Getting married may or may not bring happiness, but it’s likely to bring a strong financial advantage. A February 13 post on Life Inc., an NBC Today blog, cited research showing that a married couple that stays together typically has four times the wealth of a single person. And the advantages are not just financial. ISR researcher Pamela Smock told Life Inc. that the sharing of responsibilities can be a boon for people who are married. For example, one member of the couple might work long hours to get ahead while the other handles things at home. Married couples also are wealthier on average because wealthier and better educated people are more likely to marry. By contrast, Smock said, not having money deters many couples who might otherwise marry because they want to achieve greater financial security before tying the knot. “Those people [who marry] are more likely to be the privileged people,” she said. “And the others, the less well off, are doing family in a different way.”

“The Wire” was known during its five seasons on HBO for deftly interweaving complex urban issues, like drug trade, education, and city government. So perhaps it’s not that surprising that ISR researcher David Harding used the acclaimed TV show as the foundation for a graduate-level course on urban public policy he’s teaching this semester. Harding’s course was featured in the February 24 Detroit Free Press. According to the article, Harding created the seminar, Urban Public Policy Through the Lens of HBO’s “The Wire,” after students asked him to develop a class putting the show’s story lines in the context of real life. “At first it sounded a little gimmicky, but once the students articulated their motivations for the course and demonstrated their enthusiasm and commitment to making it happen, I saw the value in it,” Harding said. “The main thing that makes this course different from other courses is our emphasis on understanding the connections between areas of policy that are not usually studied together.”

Mattel, maker of Hot Wheels toy cars, may have developed a flat. The toy-maker recently hosted a brunch in Manhattan to tutor mothers in the art of playing with toy cars with their kids, particularly their sons. After the event, a Mattel executive made remarks that appeared to blame the drop in Hot Wheels sales in the U.S. on mothers who never played with cars themselves and who don’t understand how to make the most of the diminutive vehicles, according to a March 12 article in Today.com. The entire episode has led a number of women, including toy car-playing mothers, to step on the brakes. Among them is ISR researcher Pamela Davis-Kean. “Children’s desire for toys are what usually drives what parents and families buy, and if a boy or girl likes playing with cars—then a parent will purchase it,” Davis-Kean told Today.com. “I have no doubt that most mothers are quite comfortable playing with toy cars with their sons and fathers are comfortable playing with dolls with their daughters.”

Barack Obama won re-election as president in 2012 with 39 percent of the white vote, 4 percent less than what he received in 2008. According to a Feb. 6 article in The New York Times, the dip in white support is one sign of how the election of the nation’s first Black president has affected racial attitudes. Still, Obama’s white support falls within the norm of that received by other Democratic candidates for president in the years between 1952 and 2012, the article said. But it also cited a 2010 paper, based in part on data from the American National Election Studies, that argued that party attachments became more polarized by racial attitudes and race after Obama became the Democratic nominee in 2008. In particular, between 2006 and 2008, voters who were high on a racial-resentment scale—showing “subtle hostility towards African-Americans”—increased their partisanship within the Republican Party. The shift shows the intensifying conservatism within the right wing of the Party, the article said.

The pain of a broken heart is real. The Los Angeles Times featured work by ISR researcher Ethan Kross in a Feb. 9 article about the physical toll of heartbreak. Emotional threats are much like physical ones, the article said, and can stir up the “fight or flight” response intended to protect us from harm. But instead of helping, this physiological response simply adds physical pains to the emotional hurt. The surging adrenaline brought on by a painful breakup, for example, can raise blood pressure, speed up breathing, and cause cramps, nausea, and other digestive problems. In 2011 Kross studied the brain activity of people who had recently been jilted, and found that the same portions of the brain were activated when participants were reminded of their exes and when they were subjected to an uncomfortable source of heat. “The experience of social rejection may actually have a bodily component to it,” Kross said. “It is more than just a metaphorical feeling of pain around a heartbreak.”

Middle-aged women bear many of the burdens of caring for others. They look after aging parents, take care of children, and tend to friends in need. So it is not surprising, a Jan. 31 article in the Huffington Post said, that research has shown these women to be more empathetic than similarly aged men, or than younger and older people. The article featured an analysis of data on more than 75,000 adults co-authored by ISR researcher Sarah Konrath that demonstrated the empathetic nature of women in their 50s. According to Konrath, this heightened empathy may in part reflect the era in which the women grew up. “It may be that today’s middle- aged adults report higher empathy than other cohorts because they grew up during periods of important societal changes that emphasized the feelings and perspectives of other groups,” she said. Men of the same age may be less empathetic, Konrath said, because “men and women are socialized differently to be more caring, even from early childhood.”

Americans, who spend more on health care than the residents of other wealthy countries, are far less healthy than people in Canada, Australia, Japan, and 13 European countries, according to a report by researchers at the National Academy of Sciences. Younger Americans are particularly vulnerable, NBCNews.com reported January 9. Obesity, heart disease, car accidents, and murders are among the causes of early death in the United States, and Americans are 20 times more likely than residents of the other 16 countries to be killed by a gun. The United States came out well in only a few areas, including lower death rates from cancer, and better management of blood pressure and cholesterol. “Americans who reach age 75 can expect to live longer than people in the peer countries,” the report said. Experts on the panel said an array of factors contributed to the bad showing. “It seems to be a whole bunch of things acting together,” said panel member and ISR researcher Ana Diez Roux.

Smoking among teenagers has fallen to its lowest level since ISR’s Monitoring the Future survey began tracking substance use among youth 38 years ago. The drop was significant for all three grades studied—8^th, 10^th, and 12^th. Across the three grades, the percentage of respondents who smoked in the previous 30 days dropped from 11.7 percent in 2011 to 10.6 percent in 2012, Reuters reported. The ISR researchers who conducted the study credited a 62-cent per pack 2009 increase in the federal cigarette tax as a likely factor contributing to the drop in smoking. Susan Liss, executive director for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, also praised “well-funded tobacco prevention and cessation programs that include mass media campaigns, strong smoke-free laws, and effective regulation of tobacco products and marketing.” But, Liss added, “We cannot be satisfied when 17 percent of high school seniors still graduate as smokers, putting them at risk for debilitating diseases and premature death.”

People who are financially strapped are more likely to make bad borrowing decisions, according to a January 15 article in The New York Times. And, ironically, individuals with histories of paying their debts on time may be unrealistically overconfident when it comes to taking on debts with sky-high interest rates. ISR researcher Kristin Seefeldt, whose ongoing study of 39 single mothers in the Detroit area was featured in the article, has found that managing debt becomes a necessity of daily life for most poor families. The women, Seefeldt reported, carried an average debt of $3,700, but some owed far more. To get by, they made tactical decisions about which bills were most important, ignoring some, delaying others for later, and making at least partial payments on the most critical. “You’re keeping the lights on, you’re not being evicted, the kids are not hungry, the family is protected,” she told The New York Times. “It allows you to say, ‘I’m doing what I’m doing, and I’m not out on the street.’”

Race and bias will both affect how people vote this November, according to recent videos featuring two ISR researchers. There is “a default perception” among African-Americans and Hispanics that the Democratic Party is more receptive to their interests and concerns, said Vincent Hutchings. “If [Republicans] want to be serious about attracting Hispanic voters, they have to combat the notion that theirs is the party of intolerance,” he said. Meanwhile, Anna Grzymala-Busse said citizens need to “go outside their comfort zones” and “reach out to the other side of the aisle” in order to be informed and sophisticated voters. Many voters
reinforce their biases by only getting information from like-minded news sites and commentators. Instead, Grzymala-Busse said, dyed-in-the-wool Democrats should sometimes watch Fox News, for example, and committed Republicans should sample MSNBC. Watch their videos at http://bit.ly/isrhutchings and http://bit.ly/isrgrzymala-busse.