Organized Violence and Institutional Child Delivery: Micro-Level Evidence From Sub-Saharan Africa, 1989–2014

The conditions under which a mother gives birth greatly affect the health risk of both the mother and the child. This article addresses how local exposure to organized violence affects whether women give birth in a health facility. We combine geocoded data on violent events from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program with georeferenced survey data on the use of maternal health care services from the Demographic and Health Surveys. Our sample covers 569,201 births by 390,574 mothers in 31 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. We use a mother fixed-effects analysis to estimate the effect of recent organized violence events within a radius of 50 km of the home of each mother on the likelihood that her child is born in a health facility. The results indicate that geographical and temporal proximity to organized violence significantly reduces the likelihood of institutional births. Although the level of maternal health care overall is lower in rural areas, the negative effect of violence appears to be stronger in urban areas. The study further underscores the importance of household and individual resilience, indicating that the effect of organized violence on institutional child delivery is greater among poor and less-educated mothers.     

Can We Still Learn Something From the Relationship Between Fertility and Mother’s Employment? Evidence From Developing Countries

In this work, I study the impact of fertility on mothers’ employment for a sample of developing countries. Using the event of multiple births as an instrumental variable (IV) for fertility, I find that having children has a negative impact on female employment. In addition, three types of heterogeneity are found. First, the magnitude of the impact depends on the birth at which the increase in fertility takes place. Second, the types of jobs affected by a fertility shock (multiple births) are jobs identified with a higher degree of informality, such as self-employment or unpaid jobs. Finally, the heterogeneity analysis reveals that an unexpected change in fertility is stronger at a higher education level of the mother and in urban areas.     

Is There Evidence of Birth Control in Late Imperial China?

In recent publications James Lee, Wang Feng, Cameron Campbell, and Zhongwei Zhao argue—contrary to what has long been the view of most sinologists—that people in late imperial China deliberately controlled their fertility through a combination of late starting, early stopping, and long spacing. The present article challenges this argument and the data offered in its support. It attempts to show that though they did not want as many children as possible, most Chinese couples did want to raise as many sons as possible. What is interpreted by the revisionists as evidence of birth control is better understood as evidence of poverty.     

Ethnic Diversity and Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Do Institutions Reduce the Noise?

Studies on the causes of income differences between the rich and the poor have received an extensive attention in the inequality empirics. While ethnic diversity has also been identified as one of the fundamental causes of income inequality, the role of institutions as a mediating factor in the ethnicity-inequality nexus has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. To this end, this study complements the existing literature by investigating the extent to which institutional framework corrects the noisy influence originating from the nexus between “ethnic diversity” and inequality in 26 sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1996–2015. The empirical evidence is based on pooled OLS, fixed effects and system GMM estimators. The main findings reveal that the mediating influences of institutional settings are defective, thus making it extremely difficult to modulate the noisy impacts of ethno-linguistic and religious heterogeneity on inequality. In addition, the negative influences orchestrated by ethno-linguistic and religious diversities on inequality fail to attenuate the impact of income disparity even when interacted with institutions. On the policy front, institutional reforms tailored toward economic, political and institutional governances should be targeted.

     

Is migration an effective adaptation to climate-related agricultural distress in sub-Saharan Africa?

Population and Environment - Migration is often considered a form of climate change adaptation by which individuals, households, and communities seek to reduce the risks associated with climate...     

Why the rise in adolescent fertility rates in the Dominican Republic in the 1990s?

Despite concern over high pregnancy rates and levels of risk for sexually transmittedinfections, adolescent fertility rates in the Dominican Republic have not changed substantially since the early 1980's, and actually increased during the early to mid 1990s. The present study was undertaken to assess the factors contributing to the recent rise in fertility among Dominican adolescents. The findings suggest that although contraceptive use among adolescents and young adults has increased, this has been more than offset by ominous trends on other determinants of fertility. Among these are declines in mean age at first sex and first marriage/union without a commensurate decline in mean age at first contraceptive use, and stubbornly high discontinuation rates for oral contraceptives andcondoms. There is also some evidence that rates of induced abortion among adolescents may have increased, without which adolescent fertility rates would have been even higher. Demand for children among Dominican adolescents remains strong, suggesting that efforts to reduce the current high prevalence of risky sexual behaviors need to influence social norms in order to be successful.     

Does Culture Affect Divorce? Evidence From European Immigrants in the United States

This article explores the role of culture in determining divorce by examining country-of-origin differences in divorce rates of immigrants in the United States. Because childhood-arriving immigrants are all exposed to a common set of U.S. laws and institutions, we interpret relationships between their divorce tendencies and home-country divorce rates as evidence of the effect of culture. Our results are robust to controlling for several home-country variables, including average church attendance and gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, specifications with country-of-origin fixed effects suggest that immigrants from countries with low divorce rates are especially less likely to be divorced if they reside among a large number of coethnics. Supplemental analyses indicate that divorce culture has a stronger impact on the divorce decisions of females than of males, pointing to a potentially gendered nature of divorce taboos.     

Is Health of the Aging Improved by Conditional Cash Transfer Programs? Evidence From Mexico

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs link public transfers to human capital investment in the hopes of alleviating current poverty and reducing its intergenerational transmission. Whereas nearly all studies of their effects have focused on youth, CCT programs may also have an impact on aging adults by increasing household resources or inducing changes in allocations of time of household members, which may be of substantial interest, particularly given the rapid aging of most populations. This article contributes to this underresearched area by examining health and work impacts on the aging for the best-known and most influential of these programs, the Mexican PROGRESA/Oportunidades program. For a number of health indicators, the program appears to significantly improve health, with larger effects for recipients with a greater time receiving benefits from the program. Most of these health effects are concentrated on women.     

Is Over-Education a Problem in Spain? Empirical Evidence Based on the EU-SILC

Spain is suffering an important economic slowdown which affects significantly to unemployment rises. For this reason, many individuals are considering to increase their educational level. However, this decision can lead to get worse labor market indicators. In this paper, we analyze the problem of over-education in Spain and its effect on earnings. Using the last four waves (2009–2012) of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC, 2009–2012) this study analyses over-education situation of employed people and compares over-education rates and earnings of these individuals. Cross-sectional analysis (focused on a recent period of time) is performed. We apply different matching techniques based on propensity score methods to evaluate the impact of over-education on personal earnings. The results obtained in this paper add more empirical evidence supporting the effect of education on earnings together with occupational placement because over-education could be a great problem for many countries. In Spain, there exists a problem of over-education which varies among occupations. Overeducated workers are most likely to be found among “Service workers and shop and market sales workers” and “Elementary occupations”. Also, the majority of individuals working as “Professionals” are adequately educated. Besides, over-education has a significant negative impact on earnings. Although the results depend on the way we define over-education (interval or modal method), those individuals over-educated receive less earnings than they correspond to. In fact, the decrease can reach about 5000 euro per year.     

Refining the Conceptualization and Measurement of Women’s Empowerment in Sub-Saharan Africa Using Data from the 2013 Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey

The measurement of women’s empowerment has long eluded academics and practitioners alike. A key challenge relates to the way researchers construct measures of empowerment, pairing indicators together in either composite indices, or multiple dimensions. This study tests three commonly found measurement models of women’s empowerment using data from the 2013 Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey. Model fit statistics indicate that a seven factor first order Functional Scales of Empowerment model best fits the data. Implications following from this study’s findings include that simplification into composite indices, a commonly used method to aggregate indicators of empowerment may lead to erroneous conclusions regarding the effect of empowerment on development and health outcomes and hamper comparative research. The results from this study contribute to the highly important and often ignored discussion regarding measurement of women’s empowerment.     

Is the Relationship between Socioeconomic Status and Health Stronger for Older Children in Developing Countries?

Recent research on the relationship between child health and income in developed countries reveals a positive gradient that is more pronounced for older children, suggesting that the impact of income upon health accumulates. This article examines whether the same is true in a developing country. Using data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey on children aged 0 to 14 years, we find that although low income adversely affects health, its impact does not differ by age. This finding is robust to the use of both subjective and objective health measures, controlling for selective mortality, the use of alternative measures of households’ resources, and the inclusion of indicators of health at birth and parental health. One explanation for the constancy of the health-income relationship that we explore is the dominant role played by acute illness in determining the general health status of children in a developing-country context compared with the more central role played by chronic conditions in developed countries.     

How Does Relative Income and Variations in Short-Run Wellbeing Affect Wellbeing in the Long Run? Empirical Evidence From China’s Korean Minority

Cognitively appraised life satisfaction is relatively stable over time and can be considered as reflecting subjective wellbeing in the long run. Affect is transitory and can be considered as reflecting subjective wellbeing in the short run. Using the Personal Wellbeing Index to measure cognitively appraised life satisfaction and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule to measure positive and negative affect we examine how income relative to one’s comparator group and variations in short run wellbeing impact upon wellbeing in the long run. We do so for China’s Korean ethnic minority. We find that affective state has an effect on wellbeing in the long run and that a negative shock to affectivity is more persistent than a positive shock. We also find that relative income, rather than absolute income, matters for wellbeing in the long run and that the results are consistent with a status effect.     

Is education a risk factor or social vaccine against HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa? The effect of schooling across public health periods

Early in the 30-year HIV/AIDS pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa, epidemiological studies identified formal education attainment as a risk factor: educated Sub-Saharan Africans had a higher risk of contracting HIV/AIDS than their less educated peers. Later demographic research reported that by the mid-1990s the education effect had reversed, and education began to function as a social vaccine. Recent counter-evidence finds a curvilinear pattern, with the association between educational attainment and HIV/AIDS infection changing from positive to negative across the education gradient. To reconcile these inconsistent conclusions, a hypothesis is developed and tested that education at early stages functioned as a risk factor and later functioned (and continues to function) as a social vaccine. We reason that this shift in the direction of the education effect was concurrent with changes in the public health environment in SSA that early on heightened material benefits from educational attainment but later heightened cognitive benefits from schooling. Using the 2003/2004 Demographic Health Surveys from four Sub-Saharan African countries (Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania), we tested this hypothesis (differential effects of schooling) using non-linear regression analysis (probit), identifying the different public health periods and controlling for confounding factors. The results support the hypothesis that the education effect shifted historically in the HIV/AIDS pandemic in SSA as we hypothesized.     

Do Racial Disparities in Private Transfers Help Explain the Racial Wealth Gap? New Evidence From Longitudinal Data

How do private transfers differ by race and ethnicity, and do such differences explain the racial and ethnic disparity in wealth? Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study examines private transfers by race and ethnicity in the United States and explores a causal relationship between private transfers and wealth. Panel data and a family-level fixed-effect model are used to control for the endogeneity of private transfers. Private transfers in the form of financial support received and given from extended families and friends, as well as large gifts and inheritances, are examined. We find that African Americans and Hispanics (both immigrant and nonimmigrant) receive less in both types of private transfers than whites. Large gifts and inheritances, but not net financial support received, are related to wealth increases for African American and white families. Overall, we estimate that the African American shortfall in large gifts and inheritances accounts for 12 % of the white-black racial wealth gap.     

From Motherhood Premium to Motherhood Penalty? Heterogeneous Effects of Motherhood Stages on Women’s Economic Outcomes in Urban China

Chinese women have reached a high level of labor force participation before China’s deepening economic reform starting from the early 1990s, while women’s deteriorating position in the labor market has been documented in recent literature. However, few studies connect the relationship between the presence of children at different ages and women’s labor market outcomes. Capitalizing on longitudinal data, this study uses a person-fixed-effects model to investigate the relationship between motherhood stages and women’s economic outcomes in urban China. It takes into consideration the impact of children at various ages, as well as the impact of growth in local economies. We find that very young children inhibit mothers’ employment, but the presence of school-aged children is positively correlated with mothers’ income. Our analysis further suggests that, with the development of local economies, the negative association of very young children and women’s labor activity is exacerbated, while the positive relationship between school-aged children and mothers’ income is weakened. Our findings also contribute to the literature on labor market institutions, gender-role ideologies, and the impact on women’s economic outcomes as they balance work with childrearing obligations.     

Student Degree Program and Attitudes Toward Gays and Lesbians in the Military: Is There a Connection?

Individuals routinely experience discrimination based on sexual orientation. Since the implementation of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in 1994, over 13,000 military personnel have been discharged from the U.S. military on the basis of sexual orientation. As helping professionals, social workers will often provide services to returning gay and lesbian veterans. Therefore, social work programs must ensure that students develop positive attitudes toward and understanding of the needs presented by this population. Little is known about whether a specific degree program can be a predictor of student attitude toward gay and lesbian individuals in the military. Eighty-nine graduate students completed the Attitudes Toward Homosexuals in the Military (ATHM) scale, and scores were compared between two graduate degree programs: Social Work and Business Administration. A statistically significant relationship was found between degree program and ATHM scores. Implications for policy, practice and research related to gay and lesbian veterans are discussed.     

Social Desirability Bias in Self-reports of Physical Activity: Is an Exercise Identity the Culprit?

Like that of other normative behaviors, much of the research on physical exercise is based on self-reports that are prone to overreporting. While research has focused on identifying the presence and degree of overreporting, this paper fills an important gap by investigating its causes. The explanation based in impression management will be challenged, using an explanation based in identity theory as an arguably better fitting alternative. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (1) a web instrument using direct survey questions, or (2) a chronological reporting procedure using text messaging. Comparisons to validation data from a reverse record check indicate significantly greater rates of overreporting in the web condition than in the text condition. Results suggest that measurement bias is associated with the importance of the respondents’ exercise identity, prompted by the directness of the conventional survey question. Findings call into question the benefit of self-administration for bias reduction in measurement of normative behaviors.