Efforts to improve international migration statistics: a historical perspective

During the past decade, the international statistical community has made several efforts to develop standards for the definition, collection and publication of statistics on international migration. This article surveys the history of official initiatives to standardize international migration statistics by reviewing the recommendations of the International Statistical Institute, International Labor Organization, and the UN, and reports a recently proposed agenda for moving toward comparability among national statistical systems. Heightening awareness of the benefits of exchange and creating motivation to implement international standards requires a 3-pronged effort from the international statistical community. 1st, it is essential to continue discussion about the significance of improvement, specifically standardization, of international migration statistics. The move from theory to practice in this area requires ongoing focus by migration statisticians so that conformity to international standards itself becomes a criterion by which national statistical practices are examined and assessed. 2nd, the countries should be provided with technical documentation to support and facilitate the implementation of the recommended statistical systems. Documentation should be developed with an understanding that conformity to international standards for migration and travel statistics must be achieved within existing national statistical programs. 3rd, the call for statistical research in this area requires more efforts by the community of migration statisticians, beginning with the mobilization of bilateral and multilateral resources to undertake the preceding list of activities.     

Community Wise: The Development of an Anti-Oppression Model to Promote Individual and Community Health

Communities with histories of oppression have shown great resilience, yet few health interventions focus on structural oppression as a contributor to health problems in these communities. This article describes the development and active ingredients of Community Wise, a unique behavioral health intervention designed to reduce substance use frequency, related health risk behaviors, and recidivism among individuals with a history of incarceration and substance abuse residing in distressed and predominantly African American communities. Community Wise, developed through the collaborative efforts of a board of service providers, researchers, consumers, and government officials, is a 12-week group intervention that aims to address behavioral health problems by raising critical consciousness in distressed communities.     

Inheritance,poverty, and disability

Inheritance is a significant means of transferring wealth from one generation to the next, and therefore increasingly attracts attention from researchers and policy-makers working on intergenerational and multidimensional poverty. However, until now disabled persons have been overlooked in these discussions. This oversight is particularly unfortunate because, as a group, the estimated one billion people with disabilities (some 15% of the world’s population) are among the poorest and most marginalized of the global population. Over the past decade, a small but growing literature has examined the recursive connections between poverty and disability throughout the developing world. In this paper, we argue that disabled individuals are routinely denied inheritance rights in many low-income and middle-income countries, and that this is a significant and largely unrecognized contributor to their indigence. The denial of inheritance is both a social justice issue and a practice that can no longer be overlooked if disabled persons are to be brought into the development mainstream.     

Digit ratios (2D:4D) as predictors of risky decision making for both sexes

Many important decisions involve financial risk, and substantial evidence suggests that women tend to be more risk averse than men. We explore a potential biological basis of risk-taking variation within and between the sexes by studying how the ratio between the length of the second and fourth fingers (2D:4D) predicts risk-taking. A smaller 2D:4D ratio has been linked to higher exposure to prenatal testosterone relative to estradiol, with men having lower ratios than women. In financially motivated decision-making tasks, we find that men and women with smaller 2D:4D ratios chose significantly riskier options. We further find that the ratio partially explains the variation in risk-taking between the sexes. Moreover, for men and women at the extremes of the digit-ratio distribution the difference in risk-taking disappears. Thus, the 2D:4D ratio partially explains variation in financial risk-taking behavior within and between sexes and offers evidence of a biological basis for risk-taking behavior.     

The Inability of Self-affirmations to Decrease Defensive Bias Toward an Alcohol-Related Risk Message Among High-Risk College Students

Abstract

Objective: To examine the efficacy of a self-affirmation task in deterring college alcohol misuse and the importance of preexisting beliefs in predicting subsequent behavior change. Participants: Heavy-drinking undergraduates (N = 110) participated during the 2011–2012 academic year. Methods: Participants were randomized to complete an affirmation or control task before reading an alcohol risk message. Alcohol-related beliefs and behaviors were assessed. Participants completed a 2-week online follow-up assessing alcohol-related behaviors. Results: Both groups reported increased perceived problem importance, but neither group displayed changes in personal risk. Follow-up assessment revealed similar, significant declines in peak consumption in both groups, with no significant between-group differences. Preexisting beliefs accounted for 5% to 10% of variance in drinking outcomes. Conclusions: An affirmation task does not seem to decrease defensive processing or alter high-risk drinking behaviors among college students and should not be utilized in lieu of more effective strategies.