A Quiescent Phase in Human Mortality? Exploring the Ages of Least Vulnerability

Demographic studies of mortality often emphasize the two ends of the lifespan, focusing on the declining hazard after birth or the increasing risk of death at older ages. We call attention to the intervening phase, when humans are least vulnerable to the force of mortality, and consider its features in both evolutionary and historical perspectives. We define this quiescent phase (Q-phase) formally, estimate its bounds using life tables for Swedish cohorts born between 1800 and 1920, and describe changes in the morphology of the Q-phase. We show that for cohorts aging during Sweden’s demographic and epidemiological transitions, the Q-phase became longer and more pronounced, reflecting the retreat of infections and maternal mortality as key causes of death. These changes revealed an underlying hazard trajectory that remains relatively low and constant during the prime ages for reproduction and investment in both personal capital and relationships with others. Our characterization of the Q-phase highlights it as a unique, dynamic, and historically contingent cohort feature, whose increased visibility was made possible by the rapid pace of survival improvements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This visibility may be reduced or sustained under subsequent demographic regimes.     

Hand over Heart Primes Moral Judgments and Behavior

Morality is a prominent guide of both action and perception. We argue that non-emotional gestures can prime the abstract concept of honesty. Four studies demonstrated that the emblematic gesture associated with honesty (putting a hand on one’s heart) increased the level of honesty perceived by others, and increased the honesty shown in one’s own behavior. Target persons performing this gesture were described in terms associated with honesty, and appeared more trustworthy to others than when the same targets were photographed with a control gesture. Persons performing the hand-over-heart gesture provided more honest assessments of others’ attractiveness, and refrained from cheating, as compared to persons performing neutral gestures. These findings suggest that bodily experience associated with abstract concepts can influence both one’s perceptions of others, and one’s own complex actions. Further, our findings suggest that this influence is not mediated by changes in affective states.     

Subjective Quality of Korean Life in 1981 and 2001

Social Indicators Research - Over the past two decades, Korea has been transformed into an economic powerhouse, a maturing democracy, a nation of cities, and a society of mixed cultures. How have...     

Pitfalls of Self-management in the Kibbutz

This article traces and analyzes the changes that have occurred in the self-managed Kibbutz communities and in their industrial organization. It primarily examines changes concerned with self-management and democracy in the community and the Kibbutz economy, and analyzes their direction. The article raises the question whether a self-managed democratic community is able to remain as such at a time when the national economy, public support and the collective ideology are all weakened. Even though the Kibbutz community is not self-managed now as it was in the past, it still retains representative democracy, as well as some direct democracy, and presents a unique way of managing its industrial, agricultural and social organizations, which enables the Kibbutz community to adhere to some, if not all, of its basic values.     

The Demand for Bank Reserves and Other Monetary Aggregates

The article starts with Haslag's (1998) model of the bank's demand for reserves and reformulates it with a cash-in-advance approach for both financial intermediary and consumer. This gives a demand for a base of cash plus reserves that is not sensitive to who gets the inflation tax transfer. It extends the model to formulate a demand for demand deposits, yielding an M 1-type demand, and then includes exchange credit, yielding an M 2-type demand. Based on the comparative statics of the model, it provides an interpretation of the evidence on monetary aggregates. This explanation relies on the nominal interest as well as technology factors of the banking sector.     

Parental transfer of financial knowledge and later credit outcomes among low- and moderate-income homeowners

It is well established that acquiring financial skills during childhood is linked with better savings in adulthood. Little is known, however, about the relationship between parental teaching of money management early in life and children's financial outcomes in adulthood. This is particularly true for low- and moderate-income (LMI) households. Using data from Community Advantage Program survey data for 2,389 LMI homeowners, we find that adults who report receiving high levels of money-management teaching in childhood from their parents are associated with higher credit scores and lower credit card debt in adulthood. We also find that the level of parental financial teaching influences the relationship between children's later educational attainment and credit scores. These findings suggest implications for initiatives promoting financial capability for parents and children.     

Total least squares and bootstrapping with applications in calibration

The solution to the errors-in-variables problem computed through total least squares is highly nonlinear. Because of this, many statistical procedures for constructing confidence intervals and testing hypotheses cannot be applied. One possible solution to this dilemma is bootstrapping. A nonparametric bootstrap technique could fail. Here, the proper nonparametric bootstrap procedure is provided and its correctness is proved. On the other hand, a residual bootstrap is not valid and suitable in this case. The results are illustrated through a simulation study. An application of this approach to calibration data is presented.     

Identification and Inference With Many Invalid Instruments

We study estimation and inference in settings where the interest is in the effect of a potentially endogenous regressor on some outcome. To address the endogeneity, we exploit the presence of additional variables. Like conventional instrumental variables, these variables are correlated with the endogenous regressor. However, unlike conventional instrumental variables, they also have direct effects on the outcome, and thus are “invalid” instruments. Our novel identifying assumption is that the direct effects of these invalid instruments are uncorrelated with the effects of the instruments on the endogenous regressor. We show that in this case the limited-information-maximum-likelihood (liml) estimator is no longer consistent, but that a modification of the bias-corrected two-stage-least-square (tsls) estimator is consistent. We also show that conventional tests for over-identifying restrictions, adapted to the many instruments setting, can be used to test for the presence of these direct effects. We recommend that empirical researchers carry out such tests and compare estimates based on liml and the modified version of bias-corrected tsls. We illustrate in the context of two applications that such practice can be illuminating, and that our novel identifying assumption has substantive empirical content.     

The Working Families’ Tax Credit and Some European Tax Reforms in A Collective Setting

A framework for simplified implementation of the collective model of labor supply decisions is presented in the context of fiscal reforms in the UK. Through its collective form the model accounts for the well known problem of distribution between wallet and purse, a broadly debated issue which has so far been impossible to model due to the limitations of the unitary model of household behavior. A calibrated data set is used to model the effects of introducing two forms of the Working Families’ Tax Credit. We also summarize results of estimations and calibrations obtained using the same methodology on data from five other European countries. The results underline the importance of taking account of the intrahousehold decision process and suggest that who receives government transfers does matter from the point of view of labor supply and welfare of household members. They also highlight the need for more research into models of household behavior.

Collective Models of Labor Supply with Nonconvex Budget Sets and Nonparticipation: A Calibration Approach

We suggest a methodology to calibrate a collective model with household-specific bargaining rules and marriage-specific preferences that incorporate leisure externalities. The empirical identification relies on the assumption that some aspects of individual preferences remain the same after marriage, so that estimation on single individuals can be used. The procedure maps the complete Pareto frontier of each household in the dataset and we define alternative measures of a power index. The latter is then regressed on relevant bargaining factors, including a set of variables retracing the potential relative contributions of the spouses to household disposable income. In its capacity to handle complex budget sets and labor force participation decisions of both spouses, this framework allows the comparison of unitary and collective predictions of labor supply reactions and welfare changes entailed by fiscal reforms in a realistic setting (see Michal Myck et al., 2006; Denis Beninger et al., 2006).