Smaller net or just fewer to catch? Disentangling the causes for the varying sizes of minimum income schemes

The number of social assistance recipients varies significantly between welfare states. Social assistance is a last-resort residual benefit, so a high number of receipts may be related to policies for first-tier benefits, social assistance and their implementation, as well as need factors (unemployment rate and low income). Considering the strong political will to diminish the receipt of last-resort benefits, we demonstrated a way to decompose the reasons for eligibility in a cross-national analysis of two Nordic countries, namely Finland and Sweden. By using administrative register microdata, eligibility simulations and policy swaps, we found that the legislative features of social assistance, such as more extensive benefit norms and earning disregard, contribute to Finland's higher eligibility rate and likely explain some of the reasons for its higher number of recipients. Finland also exhibited lower non-take-up rates among those eligible, which implies better access to benefits than in Sweden.     

Aggression in toddlers: Associations with temper loss and parent-child conflict

Using a normative US sample of 477 mothers of 6- to 24- month-old children, we explored the relations among toddlers’ physical aggression, child temper loss, and parent-child conflict to gain a better understanding of how aggression develops from infancy to toddlerhood. An inventory of specific aggressive acts was subject to factor analysis to test whether the acts clustered as hypothesized. Consistent with our hypothesis, confirmatory factor analyses supported the distinction between the two types of aggression, directed and exploratory physical aggression. Although the two types were correlated, they showed differential associations with temper loss and parent-child conflict consistent with theory. Directed aggression had a relatively stronger relation with child defiance and temper loss than did exploratory aggression. Moreover, the association between directed aggression and defiance was stronger for older children. The findings from this cross-sectional study provide preliminary support for two forms of early aggression that may differ in trajectory and context.     

A multivariate extension of the Lorenz curve based on copulas and a related multivariate Gini coefficient

The Journal of Economic Inequality - We propose an extension of the univariate Lorenz curve and of the Gini coefficient to the multivariate case, i.e., to simultaneously measure inequality in more...