The Importance of Gifts in Marriage

In this article, a new element is introduced into the household production function: gifts. Gifts occur when spouses use their time and/or incomes to produce commodities that usually only have value to their spouse, such as empathy and understanding. The difficulty of identifying a potential mate's capacity to produce gifts prior to marriage and of negotiating for them during marriage is argued as having contributed to the increase in the divorce rate. Evidence is provided that women are the spouses most likely to seek a divorce and part of their motivation is an inadequate receipt of gifts during marriage.     

Placing Clinical Social Workers “Between a Legal Rock and a Practice Hard Place”: Reactions to Madden and Parody

The debate about the veracity of incest memories uncovered in therapy is often impassioned and acrimonious. Recent statements by various professional organizations, advising that corroboration of recovered memories is the only method for determining their accuracy, have not decreased the intensity of this debate. This response to Madden and Parody's paper discusses the importance of corroboration of recovered memories of sexual abuse and details the clinical, scientific, and legal foundations for this approach. A point of confusion in Madden and Parody's paper and an important aspect of this response is the difference between clients who uncover completely new memories of childhood sexual abuse and clients who enter therapy with a history of sexual abuse. Those clients with new memories are the focus of this debate and the standard of care proposed in this paper.     

No-Fault Divorce and the Compression of Marriage Ages

We examine how no-fault divorce law affects the age at first marriage, when everyone has a different value of marriage. The heterogeneity of individual values implies an unambiguous negative effect on the variance of marriage age. We test this hypothesis with marriage records from 1970 to 1995. Controlling for state-level heterogeneity and for time trends, the standard deviation of the log age at first marriage drops by approximately 5% with the introduction of no-fault divorce. We find that the mean age at first marriage increases slightly, suggesting that the mean person is slightly worse off with no-fault divorce. (JEL K0 , D1 )     

Asymptotic properties of the maximum-likelihood estimator for a class of birth-and-death processes admitting a unique stationary distribution

The asymptotic properties of the maximum-likelihood estimator of the parameter vector for a class of birth-and-death processes admitting a unique stationary distribution are studied. Also, it is shown that identifiability of the parameter vector with respect to the likelihood implies that the Fisher information matrix is of full rank. Two special cases of biological interest are presented. One of these, the exponential birth-and-death process, is proposed as a more appropriate model of density dependence than the logistic process.     

Negotiated Compensation for Solid-Waste Disposal Facility Siting: An Analysis of the Wisconsin Experience

Since enacting a unique facility siting law in 1981, Wisconsin has had unusual success in siting solid-waste management facilities. The law mandates a state-level technical review and licensing process and a local-level negotiation/arbitration process that deals with host community impacts and concerns. Data from the negotiated compensation agreements, a survey of facility proposers, and secondary data for the host communities are analyzed in relation to compensation levels. Concerns with community image and health risks and with facility management and equity issues are found to significantly and substantially increase negotiated compensation levels. In contrast, a focus on logistics and transportation concerns is associated with lower levels of compensation. Compensation increases with facility capacity but at a less than proportional rate. Higher levels of compensation are obtained by communities that accept compensation "in kind" in the form of free or reduced fees for host community waste disposal.     

ENGAGING THE NON-ATTENDING SPOUSE IN MARITAL THERAPY THROUGH THE USE OF THERAPIST-INITIATED WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

There is currently rather widespread acceptance among clinicians that conjoint marital therapy is the preferred format for treating marital difficulties. However, more often than not, it seems that the marital referral or inquiry for therapy stems from the efforts of one spouse, with the other spouse remaining uninvolved or resistant. Consequently, engaging the non-attending spouse in therapy is an important issue for professionals working with married couples.     

Summative scales for measuring community satisfaction

Results of this study indicate that pen and paper questionnaire procedures can be successfully adapted to random digit dialing telephone interview methods. Further, the study produced a reliable instrument for measuring attitudes about how residents perceive their communities as a place to live.