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Bay Area Has Highest Income Inequality in California

It’s official: The gap between the Bay Area’s haves and have-nots is wider than anywhere else in the state. Top income earners in the Bay Area make 12.2 times as much as those at the bottom of the economic ladder, according to new research from the Public P...
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Newsom Signs Law Overhauling Charter Schools

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law overhauling California's charter schools Thursday in a move seen as a compromise between teachers’ unions and charter school supporters, who have long argued over how...

California’s Pension Debt Cannot Be Ignored

A decade ago, at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s request, I supervised a graduate student team that performed a comprehensive analysis of public pensions in California. The goal was to calculate California’s pe...
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Cholesterol Improves in US Kids Despite High Obesity Rates

CHICAGO — Cholesterol levels in children and teens improved in the latest analysis of U.S. health surveys, yet only half of them had readings considered ideal. Overall, 7% of kids had high cholesterol in surveys from 2009 to 2016. That was down from 10% a d...
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California’s Worsening Wildfires, Explained

If it seems that wildfires are burning nearly all the time these days, that there’s no longer a definable fire season in California, you’re right. Fourteen of the 20 most destructive fires in state history have...
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AP Finds Hot Records Falling Twice as Often as Cold Ones

Over the past 20 years, Americans have been twice as likely to sweat through record-breaking heat rather than shiver through record-setting cold, a new Associated Press data analysis shows. The AP looked at 424 weather stations throughout the Lower 48 state...