Essentialist beliefs about sexuality-related categories / Creencias esencialistas sobre diferentes categorías relacionadas con la sexualidad

People form essentialist beliefs about social categories as a strategy to organize their world and to make sense of the similarities and differences between different categories. This research examines four dimensions of essentialist thinking (biological basis, immutability, clarity of discreteness and informativeness) across different sexuality-related categories. Specifically, the categories of gays, lesbians, transsexuals, paedophiles, rapists and prostitutes were studied. Results show that essentialist beliefs of the six categories vary across dimensions and that essentialist dimensions function independently. Therefore, we discuss the relative usefulness of taking a global measurement as opposed to analysing the dimensions of essentialism separately.     

Russian Mortality Crisis and the Quality of Vital Statistics

Mortality from ill-defined conditions in Russia has the fastest rate of increase compared to all other major causes of death. High proportion of deaths in this category is indicative for low quality of mortality statistics. This article examines the trends and possible causes of mortality from ill-defined conditions in Russia. During 1991–2005, mortality from ill-defined conditions in Russia increased in all age groups. The pace of increase was particularly high at working ages and the mean expected age at death from ill-defined conditions has shifted to younger ages, particularly for men. The analysis of individual medical death certificates issued in Kirov and Smolensk regions of Russia demonstrate that 89–100% of working-age deaths from ill-defined conditions correspond to human bodies found in a state of decomposition. Data from Smolensk region shows that over 60% of these decedents were unemployed. Temporal trends of mortality from ill-defined conditions and injuries of undetermined intent in Moscow city suggest that deaths from the latter cause were probably misclassified as ill-defined conditions. This practice can lead to underestimation of mortality from external causes. Growing number of socially isolated marginalized people in Russia and insufficient investigation of the circumstances of their death contribute to the observed trends in mortality from ill-defined conditions.     

Parenting with a Disability and Child Mental Health: A Propensity Score Analysis

Little research has examined the impact of having a parent with a disability on child mental health. This study used data from 7,116 families of children who participated in the 2006 National Health Interview Survey and propensity score matching (PSM) to investigate this question. Prior to PSM, differences in Child Mental Health Brief scores were significant with a moderate effect size. After PSM, differences in Child Mental Health Brief scores were still significant, but the effect size was small. Results indicate that much of the mental health risk for children of parents with disabilities is connected to related issues.     

The socioeconomic gradient in health: how important is material deprivation?

In this paper we use the Spanish Living Conditions Survey (2005–2008) to investigate the existence of a socioeconomic gradient in health when alternative measures of socioeconomic status, apart from income, are considered. In particular we construct a material deprivation index that reflects minimum standards of quality of life and that incorporates comparison effects with societal peers and we estimate health equations with probit adapted least squares, fixed effects and instrumental variables. Our results reveal that the relationship between health and income operates through comparison information with respect to societal peers. In contrast, material deprivation in terms of financial difficulties, basic necessities and housing conditions exerts a direct effect on individual health. Mixed evidence is found with respect to gender.     

Motivation vs. relevance: Using strong ties to find a job in Urban China

While the idea that contacts matter in finding a job is intuitively appealing, we still do not know—after decades of research—how and why strong ties benefit job seekers. To resolve this confusion, we need to theorize how specific characteristics of ties are related to the mechanisms that make job search through contacts effective. We have reasons to expect that, while a contact’s motivation influences the likelihood that a job seeker receives an offer, her homophily with the job seeker on occupation and other job-relevant attributes influences the quality of the offer. The use of strong ties among university students to find jobs in China provides a unique opportunity to empirically isolate the relationship between contact characteristics and the mechanisms through which contacts benefit the job seeker. I tested my hypotheses with data on both the successful and unsuccessful job searches of 478 graduates of China’s flagship universities, who, as first-time job seekers, primarily used strong ties. Survey results are consistent with my hypotheses: job seekers who used strong ties to look for jobs had more offers—but not better offers—than those who used only formal methods.     

The facility location problem with Bernoulli demands

This paper presents the facility location problem with Bernoulli demands. In this capacitated discrete location stochastic problem the goal is to define an a priori solution for the locations of the facilities and for the allocation of customers to the operating facilities that minimizes the sum of the fixed costs of the open facilities plus the expected value of the recourse function. The problem is formulated as a two-stage stochastic program and two different recourse actions are considered. For each of them, a closed form is presented for the recourse function and a deterministic equivalent formulation is obtained for the case in which the probability of demand is the same for all customers. Numerical results from computational experiments are presented and analyzed.     

Economic Gender gap in the Global South: How Public Institutions Matter

One of the most challenging gender gaps in the Global South remains in the economic sphere. This paper examines how public institutions affect the gender gap in economic participation and opportunities in 74 developing and emerging countries during the period 2006–2016. We find that the public institutional environment is closely related to the economic gender gap. Specifically, the protection of property rights and guaranteeing security seem to be two key factors associated to lower economic gender inequality. Nevertheless, public institutions do not matter equally throughout economically backward countries. Whereas in emerging countries, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, a broad variety of institutional aspects, including undue influence on judicial and government decisions, are closely related to the economic gender gap, in low-income developing countries, such as Sub-Saharan countries, the problems of ethics and corruption stand out as a particularly remarkable element against economic gender equality. Some significant policy implications are derived from our findings regarding the potential of public institution reforms to reduce the economic gender gap.

     

Modified Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for Bayesian inference

Statistics and Computing - The Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) method has been recognized as a powerful sampling tool in computational statistics. We show that performance of HMC can be significantly...