No claim, no pain. Measuring the non-take-up of social assistance using register data

The main objectives of social assistance benefits, including poverty alleviation and labor-market or social reintegration, can be seriously compromised if support is difficult to access. While recent studies point to high non-take-up rates, existing evidence does not make full use of the information recorded by benefit agencies. Most studies have to rely on interview-based data, with misreporting and measurement errors affecting the variables needed to establish both benefit receipt and benefit entitlement. In this paper, we exploit a unique combination of Finnish administrative data and eligibility simulations based on the tax-benefit calculator of the Finnish authorities, carefully investigating the measurement issues that remain. We find rates of non-take-up that are both substantial and robust: 40 to 50% of those eligible do not claim. Using repeated cross-section estimations for years 1996?C2003, we identify a set of stable determinants of claiming behavior and suggest that changes in behavior could drive the observed downward trend in take-up rates during the post-recession period. We discuss the poverty implications of our results.     

Exploring the relationship between parents’ and children’s housework time in Spain

Intergenerational transmission has been successfully employed in economic research to explain the persistence of certain economic behaviors across generations. This paper evaluates the relevance of this transmission process in the formation of gender roles during childhood. In particular, we analyze the relationship between parents?? and children??s housework allocation patterns. We propose a simple theoretical model that predicts that parents with a strong adherence to gender to traditional gender norms??as proxied by their division of household labor??are more likely to allocate housework to children in a way that reflects stereotypes of men??s and women??s domestic tasks. The empirical application is carried out with data from the 2002?C2003 Spanish Time Use Survey. The sample restricts to two-parent households with at least one child aged 10?C17?years. We find a significant positive correlation between a more egalitarian parents?? allocation of housework and a less asymmetrical distribution of domestic chores between sons and daughters.     

Labor Unions and Life Satisfaction: Evidence from New Data

While a growing literature demonstrates the impact of socio-political factors on citizens’ quality of life, scholars have paid comparatively little attention to the role political organizations such as labor unions play in this regard. We examine labor organization as a determinant of cross-national variation in life satisfaction across a sample of advanced industrial polities. Our findings strongly suggest that unions increase the life satisfaction of citizens, and that that this effect holds for non-union members as well. Moreover, we also find that labor organization has the strongest impact on the subjective well-being of citizens with lower incomes. We confirm these hypotheses using both individual and aggregate-level data from fourteen nations. We show these relationships to have an independent and separable impact from other economic, political, and cultural determinants. The implications for the study of life satisfaction and of labor unions as political actors in general are discussed.     

Small Area Indices of Multiple Deprivation in South Africa

This paper presents the Provincial Indices of Multiple Deprivation that were constructed by the authors at ward level using 2001 Census data for each of South Africa’s nine provinces. The principles adopted in conceptualising the indices are described and multiple deprivation is defined as a weighted combination of discrete dimensions of deprivation. The methodological approach used is outlined and key findings are presented for one province—the Eastern Cape. The paper summarises the ways in which the research is being developed further and the potential uses of these tools for policy and research.     

Fathers’ Financial Support of Children in a Low Income Community in South Africa

We used data from the Birth to Twenty Cohort study to understand children’s receipt of financial support from their fathers in a low income, Black community in urban South Africa. Specifically, we (1) described fathers’ financial support over the life course of children; (2) estimated survival probabilities of receiving support for all children and not receiving support for children who experienced a parental union dissolution; and (3) identified factors that explained variation in the receipt of support after a union dissolution. Results suggest that most children received full or partial support throughout the life course. Furthermore, a high proportion of children received support after a union dissolution with much of the variation driven by pre-dissolution support, father’s education and the presence of extended kin.     

Infant Preference for Natural Texture Statistics is Modulated by Contrast Polarity

Adult observers are sensitive to statistical regularities present in natural images. Developmentally, research has shown that children do not show sensitivity to these natural regularities until approximately 8–10 years of age. This finding is surprising given that even infants gradually encode a range of high‐level statistical regularities of their visual environment in the first year of life, We suggest that infants may in fact exhibit sensitivity to natural image statistics under circumstances where images of complex, natural textures, such as a photograph of rocks, are used as experimental stimuli and natural appearance is substantially manipulated. We tested this hypothesis by examining how infants' visual preference for real versus computer‐generated synthetic textures was modulated by contrast negation, which produces an image similar to a photographic negative. We observed that older infants' (9‐months of age) preferential looking behavior in this task was affected by contrast polarity, suggesting that the infant visual system is sensitive to deviations from natural texture appearance, including (1) discrepancies in appearance that differentiate natural and synthetic textures from one another and (2) the disruption of contrast polarity following negation. We discuss our results in the context of adult texture processing and the “perceptual narrowing” of visual recognition during the first year of life.     

Individuals and Communities: the Importance of Neighbors Volunteering

In this analysis, I examine the effects of community-level volunteering on an individual’s choices regarding time – whether to work and whether to volunteer. In order to better explain the decision to volunteer, a classic pure public goods structure is contrasted with a less restrictive impure public goods model that admits other possible private motivations. The results of this study undermine the neoclassical notion that volunteering can be understood solely as a pure public good that is provided less when others are seen to be contributing. In fact, individuals are found to be more, not less, likely to volunteer when others in their communities do so. An innovative instrumental variables strategy is used to account for reflection bias and the possible endogeneity caused by selective sorting of individuals into neighborhoods, which allows for a causal interpretation of these results. Employment regressions provide preliminary evidence that average volunteering relates, to some extent, with the decision of whether to participate in the labor force. Variations in the effect of average volunteering across age and gender are also explored. The present work is unique by virtue of its use of a large and representative dataset, along with rigorous statistical testing. I use United States Census 2000 Summary File 3 and Current Population Survey (CPS) 2004–2007 September Supplement file data and control for various individual and community-level characteristics.     

Native Friends and Host Country Identification among Adolescent Immigrants in Germany: The Role of Ethnic Boundaries

Many studies find that high shares of native friends are positively related to immigrant youths' identification with the host country. By examining various immigrant groups together, these studies imply that having native friends matters in the same way for the national identification in different immigrant groups. In contrast, we argue that the extent to which having native friends affects immigrants' national identification depends on both immigrant group characteristics and the receiving context, especially on ethnic boundaries and related group differences in perceived discrimination and the compatibility of ethnic and national identities. Analyses based on data from the National Educational Panel Study in Germany that are representative of 15‐year‐old adolescents in secondary schools indeed reveal pronounced group differences: While national identification of ethnic German repatriates as well as of adolescents of former Yugoslavian and Southern European origin is related to the share of native friends, as hypothesized, we do not find this association for immigrants of Turkish and Polish origin. Our finding underlines the importance of theoretically as well as empirically accounting for group differences.     

Using a Verbal Analysis of Lady Gaga’s Applause as a Classroom Exercise for Teaching Verbal Behavior

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Learning Skinner’s (1957) verbal behavior taxonomy requires extensive study and practice. Thus, novel classroom exercises might serve this goal. The present...     

Winning a Battle but Losing the War? Third Sector and Social Policy in Latin America: The Case of Uruguay

This paper analyzes some aspects of the third sector’s involvement process in the provision of public social services. Using evidence garnered in previous research based on in-depth interviews, I offer elements toward an assessment of the consequences this process has produced not only in terms of the gains and losses it has produced for social policy, but also for the very identity and constitutive characteristics of the third sector. The evidence hereby compiled strengthens skepticism toward the hypothesis that sees a transformative potential in the role of the third sector in social policy in Latin America. This skepticism arises from issues detected by involved actors themselves and that are linked to the weakness of the sector as a whole.