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The Effect of L.A. Homes, Neighborhoods on Children

A new RAND study will examine 65 neighborhoods in Los Angeles County over the next four years to try to understand how the homes and environments of children affect their physical, psychological, and social development.

Beginning in October, the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey will conduct annual surveys of household residents and neighborhood representatives. Previous research has often focused on one--either the home or neighborhood--to the neglect of the other.

According to the RAND analysts, research on the family, home, or even the local school alone ignores larger social influences on children. And research on the neighborhood alone fails to account for neighborhood mobility and the fact that families choose where to live.

The project seeks to shed light on policy questions in three areas:

The effects of neighborhoods, families, and peers on child and teenage behavior and health, attitudes toward education and work, chances of becoming a teenage parent, and educational and employment opportunities.
The effects of welfare reform on patterns of employment, transportation, day care, and private social services.

The factors behind residential mobility and neighborhood change, factors such as neighborhood selection, residential segregation, and migration patterns of recent immigrants.

The household survey will target 50 homes in all 65 neighborhoods, for a total of 3,250 households. The neighborhood survey will target school officials and teachers, librarians, police, religious leaders, owners of small businesses, and social service providers.

Los Angeles County is the largest and most complex of the newer western and southwestern cities that are home to a growing proportion of American children.

The research is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at $1.5 million for the first year of a five-year grant.

Limited Foreign Duty Boosts Reenlistment

Some foreign duty--but not too much--is a key to reenlistment in all four services of the U.S. military, according to a new RAND report. The challenge is to balance the burden of long separations and hostile duty among enlisted troops and to make the assignments more predictable to meet troop expectations.

The report shows that limited deployments--of, say, three months-- tend to increase early career reenlistment across the services and first-term reenlistment in the army and marine corps. The positive effect is particularly strong for first-term enlisted people in the army.

"Evidently, many service members join or remain in the ranks because they expect and want some service on behalf of their country, adventure, travel, or all of the above. If it doesn't happen, they're disappointed," said lead author James Hosek.

But adding an additional tour of duty atop the first--such as another three months away from home--sharply reduces the likelihood of reenlistment, especially in the army and marine corps. The negative effect of the extra tour is strongest when it involves hostilities.

The study is the first cross- service inquiry into the relationship between reenlistment and personnel tempo, or "perstempo." Covering a period between 1993 and 1995, the study comes at a time when the pace of the nation's peacetime military operations exceeds that of earlier decades and when military personnel resources, among others, are under strain.

"The relationship between deployments and retention is the opposite of what many feared," said Hosek.

"The effect on reenlistment was mostly positive. But our results underscore the importance of each service spreading the burden of peacetime military operations to the maximum extent compatible with readiness. This is especially important if perstempo levels have now risen above those prevailing in our study period."

Among the detailed findings are the following:

First-term army personnel with no prior long or hostile duty were 28 percent more likely to reenlist if given an initial three months of nonhostile duty--and 13 percent more likely given the same length of hostile duty. But an additional three-month assignment made them less likely to reenlist, up to 17 percent less likely if it involved hostilities.
During the 1993-1995 period-- which included deployments to Korea, Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia--over two-thirds of first-term navy personnel faced long or hostile duty, compared with 61 percent of first-termers in the marine corps, 39 percent in the army, and 31 percent in the air force. The total months of long or hostile duty were greatest by far in the navy.

The report, coauthored by Mark Totten, is entitled Does Perstempo Hurt Reenlistment? The Effect of Long or Hostile Perstempo on Reenlistment (RAND/MR-990-OSD).

Urban Operations Likely; U.S. Forces Not Ready

Although increasing worldwide urbanization and expanded U.S. engagement abroad suggest that future urban military operations are likely, U.S. ground and air forces lack the tools--doctrine, training, and technologies--to fight successfully in an urban environment.

"It is apparent that the nation's armed services are inadequately prepared to conduct combat operations in cities without undue friendly force losses, noncombatant casualties, and collateral damage," said Russell Glenn, author of Marching Under Darkening Skies: The American Military and the Impending Urban Operations Threat (RAND/MR-1007-A).

Despite encouraging performances by U.S. peacekeeping operations in urban areas of Haiti and Bosnia, U.S. preparedness for urban combat appears weak in several respects, including the following:

"Woefully outdated" army doctrine, which provides little foundation for fighting under the strict rules of engagement typical of urban combat today.
A shortage of adequate training facilities designed specifically for urban operations.
The absence of aircraft and weapons accurate enough to avoid unnecessary civilian and friendly casualties, compounded by the absence of communications and navigation equipment capable of supporting the close combat demanded by urban operations.

To overcome such weaknesses, the RAND study offers these recommendations:

Adopt current marine corps doctrine as a foundation for army and joint doctrine on urban operations until a comprehensive doctrine can be developed, and have the army distribute periodic bulletins of lessons learned regarding urban operations.
Conduct a variety of training exercises in urban areas (such as those recently held in Monterey, Oakland, and Alameda, Calif.), make existing urban operations training facilities available to units based elsewhere, and provide after-action reporting of a quality comparable to that now available in open terrain exercises.
Incorporate urban combat concerns when developing new technologies, as several advanced weapons systems will be even less useful in urban environments than their predecessors.

To date, both the army and the joint community have embarked on efforts to write urban operations doctrines suitable to modern needs.

The research was based, in part, on a 1998 conference hosted by RAND and the U.S. Army Infantry Center's Dismounted Battlespace Battle Lab.

Many Bear the Costs of High-Tech Theft

Theft of high-technology products and components could cost U.S. manufacturers and distributors more than $5 billion annually, according to a RAND study commissioned by the American Electronics Association and the International Electronics Security Group.

The study, conducted in 1997-1998, estimates that hardware stolen from industrial sources sets the industry back about $250 million a year in direct replacement costs. Indirect costs--including increased security and insurance, lost sales of components, and sales lost by other firms--raise the total to more than $1 billion. Finally, thefts from customers reduce their willingness to buy new products, which drives down both the prices and the quantity of products sold, costing manufacturers another $4 billion.

Thus, the sum of all industry losses exceeds $5 billion, representing roughly 2 percent of industry revenues. "Our findings are apt to be conservative, because there are many types of cost, such as warranty fraud and disruption of business, that we did not attempt to quantify," said James Dertouzos, who led the study.

The researchers surveyed 95 U.S.-based, high-tech manufacturers that account for 40 percent of the sales in the computer, semiconductor, hard disk drive, and cellular phone industries. The researchers also conducted interviews with law enforcement officials.

The study found that as much as 80 percent of all reported high-tech theft occurs in transit, about half of which occurs overseas. Computers are not safe once they reach their destinations, either: About 9 percent of high-tech theft occurs in offices of the manufacturers, and similar losses occur among their business customers.

Dertouzos pointed out that a large part of the cost of high-tech theft is not borne by the manufacturers. On the one hand, thefts from manufacturers induce them to raise prices and pass on some of the burden to customers. On the other hand, thefts from customers make them hesitate to buy, which lowers prices, deflecting some of the burden back to manufacturers but also spreading the burden among all high-tech firms.

"This suggests a larger role for collective action on the part of the industry and the public sector," he said. Such action could focus on common standards for shipping freight, new methods to identify and disable stolen property, and more information exchanges between industry and law enforcement.

In California, legislation has been introduced to enhance the role played by statewide and regional high-tech crime task forces (SB 157) and to strengthen the prosecution of high-tech crimes (AB 154).

RAND also found that beefing up private security pays off. Industry security budgets rose 26 percent from 1996 to 1998; yet product losses from theft dropped 50 to 75 percent. The companies making the largest investments in security reaped the largest reductions in theft.

The report is entitled The Economic Costs and Implications of High-Technology Hardware Theft (RAND/MR-1070-AEA).

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