MANDATORY RETIREMENT AND THE CONSUMPTION PUZZLE: DISENTANGLING PRICE AND QUANTITY DECLINES

This study investigates changes in household consumption at retirement based on a comprehensive, diary‐based household survey from China. We focus on disentangling price changes from quantity changes at retirement. The mandatory retirement policy in China provides a quasi‐experimental setting for nonparametric identification of the true causal effects of fully anticipated retirement. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that food expenditure declines at retirement, particularly among the less‐educated group. We further show that this decline is driven by a reduction in prices rather than quantities. These findings, along with a documented increase in shopping time for food upon retirement among the less‐educated households, are consistent with a time allocation model in which education enhances the value of leisure. (JEL J26, C21)     

Enhancing Health-Conscious Behaviors Among Clients in Substance Abuse Treatment Programs

The physical health of substance abuse clients significantly deteriorates because of the client’s prolonged abuse of alcohol and other drugs and accompanying behaviors. The purposes of this study are (a) to understand how substance abuse clinicians think about the health needs of their clients, (b) to identify the mechanisms through which clinicians seek to enhance health-conscious behaviors among their clients, and (c) to identify how substance abuse clinicians view their role in enhancing health-conscious behaviors among their clients. A qualitative study was conducted using in-depth, semistructured interviews with substance abuse clinicians (N = 16) from 4 substance abuse treatment centers. Using the theory of planned behavior as a framework for understanding the promotion of health-conscious behaviors in substance abuse treatment, the findings suggest that substance abuse clinicians are capable of enhancing health-conscious behaviors among clients in substance abuse programs.     

Abortion,Family Planning,and Population Policy: Prospects for the Common‐Ground Approach

For the past several decades those engaged in shaping the Program of Action documents at international conferences on population have muted their voices when the topic of abortion has been raised. In a desire to side‐step entanglement in a bitter debate over the morality of abortion, great care has been taken to define “family planning” in ways that explicitly exclude abortion. The “common‐ground” approach to treating abortion can be summarized in two directives found in all contemporary international population documents: “in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning”; and all governments should work “to reduce the recourse to abortion through expanded and improved family‐planning services.” This article has three goals: first, to examine the appropriateness of these directives with respect to what is currently known about the relationship between abortion, family planning, and population policy; second, to trace how this “contraception‐only” definition of family planning became de rigueur at international population conferences; and third, to discuss the prospects for the emergence of a more appropriate “common‐ground” approach to abortion and population policy.     

One-year rates of public shelter utilization by race/ethnicity,age, sex and poverty status for New York City (1990 and 1995) and Philadelphia (1995)

This study calculates public homeless shelter utilization rates by sex, race/ethnicity and age status for New York City (1990 and 1995) and Philadelphia (fiscal year 1995) to determine the relative risk for shelter use among different demographic groups in these cities. The resulting shelter utilization rates reveal large disparities among age groups and across racial/ethnic groups, as well as showing different trends in shelter utilization among the two cities. Among the results reported, the rate of shelter utilization declined by 11% in New York City over this period, while the overall utilization rate in Philadelphia has increased to where it is 40% higher than that of New York City. Children under age 5, at a rate of 0.0248, have the highest shelter utilization rate among the age groups studied and the overall rate for blacks is 2.3 times that of the overall population. And while shelter utilization rates among single men have decreased by 30% in New York City, a similar decrease has not occurred among women of early childbearing ages or among young children. Finally, policy implications related to these findings are discussed.     

The wild bootstrap for multivariate Nelson–Aalen estimators

Lifetime Data Analysis - We rigorously extend the widely used wild bootstrap resampling technique to the multivariate Nelson–Aalen estimator under Aalen’s multiplicative intensity...     

Letting Oneself Go Isn't Enough: Cognitively Oriented Expressive Writing Reduces Preadolescent Peer Problems

Peer problems are a stressor for many early adolescents, and simple cost‐effective tools for managing peer stress are needed. Expressive writing (EW) may be one such tool. With a sample of middle school children aged 12–14 years (n = 119; 53% males), this research evaluates whether cognitively oriented expressive writing (CEW), which focuses more on psychological self‐distancing, improves personal well‐being better than traditional EW, which focuses more on emotional disclosure. CEW—compared with EW—slightly enhanced long‐term social adjustment for the entire sample, and increased positive affect for those early adolescents that reported more peer problems at baseline. These findings suggest that structured writing instructions with early adolescents may be key to improvements.