An alternative sampling strategy for obtaining child health data in a reproductive health survey

Retrospective demographic surveys typically collect substantial information about child health. This information is often collected for all children born during a specified period. For women with several young children, the interview can become quite long. To shorten the interview, some surveys have asked child health questions only for the last child born. However, data on the last birth may be biased because last children have a younger age distribution and have longer subsequent birth intervals than does the average child. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach to collecting child health data - that child health questions be asked only for a child chosen randomly from among the respondent's children younger than age five. This alternative has the advantage of keeping the interview shorter but does not lead to biased information.Abbreviations DHS Demographic and Health Surveys     

Does Manufacturing Still Matter?

Although employment in the manufacturing sector has declined over the past few decades, it continues to play an important role in many regions of the U.S. Most studies have not examined the spatial effects of manufacturing employment on regional job quality. In this paper, we consider the spatial dependence and spatial variation of this relationship in the Midwest. This analysis suggests that it is important to take into consideration spatial effects when examining the implications of economic restructuring for regions. Labor market areas are not distinct spatial units and can be influenced significantly by nearby local labor markets. Once that spatial dependence is considered, manufacturing has a negative and significant effect on underemployment by low earnings, but its effect is not significant in labor hardship associated with work time and steadiness. At the same time, our analysis demonstrates that the effects of manufacturing employment vary across local labor markets. More specifically, these findings suggest that in those areas in the Midwest that have historically had higher concentrations of manufacturing jobs, the benefits of working in this sector are smaller. In regions that have not had a large manufacturing sector and have experienced some gains in recent years, the benefits of working in the manufacturing sector are larger.     

Temporal and spatial variation in age-specific net migration in the United States

As fertility differences in the United States diminish, population redistribution trends are increasingly dependent on migration. This research used newly developed county-level age-specific net migration estimates for the 1990s, supplemented with longitudinal age-specific migration data spanning the prior 40 years, to ascertain whether there are clear longitudinal trends in age-specific net migration and to determine if there is spatial clustering in the migration patterns. The analysis confirmed the continuation into the 1990s of distinct net migration "signature patterns" for most types of counties, although there was temporal variation in the overall volume of migration across the five decades. A spatial autocorrelation analysis revealed large, geographically contiguous regions of net in-migration (in particular, Florida and the Southwest) and geographically contiguous regions of net out-migration (the Great Plains, in particular) that persisted over time. Yet the patterns of spatial concentration and fragmentation over time in these migration data demonstrate the relevance of this "neighborhood" approach to understanding spatiotemporal change in migration.     

Incentivising trust

We argue that trust can be incentivised by measures which increase the ability of trusters to protect themselves against risk. We work within the framework originally established by Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe (1995) in which trust is measured experimentally as the ability to generate reciprocity in response to an initial offer of money within a two-person game. An incentive is conveyed both by means of variations in the multiplier applied to the first player’s initial offer and by giving the first player the opportunity to insure themselves against the possibility that the second player will fail to reciprocate their initial offer. Measured trust is strongly responsive to both these incentives. Thus third parties have the ability to influence the outcome of the game, not only, as in the analysis of Charness, Cobo-Reyes, and Jimenez (2008), by punishing failure to reciprocate and rewarding ‘good’ initial offers, but also by offering protection which strengthens the first player’s risk efficacy, or ratio of assets to risk.     

Why Parents Pay for College: The Good Parent,Perceptions of Advantage,and the Intergenerational Transfer of Opportunity

This article asks how parents think about the cost of a college education for their children. Based on data from more than ninety in‐depth interviews with upper‐middle‐class parents and children, it is clear that grooming children for college and then paying for their education is intimately linked with ideas about being a “good parent.” We present data on three related aspects of parents' consciousness about paying for college. First, data are presented on how parents view the benefits of college for their children. Second, data illustrate how parents think about the obligations associated with paying. Third, we report on what parents expect in return for their efforts and expenditures. Data also indicate that parents' views are contingent on their perceived ability to pay for the increasing costs of higher education. We conclude by considering how the implicit contract between upper‐middle‐class parents and children may change as new economic and structural uncertainties increase parents' anxieties and challenge their abilities to see themselves as good parents.     

Restrictiveness and guidance in support systems

Restrictiveness and guidance have been proposed as methods for improving the performance of users of support systems. In many companies computerized support systems are used in demand forecasting enabling interventions based on management judgment to be applied to statistical forecasts. However, the resulting forecasts are often ‘sub-optimal’ because many judgmental adjustments are made when they are not required. An experiment was used to investigate whether restrictiveness or guidance in a support system leads to more effective use of judgment. Users received statistical forecasts of the demand for products that were subject to promotions. In the restrictiveness mode small judgmental adjustments to these forecasts were prohibited (research indicates that these waste effort and may damage accuracy). In the guidance mode users were advised to make adjustments in promotion periods, but not to adjust in non-promotion periods. A control group of users were not subject to restrictions and received no guidance. The results showed that neither restrictiveness nor guidance led to improvements in accuracy. While restrictiveness reduced unnecessary adjustments, it deterred desirable adjustments and also encouraged over-large adjustments so that accuracy was damaged. Guidance encouraged more desirable system use, but was often ignored. Surprisingly, users indicated it was less acceptable than restrictiveness.