CONSUMER DEBT STRESS,CHANGES IN HOUSEHOLD DEBT,AND THE GREAT RECESSION

This research examines psychological debt stress and changes in household debt holdings for consumers during the Great Recession using data from a monthly national U.S. household survey covering the period 2006 through 2012. Debt stress measures in the population rose by over 50% at the bottom of the recession. Determining relative stress for eight different types of household debt, we find that noncollateralized debts are more stressful than collateralized debt and that during the recession the composition of debt shifted away from collateralized debt and toward noncollateralized. Our empirical results show that women and Hispanics experienced higher measured levels of stress. (JEL D12, D18)     

Social and Economic Determinants of Reproductive Behavior Before the Fertility Decline. The Case of Six Italian Communities During the Nineteenth Century

In recent decades, main demographic historical research assessed the importance of bio-demographic components in human reproduction, before the diffusion of birth control and contraceptive techniques. According to this dominant view, before fertility decline, marital fertility was mainly regulated by biological and physiological factors and socio-economic factors played only a limited and indirect role. In order to demonstrate the importance of non-biological components, the present study focuses on six pre-transitional communities situated in different geographic areas of Italy. The work aims to demonstrate how fertility levels could significantly be affected by social and economic factors even in natural fertility populations, before the diffusion of contraceptives. Micro-level data are collected from several historical sources, and discrete-time event history models are applied to female reproductive careers in order to estimate effects of socio-economic status, household structure, and price fluctuations on marital fertility, controlling for several bio-demographic factors. Despite clear differences in geographic localization and environment, marital reproductive behavior appeared to be significantly and constantly affected by socio-economic status, household composition, and price levels in all the investigated communities.     

A New Perspective on Neonatal Smiling: Differences Between the Judgments of Expert Coders and Naive Observers

To better understand the form and recognizability of neonatal smiling, 32 newborns (14 girls; M = 25.6 hr) were videorecorded in the behavioral states of alertness, drowsiness, active sleep, and quiet sleep. Baby Facial Action Coding System coding of both lip corner raising (simple or non‐Duchenne) and lip corner raising with cheek raising (Duchenne smile) was followed by a smile recognition task using 48 naive observers. Both types of smiles were detected in all behavioral states. Lip corner raising with cheek raising (Duchenne smiling) tended to predominate in active (rapid eye movement) sleep, suggesting a potential tie to early constituents of emotion. A significant portion of the typically briefer lip corner raising distinguished by expert coders was not recognized as smiling by the naive observers. These briefer actions may represent a motor phenomenon idiosyncratic to the neonatal period.     

IMMIGRATION AND RURAL AMERICA

Immigration is changing the face of rural America. Stable, year-round employment in the food-processing industry is the most significant factor attracting immigrants into the rural Midwest. Much has been published documenting social and economic changes in rural communities following surges in immigration in rural meat-processing communities. The purpose of the present investigation was to examine immigrants’ perceptions of work and residence in rural America. To this end, personal interviews were conducted with 43 immigrants residing in three Nebraska meatpacking communities. Participants described routes of immigration and motivations for international movement, work in the packing plants, and rural residence. Work for future investigators and the role of policy and social service professionals are presented.     

Sexual Behaviour and Attitudes of Students in the Moscow State University

This article is focused on the sexual attitudes and behaviour, and knowledge of AIDS of a group of students of Moscow State University. Reference will also be made to surveys dating back to the beginning of the century, when Russia and then the Soviet Republic were at the forefront in this field of research, in that they help throw light on past trends and present tendencies.The first sexual intercourse (FSI) is relatively early for male students (median age = 17.7) and relatively late for females (18.9). Mean number of partners per year is not low, and it is the same for both males and females (almost 1.7). This is not the case in Western countries. Moreover, contraception at FSI is at a low level. Sexual attitudes are permissive -- particularly concerning infidelity -- and there is a general concern regarding the spread of AIDS. However, specific knowledge about AIDS transmission is lacking.     

Regulatory fit effects on perceived fiscal exchange and tax compliance

Paying taxes can be considered a contribution to the welfare of a society. But even though tax payments are redistributed to citizens in the form of public goods and services, taxpayers often do not perceive many benefits from paying taxes. Information campaigns about the use of taxes for financing public goods and services could increase taxpayers’ understanding of the importance of taxes, strengthen their perception of fiscal exchange and consequently also increase tax compliance. Two studies examined how fit between framing of information and taxpayers’ regulatory focus affects perceived fiscal exchange and tax compliance. Taxpayers should perceive the exchange between tax payments and provision of public goods and services as higher if information framing suits their regulatory focus. Study 1 supported this hypothesis for induced regulatory focus. Study 2 replicated the findings for chronic regulatory focus and further demonstrated that regulatory fit also affects tax compliance. The results provide further evidence for findings from previous studies concerning regulatory fit effects on tax attitudes and extend these findings to a context with low tax morale.     

Extreme value regression models: a useful reparameterization for the survival function

In this paper, we consider some aspects of accurate approximate inferences for the survival function at a specifed time t 0 , considering extreme value regression models using a modified form of reparameterization proposed by Guerrero and Johnson, and exploring a non-normality measure for likelihood functions and posterior densities introduced by Kass and Slate. We illustrate the proposed methodology, considering a lifetime data set with two treatments introduced by Lee.     

A practical approach for assessing the effect of grouping in hierarchical spatio-temporal models

Hierarchical spatio-temporal models allow for the consideration and estimation of many sources of variability. A general spatio-temporal model can be written as the sum of a spatio-temporal trend and a spatio-temporal random effect. When spatial locations are considered to be homogeneous with respect to some exogenous features, the groups of locations may share a common spatial domain. Differences between groups can be highlighted both in the large-scale, spatio-temporal component and in the spatio-temporal dependence structure. When these differences are not included in the model specification, model performance and spatio-temporal predictions may be weak. This paper proposes a method for evaluating and comparing models that progressively include group differences. Hierarchical modeling under a Bayesian perspective is followed, allowing flexible models and the statistical assessment of results based on posterior predictive distributions. This procedure is applied to tropospheric ozone data in the Italian Emilia–Romagna region for 2001, where 30 monitoring sites are classified according to environmental laws into two groups by their relative position with respect to traffic emissions.