Psychophysical measurement and the validity of the modern economic approach: A presentation of methods and preliminary experiments

The modern economic approach to human behavior and social interaction argues that people maximize the subjective theoretical quantity utility. This primary presupposition has resisted all empirical tests and a consensus has developed that it is unfalsifiable. A promising new approach to the problem is introduced in the paper through research on the psychophysical measurement of the marginal utility of money and commitment. The research reported here suggests that the utility function for money conforms to the power law and has an exponent of about .43. The paper also examines the advisability of broadening the utility function to cover social variables. An operationalization of the concept of commitment was examined using psychophysical techniques with the result that people appear to have utility for commitment, that a power function is involved, and that the exponent is in the vicinity of .36.     

Analyzing social processes: Life tables and proportional hazards models

A number of techniques useful in describing and modeling social processes are detailed. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of changes in categorical variables as they occur in continuous time. The procedures considered are mainly non-parametric, although parametric alternatives do exist when the appropriate distributional assumptions are met. Specifically, life tables and proportional hazards models are discussed and illustrated through an analysis of first live birth intervals for a sample of white American women. The generality of proportional hazards models is outlined by considering extensions of the basic model to include competing risks, time-dependent covariates, and repeatable events.     

Economic and other determinants of annual change in U.S. fertility: 1917-1976

Decomposition of fertility into its age, period, and cohort components demonstrates the empirical importance of age and period. Of the two, less is known about the period dimension. A new measure of fertility, specific to race and birth order, is used to estimate the effects of annual change in unemployment, the marriage and unemployment rate, as well as annual change in contraceptive sterilization and change in the proportion of couples adopting the more effective (pill and IUD) methods introduced in the early 1960s, are all important determinants of fertility change, but their impact varies greatly by birth order.     

Life events and psychological well-being: A reexamination of theoretical and methodological issues

Longitudinal data, taken from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics, are used to examine the effect of specific life events on changes in psychological well-being. The paper deals with methodological criticisms raised against past research on life events and addresses several theoretical questions regarding the types of events that are most stressful. The findings indicate that a wide variety of events, including employment related events, residential moves, and household composition changes, are associated with negative changes in psychological well-being and that the context in which events occur is a major factor in determining their effect on psychological status.