December 18, 2008 at 12:21 am
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Schools throughout greater Seattle closed Wednesday at the mere threat of snow late in the day, a symptom of the city's deep phobia of the white stuff and near-complete inability to deal with any significant snowstorm. Even though Seattle is the nation's northernmost major city, snow is a rarity here, and the city is ill-equipped to clear the streets of its hilly neighborhoods. Combine that with drivers unaccustomed to driving on slick roads, and snow is a recipe for chaos. School officials' caution dates back to a 1990 snowstorm that dumped several inches of unexpected snow, paralyzing the city and forcing 1,200 children to spend the night in their classrooms. Since then, the state's largest school district and its suburban neighbors close as a precaution when snow threatens. "We always err on the side of caution, making sure our students are going to be as safe as possible, not just at school but traveling to school," said Seattle Public Schools spokesman David Tucker.
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Many developing countries use food price subsidies or price controls to improve the nutrition of the poor. However, subsidizing goods that households spend a high proportion of their budget on can create large wealth effects. Consumers may then substitute towards foods with higher non-nutritional attributes like taste, but lower nutritional content per unit currency, weakening or perhaps even reversing the intended impact of the subsidy. We present data from a randomized program of large price subsidies for poor households in two provinces of China. We find that the nutritional impact caused by the subsidy was at best extremely small, and for some households actually negative.
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