Stressful Situations at Work and in Private Life among Young Workers: An Event Sampling Approach

Most studies on occupational stress concentrateon chronic conditions, whereas research onstressful situations is rather sparse. Using anevent-sampling approach, 80 young workersreported stressful events over 7 days (409work-related and 127 private events). Contentanalysis showed the newcomers' work experiencesto be similar to what is typically found inolder samples (e.g., social stressors,quantitative overload, problems ofcooperation). At work and in private life,social stressors were dominant. Inmultilevel-analyses active coping predictedhigher success in calming down and problemsolving, particularly in controllablesituations. Palliation was positively relatedto successful calming down and negatively toevent-related well-being. With regard to therelationship between chronic conditions andsituational variables, (stable) job control wasassociated with successful calming down instressful situations, and it buffered theeffect of chronic job stressors on successfulsituational calming down, yielding a specificvariant of the demands-control model. Number ofwork-related stressful events, weighted bysignificance, was moderately associated withchronic job stressors. However, while chronicjob stressors predicted momentary well-beingover and above the weighted number of events,events did not predict momentary well-being,and its prediction of stable well-beingdisappeared once chronic stressors werecontrolled. These results show how chronicconditions represent background variables thatnot only have a stronger influence onwell-being but also influence the immediatereaction to stressful encounters.     

Disability pensions granted from 1988 to 1990 in two municipalities in Norway: the importance of occupational status

The prevalence of people with disability pensions in Norway has increased sharply from 1980, without evidence of a concomitant change in morbidity or in occupational panorama. The incidence of granted disability pensions in 2 small rural municipalities from 1988 to 1990 (n =507) were compared with professional or occupational background and the diagnostic basis of granting the disability pension. Information on occupation and diagnosis was collected manually. Efforts were made to ascertain whether the applicants' work had been strenuous or not. Data giving such information was not available for the total population at risk. Manual workers made up three fourths (n =395) of the incidence. Disability pension was granted with musculoskeletal disorders as the diagnosis in half of all cases. There was also a tendency towards cardiovascular and mental disorders being more frequent in the group of non-manual workers. Incidence rates were higher than the mean rates for the whole country for the diagnostic groups musculoskeletal disorders, cancer, cardiovascular disorders and mental disorders, and the rates did not change over the 3 years. The study indicates that disability pensioners still are more prevalent among manual workers. Increased availability of vocational rehabilitation for this group may be needed, certainly if a reduction in the incidence of disability pensions is aimed at.     

Gay Men's Knowledge of HIV Transmission and ‘Safe’ Sex: A Question of Accuracy

The study described in this paper is part of a project assessing the impact of the HIV epidemic on 535 men who have sex with men. These men were surveyed about their knowledge of HIV, their sexual practices, other issues concerning the transmission of HIV, and AIDS. This paper focuses on these men's beliefs about HIV transmission, their perceptions of the safety of a number of sexual and social practices, and the factors influencing these perceptions. The findings indicate, in general, that the men surveyed were moderately well informed about HIV transmission. Some twenty percent of the men were well-informed about both ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ sexual practices, a small number were ill-informed and the remainder, the majority, were well-informed about some aspects and ill-informed about others. The data suggest that information from the mainstream and gay press is not only differentially available but that information is processed and interpreted by the men in different ways. Variables which influence the manner in which information is interpreted are place of residence (locale), awareness of gay community posters and pamphlets, and the men's sexual practice; these are associated with cautiousness or rashness in the men's judgments of safety and risk.     

Preference for Nature in Urbanized Societies: Stress, Restoration, and the Pursuit of Sustainability

Urbanicity presents a challenge for the pursuit of sustainability. High settlement density may offer some environmental, economic, and social advantages, but it can impose psychological demands that people find excessive. These demands of urban life have stimulated a desire for contact with nature through suburban residence, leading to planning and transportation practices that have profound implications for the pursuit of sustainability. Some might dismiss people's desire for contact with nature as the result of an anti-urban bias in conjunction with a romantic view of nature. However, research in environmental psychology suggests that people's desire for contact with nature serves an important adaptive function, namely, psychological restoration. Based on this insight, we offer a perspective on an underlying practical challenge: designing communities that balance settlement density with satisfactory access to nature experience. We discuss research on four issues: how people tend to believe that nature is restorative; how restoration needs and beliefs shape environmental preferences; how well people actually achieve restoration in urban and natural environments; and how contact with nature can promote health. In closing, we consider urban nature as a design option that promotes urban sustainability.     

MEASURING LABOR MARKET FRICTIONS: A CROSS‐COUNTRY COMPARISON

In this paper we define and estimate measures of labor market frictions using data on job durations. We compare different estimation methods and different types of data. We propose and apply an unconditional inference method that can be applied to aggregate duration data. It does not require wage data, it is invariant to the way in which wages are determined, and it allows workers to care about other job characteristics. The empirical analysis focuses on France, but we perform separate analyses for the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. We quantify the monopsony power due to search frictions and we examine the policy effects of the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, and search frictions. (JEL: J63, J64)     

The Nonparametric Identification of Treatment Effects in Duration Models

This paper analyzes the specification and identification of causal multivariate duration models. We focus on the case in which one duration concerns the point in time a treatment is initiated and we are interested in the effect of this treatment on some outcome duration. We define “no anticipation of treatment” and relate it to a common assumption in biostatistics. We show that (i) no anticipation and (ii) randomized treatment assignment can be imposed without restricting the observational data. We impose (i) but not (ii) and prove identification of models that impose some structure. We allow for dependent unobserved heterogeneity and we do not exploit exclusion restrictions on covariates. We provide results for both single‐spell and multiple‐spell data. The timing of events conveys useful information on the treatment effect.     

CRITICAL PERIODS DURING CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

We identify the ages that constitute sensitive (or critical) periods in children's development towards their adult health status, skills, and human capital. For this, we use data on families migrating into Sweden from countries that are poorer, with less healthy conditions. Late‐life health is proxied by adult height and other adult outcomes. The relation between siblings’ ages at migration and their adult outcomes allows us to estimate the causal effect of conditions at specific childhood ages. We effectively exploit that, for siblings, the migration occurs simultaneously in calendar time but at different developmental stages (ages). We find evidence that the period just before the puberty growth spurt constitutes a critical period for adult height and we find related critical periods for adult cognition, mental health, and education.     

Informing employees in small and medium-sized firms about training: Results of a randomized field experiment

We mailed brochures to 10,000 randomly chosen employed German workers who were eligible for a subsidized occupational training program called WeGebAU, informing them about the importance of skills-upgrading training in general and about WeGebAU in particular. Using survey and register data, we estimate effects of the informational brochure on awareness of the program, on take-up of WeGebAU and other training, and on subsequent employment. The brochure more than doubles awareness of the program. There are no effects on WeGebAU take-up, but participation in other (unsubsidized) training increases among employees aged under 45. Short-term labor market outcomes are not affected.