The Decomposition of Economic Outcomes as a Result of Changes in Brazil’s Male Age–Education Structure

In Brazil, the age and education compositions of the male labor force is changing with great regional variation. Based on Demographic Census microdata, results indicate that cohort size has a negative impact on earnings, but this effect is decreasing over time. In this study we consider the impact on earnings by age and education, as well as estimated income inequality reduction and racial differentials. Fertility decline and improve regarding educational attainment had a significant influence on the decline of income inequality in the country. Moreover, the non-white population has been experiencing less success in relation to educational achievement, compared to the white population.     

What is Sexual Satisfaction? Thematic Analysis of Lay People's Definitions

Sexual satisfaction is an important indicator of sexual health and is strongly associated with relationship satisfaction. However, research exploring lay definitions of sexual satisfaction has been scarce. We present thematic analysis of written responses of 449 women and 311 men to the question “How would you define sexual satisfaction?” The participants were heterosexual individuals with a mean age of 36.05 years (SD = 8.34) involved in a committed exclusive relationship. In this exploratory study, two main themes were identified: personal sexual well-being and dyadic processes. The first theme focuses on the positive aspects of individual sexual experience, such as pleasure, positive feelings, arousal, sexual openness, and orgasm. The second theme emphasizes relational dimensions, such as mutuality, romance, expression of feelings, creativity, acting out desires, and frequency of sexual activity. Our results highlight that mutual pleasure is a crucial component of sexual satisfaction and that sexual satisfaction derives from positive sexual experiences and not from the absence of conflict or dysfunction. The findings support definitions and models of sexual satisfaction that focus on positive sexual outcomes and the use of measures that incorporate items linked to personal and dyadic sexual rewards for both men and women.     

Maternal union instability and childhood mortality risk in the Global South, 2010–14

Efforts to improve child survival in lower-income countries typically focus on fundamental factors such as economic resources and infrastructure provision, even though research from post-industrial countries confirms that family instability has important health consequences. We tested the association between maternal union instability and children’s mortality risk in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia using children’s actual experience of mortality (discrete-time probit hazard models) as well as their experience of untreated morbidity (probit regression). Children of divorced/separated mothers experience compromised survival chances, but children of mothers who have never been in a union generally do not. Among children of partnered women, those whose mothers have experienced prior union transitions have a higher mortality risk. Targeting children of mothers who have experienced union instability—regardless of current union status—may augment ongoing efforts to reduce childhood mortality, especially in Africa and Latin America where union transitions are common.     

Effects of the social dominance orientation on environmental attitudes of Chilean university students / Efectos de la orientación a la dominancia social sobre las actitudes ambientales de universitarios chilenos

By adopting a multidimensional approach to environmental attitudes (apathy, anthropocentrism, connectedness and emotional affinity with nature), this study explores the relationships between these dimensions, social dominance orientation (SDO) and political orientation. Two hundred and sixty-two Chilean university students filled out an ad hoc online questionnaire. Two confirmatory factorial analyses showed the four typologies of environmental attitudes and the two factors for SDO, which are labelled group dominance and opposition to equality. Through hierarchical regressions, group dominance showed higher explanatory power of environmental attitudes than political orientation. Furthermore, using the bootstrap procedure we showed that group dominance mediated between political orientation and attitudes of apathy, anthropocentrism and connectedness, while opposition to equality mediated between apathy and emotional affinity. We conclude that SDO is an important variable for measuring political ideology while also providing new nuances when analysing the relationships with environmental attitudes.     

Estimation and diagnostic analysis in skew-generalized-normal regression models

The skew-generalized-normal distribution [Arellano-Valle, RB, Gómez, HW, Quintana, FA. A new class of skew-normal distributions. Comm Statist Theory Methods 2004;33(7):1465–1480] is a class of asymmetric normal distributions, which contains the normal and skew-normal distributions as special cases. The main virtues of this distribution is that it is easy to simulate from and it also supplies a genuine expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation. In this paper, we extend the EM algorithm for linear regression models assuming skew-generalized-normal random errors and we develop a diagnostics analyses via local influence and generalized leverage, following Zhu and Lee's approach. This is because Cook's well-known approach would be more complicated to use to obtain measures of local influence. Finally, results obtained for a real data set are reported, illustrating the usefulness of the proposed method.     

Public intellectuals,political satire and the birth of activist public relations: The case of Attic Comedy

The purpose of this article is to explore the origins of dissent public relations and to establish its emergence in the context of the ancient Greek comedy represented by Aristophanes. Indeed, Attic Comedy (also known as Old Comedy) was the first great example of today’s mass communication, in which political satire was used to dissent and protest against political and social circumstances in fifth-century BC Athens. This situation was conditioned by the Peloponnesian War and its political, economic and social consequences. From this perspective, this article also constitutes an investigation into the intellectual history of public relations, of which Aristophanes can be considered to be one of the first practitioners.     

Job-Related Well-Being of Immigrants

Social Indicators Research - Considerable literature exists on the acculturation and adaptation of immigrants. For the most part, studies looked at their psychological and social adaptation to the...     

Activity patterns and temporal niche partitioning of dogs and medium-sized wild mammals in urban parks of Xalapa,Mexico

Urban Ecosystems - Free-ranging domestic dogs are the world most common exotic carnivore species that could negatively interact with the native wildlife as predators, competitors, and disease...     

Parent–Adolescent Sexual Communication and Its Association With Adolescent Sexual Behaviors: A Nationally Representative Analysis in the Netherlands

Sexual communication is a principal means of transmitting sexual values, beliefs, expectations, and knowledge from parents to children. Although this area has received considerable research attention, more studies with representative samples are needed to assure that findings are reflective of populations of interest. A nationally representative sample of parent–adolescent dyads (N = 2,965; mean adolescent age = 13.8 years) in the Netherlands was employed to examine the frequency of parent–adolescent sexual communication and its association with adolescent sexual behaviors (defined as sexual initiation, condom use, and contraceptive pill use). Nine communication topics in the areas of anatomy, relationships and rights, and protection and contraception were examined. In all, 75%of parents reported having discussed at least one topic multiple times with their adolescents. Romantic relationships were discussed most frequently. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses indicated that parent–adolescent sexual communication on protection and contraception was positively associated with adolescent sexual initiation and contraceptive pill use but not condom use. This may reflect that adolescents, when they become sexually active, are more likely to discuss sexuality with their parents. Findings are interpreted within the context of Dutch culture, which is generally accepting of adolescent sexuality and characterized by open sexual communication.     

Estimation for seasonal fractional ARIMA with stable innovations via the empirical characteristic function method

Seasonal fractional ARIMA (ARFISMA) model with infinite variance innovations is used in the analysis of seasonal long-memory time series with large fluctuations (heavy-tailed distributions). Two methods, which are the empirical characteristic function (ECF) procedure developed by Knight and Yu [The empirical characteristic function in time series estimation. Econometric Theory. 2002;18:691–721] and the Two-Step method (TSM) are proposed to estimate the parameters of stable ARFISMA model. The ECF method estimates simultaneously all the parameters, while the TSM considers in the first step the Markov Chains Monte Carlo–Whittle approach introduced by Ndongo et al. [Estimation of long-memory parameters for seasonal fractional ARIMA with stable innovations. Stat Methodol. 2010;7:141–151], combined with the maximum likelihood estimation method developed by Alvarez and Olivares [Méthodes d'estimation pour des lois stables avec des applications en finance. Journal de la Société Française de Statistique. 2005;1(4):23–54] in the second step. Monte Carlo simulations are also used to evaluate the finite sample performance of these estimation techniques.