Is it the family or the neighborhood? Evidence from sibling and neighbor correlations in youth education and health

In this paper, we present sibling and neighbor correlations in school grades and cognitive skills, as well as indicators of physical and mental health, for a sample of German adolescents. In a first step, we estimate sibling correlations and find a substantial influence of shared family and community background on all outcomes. To further disentangle the influence of family background and neighborhood, we estimate neighbor correlations. Our results show that for all outcomes, the estimated neighbor correlations are clearly lower than the estimated sibling correlations. However, especially for cognitive skills and mental health, neighbor correlations are still substantial in relation to sibling correlations. Thus, compared to existing results from other countries, the influence of the neighborhood on these outcomes is not negligible in Germany.     

Does family support ensure the protection of children? Messages from child protection research

The history of child protection is, in many ways, a catalogue of changes arising from the political/professional interface tensions relating to a highly contentious area of public and professional policy. The latest contribution to this process is the Department of Health's 1995 publication Child Protection: Messages from Research. The overview of the studies recommends that there be a shift in resources and attitudes from an investigative approach to a family support perspective. Many local authorities have subsequently produced policies which will lead to referrals being recorded as ‘children in need’ rather than child protection. The ramifications of this change in approach are examined from the dual perspectives of policy and practice. The article suggests that while much of the change in emphasis is to be welcomed, the needs of the most severely abused children may be compromised by the new orthodoxy, as it is not based on the reality of the many problems encountered by children and professionals in child protection work. It is argued that a focus on practice issues needs to permeate all such documents. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Friend or foe? Examining the relationship between news portals and newspaper sites in Taiwan

Newspapers worldwide often serve as content providers for news portals, but portals outperform most newspaper sites in audience share. Whether this is a zero-sum game or a win-win scenario deserves scholarly attention, because the phenomenon constitutes a unique case of intra-media competition. Based on empirical data collected through a large-scale survey, this study systematically examines the delicate relationship among and between news portals and newspaper sites in Taiwan. The results document non-competitive relationships among most news sites, with the exception of Yahoo! News. Such counter-intuitive findings carry theoretical and strategic implications for the study and practice of online journalism.     

Does the exchange motive influence intergenerational transfers? Evidence from Ireland

Review of Economics of the Household - This article examines the exchange motive in intergenerational monetary transfers. The exchange motive is in operation if parents make transfers to their...     

Giving time or giving money? On the relationship between charitable contributions

This paper studies philanthropic behaviour in terms of money and time contributions for charitable organisations. Using a unique dataset, which is representative of the German population, we examine the pure contributions of individuals who give either money or time as well as joint contributions of individuals who give both money and time. We find that the sequential decisions to give to charity and how much to give can be explained by different socio-economic characteristics. We report particularly pronounced gender differences among pure contributions, an interesting pattern of human capital variables such as income and education, and possible differences in the type of philanthropic goods.     

Does perceived discrimination affect health? Longitudinal relationships between work discrimination and women's physical and emotional health

This study uses longitudinal data to examine the causal relationships between perceived work discrimination and women's physical and emotional health. Using data on 1,778 employed women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women, we investigate the structural and individual characteristics that predict later perceptions of discrimination and the effects of those perceptions on subsequent health. We find that perceptions of discrimination are influenced by job attitudes, prior experiences of discrimination, and work contexts, but prior health is not related to later perceptions. However, perceptions of discrimination do impact subsequent health, and these effects remain significant after controlling for prior emotional health, physical health limitations, discrimination, and job characteristics. Overall, the results provide even stronger support for the health impact of workplace discrimination and suggest a need for further longitudinal analyses of causes and consequences of perceived discrimination.     

Does the diurnal cycle of cortisol explain the relationship between physical performance and cognitive function in older adults?

Background

Regular physical activity is a promising strategy to treat and prevent cognitive decline. The mechanisms that mediate these benefits are not fully clear but physical activity is thought to attenuate the harmful effects of chronic psychological stress and hypercortisolism on cognition. However, the circadian pattern of cortisol secretion is complex and it is not known which aspects are most closely associated with increased cognitive function and better physical performance. This is the first study to simultaneously measure cognitive function, the diurnal cycle of salivary cortisol and physical performance in older adults, without cognitive impairment (n?=?30) and with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI) (n?=?30).

Results

Regression analysis showed that better cognitive function was associated with better physical performance. A greater variance in cortisol levels across the day from morning to evening was associated with better cognitive function and physical performance.

Conclusions

The results support the idea that a more dynamic cortisol secretion pattern is associated with better cognitive function and physical performance even in the presence of cognitive impairment, but our results could not confirm a mediating role in this relationship.

     

Does perceived unfairness affect charitable giving? Evidence from the dictator game

We use a modified version of the dictator game to study whether perceived unfairness affects giving. To earn money, dictators first had to take a test. Our treatment group had participants taking tests of different difficulty levels while the control group had all participants taking a test of the same difficulty level. We found that participants who were in an environment where everyone faced the same challenge to earn money were less generous than participants in an environment where some people had an advantage while others had a disadvantage.     

Does the Association between Religiosity and Substance Use Vary between Adolescence and Early Adulthood?

The present study examines whether the association between substance use and two dimensions of religiosity—institutional and personal—changes as individuals transition from adolescence to early adulthood. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult (Add) Health, logistic regression models with interaction terms were run to test the hypothesis that the association between an individual's religiosity and his or her level of substance use is stronger during early adulthood compared to adolescence. This hypothesis is based on the observation that the shared family environment largely explains the association between religiosity and substance use during adolescence, while individual‐level characteristics largely explain this association during early adulthood. Overall, my findings support the research hypothesis, but only for the association between institutional religiosity and stigmatized types of substance use (smoking and marijuana use). This study highlights the fact that studies exploring the association between religiosity and substance use should consider potential variation between life stages.     

Stumbling towards oblivion or discovering new horizons? Observations on the relationship between social work education and practice

What should social work education be training students for? What should the relationship be between social work education and practice? The first half of this article cautions that social work education, as currently constituted, may 'unfit' people. Principally, this is because social work practice, as envisaged by employer interests, has not been subject to the same critical scrutiny as social work education and has come to dominate perceptions of the training task. The dangers that follow from this position are outlined. The second half of the article proceeds to explore the contribution that practice teachers and tutors can make to enable practitioners to remain confident, credible, critical and creative in this practice environment. The article concludes with some observations on the future as envisaged in the proposals to modernise social services and to create a General Social Care Council.     

Does FDI Guarantee the Stability of International Capital Flows? Evidence from Malaysia

The conventional wisdom is that crises are largely due to swings in short‐term capital. Economies that finance their current account deficits mainly via foreign direct investment (FDI) are therefore seen as being less susceptible to a crisis. The analysis in this article, backed up by some empirical evidence drawn from Malaysia, challenges the casual presumption that the switch towards FDI alone will automatically imply that extreme capital instability will become a thing of the past.     

Does caregiving increase poverty among women in later life? Evidence from the Health and Retirement survey

Given the rapid aging of the U.S. population and reductions in federal funding, elder care has become a major issue for many families. This paper focuses on a long-term consequence of elder care by asking how caring for elderly parents affects women's subsequent risks of living in poverty. Using longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study, we examine whether and how caregiving for parents in 1991 increases women's risks of living in households with incomes less than the poverty threshold, receiving public assistance, and receiving Medicaid in 1999. Our findings illustrate that caregiving in earlier life raises women's poverty risks in later life by intensifying the negative effects of stopping work and declining health on women's economic well-being.     

Are Americans and Indians more altruistic than the Japanese and Chinese? Evidence from a new international survey of bequest plans

This paper discusses three alternative assumptions concerning household preferences (altruism, self-interest, and a desire for dynasty building) and shows that these assumptions have very different implications for bequest motives and bequest division. After reviewing some of the literature on actual bequests, bequest motives, and bequest division, the paper presents data on the strength of bequest motives, stated bequest motives, and bequest division plans from a new international survey conducted in China, India, Japan, and the United States. It finds striking inter-country differences in bequest plans, with the bequest plans of Americans and Indians appearing to be much more consistent with altruistic preferences than those of the Japanese and Chinese and the bequest plans of the Japanese and Chinese appearing to be much more consistent with selfish preferences than those of Americans and Indians. These findings have important implications for the efficacy and desirability of stimulative fiscal policies, public pensions, and inheritance taxes.     

Will welfare reform influence marriage and fertility? Early evidence from the ABC demonstration

A primary purpose of the 1996 welfare reform was to remove features of the existing welfare system that were believed to encourage out-of-wedlock childbearing. This paper presents evidence that the policy changes in one state did influence marriage and childbearing outcomes. Data from a random assignment test of Delaware's A Better Chance Program (ABC) show that, after only 18 months of operations, ABC had positive impacts on marital cohabitation among women who were under age 25 and those with less than 12 years of education. The reform also raised marriage expectations among women with less than 12 years of education, but led fewer better-educated women to expect to marry. Although ABC had only a small impact on actual fertility in one subgroup, it sharply reduced desires for more children among women with intermediate durations of past welfare receipt, women who were 25 of age or older, and those who had ever married.     

The Experience-Earnings Profile: Productivity-Augmenting or Purely Contractual? Evidence from the UK

We test the human capital interpretation of the experience-earnings profile. Does the upward sloping portion of the experience-earnings profile reflect on-the-job training which in turn causes the experience-productivity profile to slope upwards, or do purely contractual factors determine the nature of life-cycle earnings. Herein, we provide additional evidence on the relationship between productivity and earnings by examining earnings differentials in the UK academic labor market for economists. Using a test first suggested by Mincer, we find that the empirical results are consistent with human capital theory. We find that, although the positive relationship between earnings and experience persists when individual productivity measures are included in the salary equations for lecturers and senior lecturers, the positive relationship becomes statistically insignificant when the same productivity measures are included in the salary equations for professors. For lecturers and senior lecturers, the experience-salary profile properly reflects the structure of the national pay scale rather than variations in individual research productivity. At the professor level, where individual salaries are not determined by a pay scale, the data support the human capital explanation of the positive experience-earnings profile.

Promotions and Earnings – Gender or Merit? Evidence from Longitudinal Personnel Data

This study examines the determinants of promotions, performance evaluations and earnings using unique longitudinal data from the personnel records of a large university. The study focuses on the role of gender in remuneration using, first, information on the complexity ratings of job tasks to define promotions on job ladders and, second, information on objective individual productivity. The study finds that individual research productivity was an important determinant of promotions and earnings. The results indicate that gender has no effect on the probability of being promoted, conditional on productivity, nor does it play a role in the performance evaluation of employees. Furthermore, the results suggest that contemporaneous productivity measures provide a usable proxy for the past productivity of a worker.     

Is the relationship between inequality and growth affected by physical and human capital accumulation?

Using the latest available data and semiparametric methods, we investigate how human and physical capital accumulation affects the relationship between income inequality and subsequent economic growth. We find that higher income inequality generally reduces economic growth over the next 5-year period. Within nations possessing little human capital, this inequality-growth penalty is exacerbated by higher levels of physical capital, thus implying that as the returns to human capital rise relative to physical capital, inequality becomes more harmful to growth. This inequality-growth pattern does not hold in well educated nations.     

Adolescent egocentrism and indoor tanning: is the relationship direct or mediated?

This paper explored how imaginary audience and personal fable ideations contribute to adolescent indoor tanning intentions directly and indirectly through the way they shape pro-tanning attitude and association with peers who use tanning beds. Five hundred and ninety-five male (n = 207) and female (n = 387) adolescents, ranging in age from 11 to 19 (M = 16.87; SD = 1.34) years completed a cross-sectional survey. Measures included imaginary audience, personal fable (three dimensions: invulnerability, uniqueness, and omnipotence), pro-tanning attitude, association with peers who use tanning beds, and tanning bed use intentions. Bootstrapping analyses documented that imaginary audience ideations are indirectly associated with indoor tanning intentions through the mediation of pro-tanning attitude and association with peers who use tanning beds. Of the personal fable ideations, only invulnerability ideation is indirectly associated with indoor tanning intentions through the mediation of association with peers who use tanning beds. Design and evaluation of interventions and campaigns to reduce indoor tanning must be targeted to adolescents varying in imaginary audience ideations differently.