Cost of Living Variation,Nonmetropolitan America,and Implications for the Supplemental Poverty Measure

Population Research and Policy Review - Poverty scholarship in the United States is increasingly reliant upon the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) as opposed to the Official Poverty Measure of...     

The impact of risk aversion and ambiguity aversion on annuity and saving choices

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty - We analyze the impact of risk aversion and ambiguity aversion on the competing demands for annuities and bequeathable savings using a lifecycle recursive utility...     

University Students’ Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Parenting and Gay and Lesbian Rights in Portugal

The purpose of this study was to explore university students’ attitudes toward same-sex parenting and toward gay and lesbian rights. A total of 292 participants, aged between 18 and 27 (M = 21) responded to a questionnaire measuring attitudes toward parenting by gay men and lesbians, gay and lesbian rights, and beliefs about the etiology of homosexuality. Results revealed that the majority of students were against gay and lesbian parenting, gay and lesbian equal rights, and believed that homosexuality has a social/environmental basis. It was found that sexual prejudice is highly prevalent in Portuguese university students, and implications of these findings are discussed.     

Materialism in Pedagogy Students in Chile

Many studies have used Richins and Dawson’s (J Consum Res 19: 303–316, 1992) Material Values Scale (MVS), applying it to different types of populations that exhibit a particular psychometric behavior, and showing little stability in their factorial structure. In the present study, 1,070 pedagogy students from the northern, central and southern regions of Chile answered the MVS. This sample was randomly divided in two. Using the first sub-sample (N = 539), an exploratory factorial analysis was carried out, from which a structure of nine items was grouped into two factors called “Social Success” and “Personal Happiness”, which presented adequate reliability. Later, with the second sub-sample (N = 531), the factorial structure indicated above was put to the test through a confirmatory factorial analysis. The data from the model show that the scale contains 8 items in total, grouped into two dimensions. The factorial loads are significant at the level of 1 %, which indicates that the 2-factor structure can be confirmed. Finally—using the proposed structure—the presence of the students’ material values was evaluated.     

Ecosystem services of urban green spaces in African countries—perspectives and challenges

The concept of ecosystem goods and services is increasingly used to describe how biodiversity and ecosystems are linked to human well-being and that it should be placed at the core of sustainable urban development. Predictions of a tremendous future increase of urbanization in Africa necessitate an investigation into the research on ecosystem goods and services in the urban green infrastructure of Africa. Ecosystem goods and services (ES) are described as the benefits humans derive directly or indirectly from ecosystem functions and are classified as supporting, provisioning, regulating and cultural services. A literature study focusing on journal papers was conducted. Additionally a case study based on two masters studies was further refined. ES studies in African cities are biased towards South Africa and include assessments and economic valuations in which several different methods were used to determine direct consumptive and non-consumptive and indirect use values. Emphasis was placed on the multifunctional nature of ES. The main objectives of these studies were to sensitize policy makers, planners and the general public about the importance of biodiversity and ES. Ecosystem-based adaptation is discussed as the most appropriate approach in terms of applying knowledge about ES and their values in African cities as many residents still rely on ES from natural areas, but the major ecological, economic and political challenges are acknowledged. A case study focusing on domestic gardens (private green spaces) have indicated that the demand and supply of certain ES differ along a socio-economic gradient due to poor service delivery and smaller plots in the poorer areas mainly due to the legacy of separate development of the past. Where provisioning services are mainly outsourced in cities, it was found that plant species useful as food, medicine, etc. were more frequent in the gardens of poorer residents than in those of more affluent areas. The tendency to pay more for residential properties close to public open spaces, as in Europe, could not be statistically proven in the more affluent areas of a South African city, although the property values in proximity of public open spaces in some of the areas studied were lower than further away.     

Mimetic contagion and speculative bubbles

Conclusion The present essay has focused on specularity as a type of intersubjectivitywithin self-referential systems. We have stressed the self-organizationaldimension of specular processes, which lead to the emergenceof collective objects around which the group structures itself. Rationalbubbles, sunspots, and conventions provided us with examples of thiskind of self-organization within self-referential groups. It seems thatwe have here a theoretical schema that can account for numeroussocial institutions. Such is the case with money, which the overlappinggenerations model shows to belong to the same problematic. We haveobserved that individual and collective representations play an essentialrole in the definition of specular dynamics. In fact, giving thecollectivity a means of interpreting and understanding the natural andsocial environment is a crucial function of these representations. Inspite of its great importance, this cognitive dimension of collectiverepresentations has hardly been explored in previous theorizing. Wehave given priority to a specific form of specularity, namely, mimetism,which is in our view at the very heart of financial processes. Far frombeing the aberration that traditional approaches deem it to be, imita-tion is one of the most important types of rationality in situations ofuncertain and in situations where the agents' outcomes are highlyinterdependent. Our central hypothesis amounts to considering thatthe emergence of speculative bubbles on various kinds of markets canbe explained in terms of mimetic dynamics. Should this hypothesis beconfirmed, it would be possible to account for a phenomenon that isoften observed, namely, the link between bubbles and a decrease inthe diversity of opinion on the market. In our approach, conventionsare taken to be the outcome of a mimetic process. Conventions are thesocial objects created by a unanimous mimetic polarization.     

Bivariate income distributions with lognormal conditionals

In this paper, the most general bivariate distribution with lognormal conditionals is fully characterized, using the methodology proposed by [3]. The properties of the new family are studied in detail, including marginal and conditional distributions, regression functions, dependence measures, moments and inequality measures. The new distribution is very broad, and contains as a particular case the classical bivariate lognormal distribution. Several subfamilies are studied and a generalization of the basic model is discussed. Finally, we present an empirical application. We estimate and compare the basic model proposed in the paper with a classical model, using data from the European Community Household Panel in different periods of time.     

Will They Ever Converge? Earnings of Immigrant and Canadian-born Workers over the Last Two Decades1

Using Census data covering the 1980–2000 period, this article examines what outcomes would be necessary for today's recent immigrant cohorts to achieve earnings parity with Canadian‐born workers. Our results show that today's recent immigrants would have to experience a drastic steepening of their relative age‐earnings profile in the near future for their earnings to converge with their Canadian‐born counterparts. The reason is simple: the greater relative earnings growth experienced by recent immigrant cohorts has only partially offset the drastic deterioration in their relative earnings at entry.     

Emotional displays in children's television programming

The facial expressions of emotion and the circumstances under which the expressions occurred in a sample of the most popular children's television programs were investigated in this study. Fifteen-second randomly selected intervals from episodes of five television programs were analyzed for displays of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. In addition, the contexts in which the emotions occurred were examined. Results indicated that particular emotional expressions occurred at significantly different frequencies and that there was an association between emotional displays and emotion-contexts. The high rate of emotional displays found in television shows has implications for the development of knowledge regarding emotional display rules in viewers.We are grateful to Sharon Galligan for assistance in coding part of the data and to Carolyn Saarni and Amy Halberstadt for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute of Disabilities and Rehabilitation Research, #GOO85351. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the U.S. Department of Education.