Analysing home-ownership of couples: The effect of selecting couples at the time of the survey

The analysis of events encountered by couple and family households may suffer from sample selection bias when data are restricted to couples existing at the moment of interview. The paper discusses the effect of sample selection bias on event history analyses of buying a home by comparing analyses performed on a sample of existing couples with analyses of a more complete sample including past as well as current partner relationships. The results show that, although home-buying in relationships that have ended differs clearly from behaviour in existing relationships, sample selection bias is not alarmingly large.     

Bargaining over multiple issues with maximin and leximin preferences

Global bargaining problems over a finite number of different issues are formalized as cartesian products of classical bargaining problems. For maximin and leximin bargainers we characterize global bargaining solutions that are efficient and satisfy the requirement that bargaining separately or globally leads to equivalent outcomes. Global solutions in this class are constructed from the family of monotone path solutions for classical bargaining problems. We are indebted to two anonymous referees for comments. Financial support from CENTRA (EC014-2005), CREA-Barcelona Economics, and Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (BEC2003-03111, SEJ2006-05441) is gratefully acknowledged.     

Union Dissolution and Mobility: Who Moves From the Family Home After Separation?

We investigate which partner of a 2‐gender couple moves out after separation. We test hypotheses on the impact of differences between the partners in the costs of moving out and resources, using data from the Divorce in the Netherlands survey (N = 1,537 ex‐couples who separated between 1972 and 1998). Ex‐partners initiating the separation were more likely to leave, as were those for whom a new partnership was a reason for the separation. An ex‐partner with custody of children was less likely to leave, as was an ex‐partner with more resources. A woman was less likely to leave when the joint children no longer lived at home or when the partnership had been longer lasting.     

Predictive control of posterior robustness for sample size choice in a Bernoulli model

In this article we consider the sample size determination problem in the context of robust Bayesian parameter estimation of the Bernoulli model. Following a robust approach, we consider classes of conjugate Beta prior distributions for the unknown parameter. We assume that inference is robust if posterior quantities of interest (such as point estimates and limits of credible intervals) do not change too much as the prior varies in the selected classes of priors. For the sample size problem, we consider criteria based on predictive distributions of lower bound, upper bound and range of the posterior quantity of interest. The sample size is selected so that, before observing the data, one is confident to observe a small value for the posterior range and, depending on design goals, a large (small) value of the lower (upper) bound of the quantity of interest. We also discuss relationships with and comparison to non robust and non informative Bayesian methods.     

Technology-Based Innovation for Independent Living: Policy and Innovation in the United Kingdom,Scandinavia, and the United States

Interest in utilizing technology to help older adults remain living at home is growing; however, uptake remains low. We present a conceptual framework for understanding independent living technology innovation within health and social services. Public policy and innovation in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia are profiled as case studies. In all profiled countries, independent living technology is more rapidly advancing than associated state policy, regulation, and payment systems. The findings from this comparative analysis reveal areas for further exploration, including policy subsystem environments in which technologies and services are regulated, as well as trends and desires of older adults and their caregivers within particular cultural contexts.     

Latino Racial Reporting in the US: To Be or Not To Be

This review focuses on how Latinos report their race. This is an area that has recently experienced a major surge of interest in both government and academic circles. This review of the literature examines how and why Latinos report their race on the census, in surveys and in more qualitative studies. It reviews the vibrant and growing scholarly literature relevant to the questions of the placement – by self or others – of Latinos along the US color line, what determines it and how the Census has coped and is coping with it. We begin with a brief review of the history of Latino classification in the census and then discuss the factors influencing racial reporting. These include national origin and skin color, acculturation and generational status, socioeconomic status, perceived discrimination and identification with others who have experienced actual discrimination, location, and question format. We end with a discussion of the implications of the recent 2010 Alternative Questionnaire Experiment conducted by the census, and conclude with suggestions for future research.     

The Chameleon Effect as Social Glue: Evidence for the Evolutionary Significance of Nonconscious Mimicry

The chameleon effect refers to the tendency to adopt the postures, gestures, and mannerisms of interaction partners (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). This type of mimicry occurs outside of conscious awareness, and without any intent to mimic or imitate. Empirical evidence suggests a bi-directional relationship between nonconscious mimicry on the one hand, and liking, rapport, and affiliation on the other. That is, nonconscious mimicry creates affiliation, and affiliation can be expressed through nonconscious mimicry. We argue that mimicry played an important role in human evolution. Initially, mimicry may have had survival value by helping humans communicate. We propose that the purpose of mimicry has now evolved to serve a social function. Nonconscious behavioral mimicry increases affiliation, which serves to foster relationships with others. We review current research in light of this proposed framework and suggest future areas of research.     

Testing for sub-models of the skew <Emphasis Type="Italic">t</Emphasis>-distribution

The skew t-distribution includes both the skew normal and the normal distributions as special cases. Inference for the skew t-model becomes problematic in these cases because the expected information matrix is singular and the parameter corresponding to the degrees of freedom takes a value at the boundary of its parameter space. In particular, the distributions of the likelihood ratio statistics for testing the null hypotheses of skew normality and normality are not asymptotically \(\chi ^2\). The asymptotic distributions of the likelihood ratio statistics are considered by applying the results of Self and Liang (J Am Stat Assoc 82:605–610, 1987) for boundary-parameter inference in terms of reparameterizations designed to remove the singularity of the information matrix. The Self–Liang asymptotic distributions are mixtures, and it is shown that their accuracy can be improved substantially by correcting the mixing probabilities. Furthermore, although the asymptotic distributions are non-standard, versions of Bartlett correction are developed that afford additional accuracy. Bootstrap procedures for estimating the mixing probabilities and the Bartlett adjustment factors are shown to produce excellent approximations, even for small sample sizes.     

The Connections between Family Formation and First-time Home Ownership in the Context of West Germany and the Netherlands

Using data from retrospective life course surveys held in West Germany and the Netherlands in the 1980s and early 1990s, we investigate the interconnections between first partnership, first marriage, and first childbirth, on the one hand, and first-time home ownership, on the other. We consider the temporal connection between events in the family life course and home ownership from various angles, proceeding from survival analyses to analyses of the timing and ordering of the distinct events and a multivariate analysis of the transition to home ownership. We find marked differences between countries and cohorts in this temporal connection.