Socioeconomic Deprivation and Religious Salience: A Cognitive Behavioral Approach

Past research is consistent with the idea that socioeconomic deprivation leads individuals to be more religious in certain ways. The related perspectives of exchange theory and cognitive behaviorism imply that such deprivation also leads people to place more importance on religion a virtually unexplored issue. This study examines the effects of education, occupational prestige and income on religious salience" among residents of the Raleigh, North Carolina, metropolitan area Oc cupational prestige and among respondents who were not church members education are found to have the hypothesized negative effects on salience. However, income has no effects when education and occupation are controlled, and an argument by Rodney Stark that these effects would hold true only for church members is contradicted.     

What Should Be the Implications of Uncertainty,Variability, and Inherent “Biases”/“Conservatism” for Risk Management Decision-Making?

This paper is a challenge from a pair of lifelong technical specialists in risk assessment for the risk-management community to better define social decision criteria for risk acceptance vs. risk control in relation to the issues of variability and uncertainty. To stimulate discussion, we offer a variety of straw man proposals about where we think variability and uncertainty are likely to matter for different types of social policy considerations in the context of a few different kinds of decisions. In particular, we draw on recent presentations of uncertainty and variability data that have been offered by EPA in the context of the consideration of revised ambient air quality standards under the Clean Air Act.     

Sickness Absence,Sick Leave Pay,and Pay Schemes

Utilizing Norwegian linked register and survey data, while exploiting a discontinuity in public sick pay legislation, I show that the public sick pay compensation level causally affects male performance pay workers' sick leave days. Both male and female performance pay workers experience longer sick leaves when provided private supplementary sick pay compared with those being eligible for public sick pay only. This differential impact of the replacement rate on workers' sick leave rates reveals heterogeneous behavioural changes following public sick pay cuts, and this heterogeneity will be reinforced by the provision of employer‐provided sick pay to attractive worker groups.     

The Effect of Legislated Minimum Wage Increases on Employment and Hours: A Dynamic Analysis

We present a dynamic policy simulation analysing what would have happened to wages, employment, and total hours had the federal minimum wage increased in September 1998, a year after the last actual increase in our data. Prior work suggests that employment responses take 6 years to play out. Using a time‐series model for 23 low‐wage industries, we find a positive response of average wages over 54 months following an increase in the minimum wage, but neither employment nor hours can be distinguished from random noise. Ignoring confidence intervals, the adjustment of hours is complete after 1 year, the adjustment of employment after no more than two and one half years.