Protective factors and risk factors of being a victim of couple violence in women and men / Factores de riesgo y protección de ser víctima de violencia en la pareja en mujeres y hombres

The aim of this study is to determine the risk factors and protective factors of being a victim of couple violence, considering cultural conventions, coping, social support, external attribution and violence in childhood. A non-probabilistic sample of 223 women and 177 men was used. The risk factors in the sample as a whole were being male, the coping strategy of accommodation, violence in childhood and external attribution, while the protective factors were partner support and an active coping style. The study concludes with suggestions for interventions and research.     

Altruism and monetary transfers in the household: inter- and intra-generation issues

The literature on altruism and monetary transfers in the household is here extended with new and recent evidence on different approaches with the final aim being to provide policy recommendations in order to reduce socio-economic inequality among households, from both inter- and intra-generational perspectives. Thus, we include issues which deal with transfers from parents to kids (downstream transfers), and with transfers from kids to parents (upstream transfers). On the other hand, we also include issues from intragenerational transfers beyond the household, studying such phenomena as charitable donations and remittances from migrants.     

Farmers' Contribution to Agricultural Social Capital: Evidence from Southern Spain

Social capital is the whole set of shared norms, values, attitudes, and beliefs that promote cooperation among individuals within the community and that has proved to be a key factor in explaining development processes. This article aims to provide an analytically reliable notion of social capital within the farming sector and a methodological tool for empirically measuring how social capital is accumulated at the farmer level. The theoretical framework proposed is based on the multidimensionality of the complex concept of social capital. Thus, to develop a comprehensive index for social capital, we identify three dimensions of the concept, structural, relational, and cognitive social capital, each one also comprising several subdimensions. This integrative approach permits creation of a composite indicator of the agricultural social capital accumulated at the farmer level, further identifying socioeconomic factors that influence its accumulation at that level. We empirically apply this methodological approach to farmers in Andalusia in southern Spain as a case study. This research provides an interesting starting point for informing policymakers about social capital and helping them implement the necessary programs to facilitate sustainable development in the agricultural sector.     

Más allá de la sociología. Sobre catástrofes,expertos y comunidades

We could state that a catastrophic discourse is one that refers to a catastrophe which is avoided by the same discourse. This kind of discourse stimulates cautious behaviours. It is necessary that the actors do not know that the catastrophe exists and that they are avoiding it so that this situation can work. Nevertheless, the analyst knows everything. The catastrophic discourse takes part in a stable situation in which the analyst's knowledge is directly proportional to the actor alienation. The economist knows that unstable situations like panic produce an opposite phenomenon: the analyst does not know very well what is going on but the actor knows how to manage. If the market, as well as stable operation, permits instability, the prevention of catastrophes could admit an unstable one, similar to panic and together with the catastrophic solution. This paper suggests some concepts to think about this unstable and anticatastrophic situation. They are notions which give prominence to ‘emergentism’, autopoiesis and uncertainty. The reinterpretation of the Hobbesian natural state developed by Foucault, the analysis of the mobilization power of fear by Bataille and the unpolitical reflections of the community which have been proposed by Esposito, Nancy and Agamben will be reinterpreted in order to achieve this goal.     

Working mothers’ decisions on childcare: the case of Spain

This paper aims to analyze household decisions regarding the childcare of young children. We present two specifications. The first one assumes a sequential decision process. Firstly, parents choose between paid or unpaid care and, secondly, those who opt for paid childcare must decide whether to take their children to a nursery or pre-school or employ somebody to care for them. The second specification is a multinomial Logit in which it is assumed that parents choose from three alternatives: unpaid care, paid care by a nanny, and center-based care. We apply our models to a sample of working mothers with children under three. The database used is the 2008–2010 Spanish Survey of Quality of Working Life (Encuesta de Calidad de Vida en el Trabajo). The results are in line with previous work: Parental education, family composition, income and the characteristics of the mother’s job are important factors in determining the type of childcare chosen for under-three-year-olds.     

Latin American convergence and divergence towards the mortality profiles of developed countries

It is uncertain whether Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries are approaching a single mortality regime. Over the last three decades, LAC has experienced major public health interventions and the highest number of homicides in the world. However, these interventions and homicide rates are not evenly shared across countries. This study documents trends in life expectancy and lifespan variability for 20 LAC countries, 2000–14. By extending a previous method, we decompose differences in lifespan variability between LAC and a developed world benchmark into cause-specific effects. For both sexes, dispersion of amenable diseases through the age span makes the largest contribution to the gap between LAC and the benchmark. Additionally, for males, the concentration of homicides, accidents, and suicides in mid-life further impedes mortality convergence. Great disparity exists in the region: while some countries are rapidly approaching the developed regime, others remain far behind and suffer a clear disadvantage in population health.     

Unconstrained parametrizations for variance-covariance matrices

The estimation of variance-covariance matrices through optimization of an objective function, such as a log-likelihood function, is usually a difficult numerical problem. Since the estimates should be positive semi-definite matrices, we must use constrained optimization, or employ a parametrization that enforces this condition. We describe here five different parametrizations for variance-covariance matrices that ensure positive definiteness, thus leaving the estimation problem unconstrained. We compare the parametrizations based on their computational efficiency and statistical interpretability. The results described here are particularly useful in maximum likelihood and restricted maximum likelihood estimation in linear and non-linear mixed-effects models, but are also applicable to other areas of statistics.     

Influential factors in the choice of public transportation or cars as the mode of transportation in habitual commutes / Factores que influyen en la elección del transporte público o el automóvil como modo de transporte en los desplazamientos habituales

The goal of this study is to analyse the differences in attitudes towards habitual modes of transportation among users of public and private transportation. The explanatory capacity of attitudes when determining the mode choice, along with the structural and sociodemographic factors, are also verified. The study was performed in three Spanish cities with 742 participants. The results revealed that cars are better rated than public modes of transportation in the attributes associated with immediate advantages (i.e., speed and availability) and convenience. Subways are highly rated in both immediate and deferred advantages (environment, safety, cost and health). Buses are the mode rated the lowest of the three. Using logistic regression, it was verified that the variance explained by a model that includes attitudes (R² = .639) is higher than the variance explained by a model based solely on variables related to infrastructures (R² = .489). The discussion of these results includes proposals aimed at decreasing car use.     

Duration and Recurrence of Unemployment Benefits

Using administrative data for the period 2005–2010, we test for the existence of segmentation in the pool of the unemployed receiving benefits and investigate the factors associated with the duration and recurrence of the receipt of unemployment benefits in Spain. The results suggest the existence of (at least) three groups of individuals, each with different combinations of covered unemployment duration and recurrence. We also find that the impact of the employment crisis has been an increase in the average length of time spent receiving unemployment benefits and the recurrence. Our findings support the hypothesis that not only the heterogeneity but also the previous experience of receipt increase the expected duration of subsequent benefit periods.