Political preferences for redistribution in Sweden

We examine preferences for redistribution inherent in Swedish tax policy during 1971–2012 using the inverse optimal tax approach. The income distribution is carefully characterized with the help of administrative register data, and we employ behavioral elasticities reflecting the perceived distortionary effects of taxation. The revealed social welfare weights are high for non-workers, small for low-income earners, and hump-shaped around the median. At the top, they are always negative, especially so during the high-tax years of the 1970s and ’80s. The weights on non-workers increased sharply in the 1970s, fell drastically in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and have since then increased.     

Gender and Socioeconomic Status Differences in First and Second Marriage Formation

In this article, we address how first and second marriages are formed by asking whether SES has similar effects on first and second marriage entry. Like many studies of first marriage, we focus on gender, socioeconomic characteristics (education, income, and employment status), and gender differences in the effect of SES. To examine this question, we use the NLSY79 (n = 12,231 never‐married and 3,695 divorced persons), discrete‐time logistic regression, and heterogeneous choice models to test for statistically significant differences by gender and between first and second marriages. Our models show gender differences in first and second marriage entry, that the effect of SES on marriage entry differs between first and second marriage, and that the interaction between gender and SES has a unique association with marital entry for never‐ and previously married individuals. Our results have implications for understanding marriage formation, stratification across the life course, and the well‐being of divorced persons who remarry.     

Sex roles and sexual dysfunction in college students

We conducted an assessment of the nature and prevalence of sexual dysfunctions and concerns within a nonclinical population of university students. Our hypotheses were that (a) sexual pressures would be more positively related to manifest sexual performance dysfunctions among masculine sex‐typed men than among nonmasculine sex‐typed men and that (b) androgynous subjects would report fewer sexual problems and concerns than nonandrogynous subjects. A questionnaire composed of the short form of the Bern Sex‐Role Inventory and questions regarding sexual activities, concerns, and dysfunctions was mailed to a stratified random sample of undergraduate and graduate students. Among the 43% of students who returned the survey, approximately 13% reported experiencing sexual performance dysfunctions. The hypothesis that sexual pressure from a partner would be more closely associated with sexual dysfunctioning for masculine sex‐typed men than for non‐masculine sex‐typed men was supported. However, androgynous respondents did not report lower levels of sexual dysfunction or concern than did nonandrogynous respondents.     

Precision Farming: Environmental Legitimation,Commodification of Information,and Industrial Coordination1

Abstract Precision farming—use of digital geographically referenced data in farming operations—is the leading example of a cluster of emerging information technologies in agriculture. To date, the vast majority of academic and promotional literature addressing precision farming has focused on the field and farm-level economic and environmental benefits of site-specific allocation of crop inputs (fertilizer, pesticides, and seeds). In this paper, we question popular perceptions of the technology and pursue a sociological analysis through identification of consistencies between precision farming and the political and economic requirements of an industrializing agriculture. Through promotion of a public commitment and a technical mechanism to mitigate farm chemical pollution, precision farming legitimates chemically-based agriculture in an era of rising environmentalism. Further, precision farming is based on, and will advance, the commodification of agricultural information—appropriation of field and farm-level decision processes through substitution of capital for local knowledge. By automating farm-level data collection and information management and by reducing agriculturalists' reliance on public sector agricultural research and extension, precision farming supports further integration of on-farm activity into a coordinated system of industrial manufacture.     

A Bayesian Approach to Selecting Covariates for Prediction

We consider the problem of selecting a regression model from a large class of possible models in the case where no true model is believed to exist. In practice few statisticians, or scientists who employ statistical methods, believe that a "true" model exists, but nonetheless they seek to select a model as a proxy from which they want to predict. Unlike much of the recent work in this area we address this problem explicitly. We develop Bayesian predictive model selection techniques when proper conjugate priors are used and obtain an easily computed expression for the model selection criterion. We also derive expressions for updating the value of the statistic when a predictor is dropped from the model and apply this approach to a large well-known data set.     

Life-Role Salience and Values: A Review of Recent Research

In this article, recent research using the Work Importance Study (WIS) instruments in English-speaking countries is reviewed. Research results indicate several consistent trends. First, that life-role salience and values must be viewed within specific developmental and cultural contexts. Second, in diverse settings and with different groups, there are sex differences related to the relative importance of life roles and values. Third, career counselors need consider the client's values and life-role salience to facilitate personal development. Recommendations for future research are offered.     

Multi-level governance of an intractable policy problem: migrants with irregular status in Europe

ABSTRACT

This article explores the responses of European local authorities to the public service needs of residents with irregular immigration status and the tensions with national governments to which this can give rise. Drawing on a study of responses by national and local tiers, including a mapping of national legal frameworks on entitlements to health care and education, it identifies factors that lead to divergence between local and national policy framing and responses. Finding that socio-economic and individual consequences of exclusion dominate in shaping local framing of policy responses in contrast to national government priorities, it explores the implications for modes of multi-level governance (MLG) on this issue. It expands on the concept in the literature of ‘decoupling’, contrasting relationships of overt conflict with low-visibility strategies of conflict avoidance; demonstrating the differing forms this ‘shadow politics’ of migrants’ rights and shadow provision of services can take, including arms-length provision through NGOs. Thus the dynamic of MLG is itself one part of explaining the nature of local responses to the challenges that migrants with irregular status can pose.     

Esther Thelen

This study explored whether the reported inability of newborns to perceive object unity could result from the limited abilities of newborns to recognize the correspondence between 2 stimuli that were identical except for the presence or absence of an occluder. Five experiments were carried out using a visual habituation technique. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that newborns were capable of recognizing the perceptual correspondence between a nonoccluded and an occluded form. More intriguing, the outcomes of Experiments 2, 3, and 4 suggested that newborns find a partly occluded form to be more similar to a completely unoccluded form than to an unoccluded form containing a gap. Finally, even if newborns are able to perceive the correspondence between a partly occluded object and a complete form, the presence of this skill does not appear sufficient to imply the ability to manifest veridical object unity perception at birth (Experiment 5).