The impact of changes in the marital status on return migration of family migrants

Many migrants have non-labour motives to migrate, and they differ substantially from labour migrants in their migration behaviour. For family migrants, the decision to return is highly influenced by changes in their marital status. Using administrative panel data on the entire population of recent family immigrants to the Netherlands, we estimate the effect of a divorce and remarriage on the hazard of leaving the Netherlands using a ‘timing of events’ model. The model allows for correlated unobserved heterogeneity across the migration, the divorce and remarriage processes. The family migrants are divided into five groups based on the Human Development Index (HDI) of their country of birth. We find that both divorce and remarriage increase return of family migrants from less-developed countries. Remarriage of family migrants from developed countries makes them more prone to stay. Young migrants are influenced most by a divorce. The impact of the timing of a divorce and remarriage on return is quantified graphically.     

The impact of early-life economic conditionson cause-specific mortality during adulthood

The aim of this study is to assess the effects of economic conditions in early life on cause-specific mortality during adulthood. The analyses are performed on a unique historical sample of 14,520 Dutch individuals born in 1880–1918, who are followed throughout life. The economic conditions in early life are characterized using cyclical variations in annual real per capital gross domestic product during pregnancy and the first year of life. Exposure to recessions in early life appears to significantly increase cancer mortality risks of older males and females. It also significantly increases other mortality risks especially for older females. The residual life expectancies are up to about 8 and 6 % lower for male and female cancer mortality, respectively, and up to about 5 % lower for female cardiovascular mortality. Our analyses show that cardiovascular and cancer mortality risks are related and that not taking this association into account leads to biased inference.     

Context‐Specific,Scenario‐Based Risk Scales

Reacting to an emergency requires quick decisions under stressful and dynamic conditions. To react effectively, responders need to know the right actions to take given the risks posed by the emergency. While existing research on risk scales focuses primarily on decision making in static environments with known risks, these scales may be inappropriate for conditions where the decision maker's time and mental resources are limited and may be infeasible if the actual risk probabilities are unknown. In this article, we propose a method to develop context‐specific, scenario‐based risk scales designed for emergency response training. Emergency scenarios are used as scale points, reducing our dependence on known probabilities; these are drawn from the targeted emergency context, reducing the mental resources required to interpret the scale. The scale is developed by asking trainers/trainees to rank order a range of risk scenarios and then aggregating these orderings using a Kemeny ranking. We propose measures to assess this aggregated scale's internal consistency, reliability, and validity, and we discuss how to use the scale effectively. We demonstrate our process by developing a risk scale for subsurface coal mine emergencies and test the reliability of the scale by repeating the process, with some methodological variations, several months later.     

A mixture model for the detection of Neosporosis without a gold standard

Neosporosis is a bovine disease caused by the parasite Neospora caninum. It is not yet sufficiently studied, and it is supposed to cause an important number of abortions. Its clinical symptoms do not yet allow the reliable identification of infected animals. Its study and treatment would improve if a test based on antibody counts were available. Knowing the distribution functions of observed counts of uninfected and infected cows would allow the determination of a cutoff value. These distributions cannot be estimated directly. This paper deals with the indirect estimation of these distributions based on a data set consisting of the antibody counts for some 200 pairs of cows and their calves. The desired distributions are estimated through a mixture model based on simple assumptions that describe the relationship between each cow and its calf. The model then allows the estimation of the cutoff value and of the error probabilities.     

Mobile devices and their effect on the sociality on Dutch Intercity trains

ABSTRACT

Travelling by train is an activity that many people engage in on a daily basis, which is rarely performed alone. While trains are locations where many different strangers potentially encounter each other, they are also portrayed as non-social transient places of passenger conflict and disharmony. Especially the rapid rise of mobile devices has changed the way people interact on board. This mobile ethnography – based on observations, travel-diaries and diary-interviews with 16 frequent travellers of Dutch Intercity trains – contributes to earlier studies on passenger sociality by specifically focussing on how social interactions are influenced by these mobile devices. The findings illustrate that using a mobile phone is indeed the most reported on-board activity and direct interactions are limited. Nevertheless, people on the train speak a very subtle non-verbal language that enables them to interact without engaging in extensive direct interactions. Mobile devices are thus not just enabling or constraining but have become inherent parts of socialising. Furthermore, most people do watch out for each other and try not to bother others. Discomforts emerge from different interpretations and compliances of codes of conduct.     

Excess deaths and Hurricane María

Population and Environment - We clarify the distinction between direct and indirect effects of disasters such as Hurricane María and use data from the Puerto Rico Vital Statistics System to...     

Interrelation between empathy and friendship development during (pre)adolescence and the moderating effect of developmental language disorder: A longitudinal study

The association between empathy and friendship quality in children and adolescents is well established, but longitudinal studies are lacking. Because social interactions typically involve language, these relations might be moderated by children's communication problems. The current study examined the interrelation of friendship quality (positive and negative) and empathy (affective, cognitive, and prosocial motivation) development of 317 children (8–16 years old) at three time points across 18 months. Of these children 112 had a developmental language disorder (DLD). Results confirmed a bidirectional relation between empathy and friendship quality across time. Cognitive empathy and prosocial motivation contributed to the development of more positive friendship features in children with and without DLD. For children with unstable friendships, more cognitive empathy was related to fewer negative friendship features. Positive friendship features in turn contributed to higher empathy on all three aspects. Negative friendship features were related to higher affective empathy and lower prosocial motivation in both groups, but did not predict empathy development across time. These results imply that positive friendship features are important for development of empathic skills and vice versa that empathy enables children to grow in friendship quality in children with and without DLD.     

Bayesiam simultaneous estimation for several multinomial distributions

A Bayesian method is proposed for estimating the cell probabilities of several multinomial distributions. Parameters of different distributions are taken to be a priori exchangeable. The prior specification is based upon mixtures of a hierarchical distribution, referred to as the multivariate “Dirichlet-Dirichlet” distribution. The analysis is facilitated by a multinomial approximation relating to the multinomial-Dirichlet distribution. The posterior estimates depend upon measures of entropy for the various distributions and shrink the individual observed proportions towards values obtained by pooling the data across the distributions. As well as incorporating prior information they are particularly useful when some of the cell frequencies are zero. We use them to investigate a numerical classification of males of various vocations, according to cause of death.     

Participation without Negotiating: Influence of Stakeholder Power Imbalances and Engagement Models on Agricultural Policy Development in Uganda

Although the political context in Uganda exhibits democratic deficit and patronage, research and development actors have given little attention to the possible negative impact these may have on agricultural policymaking and implementation processes. This article examines the influence of power in perpetuating prevailing narratives around public participation in agricultural policymaking processes. The analysis is based on qualitative data collected between September 2014 and May 2015 using 86 in‐depth interviews, 18 focus group discussions, and recorded observations in stakeholder consultations. Results indicate that while the political setting provides space for uncensored debates, the policymaking process remains under close control of political leaders, technical personnel, and high‐level officers in the government. Policy negotiation remains limited to actors who are knowledgeable about the technical issues and those who have the financial resources and political power to influence decisions, such as international donors. There is limited space for negotiation of competing claims and interests in the processes by public and private actors actively engaged in agricultural development, production, processing, and trade. Thus, efforts to achieve good governance in policy processes fall short due to lack of approaches that promote co‐design and co‐ownership of the policies.