Orphanhood and Human Capital Destruction: Is There Persistence into Adulthood?

This article presents unique evidence that orphanhood matters in the long run for health and education outcomes in a region of northwestern Tanzania. We study a sample of 718 non-orphaned children surveyed in 1991–1994 who were traced and reinterviewed as adults in 2004. A large proportion, 19%, lost one or more parents before age 15 in this period, allowing us to assess permanent health and education impacts of orphanhood. In the analysis, we control for a wide range of child and adult characteristics before orphanhood, as well as community fixed effects. We find that maternal orphanhood has a permanent adverse impact of 2 cm of final height attainment and one year of educational attainment. Expressing welfare in terms of consumption expenditure, the result is a gap of 8.5% compared with similar children whose mothers survived until at least their 15th birthday.     

The protective role of religious coping in adolescents' responses to poverty and sexual decision-making in rural Kenya

In this study, we explored how adolescents in rural Kenya apply religious coping in sexual decision-making in the context of high rates of poverty and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 adolescents. One-third (13) reported religious coping related to economic stress, HIV, or sexual decision-making; the majority (29) reported religious coping with these or other stressors. Adolescents reported praying for God to partner with them to engage in positive behaviors, praying for strength to resist unwanted behaviors, and passive strategies characterized by waiting for God to provide resources or protection from HIV. Adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa may benefit from HIV prevention interventions that integrate and build upon their use of religious coping.     

Information for Clinical Social Work Practice: A Potential Solution

The field of social work requires knowledgeable, skilled and self-confident professionals. We assume that many of these social workers will have less than optimal access to professionally relevant information, within and outside of their workplaces. We also assume that they, like others searching for information, will have a limited set of search skills yet will want to obtain the information for practice they need as easily as possible. Finally, we assume they will continue turning to the Internet to access relevant information. This paper describes Information for Practice (IP), an Internet service designed for social work practitioners based on these assumptions. Data regarding use of this service are presented.     

Walking the talk in multiparty bargaining: An experimental investigation

We study the framing effects of communication on payoffs in multiparty bargaining. Communication has been shown to be more truthful and revealing than predicted in equilibrium. Because talk is preference-revealing, it may effectively frame bargaining around a logic of fairness or competition, moving parties on a path toward or away from equal-division agreements. These endogenous framing effects may outweigh any overall social utility effects due to the mere presence of communication. In two studies, we find that non-binding talk about fairness within a three-party, complete-information game leads toward off-equilibrium, equal division payoffs, while non-binding talk focusing on Competitive Reasoning moves parties away from equal divisions. Our two studies allow us to demonstrate that manipulated pre-game talk and spontaneous within-game dialogue lead to the same results.     

HETEROGENEITY IN STATE‐DEPENDENT UTILITY: EVIDENCE FROM STRATEGIC SURVEYS

A standard result of life‐cycle models under uncertainty is that optimizing individuals equate the expected marginal utility of consumption across states of the world if insurance is available at actuarially fair rates. A small empirical literature has suggested that the marginal utility of consumption is lower in less healthy states. We use a novel survey‐based measure to document significant heterogeneity in health‐state dependence across individuals largely orthogonal to standard controls. We further show that individuals value unhealthy states of the world more when facing work‐limiting disabilities than when facing disabilities requiring long‐term care, and when facing physical rather than mental disabilities. (JEL D12, I10)     

Development of Sexual Expectancies among Adolescents: Contributions by Parents,Peers and the Media

To expand the scant research on sexual expectancies development among non–sexually active adolescents, we examined the relationship between adolescents' exposure to four socializing agents—mother/female guardian, father/male guardian, peers, and television programs with high sexual content—and their endorsement of four sexual expectancies: social benefit, pleasure, social risk, and health risk. Data are from Waves 2 and 3 of a three-wave annual longitudinal study conducted among California adolescents, the majority of whom were not sexually active (N = 914, 84%). Structural equation models were conducted to examine cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between the socializing agents and the sexual expectancies. Cross-sectional results indicate associations between peer sexual communication and social benefit, pleasure, and social risk expectancies. A positive association was found between exposure to music videos and social benefit expectancies, and a negative association was found between exposure to music videos and health risk expectancies. Longitudinal results suggest that communication with peers positively predicted pleasure expectancies and negatively predicted social risk expectancies. No other socializing agents were associated with any sexual expectancies. An invariance test found that significant correlations were similar across the different age groups. Results suggest that efforts to support positive sexual decision making among non–sexually active adolescents should target peer sexual communication.     

Paternal involvement with adolescents in intact families: The influence of fathers over the life course

We measure the quality and quantity of fathers’ involvement with adolescent children in intact families over time using longitudinal data from The National Survey of Children. We examine differentials in fathers’ involvement by children’s and family characteristics and model the long-term effects of fathers’ involvement on children’s outcomes in the transition to adulthood. Fathers are more involved with sons than with daughters and they disengage from adolescents with increasing marital conflict. We find beneficial effects for children of father’s involvement in three domains: educational and economic attainment, delinquent behavior, and psychological well-being. The course of affective relations throughout adolescence also has a beneficial effect on delinquent behavior and psychological well-being.     

Writing for publication: the basics

PROBLEM: Most midwives and nurses do not write for publication. Previous authors on this topic have focussed on the processes of writing and getting published. Although definitive English usage style guides exist, they are infrequently consulted by new midwifery authors. PURPOSE: To enable new writers to confidently apply the basic skills of scientific writing when preparing a paper for publication. OVERVIEW: The basic skills needed for scientific writing are the focus of this paper. The importance of careful word choices is discussed first. Next, the skills of writing sentences are presented. Finally, the skills of writing paragraphs are discussed. Examples of poor and better writing are given in relation to each of these basic elements.