“He’s Not Good at Sensing That Look That Says,I’m Drowning Here!” Academic Mothers’ Perceptions of Spousal Support

Abstract

Research consistently shows that, regardless of increased parental involvement in child-rearing over the last few decades, the ‘lion’s share’ of childcare and housework is still undertaken by women rather than men. Academia is known to have no fixed working hours as such. As a result, the pressure on academic mothers tends to be inflated, and this has repercussions on women’s promotional paths, publishing outcomes and general professional and personal well-being. The positive effect of working women having spousal support is well documented in many employment areas. This paper looks at perceived spousal support which academic mothers, living and working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), report. While some of the women did report their spouses to be supportive, this was often theoretical rather than practical. The ways in which this spousal support situation has affected the academic mothers’ lives is discussed.     

Equilibrium unemployment and the duration of unemployment benefits

This paper uses microdata to evaluate the impact on the steady-state unemployment rate of an increase in maximum benefit duration. We evaluate a policy change in Austria that extended maximum benefit duration and use this policy change to estimate the causal impact of benefit duration on labor market flows. We find that the policy change leads to a significant increase in the steady-state unemployment rate and, surprisingly, most of this increase is due to an increase in the inflow into rather than the outflow from unemployment.     

Social Networks,Social Cohesion,and Later-Life Health

Our study contributes to the literature acknowledging the joint role of social networks and social cohesion in shaping individual’s health, focusing on the older population aged 50 and over. Exploiting rich ego-centered social network data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and following the conceptual model of social integration and health proposed by Berkman et al. (Soc Sci Med 51:843–857. doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00065-4, 2000), we estimate multilevel models of self-reported and observer-measured later-life health outcomes. These models simultaneously account for (a) characteristics of 39,551 respondents’ personal social networks and (b) a measure of social cohesion—namely, participation in social organizations—across 57 Continental European regions, clustered in 14 countries. We find significant associations between individuals’ health and various social network characteristics (size, support, quality) as well as social cohesion. Moreover, cross-level interaction effects suggest that the social-network-health nexus is contextually bound. We conclude with a discussion of limitations and perspectives for future research.     

Inhospitable workplaces? International students and paid work in food services

Most international students in Australia take up paid work during their studies, generally as part‐time employees in low‐wage, low‐skill labour markets. Though little is known about the detail of their work experiences, scattered reports suggest that wages and working conditions are often poor and pose significant issues of social justice. This article examines the characteristics of jobs held by one group of international students, drawing on in‐depth qualitative interviews that form part of a case study of Melbourne's café, restaurant and takeaway food services sector. The evidence indicates that precariousness in employment is widespread in this sector and that it centres on underpayment and non‐payment of wages, in breach of labour regulation. The article suggests that such illegal employer practices are facilitated by use of undeclared casual work. Underpayments are most severe in what are typically regarded as ethnic cafes and restaurants, which concentrate on employment of international students, but they are also widespread in mainstream cafes and restaurants, where international students share precarious work conditions with other workers. The findings underline the case for more concerted research and new policy initiatives.     

Life satisfaction linked to different independence-from-parents conditions in Italian emerging adults

ABSTRACT

The transition toward adulthood in Italy lasts longer than in other countries with respect to living with the family of origin, starting work, and gaining economic independence. This study aimed to analyse the transition to adulthood in Italian youths by exploring these developmental tasks. The first aim was to analyse gender and age differences in these developmental tasks. Given that these tasks are not necessarily achieved at the same time, the second aim was to establish if it might be possible to identify different clusters of individuals according to their residential, economic and employment conditions. The third aim was to explore life satisfaction in different clusters. 191 Italian emerging adults (65 males) aged 20–30 years (M?=?24.40) completed the Satisfaction with Life Scale and a specific questionnaire assessing residential independence, economic autonomy, and job stability. Results showed no gender differences in the three developmental tasks. However, older participants reported a higher level of independence. Cluster analysis identified three different groups: ‘totally dependent’, ‘partially independent’ and ‘totally independent’ from parental family, differently composed in terms of partnering. These groups do not differ in life satisfaction levels. Results are discussed focusing on different independence-from-parents conditions that characterize Italian emerging adults.     

Relative Distribution Methods

We present an outline of relative distribution methods, with an application to recent changes in the U.S. wage distribution. Relative distribution methods are a nonparametric statistical framework for analyzing data in a fully distributional context. The framework combines the graphical tools of exploratory data analysis with statistical summaries, decomposition, and inference. The relative distribution is similar to a density ratio. It is technically defined as the random variable obtained by transforming a variable from a comparison group by the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of that variable for a reference group. This transformation produces a set of observations, the relative data, that represent the rank of the original comparison value in terms of the reference group's CDF. The density and CDF of the relative data can therefore be used to fully represent and analyze distributional differences. Analysis can move beyond comparisons of means and variances to tap the detailed information inherent in distributions. The analytic framework is general and flexible, as the relative density is decomposable into the effect of location and shape differences, and into effects that represent both compositional changes in covariates, and changes in the covariate-outcome variable relationship.     

Effect of choice complexity on design efficiency in conjoint choice experiments

Conjoint choice experiments have become a powerful tool to explore individual preferences. The consistency of respondents' choices depends on the choice complexity. For example, it is easier to make a choice between two alternatives with few attributes than between five alternatives with several attributes. In the latter case it will be much harder to choose the preferred alternative which is reflected in a higher response error. Several authors have dealt with this choice complexity in the estimation stage but very little attention has been paid to set up designs that take this complexity into account. The core issue of this paper is to find out whether it is worthwhile to take this complexity into account in the design stage. We construct efficient semi-Bayesian D-optimal designs for the heteroscedastic conditional logit model which is used to model the across respondent variability that occurs due to the choice complexity. The degree of complexity is measured by the entropy, as suggested by Swait and Adamowicz (2001). The proposed designs are compared with a semi-Bayesian D-optimal design constructed without taking the complexity into account. The simulation study shows that it is much better to take the choice complexity into account when constructing conjoint choice experiments.     

HIGH DIMENSIONAL COVARIANCE MATRIX ESTIMATION IN APPROXIMATE FACTOR MODELS

The variance covariance matrix plays a central role in the inferential theories of high dimensional factor models in finance and economics. Popular regularization methods of directly exploiting sparsity are not directly applicable to many financial problems. Classical methods of estimating the covariance matrices are based on the strict factor models, assuming independent idiosyncratic components. This assumption, however, is restrictive in practical applications. By assuming sparse error covariance matrix, we allow the presence of the cross-sectional correlation even after taking out common factors, and it enables us to combine the merits of both methods. We estimate the sparse covariance using the adaptive thresholding technique as in Cai and Liu (2011), taking into account the fact that direct observations of the idiosyncratic components are unavailable. The impact of high dimensionality on the covariance matrix estimation based on the factor structure is then studied.