More and more people have been graduating from the University of Alaska Anchorage in the past decade. Do they stay in Alaska? What kinds of jobs do they have? How much do they earn? A new analysis by ISER researchers Alexandra Hill, Gunnar Knapp, and Blake Steenhoven looks at those questions. They found that most graduates stay in Alaska at least five years after they graduate, they work throughout the economy, and by five years after they graduate their average earnings double. Around one-quarter of graduates do leave within a few years, but it looks as if they are no more likely than other Alaskans to leave the state.
ISER researchers did this work in cooperation with UAA's Office of Institutional Research and the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Download the report, UAA Graduates: How Many Stay and Work in Alaska? by Alexandra Hill, Gunnar Knapp, and Blake Steenhoven. If you have questions, get in touch with Gunnar Knapp at 907-786-7717 (gunnar.knapp@uaa.alaska.edu) or Alexandra Hill at 907-786-5436 (lexi.hill@gmail.com).
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Close to 1% of those 21 or younger in Alaska were in foster care in recent years—about twice the average of 0.5% among all those the same age nationwide. That's one of the findings of a new report by ISER researchers Diwakar Vadapalli, Virgene Hanna, and Jessica Passini, examining trends in the age, gender, and ethnicity of children and teenagers in Alaska's foster care system from 2006 through 2013. They also found that younger children make up an increasing share of those in Alaska's foster care system; that girls are somewhat more likely than boys to be in foster care; and that Alaska Native children account for about 60% of all those in foster care.
Download the report, Trends in Age, Gender, and Ethnicity Among Children in Foster Care in Alaska, by Diwakar Vadapalli, Virgene Hanna, and Jessica Passini. If you have questions, get in touch with Diwakar Vadapalli at 907-786-5422 or diwakarvk@uaa.alaska.edu.
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A new report by Mouhcine Guettabi, Rosyland Frazier, and Gunnar Knapp of ISER analyzes the results of a survey of Alaska employers about what health-care benefits they offer employees. The Alaska Department of Labor conducted the survey, which covered businesses, local governments, and school districts statewide. The Alaska Health Care Commission contracted with the department and ISER for the work. The report finds, among other things, that two-thirds of Alaska businesses don't provide health-insurance, and the reason they cite most often is no surprise: it's too expensive. And although about a third of employees at Alaska firms work part-time or seasonally, very few of them carry employer-based insurance. Of those employees carrying insurance through their employers, 95% are full-time workers and only 5% are part-time or seasonal.
Download the report, Alaska Employer Health-Care Benefits: A Survey of Alaska Employers (pdf, 1.9MB), by Mouhcine Guettabi, Rosyland Frazier, and Gunnar Knapp. A summary, Snapshot of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance in Alaska (pdf, 669.9KB), by the same authors, is also available. If you have questions, get in touch with Mouhcine Guettabi at mguettabi@alaska.edu or 907-786-5496.
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Since 2005, Alaska’s state government has collected as much in oil revenues as it did during the huge oil-revenue boom of the early 1980s: a combination of high oil prices and changes in the way the state calculates production taxes has created a second huge oil-revenue boom. But the oil creating this wealth is dwindling. That oil is from huge, low-cost oil fields on state-owned land, including the Prudhoe Bay field, and it has supported much of the economy and paid for most state government operations for decades.
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Health-care spending in Alaska reached about $7.5 billion in 2010, according to new estimates by Scott Goldsmith of ISER and Mark Foster of Mark A. Foster and Associates. For comparison, that’s close to half the wellhead value of all the oil produced in Alaska in 2010. The definition of health-care spending is broad, including not only spending for hospitals, doctors, and medical tests, but also prescriptions, nursing homes, medical equipment, and more.
The researchers found:
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A new edition of the ground-breaking map showing the traditional indigenous language regions of Alaska—and related languages of neighboring areas of Canada and Russia—is now available. It is the first revision in nearly 30 years and was generated with geographic information system (GIS) technology. The map is the joint product of researchers at UAF’s Alaska Native Language Center and UAA’s Institute of Social and Economic Research. This work updates the map originally compiled in 1974 by Michael Krauss, then director of the language center, and last updated in 1982.
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A new report from the Institute of Social and Economic Research, prepared for the Alaska Energy Authority, looks in detail at electricity in Alaska as of 2008, the most recent year for which federal statistics are available.
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Think about this: if oil had never been discovered on the North Slope, Alaska's economy today would be about half as big. And to keep the economy healthy as time goes on, Alaska needs new oil production: nothing else—including North Slope natural gas—can replace oil in the state's economy. These are the findings of a new paper by Scott Goldsmith, professor of economics at ISER.