Consequences of family disruption on children’s educational outcomes in norway

Using high-quality data from Norwegian population registers, we examine the relationship between family disruption and children’s educational outcomes. We distinguish between disruptions caused by parental divorce and paternal death and, using a simultaneous equation model, pay particular attention to selection bias in the effect of divorce. We also allow for the possibility that disruption may have different effects at different stages of a child’s educational career. Our results suggest that selection on time-invariant maternal characteristics is important and works to overstate the effects of divorce on a child’s chances of continuing in education. Nevertheless, the experience of marital breakdown during childhood is associated with lower levels of education, and the effect weakens with the child’s age at disruption. The effects of divorce are most pronounced for the transitions during or just beyond the high school level. In models that do not allow for selection, children who experienced a father’s death appear less disadvantaged than children whose parents divorced. After we control for selection, however, differences in the educational qualifications of children from divorced and bereaved families narrow substantially and, at mean ages of divorce, are almost non-existent.     

Proceed With Caution? Parents' Union Dissolution and Children's Educational Achievement

Using high‐quality Norwegian register data on 49,879 children from 23,655 families, the authors estimated sibling fixed‐effects models to explore whether children who are younger at the time of a parental union dissolution perform less well academically, as measured by their grades at age 16, than their older siblings who have spent more time living with both biological parents. Results from a baseline model suggest a positive age gradient that is consistent with findings in some of the extant family structure literature. Once birth order is taken into account, the gradient reverses. When analyses also control for grade inflation by adding year of birth to the model, only those children who experience a dissolution just prior to receiving their grades appear relatively disadvantaged. The results illustrate the need to specify and interpret sibling fixed‐effects model with great care.     

A fixed-effects multilevel analysis of how community family structure affects individual mortality in Norway

By using register data for the entire Norwegian population aged 50-89 in the period 1980-1999, during which there were about 720,000 deaths, I estimate how the proportions of persons who were divorced or never married in the municipality affected all-cause mortality, net of individual marital status. The data include individual histories of changes in marital status and places of residence, providing a rare opportunity to enter municipality fixed effects into the model, thereby capturing the time-invariant unobserved factors at that level. The positive health externality of marriage that is suggested in the literature is supported by some of the estimates for women. Other estimates--especially those for men--point in the opposite direction. One possible interpretation of these findings is that social cohesion is perhaps not as beneficial for people's health as often claimed, at least not for both sexes. Alternatively, the results may reflect that marriage perhaps undermines rather than strengthens social cohesion, or that other mechanisms are involved-for example, those that are related to people 's perceptions of their health relative to the health of others. Estimates from models without such municipality fixed effects are markedly different, but these also shed doubt on the notion that a high proportion of unmarried persons generally increases individual mortality.     

Child care availability and first-birth timing in Norway

Both sociological and economic theories posit that widely available, high-quality, and affordable child care should have pronatalist effects. Yet to date, the empirical evidence has not consistently supported this hypothesis. We argue that this previous empirical work has been plagued by the inability to control for endogenous placement of day care centers and the possibility that people migrate to take advantage of the availability of child care facilities. Using Norwegian register data and a statistically defensible fixed-effects model, we find strong positive effects of day care availability on the transition to motherhood.     

The Need for Web-Based Cognitive Behavior Therapy Among University Students

ABSTRACT

This study investigates students' need for a web-based cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) intervention program for preventing depression, the mental health status of those who felt a need for such a program, and underlying factors of the intention to use web-based self-help. A conceptual model for explaining intention to use web-based self-help is proposed. Nearly half of the participants reported a need for help with psychological problems, but only a third of these actually sought help from traditional mental health services. In conclusion, there is a need for web-based self-help, and web-based CBT has the potential to attract a group of students who, so far, have not been reached by traditional mental health services.     

State Formation and the Politics of Regime Survival: Zimbabwe in Theoretical Perspective

This article analyses state formation in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. The main question posed is this: Why has state power eroded so dramatically? To answer this question, the development of the state is analysed in the light of general theories of state formation. In spite of a situation which according to prevailing theories was conducive for the formation of a strong state, Zimbabwe entered a downward spiral, where state power gradually eroded. To explain this, it is necessary to move beyond these theories, and analyse the changing nature of the ruling regime's constituencies. While security threats and sources of revenue are important, their impact on processes of state formation is mediated by the inter‐relationship between ruling regimes and their constituencies, which is shaped by society's class structure.     

The weak impact of female labour force participation on Norwegian third-birth rates

Individual-level retrospective data from the Family and Occupation Survey of 1988 are used to estimate the effects of various employment variables on the third-birth rates among post-war Norwegian birth cohorts. Women who appear to have a strong work orientation, and may face relatively high opportunity costs of childbearing, do not have particularly low probability of advancing to parity three. This is consistent with previous Swedish and British studies, and lends some support to the view that other factors than stronger employment preferences and increased job opportunities have been largely responsible for the “second demographic transition” in Europe.     

Volunteers and Professionals in Norwegian Sport Organizations

The mass media, politicians, and social scientists assert that there are increasing problems in recruiting volunteers to voluntary organizations. This paper investigates the situation with respect to voluntary sport organizations in a Norwegian context. The situation for voluntary and paid work is described and discussed with respect to different kinds of sport organizations. The empirical results show that voluntary work still is the foundation of most sport organizations, but that there are large differences between various types of organizations, and that voluntary work functions in complex interaction with other important economic and structural features of these organizations.     

A Convolution Estimator for the Density of Nonlinear Regression Observations

Abstract. The problem of estimating an unknown density function has been widely studied. In this article, we present a convolution estimator for the density of the responses in a nonlinear heterogenous regression model. The rate of convergence for the mean square error of the convolution estimator is of order n ^?1 under certain regularity conditions. This is faster than the rate for the kernel density method. We derive explicit expressions for the asymptotic variance and the bias of the new estimator, and further a data‐driven bandwidth selector is proposed. We conduct simulation experiments to check the finite sample properties, and the convolution estimator performs substantially better than the kernel density estimator for well‐behaved noise densities.