Is Economic Policy Uncertainty Related to Suicide Rates? Evidence from the United States

The main objective of this paper was to see whether different countries around the world show differences in their sustainability levels as captured in the indicators from the Sustainable Society Index (SSI, Van de Kerk and Manuel in Ecol Econ 66:228–242, 2012) according to their level of income. To do so, the X-STATIS and CO-STATIS multivariate techniques were employed. With these methods, our sample of 151 countries and 21 indicators can be jointly represented along four time periods. The results obtained permit us to visualize that the groups of countries by income levels show differences in some of the variables from the SSI, because of the lack of proximities between those variables and the countries. Moreover, with the X-STATIS technique, the possible evolution of the countries or indicators over time can be represented, and with CO-STATIS, the relations between the social, economic and environmental aspects can be shown as well. From our results we were able to deduce that, on the one hand, social and economic indicators, such as Public Debt or Employment, are associated with countries having high and upper-middle incomes, for example, Chile, Israel, Malta, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Spain, Portugal, France, Poland and Czech Republic. On the other hand, countries with low and lower-middle incomes are more associated with environmental issues. Also, after finding that the differences between the countries by income levels are mainly caused by the economic indicators, we carried out two CO-STATIS analyses, one for social and economic variables, and the other for economic and environmental variables. These findings led us to deduce that, generally, the social and economic indicators are not related to each other, nor are the economic indicators related to the environmental ones. However, for some of the countries individually both relations may be possible.     

Does emigration benefit the stayers? Evidence from EU enlargement

Around 9 % of the Lithuanian workforce emigrated to Western Europe after the enlargement of the European Union in 2004. I exploit this emigration wave to study the effect of emigration on wages in the sending country. Using household data from Lithuania and work permit and census data from the UK and Ireland, I demonstrate that emigration had a significant positive effect on the wages of stayers. A one-percentage-point increase in the emigration rate predicts a 0.67 % increase in real wages. This effect, however, is only statistically significant for men.     

Why does migration decrease fertility? Evidence from the Philippines

We model the impact of past migration on fertility, assessing the separate effects of relative urbanization of the destination, as a proxy for norms, and post-migration employment, as a proxy for opportunity costs. In the Philippines, we find that large fertility declines accompany post-migration employment. If not followed by work for pay, the estimated fertility impact of migration is small. We find little evidence of migrant selectivity in fertility, and offer speculative evidence that fertility disruption accompanying migration may be large enough to account for much of the apparent effect of normative adaptation.     

Does welfare reform affect fertility? Evidence from the UK

This paper provides evidence on the effect of welfare reform on fertility, focusing on UK reforms in 1999 that increased per-child spending by 50% in real terms. We use a difference-in-differences approach, exploiting the fact that the reforms were targeted at low-income households. The reforms were likely to differentially affect the fertility of women in couples and single women because of the opportunity cost effects of the welfare-to-work element. We find no increase in births among single women, but evidence to support an increase in births (by around 15%) among coupled women.     

Does welfare reform affect fertility? Evidence from the UK

This paper provides evidence on the effect of welfare reform on fertility, focusing on UK reforms in 1999 that increased per-child spending by 50% in real terms. We use a difference-in-differences approach, exploiting the fact that the reforms were targeted at low-income households. The reforms were likely to differentially affect the fertility of women in couples and single women because of the opportunity cost effects of the welfare-to-work element. We find no increase in births among single women, but evidence to support an increase in births (by around 15%) among coupled women.     

Do immigrants working illegally reduce the natives' legal employment? Evidence from Italy

The paper uses estimates, provided by the Central Statistical Office, of standard units of labour to examine how immigrants working (illegally) in the shadow economy affect the employment of (legal) labour in the official economy. The results of our cross sector-time series analysis of the demand for legal labour in the Italian economy between 1980 and 1995 show that the increase of illegal units of labour produces a reduction in the use of legal labour, albeit a very limited one. An analysis by sectors shows that the competitive effect of illegal foreign workers is not homogeneous and is strongest in the agricultural sector, while complementarity between the two categories of labour is evident in the non-tradable services sector. Furthermore, when the effects of illegal foreign and illegal native workers are compared, the former is smaller than the latter one, with illegal foreigners workers just reinforcing the impact of the illegal nationals on the labour market. Received: 27 June 1997/Accepted: 31 August 1998     

Are Theories About Social Capital Empirically Supported? Evidence from the Farming Sector

Social capital is the bond that links societies together and without which there is little opportunity for economic growth or individual well-being. Thus, this paper aims to contribute to the literature by providing an analytically reliable concept of social capital and a methodological tool for empirically testing a theoretical model of how social capital is built. Based upon a decomposition of the concept of social capital characterising three main dimensions (i.e., structural, relational and cognitive), for each specific group of individuals under study the structural equation model allows us: (1) to confirm the multidimensional construct of social capital; (2) to measure the interrelation between its different attributes and; (3) to set a solid basis for additional research on the effects of social capital. This approach has been empirically applied to Andalusian (southern Spain) farmers as case study. We believe this research to be a fundamental starting point for informing social capital policymakers and helping them implement the necessary tools to facilitate sustainable development processes at different moments in time as it takes into account the multidimensional, contextual and dynamic nature of the concept.     

“The shock of widowhood”? Evidence from an Italian population (Parma, 1989–2000)

The purpose of our study is to assess the influence of socio-demographic factors on overall and cause-specific mortality of elderly people of Parma aged 65. In particular, the paper aims at exploring the relation between mortality and living arrangement in association with marital status. Data were obtained from the General Registry Office of Parma and from the death certificates issued by the Local Health District from 1989 to 2000. A logistic regression was performed using longitudinal data. In the male population, living alone and being never married appears to be the worst condition, while living with the wife repsresents a caring situation. In the female population, the major risk of death is associated to living with others than a spouse, while a reduced risk was detected for widows living alone. This was a common and shared result for both overall mortality and many of the causes of death here considered. The condition of widows and widowers living alone does not appear to constitute a particularly serious risk among the elderly population of Parma. Yet, in the female population the association between living alone and the status of widow seems playing a protective role. This result should be interpreted in the light of the social policy of services and support for the elderly pursued by local authorities.     

Ethnic Intermarriage and Social Cohesion. What Can We Learn from Yugoslavia?

Social cohesion theory is tested using data on ethnic intermarriage in former Yugoslavia. Before the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the proportion of marriages outside the own ethnic group was generally low, but in this respect large differences among the groups existed. The proportion of mixed marriages with a Serbian partner was much higher among the Montenegrins and Hungarians than among the Muslims, Slovenes, or Albanians. The findings are largely in line with the predictions of social cohesion theory that intermarriage reduces the probability of violent conflict among social groups. Besides proportions of mixed marriages, loglinear parameters are presented. These parameters show that percentages not always give a good indication of the social distances among groups. The boundaries of the largest ethnic groups, the Serbians and Croatians, were less closed than their rather low intermarriage rates suggested. The social distance between the Hungarians and the Serbians, on the other hand, was larger than expected on the basis of their intermarriage rates. The findings stress the importance of including information on ethnically mixed marriages into models of ethnological monitoring and early warning systems for ethnic conflicts.     

Can migration reduce educational attainment? Evidence from Mexico

This paper examines the impact of migration on educational attainment in rural Mexico. Using historical migration rates to instrument for current migration, we find evidence of a significant negative effect of migration on schooling attendance and attainment. IV-censored ordered probits show that living in a migrant household lowers the chances of boys completing junior high school and of boys and girls completing high school. We find that the observed decrease in schooling of 16- to 18-year-olds is accounted for by current migration of boys and increased housework for girls.     

Child labour or school attendance? Evidence from Zambia

In this paper we investigate what affects school attendance and child labour in an LDC, using data for Zambia. Since the data comes from a household survey with information on all household members it allows us to take account of unobserved household effects by introducing household-specific effects in a logit model. The empirical analysis suggests that both economic and sociological variables are important determinants for the choice between school attendance and child labour. In particular, we find some support for the hypothesis that poverty forces households to keep their children away from school. JEL classification: J24, I21, O15 Received May 20, 1996/Accepted January 2, 1997     

Does the number of sex partners affect educational attainment? Evidence from female respondents to the Add Health

We use data on young women from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to explore the relationship between number of sex partners and educational attainment. Using the average physical development of male schoolmates to generate plausibly exogenous variation in number of sex partners, instrumental variables estimates suggest that number of sex partners is negatively related to educational attainment. This result is consistent with the argument that romantic involvements are time consuming and can impose substantial emotional costs on young women.     

Do amnesty programs reduce undocumented immigration? Evidence from Irca

This article examines whether mass legalization programs reduce future undocumented immigration. We focus on the effects of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted amnesty to nearly 2.7 million undocumented immigrants. We report that apprehensions of persons attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally declined immediately following passage of the law but returned to normal levels during the period when undocumented immigrants could file for amnesty and the years thereafter. Our findings suggest that the amnesty program did not change long-term patterns of undocumented immigration from Mexico.     

Does child gender affect marital status? Evidence from Australia

Pooling microdata from five Australian censuses, I explore the relationship between child gender and parents’ marital status. By contrast with the USA, I find no evidence that the gender of the first child has a significant impact on the decision to marry or divorce. However, among two-child families, parents with two children of the same sex are 1.7 percentage points less likely to be married than parents with a boy and a girl. This finding is unlikely to be consistent with theories of preference for sons over daughters, differential costs, role models, or complementary costs but is consistent with a theory of mixed-gender preference.

Are there crisis-led fertility declines? Evidence from central Cameroon

Past demographic transitions have beenobserved with and without economic progress, but thereis little empirical record of crisis-driven fertilitytransitions. In recent years, several authors haveargued that conditions for such transitions are met inAfrican countries under economic crisis and structuraladjustment. Using retrospective family histories,this study examines fertility responses to crisis inCameroon, a country with a particularly abrupteconomic reversal. The thesis of a crisis-led declineis tested on the basis of five criteria includingtiming of the decline, statistical and substantivesignificance, rural-urban response differentials andsocial salience. Findings are consistent with acrisis-led effect.     

Does Inequality Cause a Difference in Altruism Between the Rich and the Poor? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment

Increasing research evidence indicates that economic inequality leads the rich to be less generous than the poor. While compelling, the underling mechanism of the finding remains elusive. We conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate how inequality influences people’s behavior in a sharing game. We test varying causes of inequality to see how people share payoffs with others when inequality is caused respectively by chance, competition, and choice. The experiment result shows that the rich give less than the poor only when inequality is self-chosen. Yet, different from findings in previous studies, increasing inequality does not reinforce, but instead mitigates the negative relationship of income and giving. Our study suggests that research on the consequences of inequality should be careful on discerning whether self-choice of inequality could account for the spurious effect of inequality on people’s prosocial behavior.

     

Does How You Measure Income Make a Difference to Measuring Poverty? Evidence from the UK

Income is regarded as one of the clearest indicators of socioeconomic status and wellbeing in the developed world and is highly correlated with a wide range of outcomes. Despite its importance, there remains an issue as to the best way to collect income as part of surveys. This paper examines differences in how income is collected in a nationally representative UK birth cohort, the Millennium Cohort Study, looking at variations by questions asked and by respondent characteristics before then examining the implications different methods of collecting and reporting income may have for measuring poverty. Results show that less than a third of respondents give consistent information on income between measurement tools. Using multiple questions is associated with a substantially lower response rate but this method generally results in a higher estimate of family income than using a single question. This is particularly true for certain groups of the population—those on means tested benefits, in self-employment and in part-time employment. Not surprisingly then in our analysis of poverty, using a single question produces an inflated proportion of families who could be classified as living in poverty and is less associated with other measures of financial deprivation than the more conservative poverty measure based on multiple questions.