‘Under the wife's feet’: renegotiating gender divisions in early retirement

There has rightly been much recent sociological concern with the effects of recession and the restructuring of the economy on family relationships. One important aspect of recent economic changes has been the pressure on older people to leave the workforce before the age of conventional retirement. Male early retirement has been a significant factor in accounting for the dramatic fall in the economic participation rates of older male workers over the last decade. Yet early retirement has been a relatively neglected topic in social scientific literature. Studies of unemployed and redundant males have tended to suggest that there is little renegotiating of the domestic division of labour within the home due to the ways in which traditional notions of masculine identity are called upon to protect the position of the unemployed male. This paper reports findings relating to these issues from a study of men from West Yorkshire who had taken early retirement from the local chemical industry. These findings suggest considerably more renegotiation than studies of unemployed and redundant males but neither the amount or type of such renegotiation seemed to be related to either marital disharmony or quality of life in retirement.     

The Use of Multizone Models to Estimate an Airborne Chemical Contaminant Generation and Decay Profile: Occupational Exposures of Hairdressers to Vinyl Chloride in Hairspray During the 1960s and 1970s

Vinyl chloride (VC) was used as a propellant in a limited percentage of aerosol hairspray products in the United States from approximately 1967 to 1973. The question has arisen whether occupational exposures of hairdressers to VC-containing hairsprays in hair salons were sufficient to increase the risk for developing hepatic angiosarcoma (HAS). Transient two-zone and steady-state three-zone models were used to estimate the historical airborne concentration of VC for individual hairdressers using hairspray as well as estimated contributions from other hairdressers in the same salon. Concentrations of VC were modeled for small, medium, and large salons, as well as a representative home salon. Model inputs were determined using published literature, and variability in these inputs was also considered using Monte Carlo techniques. The 95th percentile for the daily time-weighted average exposure for small, medium, and large salons, assuming a market-share fraction of VC-containing hairspray use from the Monte Carlo analysis, was about 0.3 ppm, and for the home salon scenario was 0.1 ppm. The 95th percentile value for the cumulative lifetime exposure of the hairdressers was 2.8 ppm-years for the home salon scenario and 2.0 ppm-years for the small, medium, and large salon scenarios. If using the assumption that all hairsprays used in a salon contained VC, the 95th percentile of the theoretical lifetime cumulative dose was estimated to be 52–79 ppm-years. Estimated lifetime doses were all below the threshold dose for HAS of about 300 to 500 ppm-years reported in the published epidemiology literature.     

Encouraging workers to save: the 2005 Retirement Confidence Survey

This Issue Brief reports findings of the 15th annual Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS), which points to potential solutions to the American retirement savings problem, specifically ways that could help workers save more through their employment-based retirement plans. IMPORTANCE OF EMPLOYER MATCH: More than 7 in 10 workers not currently contributing to their employer-sponsored retirement plan say an employer contribution of up to 5 percent of their salary would make them much more or somewhat more likely to participate (72 percent). SIMPLIFIED OPTIONS: Other retirement plan options that nonparticipants say would make them more likely to contribute are an investment option that automatically becomes more conservative as their retirement date approaches (66 percent) and a feature that automatically raises workers' contributions by a fixed amount or percentage when they receive a pay raise (55 percent). Two-thirds of nonparticipants indicate they would be very or somewhat likely to remain in their employer's plan if they were automatically enrolled (66 percent). SOCIAL SECURITY: Nearly 7 in 10 of today's workers are skeptical that Social Security will continue to provide benefits of at least equal value to those received by current retirees (68 percent). This proportion has remained relatively constant in recent years, but is below the 1995 level (79 percent). Workers continue to be unable to identify the age at which they will be eligible for full Social Security benefits. MOST BEHIND SCHEDULE IN SAVING: A majority of workers believe they are behind schedule when it comes to planning and saving for retirement (55 percent). Most of those behind schedule say that high expenses, particularly everyday expenses (49 percent), child-rearing expenses (39 percent), and medical costs (35 percent), are a major factor in keeping them from saving. LESS THAN HALF HAVE TRIED TO CALCULATE NEEDED SAVINGS: Approximately 4 in 10 workers say they have tried to calculate how much they need to accumulate for retirement. More than one-third of these workers say they asked a financial advisor to calculate this number or used their own estimates; 10 percent say they simply guessed how much they will need in retirement.     

Feminism,Management and Self-Actualization

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs has had an enduring influence on management theory, both in and of itself and in past and present theories of employee motivation and performance. However, management theorists have not been the only ones to embrace Maslow's hierarchy. Betty Friedan also accepted and used it in The Feminine Mystique. Friedan seems to have been attracted to Maslow's theory because of his earlier research on women's self-esteem and sexuality, research which was central to the development of the needs hierarchy. Thus, management theory and liberal feminist theory have a common base in Maslow's hierarchy and self-esteem research. This paper analyzes that common base, beginning with an examination of the masculine and hierarchical bias in the needs hierarchy. Then, after establishing the link between the needs hierarchy and the self-esteem research, the paper moves to an analysis of the latter, and demonstrates the ways in which it misinterpreted women's experience and sexuality and valued only those women with stereotypically masculine characteristics and behaviours. The paper concludes with a discussion of the effect of the acceptance of Maslow's ideas on the women in management literature.     

Morphometric Approaches for Evaluating Pulmonary Toxicity in Mammals: Implications for Risk Assessment

Recent advances in quantitative morphology provide all the tools necessary to obtain structural information in the lung that can be quantified and interpreted in the three-dimensional world of toxicology. Structural hierarchies of conducting airways and parenchyma of the lung provide: (1) numbers of cells per airway, lobe, or lung; (2) surface areas of cells, airways, and alveoli; (3) length of airways and vessels; and (4) volumes of cells, alveoli, airways, vessels, and individual lobes or the entire lung. Unbiased sampling of these subcompartments of the lung requires fractionation of lobes or individual airways. Individual airways of proximal and distal generations are obtained by airway microdissection along one axial pathway and comparisons made between airway generations. Vertical sections of selected airways are used to sample epithelium and interstitium. Using this unbiased approach of quantitative morphology, we have shown that inhalation of low ambient concentrations of ozone ([O₃]0.15 ppm) near or at the United States National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) (0.12 ppm O₃) induces significant alterations in bronchiolar epithelium and interstitium in nonhuman primates but not rats. The alterations do not appear to be concentration- or time-dependent, thereby bringing into question the current NAAQS that may be at or above the threshold for distal airway injury in primates. Unbiased morphometric methods are critical in a quantitative evaluation of toxicological injury of mammalian tracheobronchial airways.     

The left-truncated Weibull distribution: theory and computation

This paper studies the two-parameter, left-truncated Weibull distribution (LTWD) with known, fixed, positive truncation pointT. Important hitherto unknown statistical properties of the LTWD are derived. The asymptotic theory of the maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs) is invoked to develop parameter confidence intervals and regions. Numerical methods are described for computing the MLEs and for evaluating the exact, asymptotic variances and covariances of the MLEs. An illustrative example is given.     

EBRI 2008 recent retirees survey: report of findings

Understanding how to achieve longer work lives: The 2008 Recent Retirees Survey was undertaken to better understand the tools and practices that might encourage workers to postpone their retirement and remain longer with their company. Why do people retire when they do? Respondents typically retired from employers for one of four reasons: retirement becomes affordable, lack of job satisfaction, a desire for more personal or family time, and/or their own health status. Narrow window for asking people to work longer: One of the major findings from the survey is that employers have a narrow window of up to two years in which they may be able to intervene to change retiring workers' decisions by offering them incentives to remain with the company. Employers may just need to ask: Many retirees report they would have been open to an approach from their employer asking them to stay longer with the company. Sixty-one percent say they would have viewed the experience positively. Just 10 percent indicate they would have reacted negatively to an approach asking them to delay their retirement. Work incentives vary in appeal: The survey tested a total of 19 possible incentives that might encourage retiring workers to postpone retirement. Four of these appear especially likely to be successful: Half of retirees (48 percent) indicate that feeling truly needed for an assignment would have been extremely or very effective in encouraging them to delay their retirement. Moreover, of those ranking this as one of the top two most effective incentives, 72 percent say it might have prompted them to stay at least two more years with the company. Half of retirees with a defined benefit pension state receiving a full pension while working part time would have been effective in delaying their retirement (50 percent), and almost as many feel this way about receiving a partial pension while working part time (44 percent). Seven in 10 of those rating each among the top two most effective incentives report they would likely have stayed at least two more years if it had been offered to them (72 percent for full pension, 71 percent for partial pension). However, this would necessitate a change in federal law and several other compensation-related incentives may be almost as compelling. Thirty-eight percent report that being able to work seasonally or on a contract basis would have been effective in encouraging them to delay retirement. Among those rating this as one of the top two incentives, more than three-quarters (77 percent) say it might have prompted them to stay two years or more with the company.     

Testing for lack of fit in regression - a review

Assessment of the adequacy of a proposed linear regression model is necessarily subjective. However, the following three criteria may warrant investigation whether the distributional assumptions for the stochastic portion of the model are satisfied, whether the predictive capability of the model is satisfactory, and whether the deterministic portion of the model is adejuate in a statistical sense. The first two criteria have been reviewed in the literature to some extent. This paper reviews statistical tests and procedures which aid the experimenter in deterrmining lack of fit or functional misspecification associated with the deterministic portion of a proposed linear regression model.     

An Examination of Discrepancies in Multiple Imputation Procedures Between SAS® and SPSS®

Multiple imputation (MI) has become a feasible method to replace missing data due to the rapid development of computer technology over the past three decades. Nonetheless, a unique issue with MI hinges on the fact that different software packages can give different results. Even when one begins with the same random number seed, conflicting findings can be obtained from the same data under an identical imputation model between SAS® and SPSS®. Consequently, as illustrated in this article, a predictor variable can be claimed both significant and not significant depending on the software being used. Based on the considerations of multiple imputation steps, including result pooling, default selection, and different numbers of imputations, practical suggestions are provided to minimize the discrepancies in the results obtained when using MI. Features of Stata® are briefly reviewed in the Discussion section to broaden the comparison of MI computing across widely used software packages.     

Urban noise affects song structure and daily patterns of song production in Red-winged Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus)

Traffic noise is becoming a more prominent fixture in urban environments as cities and highways expand to accommodate the growing human population. Birds, in particular, rely heavily on vocal communication and have recently been shown to change the structure of their signals in response to environmental noise. Our objective was to determine the impact of traffic noise on Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) song structure and song timing. We recorded bird songs using a directional microphone and installed permanent recording devices to monitor daily song patterns at both high traffic noise sites and low traffic noise sites throughout southern Ontario, Canada. Our results indicate that at sites with high traffic noise, Red-winged Blackbirds sing songs with fewer introductory syllables, which are an important component of individual recognition and repertoire formation. In addition, the typical diurnal singing pattern of birds associated with noisy urban sites is more homogeneous than that of birds associated with quiet rural marshes. In the early morning and evening, singing effort was higher at rural sites than at urban sites, while in the midday singing effort at urban sites was higher than at rural sites. Birds at our noisy urban sites appear to be avoiding acoustic masking by increasing song production during the quiet part of the day and decreasing song production during the noisy rush hour periods. Based on our results, urban noise is impacting communication structure and the daily pattern of song production in a marsh-nesting species. These results have important implications for avian conservation and land use planning for urban development.