. Finally, the chronically poor reported more daily smoking than the never poor group, but less daily smoking than the moving out of poverty group. The never poor group was less likely to have tried any illicit drugs compared to the groups moving into or out of poverty, and less likely to smoke daily compared to the moving out of poverty group. In other words, the present study somewhat surprisingly suggested lower substance use among the chronically poor adolescents compared to other adolescents on several of the measures of substance use.

Medical imaging technology shock and volatility of macro economics: Analysis using a three-sector dynamical stochastic general equilibrium REC model

The study analysed the medical imaging technology business cycle from 1981 to 2009 and found that the volatility of consumption in Chinese medical imaging business was higher than that of the developed countries. The volatility of gross domestic product (GDP) and the correlation between consumption and GDP is also higher than that of the developed countries. Prior to the early 1990s the volatility of consumption is even higher than GDP. This fact makes it difficult to explain the volatile market using the standard one sector real economic cycle (REC) model. Contrary to the other domestic studies, this study considers a three-sector dynamical stochastic general equilibrium REC model. In this model there are two consumption sectors, whereby one is labour intensive and another is capital intensive. The more capital intensive investment sector only introduces technology shocks in the medical imaging market. Our response functions and Monte-Carlo simulation results show that the model can explain 90% of the volatility of consummation relative to GDP, and explain the correlation between consumption and GDP. The results demonstrated the significant correlation between the technological reform in medical imaging and volatility in the labour market on Chinese macro economy development.