The impact of female education on fertility: a natural experiment from Egypt

This paper presents new evidence on the impact of female education on fertility in Egypt using the change in the length of primary schooling as the source of exogenous variation in education. Beginning in 1988, the Egyptian government cut the number of primary school years from six to five, moving from a 12-year system of pre-university education to an 11-year system. This policy change affected all individuals born on or after October 1977. Using triennial pooled cross-section data from 1992 to 2014 and a nonparametric regression discontinuity approach, we compare education and fertility of women born just before and right after October 1977. Our analysis shows that female education significantly reduces the number of children born per woman. The reduction in fertility seems to result from delaying maternal age rather than changing women’s fertility preferences. We also provide evidence that female education in Egypt does not boost women’s labor force participation or affect their usages of contraceptive methods. Female education, however, does appear to increase women’s age at marriage which might explain the delay of maternal age.     

Sanctioning as a social norm: Expectations of non-strategic sanctioning in a public goods game experiment

Sanctioning increases cooperation in public goods games, but not indiscriminately under all conditions and in all societies, and the mechanisms by which sanctioning exercises its impact on behavior are yet to be studied in detail. We show experimentally that in the presence of sanctioning, our experimental subjects adjust their behavior in order to avoid being a free rider. They do this not only in the STANDARD sanctions treatment, where they directly experience any sanctions assigned to them, but also in our main treatment, the SECRET sanctions treatment, where no information on sanctions received is available until the end of the experiment. We observe no such free riding avoidance in the treatment without sanctioning. The mere knowledge that sanctions might be assigned increases cooperation among the members of our subject pool; subjects expect that non-strategic sanctioning occurs against the free riders. Moreover, these expectations are correct as we observe a similar pattern and extent of sanctioning in both treatments. We propose that sanctioning in itself is a social norm and may be culturally dependent, as suggested in the literature.     

Decision making in networks: an experiment on structure effects in a group dictator game

In this study we examine the impact of communication networks on decision making in five-person committees. Within the framework of a group dictator game the committees must reach a majority choice for one collective transfer. We focus on the effect of the group structure on the collective decisions, and explore the effect of incomplete and asymmetric information on voting outcomes by defining three different networks structures: the unconnected network, a circle and a star. As expected the connections improved coordination within the committees, however, we find no significant difference between the network forms concerning the transfers chosen.     

The potential educational benefits of extending foster care to young adults: Findings from a natural experiment

Research has demonstrated the employment and earnings benefits accompanying educational attainment, and the relatively poor educational attainment and economic well-being of young people who transition to adulthood from foster care. Policymakers' concern over these poor outcomes has long been reflected in U.S. child welfare policy, most recently in the provisions of the 2008 Fostering Connections to Success Act allowing states to claim federal reimbursement for extending foster care from age 18 to age 21. While the policy of allowing youth to remain in foster care past age 18 has promise as a strategy for helping them continue their education, empirical evidence of its impact is lacking. Using data from a longitudinal study of youth (n = 732) who transitioned to adulthood from foster care, this study takes advantage of between-state policy variation in the age at which youth are required to leave care to assess the relationship between extended foster care and educational attainment at age 26. Distinguishing between not having obtained a high school diploma or GED, having only a high school diploma or GED, and having obtained at least one year of college, each additional year in care is associated with a 46% increase in the estimated odds that former foster youth will progress to the next level of educational attainment, controlling for a range of youth characteristics measured at ages 17–18. Background characteristics including youth's gender, race, employment, parenting, educational performance and aspirations, and indicators of behavioral health problems are also associated with educational attainment in early adulthood.     

Social complex contagion in music listenership: A natural experiment with 1.3 million participants

Can live music events generate complex contagion in music streaming? This paper finds evidence in the affirmative—but only for the most popular artists. We generate a novel dataset from a music tracking website to analyse the listenership history of 1.3 million users over a two-month time horizon. We show that attending a music artist’s live concert increases that artist’s listenership among the attendees of the concert by approximately 1 song per day per attendee (p-value < 0.001). Moreover, this effect is contagious and can spread to users who did not attend the event. However, whether or not contagion occurs depends on the type of artist. We only observe contagious increases in listenership for popular artists (∼0.06 more daily plays per friend of an attendee [p < 0.001]), while the effect is absent for emerging stars. The contagion effect size increases monotonically with the number of friends who have attended the live event.     

Community role salience: the development and testing of a new measure

There is growing recognition that community plays a role in an individual's work-life experience. While measures of work and family role salience have been developed and applied in the work-life literature, no measure of community role salience had been developed. This has served to limit our understanding of community role salience and how it influences work-life experience. The research aimed to address this gap by developing a new measure for community role salience and community role importance, with a view to understanding the role community plays in shaping an individual's work-life experience. Surveys were administered to 59 participants from the construction sector. The new measure of role salience shows considerable promise as a reliable instrument. The structure and nature of work undertaken in the construction industry is different from that in many other industries, therefore the results may not be generalisable to other industries. However, it is considered that the instruments themselves can be applied in different contexts to explore the role community plays in shaping an individual's work-life experience.     

Overconfidence,omens and gender heterogeneity: Results from a field experiment

We investigate whether overconfidence is affected by superstitious beliefs and whether the effect is heterogeneous according to gender. With this aim, we run a field experiment involving about 700 Italian students. According to widespread superstitions, some numbers are considered lucky while others are thought of as unlucky. In our experiment, we exploited this by randomly assigning students to numbered seats in their written exam. At the end of the examination, we asked students the grade they expected to get. We find that students tend to be overconfident about their performance at the exam and that their overconfidence is positively affected by being assigned to a lucky number. Interestingly, males and females react differently: females’ overconfidence tends to be negatively affected when assigned to unlucky numbers, while they are not affected by being assigned to lucky numbers; males are not affected by being assigned to unlucky numbers but are more overconfident when assigned to lucky numbers.     

Social roles and negotiation of status in host-tourist interaction: A view from British television holiday programmes

Although folk discourses frequently emphasise such raison d’être benefits of tourism as broadening one's horizons through knowing foreign people(s) and cultures, most critical studies of tourism stress tourists’ relative illiteracy with regard to the ‘reading’ of the local. This paper is based on extracts from two British holiday programme series, BBC's Holiday 2000/1 and ITV's Wish You Were Here?, in which the presenters engage in some form of verbal (and non‐verbal) interaction with local people. A close discourse analysis of these interactions reveals that the dominant ideology of tourism, as propagated in the programmes, gives evidence of only limited contact between tourists and local people, although the former often create the illusion of closeness, familiarity and ‘friendship’. Most contact with local people occurs in their principal roles as either ‘helpers’/‘servants’, ‘experts’, or as part of ‘local scenery’. At times, however, local people are seen to resist these super‐imposed roles, casting themselves as worldly and cosmopolitan. Meanwhile, it is often the presenter‐tourists who construct for themselves parochial identities by adhering to stereotyped interpretations of local people and seeking ‘safe’ interpretations of the host culture. These encounters are therefore often sites of power struggle, in which presenter‐tourists assert themselves as dominant and powerful, while local people may subvert these attempts, for example, by claiming high status for themselves through expert knowledge.     

Sex differences in trust and trustworthiness: A meta-analysis of the trust game and the gift-exchange game

We present a meta-analytic review of the literature on sex differences in the trust game (174 effect sizes) and the related gift-exchange game (35 effect sizes). Based on parental investment theory and social role theory we expected men to be more trusting and women to be more trustworthy. Indeed, men were more trusting in the trust game (g = 0.22), yet we found no significant sex difference in trust in the gift-exchange game (g = 0.15). Regarding trustworthiness, we found no significant sex difference in the trust game (g = −0.04), and we found men, not women, to be more trustworthy in the gift-exchange game (g = 0.33). These results suggest that men send more money than women do when their money is going to be multiplied, thereby creating an efficiency gain. This so-called “male multiplier effect” may be explained by a stronger psychological tendency in men to acquire resources.     

义愤：从一种群体心态到话语力量的转变——对当代中国愤青的一种文化解读

愤青不仅是一个物化的群体,而且他们也代表了一种精神,反映了一种文化批评的话语方式和生活方式,折射出了一个社会群体在特定历史时期的社会改造理想。中国社会经济的转型使得愤青的社会和文化土壤逐渐多元化,并促进愤青心理的成熟、素质的提高和视野的开拓,使当代中国愤青发生了很大的转变。愤青文化也正在从一个疆界模糊的群体中所展示的批评精神和批评方式转化成为一种具有一定建设性的文化批评力量。     

Social cohesion in Rwanda: Results from a public good experiment

We describe a public good experiment, a type of economic experiment commonly used to examine feelings of prosociality—that is, behaviour which is positive, helpful and intended to promote social acceptance and friendship—and community cohesion, carried out in Rwanda. Contributions in different parts of the country are affected by the local intensity of the 1994 genocide, with more generous contributions being made in areas where violence was greater. This supports earlier research indicating that conflict experience leads to greater prosociality. However, we also find that people who have not, themselves, been targets of violence give lower contributions than people who have. The considerable group‐related and regional differences in social behaviour may have implications for the country's policies to deal with social cohesion.     

Disasters,donations, and tax law changes: Disentangling effects on subjective well-being by exploiting a natural experiment

This study investigates (i) whether an increase in donations in the aftermath of disasters can mitigate the negative effects on subjective well-being (SWB), and if so, (ii) whether policy measures, such as tax law changes, can amplify this mitigating effect by providing further incentives for donations. To analyze these questions, we use data on the recent, impactful triple disaster on March 11, 2011 in Japan (3–11). Coincidentally, only three months after the disaster, a long-planned change in tax law was put into effect that allows higher tax deductions for charitable donations. Applying a moderated mediation analysis to a unique dataset, we are able to disentangle the total rise of donations into positive effects that are caused by the disaster itself and positive effects that are caused by the recent change in the Japanese tax law. The results of our study are as follows: First, we show that about 30% of the direct negative effect of 3–11 on SWB is mediated and mitigated by donations. Second, we show that the change in taxation law could have further mitigated the negative SWB effects of 3–11, if more people had been aware of it. However, since a large majority of the Japanese public had not even been aware of the tax law change, potential mitigating effects by increased donations have not been realized. As for policy implications, our results show that governments can create incentives for donations that not only support disaster reconstruction, but also mitigate the negative SWB effects of disasters.     

Gender as contradiction: From dichotomies to diversity in natural resource extraction

Given the varied nature of resource dependent communities, the gendered experiences of women and men may vary in unexpected and contradictory ways. Building on a review and critique of existing theoretical approaches and studies of US and Canadian extractive resource communities in both the feminist and rural social science literature, we provide an analytical approach to engage with gender in the context of these dramatic changes. Our framework, which integrates key insights from recent feminist theorizing, summarizes emergent constructions of masculinity and femininity in a given context by emphasizing the possible contradictions along three broad lines: material, material-discursive, and discursive.     

The salience of terminology: Housing research with older people from minority ethnic communities

In this article we focus on recent literature on the housing needs of older people from minority ethnic communities. Such research has undoubtedly benefited particular communities in demonstrating that their needs have been neglected to date. However, the terminology used to describe ethnicity often assumes an unproblematic black-white divide in that it defines communities as discrete and homogeneous groups. Moreover, whilst much research in this field is described as concerned with 'black and minority ethnic' communities, it is in effect about specifically defined 'black' communities with little or no room for other minority ethnic communities. We argue in this paper, using two examples, that this has consequences for resource distribution and for funding of initiatives to help minority ethnic communities.     

Live audience responses to live televised election debates: time series analysis of issue salience and party salience on audience behavior

Televised political debates are the platforms for party leaders to outline their party's political programs and to attack those of their political opponents. At the same time journalists who moderate the debates are testing the party leaders’ ability to clearly outline and defend their programs. Television audiences of election debates evaluate these party leaders and political parties based on their television performances. Prior to the social media era, viewers’ evaluations were collected through phone surveys or web questionnaires. Nowadays viewers share their opinions in real-time on social media. Particularly Twitter is used in the Netherlands as the platform to share these opinions. In this study tweets produced by the audiences of five different televised debates that took place during the campaign for the Dutch 2012 parliamentary elections are analyzed in terms of tweeting about politicians and parties as well as political issues, as well as the content of the debates. This allowed us, using time series analysis, to test the relation between issue salience in debates and issue salience of the audience on Twitter. The issues of ‘Employment and income’ and ‘Europe’ were the most tweeted about, roughly aligning with the attention these issues received in televised debates. Findings further show there are consistent audience reactions to issues discussed in the debates: issues of ‘Housing’, ‘Care for the needy', and ‘Europe’ showing the strongest effects. However, candidates and parties are not explicitly associated by people active on Twitter when certain political issues are being debated on TV.