Has Opposition to Immigration Increased in the United States after the Economic Crisis? An Experimental Approach

We employ two population‐level experiments to accurately measure opposition to immigration before and after the economic crisis of 2008. Our design explicitly addresses social desirability bias, which is the tendency to give responses that are seen favorably by others and can lead to substantial underreporting of opposition to immigration. We find that overt opposition to immigration, expressed as support for a closed border, increases slightly after the crisis. However, once we account for social desirability bias, no significant increase remains. We conclude that the observed increase in anti‐immigration sentiment in the post‐crisis United States is attributable to greater expression of opposition rather than any underlying change in attitudes.     

Inferences on the Means of Two Log-Normal Distributions: A Computational Approach Test

In this article, we propose a novel approach for testing the equality of two log-normal populations using a computational approach test (CAT) that does not require explicit knowledge of the sampling distribution of the test statistic. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed approach can perform hypothesis testing with satisfying actual size even at small sample sizes. Overall, it is superior to other existing methods. Also, a CAT is proposed for testing about reliability of two log-normal populations when the means are the same. Simulations show that the actual size of this new approach is close to nominal level and better than the score test. At the end, the proposed methods are illustrated using two examples.     

Feminist and empowerment theory and social work practice

Feminist and empowerment theories are especially important to the understanding of individual and sociopolitical levels of social work assessment and intervention. Incorporating feminist and empowerment approaches in practice will provide social workers with the knowledge, values and skills most likely to promote human rights and social justice. In this paper, we present an overview of both theories and illustrate them with a case example.     

医疗需求与中国医疗费用增长——基于城乡老年医疗支出差异的视角

在人口老龄化和老年医疗支出城乡差异凸显的背景下,中国医疗费用增长部分源于合理的健康需求。利用中国营养与健康调查1991—2011年的八轮数据,构造出生组跟踪样本,分别考察城乡居民医疗支出的年龄效应,估算城乡老年医疗需求导致的费用上涨,可以发现:城市居民的人均医疗支出随年龄显著增加,但农村居民的人均医疗支出随年龄增长的趋势并不明显。而忽略出生组效应,会低估城乡老年医疗支出的差距。城乡老年医疗支出差距缩小,将导致医疗费用在2010—2030年年均实际增长约5.2%。在控制医疗总费用上涨的同时,医疗保险制度需根据老年医疗需求,调整医疗资源配置结构。