Helping Uganda's street children

With the help of theoretical paradigms of social behavior, we use both qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate a recent government‐initiated program for relocating and resettling orphans and street children in Uganda. We first describe this program, which we have called the Model for Orphan Resettlement and Education (MORE). MORE is an inventive approach in the battle against the problem of orphaned children living on the streets of urban centers in Africa. The government of Uganda has developed this model to effectively educate and re‐socialize children who have been living on the streets of the capital city, Kampala. We then analyze this program, highlighting both the positive and negative aspects, and suggest ways it can be adapted to be more effective and sustainable in meeting the needs of Uganda as well as other sub‐Saharan African countries that face similar problems.     

THE POWER OF THE LITTLE BLUE PILL: INNOVATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF LIFESTYLE DRUGS IN AN AGING POPULATION

The launch of Viagra in April 1998 led to a historically unprecedented high usage of erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs. We test whether Viagra's introduction significantly influenced outcomes for its target population such as sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates of older men, as well as its nontarget populations, such as divorces, natality, the distribution of the age spread within couples, female STDs, and sexual assault rates. We find causal evidence that Viagra's introduction increased gonorrhea rates in older men by 15%–28%. We find no significant evidence of any effects on other variables. We take this as evidence that this lifestyle drug causes significant changes in choices only which affect short‐term outcomes, while long‐term planned decisions are unaffected. Overall, we find that the welfare impacts of Viagra with respect to our outcomes of interest are positive and large. (JEL I1, J1, O33)     

Systematic patterning in phonologically‐motivated orthographic variation

Social media features a wide range of non‐standard spellings, many of which appear inspired by phonological variation. However, the nature of the connection between variation across the spoken and written modalities remains poorly understood. Are phonological variables transferred to writing on the level of graphemes, or is the larger system of contextual patterning also transferred? This paper considers orthographic coda deletions corresponding to the phonological variables of (ing) and (t,d). In both cases, orthography mirrors speech: reduction of the ‐ing suffix depends on the word's syntactic category, and reduction of the ‐t,‐d suffix depends on the succeeding phonological context. These spellings are more frequently used in informal conversational contexts, and in areas with high proportions of African Americans, again mirroring the patterning of the associated phonological variables. This suggests a deep connection between variation in the two modalities, necessitating a new account of the production of cross‐modal variation.     

Fetal Positions: Unraveling the Influence of Religion on Premarital Pregnancy Resolution*

Objective. This study illustrates the ways religiosity and denominational affiliation influence the probability that a young woman will have an abortion. Methods. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), measures of sexual behavior, out‐of‐wedlock pregnancy, and out‐of‐wedlock pregnancy resolution are regressed on religiosity and denominational affiliation. Results. Religiosity indirectly reduces the likelihood that a woman will have an abortion by reducing the probability that she will have an out‐of‐wedlock pregnancy. Among women who conceive out of wedlock, religiosity increases the likelihood of marriage before birth, and thereby reduces the probability of abortion. However, among women who conceive out of wedlock and do not marry before birth, religiosity is unrelated to the probability of having an abortion. Conclusions. Religiosity affects the probability that a woman will obtain an abortion more through its influence on choices about sex and marriage, and less through its influence on attitudes about abortion.     

Influence of Routine Slaughtering on the Evolution of BSE: Example of British and French Slaughterings

The aim of this article is to build a methodology allowing the study and the comparison of the potential spread of BSE at the scale of countries under different routine slaughtering conditions in order to evaluate the risk of nonextinction due to this slaughtering. We first model the evolution in discrete time of the proportion of animals in the latent period and that of infectives, assuming a very large branching population not necessarily constant in size, two age classes, less than 1-year-old animals, and adult animals. We analytically derive a bifurcation parameter rho(0) allowing us to predict either endemicity or extinction of the disease, which has the meaning of an epidemiological reproductive rate. We show that the classical reproductive number R(0) cannot be used for prediction if the size of the population, when healthy, does not remain stable throughout time. We illustrate the qualitative results by means of simulations with either the British routine slaughtering probabilities or the French ones, the other conditions being assumed identical in both countries. We show that the French probabilities lead to a higher risk of spread of the disease than the British ones, this result being mainly due to a smaller value of the routine slaughtering probability of the adult animals in France than in Great Britain.     

Stay away from fair coins: A Condorcet jury theorem

 This paper formulates a Condorcet Jury Theorem and emphasizes the necessity of the condition of boundedness away from one-half or staying away from fair coins. Received: 4 March 1996/Accepted: 3 June 1996     

Cyclicity and synchrony of historical outbreaks of the beech caterpillar,Quadricalcarifera punctatella (Motschulsky) in Japan

Historical records of the incidence of defoliation caused by the beech caterpillar,Quadricalcarifera punctatella (Motschulsky) in northern Japanese prefectures from 1910–1993 were used to characterize the cyclicity and synchrony of outbreaks. Cyclicity and synchrony were quantified using standard Box-Jenkins time series methods as well as spectral analysis and simple Markov models. Statistical analysis of these records indicated the presence of quasi-periodic behavior with 8–11 yr between outbreaks. Outbreaks tended to occur synchronously among different prefectures, though the onset of outbreaks was typically lagged. This study illustrates the use of specific statistical methods for characterizing cyclicity and synchrony from crude records of the presence/absence of outbreaks.     

Estimates of coverage of the population by sex,race, and age in the 1970 census

Several estimates of total net underenumeration and of net census errors by sex, race (white, Negro-and-other-races, Negro), and age (five-year groups) in the 1960 and 1970 Censuses, for the total population of the United States, derived by the methods of demographic analysis, are presented. The different data, procedures, and assumptions employed in developing the various estimates are described briefly, and the findings are then discussed in terms of a”preferred” set of estimates. The preferred set of estimates of corrected population for 1970 combines estimates for persons under age 35 based directly on birth, death, and migration statistics, estimates for females aged 35 to 64 based on the Coale-Zelnik estimates (white) for 1950 or the Coale-Rives estimates (Negro) for 1960, estimates for males aged 35 to 64 based on the use of expected sex ratios, and estimates for the population 65 and over based on”Medicare” enrollments and expected sex ratios. These estimates indicate an overall net underenumeration of 5.3 million persons or 2.5 percent in 1970, as compared with 5.1 million or 2.7 percent in 1960, and a net underenumeration of 1.9 percent for whites and of 7.7 percent for Negroes in 1970, as compared with 2.0 percent and 8.0 percent, respectively, in 1960. As in 1960, undercoverage in 1970 was greatest for Negro males (9.9 percent); net error rates exceeded 12 percent in each age group 20 to 49 and reached 17 to 19 percent at ages 25 to 44. All sex-race groups showed marked increases between 1960 and 1970 for children under ten and marked declines at ages ten to 24. Equally reliable estimates of population coverage cannot be prepared for states and smaller geographic units or for the population of Spanish ancestry.     

A Biodemographic Interpretation of Life Span

The life span of individuals and the life expectancy of the populations they comprise have always been topics of interest to scientists and the lay population. In modern times, forecasts of life span and life expectancy have become particularly important public policy issues because of their influence on the future solvency of age‐entitlement programs. The authors present a brief discussion of the origin of the notion of life span, discuss its relevance and importance in light of recent developments in the emerging field of the biodemography of aging, and explore the theoretical and biological forces that influence the duration of life of sexually reproducing species.