Two decades of family change: secondary analysis of continuous government surveys

"Secondary analysis of General Household Survey and Labour Force Survey data shows how the structure of families in Great Britain has changed over the last 20 years. Dependent children are now less likely to be living in a couple family and more likely to be living with a lone mother who is either single or divorced. Families in simple households with just two generations have become more common over time. Lone mothers are now more likely to be living in simple households. The paper also considers how the number and ages of dependent children are associated with family and household type. Log-linear models are used both to smooth the data and to predict family structure in the year 2000. Gaps in our knowledge about current family structures are discussed together with implications of the findings for social policy."     

Point-symmetry models and decomposition for collapsed square contingency tables

For square contingency tables with ordered categories, there may be some cases that one wants to analyze them by considering collapsed tables with some adjacent categories combined in the original table. This paper proposes three kinds of new models which have the structure of point-symmetry (PS), quasi point-symmetry and marginal point-symmetry for collapsed square tables. This paper also gives a decomposition of the PS model for collapsed square tables. The father's and his daughter's occupational mobility data are analyzed using new models.     

Friendship ties and geographical mobility: evidence from Great Britain

Summary.  A common finding in analyses of geographic mobility is a strong association between past movement and current mobility. We argue that one of the driving forces behind this pattern is the strength of local social ties outside the household. We use data from the British Household Panel Survey on the location of the three closest friends and the frequency of meetings with them. We estimate the processes of friendship formation and residential mobility jointly, allowing for correlation between the two processes. Our results show that a larger number of close friends living nearby substantially reduces movement of 20 miles or more.     

Increasing social mobility: an effective policy to reduce health inequalities

Summary.  Data from the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study are used to investigate the effect of mobility between occupationally defined social classes between 1991 and 2001 on health inequality in men and women. Logistic regression models related movement into more or less advantaged employment conditions to limiting long-term illness in 2001, controlling for social class in 1991 and 2001. When class in 1991 was controlled ('class of origin') those who moved into more advantaged social classes were least likely and those moving into less advantaged classes most likely to report a limiting illness. However, when social class in 2001 ('class of destination') was controlled, those moving from less to more advantaged positions were most likely to report limiting illness. The same patterns were seen in women. This means that social mobility did not increase the extent of health inequality over the time period that was observed, but rather served to constrain or dilute it. The results are interpreted in terms of an accumulation model of health inequality, and the policy implications are discussed.     

MULTILEVEL DISCRETE‐TIME EVENT HISTORY MODELS WITH APPLICATIONS TO THE ANALYSIS OF RECURRENT EMPLOYMENT TRANSITIONS

Data on the timing of events such as births, residential moves and changes in employment status are collected in many longitudinal surveys. These data often have a highly complex structure, with events of several types occurring repeatedly over time to an individual and interdependences between different event processes (e.g. births and employment transitions). The aim of this paper is to review a general class of multilevel discrete‐time event history models for handling recurrent events and transitions between multiple states. It is also shown how standard methods can be extended to allow for time‐varying covariates that are outcomes of an event process that is jointly determined with the process of interest. The considerable potential of these methods for studying transitions through the life course is illustrated in analyses of the effect of the presence and age of children on women's employment transitions, using data from the British Household Panel Survey.     

Toward an integrated Bayesian network approach to measurement error detection and correction

In this article, the quality of data produced by national statistical institutes and by governmental institutions is considered. In particular, the problem of measurement error is analyzed and an integrated Bayesian network decision support system based on non-parametric Bayesian networks is proposed for its detection and correction. Non-parametric Bayesian networks are graphical models expressing dependence structure via bivariate copulas associated to the edges of the graph. The network structure and the misreport probability are estimated using a validation sample. The Bayesian network model is proposed to decide: (i) which records have to be corrected; (ii) the kind and amount of correction to be adopted. The proposed correction procedure is applied to the Banca d’Italia Survey on Household Income and Wealth and, specifically, the bond amounts are analyzed. Finally, the sensitivity of the conditional distribution of the true value random variable given the observed one to different evidence configurations is studied.     

Estimating low pay transition probabilities accounting for endogenous selection mechanisms

Summary.  We propose a model of transitions into and out of low paid employment that accounts for non-ignorable panel dropout, employment retention and base year low pay status ('initial conditions'). The model is fitted to data for men from the British Household Panel Survey. Initial conditions and employment retention are found to be non-ignorable selection processes. Whether panel dropout is found to be ignorable depends on how item non-response on pay is treated. Notwithstanding these results, we also find that models incorporating a simpler approach to accounting for non-ignorable selections provide estimates of covariate effects that differ very little from the estimates from the general model.     

Parental partnership and joblessness in childhood and their influence on young people's outcomes

Summary.  The paper estimates the relationship between several outcomes in early adulthood (education, inactivity, early birth, distress and smoking) and experiences of life in a single-parent family and with jobless parent(s) during childhood. The analysis is performed using a sample of young adults, who are selected from the first nine waves of the British Household Panel Survey (1991–1999) and can be matched with at least one parent and one sibling over the same period. This sample allows us to estimate the relationship of interest by using sibling differences. We also use another sample of young adults from the British Household Panel Survey, matched to at least one parent, to estimate more conventional level models and to compute nonparametric bounds and point estimates. The estimates based on sibling differences require weaker assumptions (compared with the assumptions that are imposed by nonparametric estimators under conditional independence and level estimators) for the identification of the effects of family structure and parental joblessness on the outcomes under analysis. We find that experiences of life in a single-parent family and with jobless parents during childhood are usually associated with disadvantageous outcomes for young adults, the effect of family structure is in general significantly greater (in absolute value) than the effect of parental worklessness and most of the unfavourable outcomes are linked to an early family disruption, when the child was aged 0–5 years, whereas the timing of parental joblessness during childhood has more complex effects, with different outcomes being more strongly influenced by parental worklessness at different ages of the child.     

Income vulnerability of rural households in Bangladesh: a comparison between Bayesian and classical methods

The geographical location and the monsoon climate render Bangladesh highly vulnerable to natural hazards, deteriorating the country's socio-economic stability. This study is based on 500 randomly chosen rural households from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey [Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Planning Division, Ministry of Planning, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, Dhaka, 2006]. The objectives are to estimate the income vulnerability of rural households and to check whether the Bayesian approaches (natural conjugate prior and non-informative prior estimates) have any superiority over the classical (feasible generalized least square (FGLS)) method. The poverty level, measured from the data, is 24%; whereas the vulnerability estimates, using FGLS, natural conjugate prior and non-informative prior are 31%, 69% and 82%, respectively. Vulnerability estimates by the Bayesian natural conjugate prior approach is found to have greater efficiency compared with FGLS and non-informative prior approaches.     

非农业户籍会使人更幸福吗

中国的户籍制度相对比较特殊,它曾衍生了大量“农转非”等户口买卖现象,这使人不禁产生疑问：非农业户籍会使人更幸福吗？本文基于北京大学CFPS数据,构建了一个影响幸福程度的包括户籍因素在内的有序因变量模型。我们不但详述了户籍类型与居民幸福程度的内在联系机制,同时还分析众多主客观因素对幸福的影响。研究发现,户籍类型转变的实质是社会行动者基于户籍制度功能而做出的理性选择行为,不同时间和空间的户籍制度功能会引起幸福程度的差异;生活态度、人际和教育等因素也会显著影响幸福程度。因此,户籍制度改革过程中,重视户籍制度的功能而非形式是明智之举;同时,完善农村就业机制、增强个人自信心是提升社会行动者幸福程度的有效手段。     

经济地位、主观社会地位与居民自感健康

本文采用中国劳动力动态调查（CLDS）2012年首次全面调查数据,从经济地位和主观社会地位角度出发,并依次控制人际关系及情感因素、人口学特征和自然因素与特殊嗜好因素,系统考察其对我国居民自感健康的影响。结果发现,代表较高经济收入的社会经济地位因素对居民自感健康有积极影响;控制客观经济地位因素后,主观社会地位对各年龄层的居民自感健康的影响依然相当显著,当前社会等级和预期未来高的社会等级都能显著提高居民自感健康水平。     

代际流动性对社会公平影响的实证研究

本文利用CHNS微观调研数据库,实证分析了中国代际收入弹性及其传递机制,以及收入、教育资源和社会阶层分布的不平等性。研究表明,我国收入差距经历了逐步扩大到趋于平稳的过程,而同期代际流动性则经历了先波动后提高的过程。人力资本投资和社会地位影响可以解释代际收入弹性的30%左右。教育公平为促进我国社会公平发挥了主要作用,随着机会公平性的不断改善,代际流动性也将不断提高,将进一步减小个体差异性,缩小收入差距,使中国社会走向机会公平、收入公平和社会公平。     

The effectiveness of coach turnover and the effect on home team advantage,team quality and team ranking

The effectiveness of coach turnover on team performance is widely discussed in the literature due to the indirect impact of a team's performance on a club's revenues. This study examines the effect of coach turnover within a competition season by focusing on the change in team quality and the change in home team advantage under the new coach. The change in team quality or home team advantage can vary according to the team (team specific) or might be an independent quantity (non-team specific). We estimated nine possible regression models, given no change, team-specific change and non-team-specific change in quality or home team advantage. The data are the match results of Belgian male soccer teams playing in the highest national division during seven seasons. Results point to a team-specific effect of a new coach on a team's quality. This article further contributes by evaluating the new coach's success with regard to whether his ability to improve team quality also results in a better position of the team in the final ranking. A new coach will be able to improve the ranking of the team if the improved team quality under the new coach renders a positive team quality.     

Fiducial inference in combining expert judgements

In the expert use problem, hierarchical models provide an ideal perspective for classifying understanding and generalising the aggregative algoithms suitable to compose experts' opinions in a single synthesis distribution. After suggesting to look at Peter A. Morris' (1971, 1974, 1977) Bayesian model in such a light, this paper addresses the problem of modelling the multidimensional ‘performance function’, which encodes aggregator's beliefs about each expert's assessment ability and the degree of dependence among the experts. Whenever the aggregator has not an empirically founded probability distribution for the experts' performances, the proposed fiducial procedure provides a rational and very flexible tool for enabling the performance function to be specified with a relatively small number of assessments: moreover, it warrants aggregator's beliefs about the experts in terms of personal long run frequencies.     

我国住户调查轮换样本的确定机制

本文提出了住户调查中受样本轮换作用的六个重要方面,结合国外住户调查的经验,对国内有关制度及研究中的问题进行了讨论。通过构建一个适合复杂样本分析的方差-成本模型,结合数据模拟和比较静态分析的方法,从六个方面综合考虑轮换样本的影响,从而得出有效样本轮换率和样本轮换频率的确定机制。     

Decriminalization and Marijuana Smoking Prevalence: Evidence From Australia

This article uses the 2001 National Drug Strategy Household Survey to assess the impact of marijuana decriminalization policy on marijuana smoking prevalence in Australia. Both parametric and nonparametric methods are used. The parametric approach includes endogenous probit switching, two-part, sample selection, and standard dummy variable models, while the nonparametric approach uses propensity score stratification matching. Specification analyses are also conducted. A nonparametric kernel-based test is constructed to select between parametric and nonparametric models, and the likelihood ratio test is used to choose among parametric models. Our analyses favor the endogenous switching model where decriminalization increases the probability of smoking by 16.2%.     

中国收入流动性再探讨

 本文利用“中国营养健康调查”(1989-2006)数据,从不同角度测度了中国收入流动性,分析了其对社会福利的影响,并按不同收入阶层对收入流动性进行分解,最后考察了个体的教育特征对收入流动性的影响。研究发现,城市和农村的收入流动性都先上升后下降,在收入分配差距较大的背景下,收入流动性降低加固了现有收入分层,形成“穷者越穷、富者越富”的马太效应,收入流动性并未改善社会福利;低收入阶层对总体收入流动性贡献最大,但大都在中低收入阶层内部变动;同时,受教育程度较高的个体不易向下流动,城市个体尤为显著。因此,在制定收入分配、教育政策时对低收入群体进行扶持,将有利于促进合理的收入流动进而缩小收入分配差距。     

Bayesian estimation and influence diagnostics of generalized partially linear mixed-effects models for longitudinal data

This paper develops a Bayesian approach to obtain the joint estimates of unknown parameters, nonparametric functions and random effects in generalized partially linear mixed models (GPLMMs), and presents three case deletion influence measures to identify influential observations based on the φ-divergence, Cook's posterior mean distance and Cook's posterior mode distance of parameters. Fisher's iterative scoring algorithm is developed to evaluate the posterior modes of parameters in GPLMMs. The first-order approximation to Cook's posterior mode distance is presented. The computationally feasible formulae for the φ-divergence diagnostic and Cook's posterior mean distance are given. Several simulation studies and an example are presented to illustrate our proposed methodologies.