Gender and income inequality in the UK 1968–90: the feminization of earnings or of poverty?

This paper uses data from the Family Expenditure Survey for five selected years between 1968 and 1990 to examine trends in the income distribution in the UK, highlighting the role of women's labour force participation and earnings. The increased labour force participation of married women (especially mothers of young children in the 1980s) made a greater contribution to the decline of the 'traditional' male breadwinner family than the increased number of lone parents. The lower half of the distribution of weekly earnings became increasingly dominated by women. Though women's weekly earnings remained low relative to men's, the increase in their participation meant that, over the period, an increased share of family income came from women's labour market income: in 1990 nearly a quarter of the income of families with children came from women's earnings. Women's earnings were an important factor in keeping families out of poverty. There was no trend towards increasing feminization of poverty over the sample period. Adult women were somewhat more likely to be poor than adult men were, but female-headed families were very much more likely to be in poverty, and much more dependent on state benefits, than male-headed families were. Women's increased role in the labour market affected those in male-headed families more than those in female-headed families. Alongside a broad tendency for women's earnings to reduce poverty and inequality, there is evidence that the female population has become more economically polarized.     

最低工资政策的城镇家庭收入分配效应研究

家庭在福利分析中具有重要地位，但家庭收入如何受最低工资政策影响却很少得到关注。本文采用2005-2015年中国综合社会调查（CGSS）数据，利用多时期双重差分和再中心化影响函数回归方法实证考察了最低工资政策对我国城镇家庭收入及其分布的影响。研究发现：①最低工资标准上涨显著提升了处于贫困标准1~2倍家庭的收入水平，对贫困标准以下或高于贫困标准2倍以上的家庭收入没有影响；②最低工资标准提升可有效减缓城镇家庭收入不平等，尤其对家庭收入分布较低分位部分的不平等程度有明显改善；③最低工资政策对家庭收入的最终影响取决于工资溢出效应和就业挤出效应的比较，且其对不同收入等级家庭中成员的收入和就业影响存在明显的异质性。政府在制定最低工资政策时，应针对低收入女性劳动力出台相应的配套措施，以保证各类低收入家庭均能从最低工资标准提升中受益。     

Surveying migrant households: a comparison of census-based, snowball and intercept point surveys

Summary.  Few representative surveys of households of migrants exist, limiting our ability to study the effects of international migration on sending families. We report the results of an experiment that was designed to compare the performance of three alternative survey methods in collecting data from Japanese–Brazilian families, many of whom send migrants to Japan. The three surveys that were conducted were households selected randomly from a door-to-door listing using the Brazilian census to select census blocks, a snowball survey using Nikkei community groups to select the seeds and an intercept point survey that was collected at Nikkei community gatherings, ethnic grocery stores, sports clubs and other locations where family members of migrants are likely to congregate. We analyse how closely well-designed snowball and intercept point surveys can approach the much more expensive census-based method in terms of giving information on the characteristics of migrants, the level of remittances received and the incidence and determinants of return migration.     

On the quality of reinterview data with application to the Current Population Survey

"The [U.S.] Current Population Survey (CPS) reinterview sample consists of two subsamples: (a) a sample of CPS households is reinterviewed and the discrepancies between the reinterview responses and the original interview responses are reconciled for the purpose of obtaining more accurate responses..., and (b) a sample of CPS households, nonoverlapping with sample (a), is reinterviewed 'independently' of the original interview for the purpose of estimating simple response variance (SRV). In this article a model and estimation procedure are proposed for obtaining estimates of SRV from subsample (a) as well as the customary estimates of SRV from subsample (b).... Data from the CPS reinterview program for both subsamples (a) and (b) are analyzed both (1) to illustrate the methodology and (2) to check the validity of the CPS reinterview data. Our results indicate that data from subsample (a) are not consistent with the data from subsample (b) and provide convincing evidence that errors in subsample (a) are the source of the inconsistency."     

An evaluation of the childhood family structure measures from the sixth wave of the British Household Panel Survey

Summary.  The paper performs an evaluation of the data that were collected in the sixth wave of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) on childhood family structure. After comparing such data with a large number of studies by using external sources, we find that the BHPS data overestimate the proportion of people who report an experience of life in a non-intact family during childhood by about 10%. Although an explanation based on recall error that deteriorates with the age of the BHPS respondents is possible, the overestimation is likely to be accounted for by non-ignorable attrition that may affect most of the comparison studies based on longitudinal data. Conversely, comparisons with other independent measurements from the BHPS itself reveal that the wave 6 data underestimate the proportion of young people who have lived at least part of their childhood in a non-intact family by about 8%. The probability of disagreement between these two sets of measures is strongly associated with poor interview characteristics, which may affect the comparison measure more than the wave 6 measure. Despite such differences, there is therefore a substantial degree of similarity between the family structure information that was collected in the sixth wave of the BHPS and the host of highly diverse records against which it has been compared.     

Sampling within households in household surveys

Summary.  The number of people to select within selected households has significant consequences for the conduct and output of household surveys. The operational and data quality implications of this choice are carefully considered in many surveys, but the effect on statistical efficiency is not well understood. The usual approach is to select all people in each selected household, where operational and data quality concerns make this feasible. If not, one person is usually selected from each selected household. We find that this strategy is not always justified, and we develop intermediate designs between these two extremes. Current practices were developed when household survey field procedures needed to be simple and robust; however, more complex designs are now feasible owing to the increasing use of computer-assisted interviewing. We develop more flexible designs by optimizing survey cost, based on a simple cost model, subject to a required variance for an estimator of population total. The innovation lies in the fact that household sample sizes are small integers, which creates challenges in both design and estimation. The new methods are evaluated empirically by using census and health survey data, showing considerable improvement over existing methods in some cases.     

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.     

城镇贫困的特征演变

本文利用中国家庭收入调查数据研究了1988-2013年间我国城镇居民的贫困问题。以利用“马丁法”计算的各省历年贫困线作为贫困识别标准,发现25年间城镇地区的贫困率下降明显,尤其暂时性贫困和持久性贫困的贫困率已经很低,贫困人口以选择性贫困为主,即消费不足成为我国城镇人口贫困的主要特征。家庭人口多、有未成年子女会有更大概率陷入贫困,而教育和稳定的就业则可以有效缓解贫困。当前我国城镇地区的贫困人口认定和救助主要以收入为标准,本文认为应充分重视贫困人口消费不足的问题,拓展专项救助的范围,同时增大对教育、卫生、住房等基本民生保障的投入,减少低收入群体的过度储蓄,并特别关注贫困青少年的精神和物质消费需求。     

子女数量对家庭收入的影响

基于2005年全国1%人口抽样调查数据,利用生育偏好和生育政策的城乡差异构造工具变量,实证分析子女数量对家庭收入的影响。结果显示,子女数量的增加显著抑制家庭收入的提升,生育二胎导致家庭收入平均下降20.8%。此外,这种负向影响还表现出显著的城乡差异,农村家庭生育二胎使得家庭收入显著下降8.8%,而城镇家庭收入则下降21.2%。进一步地,区分是否三代同住以及母亲职业类型家庭的异质性分析结果显示,在非三代同住家庭、母亲在机关企事业单位任领导职务或从事专业技术类职业的家庭中,子女数量对家庭收入均具有显著的负向影响。分析结论凸显了宏观层面人口结构调整和居民收入提升以及微观层面生育决策与家庭收入之间的双重权衡。     

Exact Bayesian Inference and Model Selection for Stochastic Models of Epidemics Among a Community of Households

Abstract.  Much recent methodological progress in the analysis of infectious disease data has been due to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methodology. In this paper, it is illustrated that rejection sampling can also be applied to a family of inference problems in the context of epidemic models, avoiding the issues of convergence associated with MCMC methods. Specifically, we consider models for epidemic data arising from a population divided into households. The models allow individuals to be potentially infected both from outside and from within the household. We develop methodology for selection between competing models via the computation of Bayes factors. We also demonstrate how an initial sample can be used to adjust the algorithm and improve efficiency. The data are assumed to consist of the final numbers ultimately infected within a sample of households in some community. The methods are applied to data taken from outbreaks of influenza.     

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.     

Child health,breast-feeding,and survival in Malaysia: a random-effects logit approach

This study examines the possibility that estimation of the effect of breast-feeding on infant survival is affected by selection bias, in that children who are healthier at birth may be more likely to be breast-fed. Data are from the 1976 Malaysian Family Life Survey. "Ordinary logit models for breast-feeding and survival are estimated, and the results suggest that selection is indeed present. For example, children of higher birth weight appear to be more likely to be breast-fed and likely to survive. In addition, weight at birth and the duration of breast-feeding appear to be linked." Using birth weight as an indicator for the child's health, the authors conclude that "the direct influence of breast-feeding on survival remains of overwhelming importance even after corrections for selection bias are made."     

On future household structure

Summary.  We develop a method for computing probabilistic household forecasts which quantifies uncertainty in the future number of households of various types in a country. A probabilistic household forecast helps policy makers, planners and other forecast users in the fields of housing, energy, social security etc. in taking appropriate decisions, because some household variables are more uncertain than others. Deterministic forecasts traditionally do not quantify uncertainty. We apply the method to data from Norway. We find that predictions of future numbers of married couples, cohabiting couples and one-person households are more certain than those of lone parents and other private households. Our method builds on an existing method for computing probabilistic population forecasts, combining such a forecast with a random breakdown of the population according to household position (single, cohabiting, living with a spouse, living alone etc.). In this application, uncertainty in the total numbers of households of different types derives primarily from random shares, rather than uncertain future population size. A similar method could be applied to obtain probabilistic forecasts for other divisions of the population, such as household size, health or disability status, region of residence and labour market status.     

社会保障对农民工家庭城市生活消费的影响--以举家迁移农民工家庭为例

基于辽宁省农民工调研数据,采用OLS回归、Heckman两步法和处理效应模型,分析了社会保障对举家迁移农民工家庭城市生活消费的影响,并采用分位数回归法进一步考察了社会保障在不同消费水平上对家庭消费决策机制产生的影响。研究表明,社会保障对农民工家庭生活消费有显著的正向影响;有社会保障家庭的消费决策明显区别于无社会保障家庭,这主要表现为人均收入、人均耕地面积、户主年龄和人均受教育年限等家庭特征对有社会保障家庭和无社会保障家庭生活消费的影响存在明显差异。     

农民工职业流动的意愿及其影响因素研究——以杭州市建筑业为例

从个体微观的角度对杭州市建筑业农民工的工作情况进行实地调研,具体考察农民工的个人基本特征、家庭特征、工作特征及地区选择特征四类情况,并利用交叉分析和二元逻辑回归模型检验四类特征对农民工职业流动意愿的影响.研究结果显示,地区选择、从业时间、随同的家庭成员人数、工作中的人际关系等因素对农民工选择继续留在建筑业中工作具有显著正向作用.企业和政府等可以通过为农民工在城市创造稳定的生活和就业环境,推进农民工向城市迁移的进程,或可以加强对农民工的就业指导等多种途径来促使农民工维持稳定的职业,从而一定程度上缓解行业中“用工荒”难题.     

A Comparison of Methods for Analysing a Nested Frailty Model to Child Survival in Malawi

Demographic and Health Surveys collect child survival times that are clustered at the family and community levels. It is assumed that each cluster has a specific, unobservable, random frailty that induces an association in the survival times within the cluster. The Cox proportional hazards model, with family and community random frailties acting multiplicatively on the hazard rate, is presented. The estimation of the fixed effect and the association parameters of the modified model is then examined using the Gibbs sampler and the expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm. The methods are compared using child survival data collected in the 1992 Demographic and Health Survey of Malawi. The two methods lead to very similar estimates of fixed effect parameters. However, the estimates of random effect variances from the EM algorithm are smaller than those of the Gibbs sampler. Both estimation methods reveal considerable family variation in the survival of children, and very little variability over the communities.     

Crime victimization: its extent and communication

Summary. The criminal justice contexts are identified in which understanding and communicating risks are important. The paper is thereafter exclusively concerned with the probability of crime victimization classified by person and location. Examples of crime risks derived from the British Crime Survey are provided, with instances of where concern about crime diverges from risks of crime. Caution is advocated about seeking to reduce the fear of crime by reassurance. The high levels of concentration of crime by location are noted, together with the fact that particular individuals and households are repeatedly victimized, enabling the prioritization of crime-reductive resources after a crime has taken place. The paper concludes that an emphasis on how the supply of criminal opportunities may be regulated heralds a more systematic approach to the distribution of unavoidable hazard among citizens.     

家庭式迁移女性农民工劳动供给行为研究

随着城市化的不断推进,家庭式迁移已经成为农民工流动的重要模式。家庭式迁移的女性农民工需要同时扮演雇佣劳动者和家务主要承担者的双重角色,这种迁移模式对女性的劳动供给行为会造成重大的影响。利用浙江省农民工的调查数据,试图考察家庭式迁移女性农民工劳动供给的影响因素。分析结果表明:工作经验、培训经历、本地生活时间、工资对女性农民工的劳动供给具有显著影响;家庭结构的影响不显著,但子女或老人随迁会显著降低女性的劳动参与率和工作时间;分位数回归结果表明,各因素对女性工作时间不同分位数上的影响具有明显变化。     

FAMILY BUILDING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SAME SEX AND MIXED SEX FAMILIES IN AUSTRALIA

From this investigation it seems that an aversion among some couples to a same sex family has some relevance in family building. However, although there are significant differences in the proportions of same sex and mixed sex families having an additional child, the overall effect on average family size of the (apparent) attempt to achieve a child of each sex appears to be slight—an increase of less than 3% in the case of the Melbourne data. Despite the evidence that a significantly greater proportion of women with same sex families have another child, relatively few women admit that the sex structure of the children was the main factor in such a decision. Another insight into the relationship between sex structure and family building was that the desire for a child of each sex may have a negative effect on fertility in that couples who have already achieved such a configuration may decide not to have an additional child that they had originally planned to have. Obviously, it is difficult to separate attitudes to the importance of having both sons and daughters from rationalisations associated with the sex structure of the respondent's own family. Nevertheless the desire for children of each sex seems to be related to traditional attitudes to woman's role, Southern European background, an earlier year of birth, and a lower level of education. However, at the same time women in these categories, particularly the last, seem to be relatively less likely to exhibit behaviour indicative of a controlled response to the sex structure of the family; thus among such groups the probability of same sex families having another child is found to be relatively similar to the proportion of mixed sex families having another child. In other words, they are less likely than other women, who care less about having both sons and daughters, to stop at two (or three) children when at least one son and one daughter have been attained. What of the future relationship between proportions of same sex and mixed sex families having another child? Although it would seem that the combined effect of better educational opportunities and less traditional attitudes of each new generation would further reduce the importance attached to having both sons and daughters, at the same time one would expect an increase in a couple's ability to stop family building when two or three children of the desired sex structure had been achieved. Another factor is that possibly an increasing preference for smaller families will outweigh the wish to have a third (or fourth) child to achieve one child of each sex or for any other reason.     

On predictive distributions and Bayesian networks

In this paper we are interested in discrete prediction problems for a decision-theoretic setting, where the task is to compute the predictive distribution for a finite set of possible alternatives. This question is first addressed in a general Bayesian framework, where we consider a set of probability distributions defined by some parametric model class. Given a prior distribution on the model parameters and a set of sample data, one possible approach for determining a predictive distribution is to fix the parameters to the instantiation with the maximum a posteriori probability. A more accurate predictive distribution can be obtained by computing the evidence (marginal likelihood), i.e., the integral over all the individual parameter instantiations. As an alternative to these two approaches, we demonstrate how to use Rissanen's new definition of stochastic complexity for determining predictive distributions, and show how the evidence predictive distribution with Jeffrey's prior approaches the new stochastic complexity predictive distribution in the limit with increasing amount of sample data. To compare the alternative approaches in practice, each of the predictive distributions discussed is instantiated in the Bayesian network model family case. In particular, to determine Jeffrey's prior for this model family, we show how to compute the (expected) Fisher information matrix for a fixed but arbitrary Bayesian network structure. In the empirical part of the paper the predictive distributions are compared by using the simple tree-structured Naive Bayes model, which is used in the experiments for computational reasons. The experimentation with several public domain classification datasets suggest that the evidence approach produces the most accurate predictions in the log-score sense. The evidence-based methods are also quite robust in the sense that they predict surprisingly well even when only a small fraction of the full training set is used.