Individual and couple decision behavior under risk: evidence on the dynamics of power balance

This article reports results of an experiment designed to analyze the link between risky decisions made by couples and risky decisions made separately by each spouse. We estimate both the spouses and the couples’ degrees of risk aversion, we assess how the risk preferences of the two spouses aggregate when they make risky decisions, and we shed light on the dynamics of the decision process that takes place when couples make risky decisions. We find that, far from being fixed, the balance of power within the household is malleable. In most couples, men have, initially, more decision-making power than women but women who ultimately implement the joint decisions gain more and more power over the course of decision making.     

Cooperative Institutions and Inequality in the OECD: Bringing the Firm Back In*

Objective. To examine the relationship between firm‐level cooperation, inequality, and redistribution in 18 advanced industrialized democracies. Methods. The relationships are investigated using multiple regression analyses of institutional, political, and economic variables. Results. Multilevel models reveal that contrary to neocorporatism, firm‐level cooperative ties have significant inegalitarian effects, particularly in the distribution of pretax, pretransfer market income. The effects, however, are also felt in the distribution of posttax, posttransfer income. Conclusion. By paying attention to the effect of firm‐level cooperation, the study sheds new light on inequality in the OECD as a result of both market‐based and nonmarket coordination.     

Cross‐Border Earnings of U.S. Natives Along the U.S.‐Mexico Border*

Objective. This study explores whether the earnings of U.S.‐born cross‐border workers differ from those of their U.S.‐employed counterparts. We also analyze whether the cross‐border/non‐cross‐border wage differential changed during the 1990s—a decade when U.S.‐Mexico trade intensified and the maquiladora industry expanded. Methods. Employing decennial U.S. Census data from 1990 and 2000, this article estimates earnings functions and uses wage decomposition analysis to study changes in the earnings of U.S.‐born Hispanic and non‐Hispanic cross‐border workers. Results. The number of U.S.‐native cross‐border workers, while relatively small, increased significantly between 1990 and 2000, as did their earnings. A closer examination reveals that this cross‐border earnings premium only developed among non‐Hispanics. Conclusions. These findings indicate that some U.S. natives find lucrative employment opportunities on the Mexican side of the border, which might be diminished by additional restrictions for U.S.‐born residents to easily cross back and forth into Mexico.     

Coordinate-free analysis of trends in British social mobility

This paper is intended to make a contribution to the ongoing debate about declining social mobility in Great Britain by analyzing mobility tables based on data from the 1991 British Household Panel Survey and the 2005 General Household Survey. The models proposed here generalize Hauser's levels models and allow for a semi-parametric analysis of change in social mobility. The cell frequencies are assumed to be equal to the product of three effects: the effect of the father's position for the given year, the effect of the son's position for the given year, and the mobility effect related to the difference between the father's and the son's positions. A generalization of the iterative proportional fitting procedure is proposed and applied to computing the maximum likelihood estimates of the cell frequencies. The standard errors of the estimated parameters are computed under the product-multinomial sampling assumption. The results indicate opposing trends of mobility between the two timepoints. Fewer steps up or down in the society became less likely, while more steps became somewhat more likely.     

Interpretation of the coefficient of determination of an ANOVA model as a measure of polarization

In this paper, it is demonstrated that coefficient of determination of an ANOVA linear model provides a measure of polarization. Taking as the starting point the link between polarization and dispersion, we reformulate the measure of polarization of Zhang and Kanbur using the decomposition of the variance instead of the decomposition of the Theil index. We show that the proposed measure is equivalent to the coefficient of determination of an ANOVA linear model that explains, for example, the income of the households as a function of any population characteristic such as education, gender, occupation, etc. This result provides an alternative way to analyse polarization by sub-populations characteristics and at the same time allows us to compare sub-populations via the estimated coefficients of the ANOVA model.     

A Bayesian analysis of the Conway–Maxwell–Poisson cure rate model

The purpose of this paper is to develop a Bayesian analysis for the right-censored survival data when immune or cured individuals may be present in the population from which the data is taken. In our approach the number of competing causes of the event of interest follows the Conway–Maxwell–Poisson distribution which generalizes the Poisson distribution. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are used to develop a Bayesian procedure for the proposed model. Also, some discussions on the model selection and an illustration with a real data set are considered.     

Longitudinal Analysis of the Domains of Satisfaction Before and After Disability: Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effect of the onset of disability on life satisfaction and five different domains of satisfaction (health, household income, housing, job, leisure) for German individuals. Particular attention is paid to examining whether individuals can adapt to disability over time before and after its onset in terms of satisfaction. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for the period 1984?C2008, we estimate an innovative fixed-effects model on life satisfaction and each domain of satisfaction for working-age males (aged 21?C58), which allows us to estimate lag and lead effects and thus to test the anticipation and adaptation hypotheses. Although individual obtain complete adaptation to disability in terms of global life satisfaction (5?years after the onset), this adaptation is not complete in all domains of satisfaction. For example, despite the fact that the levels of health satisfaction drop as the individual becomes disabled, after the onset it increases but the levels are lower than those reached before the onset. In contrast, the adaptation is especially faster in the terms of leisure satisfaction (3?years after the onset), household income and housing satisfaction (5?years after the onset in both cases). Our results support the findings obtained in other psychological studies that conclude that the domain of disability extends far beyond health related concerns to encompass the person??s well-being definition of self and social position. Finally, these findings may help policy makers and government to promote social and economic measures and actions lead to increase the scores of global well-being and specific domains of satisfaction of this collective.     

Multifamily therapy in the community mental health network: A pragmatic randomized and controlled study

Multifamily therapy (MFT) is a psychotherapeutic group intervention for patients with severe mental disorders (SMDs) and their families. The present study is a multicenter, randomized, and controlled trial that analyzes the benefit of MFT during outpatient treatment. The recruited patients were randomly assigned to the experimental group (n = 26), which received 24 MFT sessions in addition to their treatment as usual (TAU), or to the control group (n = 29), which received only TAU (individual and family sessions). Six months after the inclusion in the MFT, the experimental group showed a significant decrease in number of visits to the psychiatric emergency services, number of psychiatric admissions, and the days of admission. The need for hospital care 6 months after recruitment was also lower in the experimental group compared to the control group. These results suggest that the implementation of MFT during outpatient treatment facilitates community management of people diagnosed with mental health problems.     

The use of diaries for understanding the experience of health and illness

While diaries as a method have a long tradition in sociological research, few studies to date have demonstrated its value for studying health and illness. This article intends to illustrate the importance of this method for health research. The implications of the use of solicited diaries to conduct research within the field of health and illness are discussed. The contributions that the method can make to sociological research on health and illness are explored, namely the potential to capture the everyday of ill people and their family members. Indeed, this method offers an opportunity to access the experience of illness in a multidimensional approach which is not easy for researchers to catch using other methods. The article aims to present an overview of the significance of the use of diaries in health research and will make a novel contribution to the sociology of health and illness.