The International Child Poverty Gap: Does Demography Matter?

According to the Luxembourg Income Study data, the U.S. child poverty rate is the second highest among 15 high-income nations. The present work reveals that 55% of all American children living in a household headed by a single female with no other adult present live in poverty-the highest rate for any of the five living arrangements in the 15 countries examined in this study. While previous analyses have focused on market forces and governmental redistribution across households, we question the contribution of demographic factors that place children in family structures with different poverty risks relative to other factors such as differential market opportunities and governmental benefits for adults caring for children in various living arrangements. Applying a classic demographic decomposition technique to the overall poverty gap, we find that the distributional effect of demographic behavior contributes little to the U.S. poverty gap with other nations (and none with respect to the United Kingdom). Overall differences in labor markets and welfare schemes best explain the U.S. child poverty gap, although for some countries, the gap is accentuated by the gradient of governmental transfers, and for most countries, by the gradient of market earnings across living arrangements.     

Does Demographic Transition with Human Capital Dynamics Matter for Economic Growth? A Dynamic Panel Data Approach to GMM

Social Indicators Research - This study seeks to empirically investigate whether demographic transition with dynamics of human capital matters for economic growth for a representative sample of...     

Valuing Informal Care Experience: Does Choice of Measure Matter?

Well-being equations are often estimated to generate monetary values for non-marketed activities. In such studies, utility is often approximated by either life satisfaction or General Health Questionnaire scores. We estimate and compare monetary valuations of informal care for the first time in the UK employing both measures, using longitudinal data on well-being and informal care provision. The choice of well-being measure has some effect on the estimated parameters and resulting monetary valuations, but any differences are not statistically significant. Further research is needed to confirm the comparability of these measures if researchers are to continue to use them interchangeably.     

Does Cultural Capital Matter?: Cultural Divide and Quality of Life

Since the remarkable work of Pierre Bourdieu, the concept of cultural capital has gained wide popularity along with theoretical and conceptual debates. This trend represents the social-structural change from materialism to postmaterialism. However, there are few empirical studies which find the cause and effect of cultural capital. Based on empirical survey data, this paper will analyze “how cultural capital and cultural divide influence the subjective well-being at the individual level.” Our analysis includes the following: First, we explore to what extent the cultural divide between haves and have-nots of cultural capital has impacted their subjective well-being, which consists of happiness and life satisfaction at the individual level. Second, we analyze what factors cause those cultural divides. Sociodemographic, social-relational, and economic variables are included in the regression models to test their relative explanatory power. Third, we discuss the implication for cultural policy.     

Defining Life Partnerships: Does Sexual Orientation Matter?

ABSTRACT

This study compared the responses of gay men, lesbians, heterosexual men, and heterosexual women to a number of questions investigating the needs and tensions in life partnerships between two individuals. Overall, the groups had similar attitudes toward life partnerships. Nearly all respondents found great meaning in the idea of life partnership, the pursuits of psychological and physical intimacy and the importance of family and social support, and all three of these categories were actually considered more important than the ability to marry legally. Respondents recognized that having children may encourage commitment to life partnerships, though this was less influential for gay men. A significant percentage of respondents, regarding HIV status, either had no opinion or felt that HIV was not particularly or not at all threatening to life partnerships. Men and women, regardless of sexual orientation, appear to experience similar needs and aspirations regarding life partnerships.     

The Inequality-Trust Nexus Revisited: At What Level of Aggregation Does Income Inequality Matter for Social Trust?

Social Indicators Research - The negative linkage between income inequality and social trust is widely acknowledged. Despite this consensus, it remains unclear at what level of aggregation income...     

Hispanic Immigrant Poverty: Does Ethnic Origin Matter?

Hispanic immigrant poverty is nearly double that of other immigrants. Furthermore, poverty rates among Hispanic families differ substantially by ethnicity. This paper analyzes poverty rates for Hispanic and non-Hispanic immigrants, and also for individual Hispanic ethnic groups, to determine the relative importance of different covariates of poverty. The general conclusion is that low levels of education and fluency in English contribute to high Hispanic poverty rates and are also contributing factors to differences in poverty among Hispanic ethnic groups. In particular, the high poverty rate of Mexican immigrant households is associated with the low educational attainments of household heads, along with a relatively large number of children, relatively low English fluency and a relatively short tenure in the U.S. Immigrants from Guatemala and El Salvador have substantially lower poverty rates than Mexican immigrants despite a similar constellation of observable traits. Immigrants from South America have low poverty rates, largely due to strong family work effort and high educational attainments. The relatively low family work effort and high incidence of single parent families among Puerto Ricans overpowers the beneficial effects of higher rates of citizenship and English fluency.

Loneliness and Mistreatment of Older Chinese Women: Does Social Support Matter?

The objectives of this study are to: (a) examine the association of loneliness and mistreatment of older Chinese women, and (b) examine the potential modifying effect of social support on these associations. We conducted a cross-sectional study of 141 elderly women presented to an urban medical center. After adjusting for confounders, every 1-point increase in the loneliness score was associated with 44% increased risk for mistreatment. After adding the interaction of social support (social support x loneliness), loneliness was no longer associated with increased risk for mistreatment. Loneliness is a significant risk factor for mistreatment of older Chinese women. Greater social support, particularly perceived social support, may modify loneliness as a risk factor for the mistreatment of older Chinese women.     

Does Global Fertility and Cultural Transition Affect Human Development? The Neglected Role of the Demographic Transition

This study approaches the potential influence of the demographic transition on outcomes of human development. By re-conceptualizing demographic transition as global fertility and cultural transition and combining all distal macro forces including modernization, techno-economic heritage, and economic dependency, an integrated model for explaining human development outcomes can be theoretically formulated and subjected to empirical test. A panel regression analysis of available data from all developing countries supports the influence of the distal macro forces and the intervening role played by global fertility and cultural transition in affecting human development. In particular, a four-indicator index of global fertility and cultural transition shows the strongest effect on human development index, even controlling for the lagged dependent variable and the latest most competing explanatory variables. Following the long continuing process of the demographic transition, the empirical implication of this newly constructed index of global fertility and cultural transition for exploring alternative measures of human development and policy implications for third world human development are discussed.     

Day-of-the-Week Effects in Subjective Well-Being: Does Selectivity Matter?

Individuals tend to self-report higher well-being levels on certain days of the week than they do on the remaining days, controlling for observables. Using the 2008 release of the British Household Panel Survey, we test whether this empirical observation suffers from selection bias. In other words, we examine if subjective well-being is correlated with unobserved characteristics that lead the individuals to take the interview on specific days of the week. We focus on two distinct well-being measures: job satisfaction and happiness. We provide convincing evidence for both of these measures that the interviews are not randomly distributed across the days of the week. In other words, individuals with certain unobserved characteristics tend to take the interviews selectively. We conclude that a considerable part of the day-of-the-week patterns can be explained by a standard “non-random sorting on unobservables” argument rather than “mood fluctuations”. This means that the day-of-the-week estimates reported in the literature are likely to be biased and should be treated cautiously.     

Social and Economic Indicators of Household Income in Turkey: Does Ethnicity Matter?

In Turkey, the GDP per capita of eastern regions, where the Kurdish population is dense, is significantly lower than that of the rest of the country. The aim of this paper is to provide a quantitative analysis to investigate the contribution of household characteristics and regional disparities on racial/ethnic inequalities in household income, particularly across Turks and Kurds. Based on the results of regression-based decomposition analyses, there exist significant income differences between Turks and Kurds. However, this difference significantly diminishes if the household head is working. It is also observed that the household income increases with education, while decreases with migration and being settled in economically disadvantaged regions. Results also indicate that differential returns to Turks and Kurds on observable characteristics are lower in higher income quintiles     

Correction to: Does Horizontal Inequality Matter in Vietnam?

Social Indicators Research - The article Does Horizontal Inequality Matter in Vietnam?, written Thi Thu Hoai Dang, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal...     

The Stages of Human Capital and Economic Growth: Does the Direction of Causality Matter for the Rich and the Poor?

This paper demonstrates that key models of human mobility across several disciplines can be considered as specific cases of a broader conceptualisation of mobility in terms of its contribution to wellbeing. It is argued that this wellbeing perspective offers important advantages for the formulation of policy in areas that must respond to mobility in cross-cultural contexts, and particularly in regard to policy relating to highly mobile, indigenous peoples. An applied example is provided through a discussion of how this conceptualisation of mobility offers a different understanding of the mobility of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, one that may have led to superior policy outcomes.     

Sample Errors Call Into Question Conclusions Regarding Same-Sex Married Parents: A Comment on “Family Structure and Child Health: Does the Sex Composition of Parents Matter?”

Because of classification errors reported by the National Center for Health Statistics, an estimated 42 % of the same-sex married partners in the sample for this study are misclassified different-sex married partners, thus calling into question findings regarding same-sex married parents. Including biological parentage as a control variable suppresses same-sex/different-sex differences, thus obscuring the data error. Parentage is not appropriate as a control because it correlates nearly perfectly (+.97, gamma) with the same-sex/different-sex distinction and is invariant for the category of joint biological parents.     

Trends in Inequality of Opportunity for Developing Countries: Does the Economic Indicator Matter?

Social Indicators Research - The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the behaviour of Inequality of Opportunity (IOp henceforth) in developing countries. The analysis is carried out using...     

Changing Attitudes Through Social Influence: Does Social Distance Matter?

ABSTRACT

To test the effects of social influence and social distance on attitudes, we assessed judgments of gay and lesbian targets in various contexts over three studies (n = 814, 51% female). We compared the impact of a derogatory message to a relatively favorable message ostensibly written by another participant. Participants were robustly moved by the feedback; social influence was a significant predictor in final evaluations of the target, as was social distance. Discrimination against gay men and lesbian women appears not to be a fixed behavior; seemingly anyone can be persuaded to discriminate or not to discriminate by mere peer suggestion.