No free lunch,buddy: past housing transfers and informal care later in life

Previous empirical literature on the relation between intergenerational transfer of assets and services has mostly focused on contemporary exchanges. By contrast, we provide novel evidence showing that parents who helped their adult children in the past are rewarded by higher chances of receiving informal care later in life. To this end we use Italian data containing precise retrospective information about the help with housing that couples received from their parents when they got married, such as a real estate donation or down payment. Our estimates show that this type of past help is positively associated with the current provision of informal care to the parents. This result is robust to controlling for a large set of individual and family characteristics and is only partially due to increased geographical proximity. We suggest that this finding can be explained by mixed self-interest motives, related to theories based on either bilateral exchange or the presence of a third generation (grandchildren), such as the demonstration effect model or the family constitution model.     

A new algorithm to estimate monotone nonparametric link functions and a comparison with parametric approach

The generalized linear model (GLM) is a class of regression models where the means of the response variables and the linear predictors are joined through a link function. Standard GLM assumes the link function is fixed, and one can form more flexible GLM by either estimating the flexible link function from a parametric family of link functions or estimating it nonparametically. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm that uses P-spline for nonparametrically estimating the link function which is guaranteed to be monotone. It is equivalent to fit the generalized single index model with monotonicity constraint. We also conduct extensive simulation studies to compare our nonparametric approach for estimating link function with various parametric approaches, including traditional logit, probit and robit link functions, and two recently developed link functions, the generalized extreme value link and the symmetric power logit link. The simulation study shows that the link function estimated nonparametrically by our proposed algorithm performs well under a wide range of different true link functions and outperforms parametric approaches when they are misspecified. A real data example is used to illustrate the results.     

Reweighted estimators for additive hazard model with censoring indicators missing at random

Survival data with missing censoring indicators are frequently encountered in biomedical studies. In this paper, we consider statistical inference for this type of data under the additive hazard model. Reweighting methods based on simple and augmented inverse probability are proposed. The asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators are established. Furthermore, we provide a numerical technique for checking adequacy of the fitted model with missing censoring indicators. Our simulation results show that the proposed estimators outperform the simple and augmented inverse probability weighted estimators without reweighting. The proposed methods are illustrated by analyzing a dataset from a breast cancer study.     

Economic Conditions of Young Adults Before and After the Great Recession

Transition to adulthood has undoubtedly changed in the last few decades. For youth today, an important marker of adulthood is self-actualization in their professional career, and, consequently, also the achievement of stable financial conditions. Economic conditions of youth are greatly subject to fluctuations in the economy, and the subsequent governmental response. Using the Luxembourg Income Study, this work investigates the trends in income from work of young adults before and after the Great Recession of 2008 in five countries—US, UK, Norway, Germany, and Spain. The findings showed deterioration in economic conditions of young men, but with differences across countries. Young women suffered less from the crisis, and in some countries, their economic situation improved. The general negative trend was especially pronounced for those with high education, which is primarily because they stayed in education longer.     

老龄人的"颓败"与年轻人的"重生":论羽田圭介的《颓败与重生》

随着日本人口老龄化的加速,老年人的护理日渐成为社会的一个关注点。羽田圭介的《颓败与重生》就是以老人护理以及由此引起的家庭内部纠葛为题材的小说。小说标题中的"颓败"体现在以主人公的外祖父为代表的老年人身体的衰老、病痛的侵袭以及所面临的尴尬的社会与家庭处境。而"重生"则表现在主人公对事业的追求、自我肉体的改造、帮助外祖父实现"尊严死"等方面。这部作品表征了日本社会所面临的老龄化的严峻形势及社会现实。     

基于fused惩罚的稀疏主成分分析

本文旨在研究基于fused惩罚的稀疏主成分分析方法，以适用于相邻变量之间高度相关甚至完全相等的数据情形。首先，从回归分析角度出发，提出一种求解稀疏主成分的简便思路，给出一种广义的稀疏主成分模型—— GSPCA模型及其求解算法，并证明在惩罚函数取1-范数时，该模型与现有的稀疏主成分模型——SPC模型的求解结果一致。其次，本文提出将fused惩罚与主成分分析相结合，得到一种fused稀疏主成分分析方法，并从惩罚性矩阵分解和回归分析两个角度，给出两种模型形式。在理论上证明了两种模型的求解结果是一致的，故将其统称为FSPCA模型。模拟实验显示，FSPCA模型在处理相邻变量之间高度相关甚至完全相等的数据集上的表现良好。最后，将FSPCA模型应用于手写数字识别，发现与SPC模型相比，FSPCA模型所提取的主成分具备更好的解释性，这使得该模型更具实用价值。     

Decomposing the increase in men’s time on childcare during the great recession

In this paper, I examine the time men spent on childcare during the recession of 2007–2009. The recession provides a sudden change in the employment opportunities of men relative to women in the United States. Using the American Time Use Survey and the linked Current Population Survey, I show that this lopsided shock to employment opportunities was accompanied by an increase in the average amount of time men spent on childcare. In particular, men’s average time on physical care for children increased during the recession; this is an element of childcare that men perform less than women. I decompose the total change in average time on childcare into behavioral, compositional, and between group change. A behavioral change among employed men accounted for the majority of the total increase in the average time spent on childcare; among men who are out of the labor force, the increase is entirely due to compositional changes.     

Social-ecological innovation: adaptive responses to urban environmental conditions

Novel approaches to natural resource management, particularly those which promote stakeholder participation, have been put forward as fundamental ingredients for establishing resilient, polycentric forms of environmental governance. This is nowhere more pertinent than in the case of the complex adaptive systems associated with urban areas. Decentralisation of urban green space management has been posited as an element thereof which, according to resilience thinking, should contribute to the adaptive capacity of cities and the ecosystem services upon which they rely. Implicit in this move towards increased adaptive capacity is the ability to manage through innovation. Although the importance of innovation towards system adaptability has been acknowledged, little work has thus far been carried out which demonstrates that innovative use of urban green space represents a form of adaptive response to environmental conditions. The current paper reports on research which maps examples of organised social-ecological innovation (OSEI) in an urban study area and evaluates them as adaptive responses to local environmental conditions which may contribute to system resilience. The results present OSEI as a coherent body of responses to local social and environmental deprivation, exhibiting diversity and adaptability according to individual contexts. The study therefore provides evidence for the importance of local stakeholder-led innovation as in the building of adaptive capacity in urban social-ecological systems.