Female Labor Supply,Human Capital,and Welfare Reform

We estimate a dynamic model of employment, human capital accumulation—including education, and savings for women in the United Kingdom, exploiting tax and benefit reforms, and use it to analyze the effects of welfare policy. We find substantial elasticities for labor supply and particularly for lone mothers. Returns to experience, which are important in determining the longer‐term effects of policy, increase with education, but experience mainly accumulates when in full‐time employment. Tax credits are welfare improving in the U.K., increase lone‐mother labor supply and marginally reduce educational attainment, but the employment effects do not extend beyond the period of eligibility. Marginal increases in tax credits improve welfare more than equally costly increases in income support or tax cuts.     

MANAGED COMPETITION IN HEALTH INSURANCE

Rising healthcare costs have sparked debate about the best way to provide high‐quality affordable health insurance. We discuss the potential for regulated insurance markets to outperform single‐payer public insurance. We use as an example the private Medicare plans that now provide insurance to almost a third of seniors in the United States. The evidence suggests that private plans can limit costs and potentially appeal to enrollees, and that well‐designed risk adjustment can mitigate market failures due to adverse selection. However, fostering competition between insurers, especially in smaller markets, is difficult. We discuss how future research might illuminate the relative advantages of public and private health insurance.     

Visualization for Large‐scale Gaussian Updates

In geostatistics and also in other applications in science and engineering, it is now common to perform updates on Gaussian process models with many thousands or even millions of components. These large‐scale inferences involve modelling, representational and computational challenges. We describe a visualization tool for large‐scale Gaussian updates, the ‘medal plot’. The medal plot shows the updated uncertainty at each observation location and also summarizes the sharing of information across observations, as a proxy for the sharing of information across the state vector (or latent process). As such, it reflects characteristics of both the observations and the statistical model. We illustrate with an application to assess mass trends in the Antarctic Ice Sheet, for which there are strong constraints from the observations and the physics.     

Staying strong: gender ideologies among African-American adolescents and the implications for HIV/STI prevention

This paper explores adolescents' definitions of what it means to be a man and a woman, the psycho-social context surrounding the formation of gender ideologies and their relationship to HIV/STI prevention. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with fifty African-American adolescents living in Baltimore, Maryland. Female gender ideologies included economic independence, emotional strength and caretaking. Male gender ideologies emphasized financial responsibility, toughness and sexual prowess. Findings suggest that stronger adherence to male gender ideologies related to toughness and sexual prowess is influenced by male participants' perceived inability to fulfill their primary gender role as economic providers and the importance of gaining approval from male peers in the absence of adult male role models. Stronger adherence to female gender ideologies related to emotional strength and caretaking may be linked to a heightened desire for male intimacy and tolerance of male sexual risk behavior. Implications of the gender ideologies documented and their commonalities are discussed in terms of HIV/STI prevention.     

Environmental changes to increase physical activity: perceptions of older urban ethnic-minority women

Despite the numerous benefits of physical activity, older adults continue to be more sedentary than their younger counterparts, and sedentary behavior is more prevalent among older racial and ethnic minorities than among Whites. This study used the nominal group technique (NGT) to examine participants' perceptions of what neighborhood environmental changes would encourage greater physical activity for older African American and Hispanic women. Participants age 50-75 years were recruited from 2 urban community health clinics. Nine NGT sessions (45 participants) were conducted. The women were asked what changes in their neighborhood environment would encourage them to become more physically active. Responses to the research question were tabulated, and qualitative analysis was used to identify themes and categories. Major categories were physical environment changes, safety, and activities/social support. Although the physical environment received the greatest number of points, concerns for personal safety cut across categories. Participants indicated the need for more facilities in which to be active.     

The Impact of Personal Finance Education Delivered in High School and College Courses

This study investigates the impact of personal finance education delivered in high school and college. Outcomes of interest were investment knowledge and household savings rates measured years after the financial education was delivered. A web-based survey with questions about participation in financial education, financial experiences, income and inheritances, and demographic characteristics was administered to 1,039 alumni from a large midwestern university. Participation in a college level personal finance course was associated with higher levels of investment knowledge. Experience with financial instruments appeared to explain more of the variance in both investment knowledge and savings rates. No significant relationship between taking a high school course and investment knowledge was found. Financial experiences were found to be positively associated with savings rates.

Is Sexual Abuse a Unique Predictor of Sexual Risk Behaviors,Pregnancy, and Motherhood in Adolescence?

This study tested sexual abuse as a unique predictor of subsequent adolescent sexual behaviors, pregnancy, and motherhood when in company with other types of maltreatment (physical abuse, neglect) and alternative behavioral, family, and contextual risk factors in a prospective, longitudinal study of maltreated (n = 275) and comparison (n = 239) nulliparous females aged 14–19 years old assessed annually through 19 years old. Hierarchical regression was used to disentangle risk factors that account for the associations of maltreatment type on risky sexual behaviors at 19 years old, adolescent pregnancy, and adolescent motherhood. Findings indicate that sexual and physical abuse remain significant predictors of risky sexual behaviors, and that sexual abuse remains a significant predictor of adolescent motherhood when alternative explanatory variables are controlled.     

The Role of Self-Conscious Emotions in the Sexual Health of Gay and Bisexual Men: Psychometric Properties and Theoretical Validation of the Sexual Shame and Pride Scale

Researchers have theorized about the role of sexual shame as a mechanism through which sexual minority stress manifests into mental health difficulties, such as sexual compulsivity for gay and bisexual men (GBM), and about the resilience-promoting effects of sexual pride. However, no validated measures to date have directly tapped into these constructs rather than using proxies for them, such as internalized homonegativity. We developed the Sexual Shame and Pride Scale (SSPS) and conducted a psychometric evaluation of it using a sample of 260 highly sexually active GBM. The scale had the expected structure in factor analysis and showed evidence of internal consistency and test–retest reliability. Correlational analyses demonstrated the convergent validity of sexual shame and sexual pride with relevant constructs. Regression analyses demonstrated the predictive validity of sexual shame in relation to sexual compulsivity, accounting for unique variability even after adjusting for previously demonstrated etiological factors, and the predictive validity of both shame and pride, which interacted to consistently predict four sexual behavior outcomes. Findings suggest the SSPS is a psychometrically valid and reliable measure that may be useful in future empirical work and highlight preliminary evidence for the role of these constructs in the sexual health of GBM.     

The Eighteenth Brumaire in historical context: reconsidering class and state in France and Syria

This article seeks to reinterpret the process of state and class formation in “peripheral” societies—notably Syria—through a contextualized reading of Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire influenced by the approach of Political Marxism (PM). In light of PM’s claim that capitalism did not emerge in France until the late nineteenth century, it draws a picture of post-revolutionary French society in which the legacy of the precapitalist Absolutist state still determined the nature of ruling class reproduction and class struggle, centered on the state apparatus as the principal source of appropriation. These insights on the nature of ruling class appropriation and the centrality of the state are then applied to the case of post-Ottoman Syria, uncovering parallels with class struggles in post-revolutionary France rooted in the “Jacobin” politics of a state-dependent bourgeoisie of officials and officers. It proposes to rethink the contested moments of transition in terms of “alternative modernities” that developed in the absence of generalized capitalist relations of production.

     

Unclaimed Prize Information Biases Perceptions of Winning in Scratch Card Gambling

Unclaimed prize information (i.e., the number of prizes still available to be won) is information commonly provided to scratch card gamblers. However, unless the number of tickets remaining to be purchased is also provided, this information is uninformative. Despite its lack of utility in assisting gamblers in choosing the most favourable type of scratch card to play, we hypothesized that unclaimed prize information would bias participants’ judgments within a scratch card gambling context. In Experiment 1 (N?=?201), we showed that participants are influenced by this information such that they felt more likely to win, were more excited to play, and preferred to hypothetically purchase more of the scratch card with the greatest number of unclaimed prizes. In Experiment 2 (N?=?201), we attempted to ameliorate this bias by providing participants with the number of tickets remaining to be purchased and equating the payback percentages of all three games. The bias, although attenuated, still persisted in these conditions. Finally, in Experiment 3 (N?=?200), we manipulated the hypothetical scratch cards such that games with the highest number of unclaimed prizes were the least favourable, and vice versa. As in Experiment 2, participants still favoured cards with greater numbers of unclaimed prizes. Possible mechanisms underlying this bias are discussed. In conclusion, across three experiments, we demonstrate that salient unclaimed prize information is capable of exerting a strong effect over judgments related to scratch card games.