The post-80s generation: exploring the attitudes toward family and housing

ABSTRACT

Previous literature has paid attention to housing pathways and cohort features of young people, but studies connecting the two themes are lacking. This paper offers a perspective on the cohort analysis of young people based on their housing choices and aspirations. With empirical evidence from a two-round social survey, this study explores the ‘not leaving home’ pattern of the housing choices of young people in Hong Kong. With some supplementary subgroup analysis, the cohort label of a ‘post-80s generation’ in Hong Kong is challenged. Contradictions are revealed in the views of our young people about housing and family life, and further analysis is conducted to examine the impacts of economic and sociocultural factors in the local context of Hong Kong. This study argues that we need to look beyond the shared features and subgroup differences and consider how sociocultural factors, particularly gender, marriage, education, and social norms, interact with economic factors to shape housing choices, aspirations and apparent contradictions in the viewpoints of young people regarding their personal development and housing futures. In doing so, the paper also engages with debates around intra and intergenerational dynamics and inequalities. The paper focuses on Hong Kong but these debates have international resonance.     

Book Review: Integrity. Stephen L. Carter,Harper Perennial,New York, 1996

Sociological Practice -     

Estimation of binomial parameters when both , are unknown

We revisit the classic problem of estimation of the binomial parameters when both parameters n,p are unknown. We start with a series of results that illustrate the fundamental difficulties in the problem. Specifically, we establish lack of unbiased estimates for essentially any functions of just n or just p. We also quantify just how badly biased the sample maximum is as an estimator of n. Then, we motivate and present two new estimators of n. One is a new moment estimate and the other is a bias correction of the sample maximum. Both are easy to motivate, compute, and jackknife. The second estimate frequently beats most common estimates of n in the simulations, including the Carroll–Lombard estimate. This estimate is very promising. We end with a family of estimates for p; a specific one from the family is compared to the presently common estimate and the improvements in mean-squared error are often very significant. In all cases, the asymptotics are derived in one domain. Some other possible estimates such as a truncated MLE and empirical Bayes methods are briefly discussed.     

An Extension of a Measure of Polarization, with an application to the income distribution of five OECD countries

We introduce an extension of the Esteban and Ray [Econometrica, 62:819–851 1994] measure of polarization that can be applied to density functions. As a by-product we also derive the Wolfson [Am. Econ. Rev., 84:353–358 1994] measure as a special case. This derivation has the virtue of casting both measures in the context of a (statistically) unified framework. We study the polarization of the distribution of household income for five OECD countries (LIS database): US, UK, Canada, Germany and Sweden. The present paper is essentially based on Esteban, Gradín and Ray [9], published as #218 in the working papers series of the Luxembourg Income Study. Changes have been kept to a minimum. We have provided a brief reference to the literature on polarization measurement that has appeared since then and have updated the data of our application.     

Alternative beta estimation for the market model using partially adaptive techniques

The leptokurtosls of many security market return distributions can contaminate ordinary least squares estimates of the β coefficient of the market model. Partially adaptive estimation techniques accommodate the possibility of fat tailed distributions. this methodology limits the influence of extremely large residuals and yields estimates which are both statistically and practically different from ordinary least squares.     

Binomial confidence limits adjusted for a confounding variable

A simple transformation of classical binomial confidence limits provides exact confidence limits in situations where a confounding variable is present. An example is the multiple-choice test, where a correct answer may represent either knowledge or guesswork, the latter being the confounding variable.     

New tests for stochastic order with application to case control studies

It is shown that if a binary regression function is increasing then retrospective sampling induces a stochastic ordering of the covariate distributions among the responders, which we call cases, and the non-responders, which we call controls. We also show that if the covariate distributions are stochastically ordered then the regression function must be increasing. This means that testing whether the regression function is monotone is equivalent to testing whether the covariate distributions are stochastically ordered. Capitalizing on these new probabilistic observations we proceed to develop two new non-parametric tests for stochastic order. The new tests are based on either the maximally selected, or integrated, chi-bar statistic of order one. The tests are easy to compute and interpret and their large sampling distributions are easily found. Numerical comparisons show that they compare favorably with existing methods in both small and large samples. We emphasize that the new tests are applicable to any testing problem involving two stochastically ordered distributions.