In 2017, the NIA evaluated the D&E Centers program and found that it been successful in accomplishing all of these objectives and instrumental in greatly expanding the field of population aging. Collaboration across disciplines (including demography, biology, economics, medicine, public health, psychology, and sociology) and institutions has been a hallmark of the work fostered by the centers. Each center promotes exploratory research on innovative topics in aging by funding pilot projects, recruiting new investigators to study aging and supporting the career development of established scholars. Pilot projects lay the foundation for more comprehensive research projects in new topic areas and include scholars' collaborative projects across institutions and national boundaries. Recruitment and career development expand the network of researchers in the field of aging and enhance the skills of existing researchers. Research networks supported by the centers serve as a focal point for sharing results and generating new interdisciplinary collaborations. Data resources developed and managed by the centers both in the United States and abroad contribute significantly to the advancement of knowledge about population aging. Some centers also develop and support secure data environments to facilitate data access and sharing. Beginning as a center core and emerging as an independent center funded through an R24 grant, the Coordinating Center serves as the nexus of communication across Centers, with NIA, and to the public in part by maintaining an active and dynamic website (agingcenters.org). In partnership with the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), the Coordinating Center aggregates and synthesizes novel research findings to make them accessible to nontechnical audiences to demonstrate to researchers, policymakers, relevant stakeholders, and the public the sizeable impact of the D&E Center Program on the health and well-being of older adults. In 2017, the NIA determined that the study of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD) would benefit significantly if it were added to the D&E Centers Program. In the current round of funding, there are 15 centers (Table 1), three with an explicit focus on demography, economics, and health services research relevant to AD/ADRD. The current centers host 22 research networks and have awarded more than 250 pilot projects since July 2000 (current funding cycle). The Centers have more than 800 center affiliates and 455 are early career scholars, supporting a strong pipeline of new scholarship in the field. Since the program began, researchers have acknowledged center support in hundreds of peer-reviewed publications. Reviewing all the research generated through the P30 Center program is beyond the scope of this brief communication. The Coordinating Center works with the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) to create publications that summarize findings and policy implications of research across all Centers. Topics of recent publications shown in Table 2 illustrate the breadth of topics across the centers. The breadth and depth of expertise across the P30 Centers is renowned, in part because of the high degree of collaboration and information exchange that characterizes the Program. There is wide recognition, however, that the full promise of the center mechanism itself and, indeed, the pace of future scientific discovery in aging will depend crucially on scholars continuing to cross-disciplinary boundaries and to build and strengthen ties between their centers and the other NIA center programs. In 2017, NIA funded the Research Centers Collaborative Network (RCCN) whose stated mission is "Catalyzing cross-disciplinary research across the NIA Center Programs".1 As Director of the Coordinating Centers, Sonnega works with the P30 Directors and the PRB team to expand into the spaces created by the RCCN to build and strengthen ties between the P30s and other NIA Center Program, by for example, sponsoring cross-center events that provide an opportunity for researchers to share their work with their peers in other institutions. Another important direction for the future is to develop scholars from underrepresented groups. The Coordinating Center has begun efforts to increase the number of minority supplements submitted by the centers. We are also working to increase applications for administrative supplements to develop early career scholars. Meeting this challenge will require continued innovation and persistence. Amanda Sonnega drafted the letter, and Mark Mather and Paola Scommegna contributed feedback and created the figures. The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging (R24AG066588).

This article develops a comprehensive composite state-level index of child well-being modeled after the Foundation for Child Development's Child Well-Being Index (CWI) to assess state differences in child well-being among the 50 U.S. states in 2007. The state-level CWIs are composed of 25 state-level indicators clustered into seven different domains or dimensions of child well-being. In addition to examining state rankings and the inter-relationship among domains across states, statistics on 27 demographic, economic, and policy characteristics of the states are analyzed in a regression analysis with respect to their ability to explain state differences in the CWIs. Because of the large number of explanatory variables and the potential redundancy created thereby, a principal components analysis/composite index method is applied. This leads to three composite indices that simplify the regressor space and explain 66.0 % of the variance. A second regression that adds three key policy measures to the three structural indices explains 79.5 % of the variance. Key findings of the study pertaining to how the resources available to children provided by families, communities, and the public sector relate to child well-being are discussed.

World population has reached a transition point: The rapid growth of the second half of the 20th century has slowed. But factors such as continuously improving mortality and slower than expected declines in birth rates guarantee continued growth. There are large differences between the age structure of populations in developed and developing countries and the demands they place on societies. Youth dependency is relatively low in developed countries and significantly greater in developing countries. Improved health and living standards increased access to education and economic growth have led to lower fertility rates and longer life expectancy in every region and across socioeconomic groups. While this shift represents a major global success story aging populations also present challenges. Women are essential to the demographic dividend—the potential of a large cohort of youth to provide a boost to economic growth. But in a majority of countries women are more likely to be unemployed than men. An estimated 1.5 million deaths are caused by diarrhea each year largely due to lack of clean drinking water poor sanitation and hygiene and poor nutrition and health status. Improving sanitation reduces diarrhea deaths. The most recent data indicate that progress in meeting the Millennium Development Goal target on sanitation is insufficient.

Dan A. Black University of Chicago Mark Mather Population Reference Bureau Seth G. Sanders University of Maryland at College Park In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson formed the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) to study and improve the economic conditions of poor families living in the Appalachian region. In their first report that same year, the ARC concluded that “from the facts on income and joblessness, we can infer that the ‘real’ Appalachian standards of living are below national norms.”

The U.S. government has a long history of gathering information about the American people. Congress has authorized funds to conduct a national census of the U.S. population every 10 years since 1790 as required by the U.S. Constitution. When the first American leaders chose to allocate congressional seats to states according to population size a decennial census was mandated to obtain a complete and official enumeration of the population. The first census recorded a minimum of information: the gender race and age group of household members. Census questionnaires have changed every decade since then reflecting the current interests and needs for information about the U.S. population and housing units. Some censuses collected detailed demographic social and economic information for all Americans including parents birthplaces dates of immigration and naturalization literacy and the value of any assets. More recent censuses consist of a "short form" delivered to all U.S. housing units and a "long form" delivered to a sample of housing units. The short form includes questions about age gender race Hispanic origin household relationship and owner/renter status; the long form seeks detailed socioeconomic information about U.S. population and housing. (excerpt)

Between 1990-2000, there was a decrease in the number of children living in high-poverty neighborhoods, but the picture provided by the decrease in poverty levels alone is incomplete and potentially misleading. Using a more comprehensive measure of neighborhood quality, researchers found that the number of children living in severely distressed neighborhoods increased significantly between 1990-2000. Severely distressed neighborhoods are defined as census tracts with at lest three of the four following characteristics: high poverty rate (27.4 percent or more); high percentage of female-headed families (37.1 percent or more); high percentage of high school dropouts (23.0 percent or more); and high percentage of working-age males unattached to the labor force (34.0 percent or more). Despite the booming economy of the 1990s, the number of children living in severely distressed neighborhoods increased from 3.4 million in 1990 to 4.4 million in 2000. The number of adults living in such neighborhoods also increased, from 7.7 million to JO million during the 1990s. Of the 4.4 million children growing up in severely distressed neighborhoods, 54 percent are black, and 30 percent are Hispanic. Almost a quarter of all black children, and more than 1 in 10 Hispanic children, live in severely distressed neighborhoods, compared with 1 percent of non-Hispanic white children. (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the ori inal document. The Growing Number of Kids in Severely Distressed Neighborhoods: Evidence from the 2000 Census By William O'Hare and Mark Mather