Posts Tagged: UCLA
Honey, What's Going On with the Honey?
Honey, what's going on with the honey? If you're a beekeeper, a food retailer, in honey production...
A honey bee on honeycomb. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A honey bee foraging on a zinnia. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A New Look at How Latinos are Powering the U.S. Economy: Report
Headed by University of California, Los Angeles Professor David E. Hayes-Bautista, and Werner Schink, CEO of Latino Futures Research, the report commissioned by the non-partisan group Latino Donor Collaborative estimates the total GDP of the Latino population based on data that is publicly available at the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Labor.
In a discussion with NBC News over the phone, Hayes-Bautista said that most studies on Latino economic power look at Hispanics one-dimensionally, through their spending power. But by looking at Latinos beyond consumption and instead through their economic production, Latinos' contribution to the nation can be seen more as an investment than an expense.
“I've been studying Latinos for over 40 years, and you can point out some amazing things about Latinos, but people just yawn. But if you reframe Latinos in terms investors can understand, by size and growth rate, we can have a better idea of Latinos' importance in the U.S. economy," said Hayes-Bautista, professor of medicine and director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the School of Medicine, UCLA.
According to the report, “The U.S. Latino GDP is growing 70 percent faster that the country's non-Latino GDP.”
For instance, 70 percent of the growth in our workforce is Latino. In the 75 years he has reviewed data, said Hayes-Bautista, Latinos have consistently ranked at the top, with the highest labor force participation rates.
Another common misperception around the country, the report finds is that non-U.S. citizen Latinos do not participate in the work force as much as other populations. In fact, male Latino non-citizens have an extremely high work force participation rate, over 90 percent for young mature workers aged 25 to 49.
Poll: 62% unhappy with economy 16:28
Hayes-Bautista has spent his professional career dispelling myths about Latinos, and working in California, first at Stanford and then at UCLA, he has seen how the Hispanic population has changed over the decades. Our perception of Latinos is based on an old model, he explained.
Immigration since the 1990s has effectively ceased being the largest factor in the demographic growth of the Latino population. “Immigrant growth has been fading out, and their kids are taking over, the millennials and post millennials are going to be driving our economy,” he said.
When you look at burgeoning cities throughout the country since the 1970s, Latinos have revitalized or saved those regions from massive decline as the non-Latino white population ages.
Hayes-Bautista said that misperceptions about Latinos evoke policies under false assumptions that ultimately do more harm than good for the nation as a whole.
“Latinos work more hours, work less in the public sector, and have the lowest rates of welfare utilization," Hayes-Bautista said. Yet despite their low relative burden to taxpayers, “their reward is the highest level of poverty in the nation.”
If the U.S. realized how vital Latinos are to the future of the United States, there would be greater investment in education, infrastructure, job training, and health care, rather than a constant flow of negative messaging about gangbangers, Hayes-Bautista said.
The report's takeaway is that the country's economic future depends on the interconnectedness between ethnicities and generations.
“The ability of the baby boomers to retire and use their benefits, such as health care and their investment portfolio," said Hayes-Bautista, "depends on Latinos."
Source: Published originally on nbcnews.com A New Look at How Latinos are Powering the U.S. Economy: Report by by Stephen A. Nuño
UCLA leads nationwide, multiracial survey of attitudes about politics and policy
More than 10,000 adults offered their thoughts on health care reform, immigration, climate change and other issues.
To capture a demographically and geographically diverse snapshot of the electorate, the survey queried more than 10,000 people and was conducted in five languages.
Initial findings from a UCLA-led nationwide survey of more than 10,000 adults reveal some of the differences and similarities among whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians when it comes to the White House agenda on immigration, taxes and health care reform.
Survey results showed significant differences in support toward both improving the Affordable Care Act and federal spending on Medicare, Medicaid and health services. Majorities from all groups — 77 percent of black respondents, 70 percent of Latinos, 68 percent of Asian respondents and 54 percent of white respondents — said they think that Obamacare should be amended and improved, not repealed. And while 57 percent of white respondents supported increasing spending for Medicaid and Medicare, the numbers were higher for all other groups — for Asians it was 60 percent, and 68 percent for Latinos and 76 percent for blacks.
UCLA political scientist professors Matt Barreto and Lorrie Frasure-Yokley served as co-principal investigators with Janelle Wong, professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland and Edward Vargas, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
“With this data, we can better understand how racial and ethnic groups differ in their views toward today's most pressing political and policy issues,” Frasure-Yokley said.
The survey asked people in the four groups their opinions about the 2016 election and ongoing public policy issues that also included climate change, federal spending, policing, racial equality and more.
To capture a demographically and geographically diverse snapshot of the electorate, the 2016 “Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey” queried more than 10,000 people and was conducted in five languages — English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. To include the most comprehensive list of electoral, civic and policy-related survey questions, 86 researchers from 55 colleges and universities contributed questions. A full list of collaborators and access to topline results is available at Latino Decisions, the political opinion research firm that led the data-gathering effort.
In spring 2016, with the presidential primaries in full swing, the co-principal investigators began building a national cooperative of scholars in the social sciences whose research interests focus on the study of U.S. racial and ethnic politics. With its collaborative focus, the CMPS also contributes to building an academic pipeline of scholars in the social sciences, by bringing together a multidisciplinary group of researchers at varying stages of their careers, Frasure-Yokley said.
Majorities of respondents across all groups surveyed said they believe that taxes on the rich should be increased to give the middle class a tax break — 73 percent of all black, Latino and Asian respondents agreed with this sentiment, and 63 percent of white respondents did as well.
“While there was dovetailing agreement on many pressing issues, we see that race still matters in America,” Frasure-Yokley said.
Strong majorities from all racial groups surveyed favor a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants — 76 percent of black respondents, 81 percent of Latino, 69 percent of Asian and 71 percent of whites. Yet whites were much more likely than other racial groups to support deporting of undocumented immigrants. However, even in that case, less than one out of three whites said they supported deportation. Whites are the only group in which a majority supported increased public spending on border security and police.
Less than a quarter of Latino, white and Asian respondents agreed that there should be a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Slightly more —27 percent — of black respondents favored such a ban. Unusually, in response to this statement about a third of respondents in each group neither agreed nor disagreed.
Black and Latino respondents were the strongest supporters of increased spending on public education at 80 and 70 percent, respectively. Sixty-one percent of whites favored increased education spending and 66 percent of Asians.
“As academics and analysts we have a responsibility to help bring to light information that will aid in policy decision-making,” said Barreto, who is co-founder of Latino Decisions.
Participating scholars, which includes junior and senior faculty as well as graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, will convene to share findings during a conference this summer at UCLA. All who provided content and financial backing for the survey received access to responses from the complete set of 394 questions.
“One of the most exciting aspects of this project is that it is truly collaborative from across the country,” Barreto said. Frasure-Yokley and Barreto also were part of teams that conducted smaller post-election multi-ethnic surveys after the 2008 and 2012 elections. “Bringing a diversity of views and voices to the project greatly improved the topics and content we covered.”
Of those surveyed, 60 percent were registered voters. Of those voters, 92 percent of black respondents voted for Hillary Clinton and 5 percent for Donald Trump. For Latinos, 77 percent said they voted for Clinton and 19 percent voted for Trump. Asian respondents voted 73 percent for Clinton versus 22 percent for Trump. And 37 percent of white respondents voted for Clinton and 57 percent for Trump.
Attitudes were split on climate change. Only 49 percent of white respondents said the federal government should pass laws to combat climate change, compared to 69 percent of Asians, 65 percent of Latinos and 62 percent of black respondents.
Personal experiences with discrimination also varied widely, as did feelings about Black Lives Matter. Nearly two thirds of blacks support activism by the Black Lives Matter movement, along with nearly half of all Latinos and nearly 40 percent of Asians. Thirty-seven percent and 42 percent of Latinos and Asians, respectively, neither support nor oppose the movement's activism. On the other hand, 44 percent of white respondents oppose such activism.
The cooperative survey was self-funded through the purchase of question content by contributors. The survey is among the first to use an online platform in combination with web-based random sampling directly from the voter registration rolls. It included video and audio stimuli and split-sample experimentation in question wording, consistent with the latest methods and approaches in survey research. After collecting all responses, researchers weighted the final data with a standard model to bring it in matching balance with the 2015 U.S. Census demographics for each racial group.
Source: Published originally on UCLA Newsroom. UCLA leads nationwide, multiracial survey of attitudes about politics and policy, by Jessica Wolf, March 10, 2017.
Latinos age slower than other ethnicities, UCLA study shows
“Latinos live longer than Caucasians, despite experiencing higher rates of diabetes and other diseases. Scientists refer to this as the ‘Hispanic paradox,'” said lead author Steve Horvath, a professor of human genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Our study helps explain this by demonstrating that Latinos age more slowly at the molecular level.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Latinos in the United States live an average of three years longer than Caucasians, with a life expectancy of 82 versus 79. At any age, healthy Latino adults face a 30 percent lower risk of death than other racial groups, according to a 2013 study in the American Journal of Public Health.
The UCLA team used several biomarkers, including an “epigenetic clock” developed by Horvath in 2013, to track an epigenetic shift in the genome that's linked to aging. Epigenetics is the study of changes to the DNA molecule that influence which genes are active but don't alter the DNA sequence.
Horvath and his colleagues analyzed 18 sets of data on DNA samples from nearly 6,000 people. The participants represented seven ethnicities: two African groups, African-Americans, Caucasians, East Asians, Latinos and an indigenous people called the Tsimane, who are genetically related to Latinos. The Tsimane live in Bolivia.
When the scientists examined the DNA from blood — which reveals the health of a person's immune system — they were struck by differences linked to ethnicity. In particular, the scientists noticed that, after accounting for differences in cell composition, the blood of Latinos and the Tsimane aged more slowly than other groups.
According to Horvath, the UCLA research points to an epigenetic explanation for Latinos' longer life spans. For example, the biological clock measured Latino women's age as 2.4 years younger than non-Latino women of the same age after menopause.
“We suspect that Latinos' slower aging rate helps neutralize their higher health risks, particularly those related to obesity and inflammation,” said Horvath, who is also a professor of biostatistics at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “Our findings strongly suggest that genetic or environmental factors linked to ethnicity may influence how quickly a person ages and how long they live.”
The Tsimane aged even more slowly than Latinos. The biological clock calculated the age of their blood as two years younger than Latinos and four years younger than Caucasians. This reflects the group's minimal signs of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity or clogged arteries, the researchers said.
“Despite frequent infections, the Tsimane people show very little evidence of the chronic diseases that commonly afflict modern society,” said coauthor Michael Gurven, a professor of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara. “Our findings provide an interesting molecular explanation for their robust health.”
In another finding, the researchers learned that men's blood and brain tissue ages faster than women's from the same ethnic groups. The discovery could explain why women have a higher life expectancy than men.
Horvath and his colleagues next plan to study the aging rate of other human tissues and to identify the molecular mechanism that protects Latinos from aging.
The research was supported by grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Institute on Aging.
Source: Published originally on newsroom.ucla.edu as Latinos age slower than other ethnicities, UCLA study shows by Elaine Schmidt, August 16, 2016
Latino children in California eat fast food regularly
Among young Latino children, the rate is 70 percent; overall, one in ten young children eats three or more fast food meals per week. The majority of children also fall short of the state standard on fruit and vegetable consumption, with only 57 percent of parents reporting that their child ate at least five fruit and vegetable servings the previous day. Asian children have the lowest levels of fruit and vegetable consumption, and both Asian and Latino parents report lower levels of influence over their children’s diets than do White and African-American parents.
The report indicates that given the poor trajectory for children who are overweight before they reach age six, investments in programs that help reduce fast food consumption and promote eating more fruits and vegetables (for example, serving fruit instead of fruit juice) may be among the policy solutions that will help improve young children’s health.
Nationally, the prevalence of overweight and obesity among children started to rise in the 1980s and doubled between 1980 and 2000. Today, about one-fourth of children ages two to five are overweight or obese. Low-income and minority children are at greatest risk for overweight at an early age.
Despite the association between fast food and soda consumption, there has been a sharp decline in the number of very young children drinking sugar-sweetened beverages in California.
In 2009, the proportion of soda consumption remained significantly higher among Latino children than among White and Asian children. However, the percentage of Latino children who drank soda the previous day decreased from slightly less than half in 2003 (46.7 percent) to 22.1 percent in 2009.
Although the proportion of children drinking soda has declined significantly, Latino families merit particular attention regarding soda intake: half of all children under age five in California are Latino, and young Latino children continue to have significantly higher levels of soda consumption than young children in all other racial/ethnic groups.
Source: UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, Majority of Young Children in California Eat Fast Food Regularly but Drink Less Soda, November 2013.