Category Archives: Public Policy

Empathy Gap

Posted on 04/26/2013 by

My family and Bangladesh go way back: I lived in Bangladesh for a year when I was in my early twenties. A decade later, in an odd twist of fate, my sister moved to Bangladesh, too, and stayed there with … Continue reading →

Posted in Children/Teens/Young Adults, Public Policy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Two Degrees of Separation From a Bomber

Posted on 04/23/2013 by

A TIME.com column I wrote today with my husband, Nicholas Christakis: We spent a tense hour last Monday checking Facebook and Twitter to account for all 400 of our students at Harvard College, several of whom had been running in the marathon … Continue reading →

Posted in Erika @ TIME.com, Harvard-related, My story, Public Policy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Painful Questions

Posted on 04/21/2013 by

How do we talk about the Boston marathon murders in a way that acknowledges the suffering and the evil, yet also places them within the broader perspective of suffering and evil that the human race has experienced, and is currently … Continue reading →

Posted in Public Policy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Who You Gonna Call In A Crisis?

Posted on 04/20/2013 by

I want to return to my “Big Fat American Government” piece I posted a couple days ago. I think the horrific explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas is a chilling counterpoint to the kind of government response … Continue reading →

Posted in Public Policy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

My Big Fat American Government

Posted on 04/19/2013 by

Hey, props to Boston! Taxachusetts, I heart you. Gimme some B-I-G government! O big/bloated/corrupt government-shunners, O bombastic, ignorant Tea partiers, O federal trough-slopping hypocrites… come on, just admit it. Didn’t we all see this week what robust public investments in health, … Continue reading →

Posted in My story, Public Policy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

How to Survive an Attack

Posted on 04/06/2013 by

There’s something grimly understated about this article from the NYT on how to survive a mass homicide attack. Apparently, we now have a large enough sample size from these shootings to talk intelligently about predictors of survival: Research on mass … Continue reading →

Posted in Children/Teens/Young Adults, Public Policy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Free Lunch

Posted on 03/14/2013 by

I’m getting a lot of inquiries from people at CNN and radio shows asking me to talk about  paying at-risk teenagers not to become pregnant. Mainly, people seem to think I’m totally nuts, so let me clarify a few key … Continue reading →

Posted in Children/Teens/Young Adults, Public Policy, Women-related | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Carrots and Sticks and the politics of teen pregnancy

Posted on 03/12/2013 by

To the folks who think I’m crazy for proposing that we pay kids not to get pregnant, a few questions. Why is it so abhorrent to incentivize people, financially, to behave in certain ways? I’m talking about cases where the … Continue reading →

Posted in Children/Teens/Young Adults, Public Policy, Women-related | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

A Dollar a Day Keeps the Baby Away

Posted on 03/12/2013 by

Here’s my TIME.com proposal on how to save money and reduce societal mayhem. (Hat tip to Adam Glick, and to the few programs, like College Bound Sisters, already doing just that.) I’ve written more on pregnancy prevention, for example,  here, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Children/Teens/Young Adults, Erika @ TIME.com, Public Policy, Women-related | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

(Don’t) Rush To Judge Me

Posted on 01/08/2013 by

(Update: Just noticed that uber-blogger, Andrew Sullivan, picked me up again a few days ago for my  TIME.com column last week on the link between India’s skewed sex ratios and violence against women. Here’s the link.) I have a love-hate relationship … Continue reading →

Posted in Erika @ TIME.com, Children/Teens/Young Adults, Women-related, Public Policy, Sexuality/Gender | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 33 Comments