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Elevated proinflammatory cytokines and decreased antiinflammatory cytokines are important in the context of perinatal health, and immune dysregulation has been found among perinatal women with low socioeconomic status (SES). Data examining psychological factors that may contribute to cytokines in pregnancy are lacking. Of importance, these associations may be most evident among women with low SES. This study examined the moderating role of SES on associations among presence of meaning in life and repetitive negative thinking with cytokine levels among 67 pregnant women. A cumulative SES index was calculated using income, education, perceived social class, and receipt of governmental support. Measures included the Perseverative Thinking Questionnaire, Meaning in Life Questionnaire, and serum interleukin (IL)-6 as well as IL-4. Using PROCESS, moderation analyses showed significant interactions between psychological factors and SES in predicting serum cytokines. In the context of high SES only, greater repetitive negative thinking was associated with higher levels of the proinflammatory cytokine IL-6 (p = 0.056) while greater meaning in life was associated with higher levels of the antiinflammatory cytokine IL-4 (p = 0.02). Findings from this study suggest that the benefits of these psychological factors on cytokine levels may be most readily observable among women with greater economic stability. Identifying psychological factors that positively contribute to biological functioning in women experiencing heightened economic distress will be crucial in addressing SES-related disparities in perinatal health., Author(s): Amanda M. Mitchell [sup.1] , Lisa M. Christian [sup.2] [sup.3] [sup.4] [sup.5] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) 0000 0001 2113 1622, grid.266623.5, Department of Counseling and Human Development, College of Education [...]

Education has demonstrated consistent links with many aspects of physical health and is theorized to relate to a variety of behavioral and psychosocial antecedents of health that may ultimately account for these associations. However, many of these associations and the extent to which they manifest specifically for African Americans have not been thoroughly tested. We examined associations of education-distinct from income-with established behavioral and psychosocial antecedents of health in a national sample of African Americans. Education favorably related to many behavioral (e.g., fruit/vegetable intake, lifetime smoking) and psychosocial (e.g., self-efficacy, personality traits, self-esteem, psychological well-being) antecedents of health, but not to all. Some evidence of stronger salutary relations of education for women was found. Results suggest that, for African Americans, education is generally favorably associated with an array of behavioral and psychosocial antecedents of physical health, partially explaining health disparities and providing a point of intervention moving forward., Author(s): Crystal L. Park [sup.1] , Eddie M. Clark [sup.2] , Emily Schulz [sup.3] , Beverly Rosa Williams [sup.4] , Randi M. Williams [sup.5] , Cheryl L. Holt [sup.5] Author [...]

This paper examines the consumption-smoothing mechanisms of Thai agricultural households using data from the Thai household socio-economic panel surveys conducted from 2005 to 2007. The study finds that households heavily depend on their saving mechanisms when smoothing their consumption in the face of an income shock. There is little evidence to show that households depend on borrowing and increased work hours to counteract income shocks. The results also show that savings have a positive significant relationship with income variance in every region, whereas households do not respond to future income uncertainty by borrowing or increasing work hours in all regions. Keywords: Consumption-smoothing mechanisms, transitory income, income uncertainty, agriculture., 1. Introduction Households in developing countries, mainly in rural areas, often face immense risk from both idiosyncratic and covariate shocks. Their income stems, either directly or indirectly, from agriculture. Consequently, [...]

Extractivism today shapes a new hegemonic order that is sutured to global capitalism. What might a long-term mapping of its social and economic consequences reveal? Bolivia's high growth rates have [...]

Stealing, shirking, and opportunistic behavior in general can create barriers to the development of markets. The costs associated with such behavior are shared by both firms and individuals and can be large enough to even prevent the initiation of trade. Measurement of these costs is difficult because information is not available for transactions that fail to occur. We use a field experiment to identify opportunistic crime in a task that is important and relevant for trade: the delivery of mail. We subtly manipulate the content and information available in mail sent to households across neighborhoods that vary by income, and detected high levels of shirking and stealing. Eighteen percent of the mail never arrived at its destination, and significantly more was lost if there was even a slight hint of something additional inside the envelope. Our results demonstrate the importance of transaction costs created by crime and that not all populations are equally affected. Middle-income neighborhoods suffer the most. (JEL C93, K42, H41, L87, O21), I. INTRODUCTION Crime and opportunistic behavior, e.g., shirking on the job or pilfering from the office when no one is looking, impose high costs on firms and individuals. Even the [...]

In his classic, The Theory of Economic Progress, C.E. Ayres conjectured that economics must be a science of value (Ayres 1978, 85). While most working economists probably do not think [...]

Dennis Rusche otters a dismissive critique of our 2011 paper on the theme of a prioris in economics. But it is a critique in which he confuses institutionalized religion and [...]

Subjective probabilistic judgments in forecasting are inevitable in many real-life domains. A common way to such judgments is to assess fractiles or confidence intervals. However, these judgments tend to be systematically overconfident. Further, it has proved particularly difficult to debias such forecasts and improve the calibration. This paper proposes a simple process that systematically leads to wider confidence intervals, thus reducing overconfidence. With a series of experiments, including with professionals, we show that unpacking the distal future into intermediate more proximal futures systematically improves calibration. We refer to this phenomenon as the time unpacking effect, find it is robust to different elicitation formats, and address the possible reasons behind it. We further show that this results in better overall forecasting performance when improved calibration is traded off against less sharpness, and that substantive benefits can be obtained even from just one level of time unpacking. Key words: confidence intervals; overconfidence; time unpacking History: Received October 10, 2011; accepted October 5, 2012, by Teck Ho, decision analysis. Published online in Articles in Advance April 4, 2013., 1. Introduction In many real-life situations, especially in the socioeconomic domains, prediction of future events necessarily involves subjective probabilistic judgments since well-defined data-generating processes simply do not exist. For example, [...]

Besides the common faith in the effect of collective action to change economic institutions and, above all, the distribution of income, the most remarkable similarity between Proudhon's theory and old institutionalism resides in their epistemology. In both cases, we find applications of some sort of classical 'practical reason' approach to social order. The former tends to be centered on the idea of justice, the latter on democracy. The major difference is that law tends to be instrumental for institutionalists, while for Proudhon, the law is based on morals and is an expression of justice. Thus, institutionalism accepts public law as a mechanism of allocation and sees the state as an important factor in the enforcement of rights. On the contrary, Proudhon opposed any form of political control and based his 'revolution' on social law. Keywords: institutionalism, pragmatism, Proudhon, social law JEL Classification Codes: B15, B52, Political Economy as an Instrument of Change The systematic study of the relationships between epistemological foundations and theoretical outcomes is one of the strengths of contemporary institutionalist thinking. It could [...]

This study considers social capital and religious adherence as determinants of child poverty in the United States and finds that both social capital and religious adherence play a role in U.S. child poverty at the county level. The study also disaggregates the total religious adherence variable into Mainline Protestants, Evangelical Protestants, and Catholics and finds that the effects of these denominations on child poverty are mixed. The model is tested for spatial dependence bias and the test results show that without spatial correction, the OLS results may be biased and inefficient. Keywords: child poverty, religion, social capital, U.S. counties JEL Classification Codes: R11, Z12, Z13, This paper investigates the role of social and cultural factors in determining child poverty in the United States. We want to emphasize that this study is not an attempt to [...]

In their book on property rights, Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney (2003: 13) make the following statement: The idea that property rights might themselves be a distinct and explicit area [...]

In this essay, we outline the provocative argument that in the realm of human affairs there exists an 'entrepreneurial method' analogous to the scientific method spelled out by Francis Bacon [...]

As a modeler I do have an answer to this question, but as I am also a complexity thinker, you will see that the answer is not quite straight forward. [...]

Byline: Sara Hauw (1), Ans Vos (1) Keywords: Millennial generation; Psychological contract; Economic recession; Optimism; Careerism Abstract: Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of generational, contextual, and individual influences on Millennials' career expectations. Design/methodology/approach Two matched samples of Millennials graduating in 2006 (n = 787) and 2009 (n = 825) filled out a questionnaire regarding their psychological contract expectations, career strategy, and optimism about the labor market in completely different socioeconomic contexts. Findings Recession is related to lower levels of optimism. During times of recession, Millennials lower their expectations regarding the work-life balance and social atmosphere. However, their expectations regarding job content, training, career development, and financial rewards remain high, suggesting that these expectations are largely embedded within the generation. Moreover, Millennials' expectations are significantly influenced by individual variables, careerism, and optimism. Implications This study suggests that managers need to focus their limited resources during times of recession on meeting Millennials' high expectations regarding their development and careers. Because violating these high expectations can have detrimental effects on a number of outcomes, organizations are encouraged to discover creative and inexpensive ways to provide Millennials with meaningful work, plenty of learning opportunities and career development. Originality/value By comparing two matched samples of Millennials in two different situations, this study was able to disentangle generational, contextual, and individual influences on Millennials' psychological contract expectations. Author Affiliation: (1) HRM Centre, Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Reep 1, Ghent, 9000, Belgium Article History: Registration Date: 02/02/2010 Online Date: 11/03/2010

The article discusses changes over the course of the 20th century in Iraq's distributive capacity and patterns especially the relations between the Sunni and Shi'i Arabs in Iraq is addressed. It is felt that Iraq can represent the direct unfolding of the transition from developmental to cultural nationalisms that may put an end to nation-state.

The authors study 74 cities in 30 states to determine whether citizens in adapted cities are more likely to rate the quality of city services in the top category, than are citizens in nonadapted cities. Contrary to the proposed hypothesis, the authors find statistical support that citizens in the 16 administrative cities are more likely to rate the quality of city services in the top category than are citizens in the 52 adapted cities, controlling for important socioeconomic variables. This finding provides preliminary evidence that introducing political institutions and values or constraining the policy-making/executive role of the city manager in traditional council-manager cities can adversely impact service quality--at least from the perspective of citizens. KEYWORDS: adapted city, citizen perception, citizens, city, performance measurement, type of government

The extent to which the possession of social capital is affected by individual characteristics as well as socioeconomic factors was assessed in a study of legal and illegal Mexican immigrant households.

The extent to which the rise of the African American business elite in the US is aided by historically African American colleges and universities (HBCUs) is examined.

A study analyzing the structure of civic networks in two British cities, Glasgow and Bristol and looking at empirical evidence to prove the efficacy of this analytical framework is presented. The civic networks despite socioeconomic profile and political tradition being different display the same structural properties in both the cities.

The article examines the effect of mass attitudes on the effects of democracy and elaborates on the role of attitude-driven mass actions.

The increase in life expectancy at middle age has added quality of life to the policy concerns related to older ages. The present article asks whether this quality of life varies with socio-economic position. Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (n.d.), the article answers this question in terms of the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification and CASP-19, a measure of positive quality of life in early old age. Among all respondents aged 50 to 75 years, quality of life was found to be graded by social position, with the difference in quality of life between the higher managerial and professional group and the routine group being of comparable size to having a limiting long-standing illness; with the size of this difference varying between labour market sub-groups.The implication of these findings for ageing policy and for the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification are discussed. KEY WORDS CASP-19 measure / National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification / third age

The reasons for failures in school are critically analyzed with respect to the socioeconomic status of the children. The strategies of urban schools to prevent academic failures are studied.

The role of work-family gender ideologies in the construction of educational expectations and status attainment goals of adolescents is discussed.

The reasons for more socioeconomic development of Jews than the other ethnic groups in United States are investigated.

The study of trends in socioeconomic disparities in physical activity during free time from national time-use studies between 1965 and 1999 shows that passive free-time activities have more disparities than that of the active period.

Do African Americans, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic whites differ in their explanations of the socioeconomic divide separating blacks and whites in the United States? Have such explanations changed over time? To answer these questions, I use data from the 1977 to 2004 General Social Surveys (GSS) to map race/ethnic differences in support for, trends in, and the determinants of seven 'modes of explanation' for blacks' disadvantage. Trends over time indicate the continuation of a long-standing decline in non-Hispanic whites' use of an ability-based (innate inferiority) explanation. Non-Hispanic whites 'beliefs in a purely motivational and a purely educational explanation are increasing, however, along with the view that none of the explanations offered in the GSS explain blacks' disadvantage. African Americans and Hispanics also evidence increases in a purely motivational explanation, but they differ from non-Hispanic whites in demonstrating clear declines in structural beliefs--especially the perception that discrimination explains blacks' lower socioeconomic status. These conservative shifts in blacks' and Hispanics' beliefs result in greater similarity with non-Hispanic whites over time. Notably, however, significant 'static' race/ethnic group differences remain: non-Hispanic whites score highest, and blacks lowest, on a purely motivational explanation, while African Americans are more likely than both non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics to endorse a discrimination-based explanation. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for racial policy support.

This article draws on evidence from an exploratory survey of living situations to assess the validity of assumptions about residence and to offer methodological innovations to improve coverage of people with tenuous attachment to households. These innovations include more inclusive probes and questions used to compile the roster of household residents; a review of the places a person stayed the previous few months; and a Residential Attachment scale that measures strength of attachment to households. This scale shows that it takes more probing to list tenuously attached people than most surveys do, suggesting that tenuously attached people are likely to be omitted from the typical survey roster. The Residential Attachment scale is correlated with social and economic participation in households, suggesting that participation is fairly high even among those with tenuous or no residential attachment.

Recent research has shown that participation in migrant labor markets has led to substantial increases in income for families in rural China. This article addresses the question of how participation is affected by elderly parent health. We find that younger adults are less likely to work as migrants when a parent is ill Poor health of an elderly parent has less impact on the probability of employment as a migrant when an adult child has siblings who may be available to provide care. We also highlight the potential importance of including information on nonresident family members when studying how parent illness and elder care requirements influence the labor supply decisions of adult children.

I use data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth to examine the relationship between military service and marital timing for white men and black men during the 1980s. I use information about active-duty and reserve-duty service as well as veteran status to implement strong controls for selectivity. I find that active-duty military service increases the probability of first marriage for both whites and blacks. In part, this relationship is due to positive selectivity into the military and, for whites, to greater income and economic stability. Above and beyond the effects of selectivity, income, and economic stability, the effect of active-duty military service is particularly strong for black men.

Both sociological and economic theories posit that widely available, high-quality, and affordable child care should have pronatalist effects. Yet to date, the empirical evidence has not consistently supported this hypothesis. We argue that this previous empirical work has been plagued by the inability to control for endogenous placement of day care centers and the possibility that people migrate to take advantage of the availability of child care facilities. Using Norwegian register data and a statistically defensible fixed-effects model, we find strong positive effects of day care availability on the transition to motherhood.

Prior research seeking to explain variation in extended family coresidence focused heavily on the potentially competing roles of cultural preferences and socioeconomic and demographic structural constraints. We focus on challenges associated with international immigration as an additional factor driving variation across groups. Using 2000 census data from Mexico and the United States, we compare the prevalence and age patterns of various types of extended family and non-kin living arrangements among Mexican-origin immigrants and nonimmigrants on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Additionally, we use the Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine the stability of extended family living arrangements among Mexican-origin immigrants and natives in the United States. We find that newly arrived immigrants to the United States display unique patterns in the composition and stability of their households relative to nonimmigrants in both Mexico and the United States. Recent immigrants are more likely to reside in an extended family or non-kin household, and among those living with relatives, recent immigrants are more likely to live with extended family from a similar generation (such as siblings and cousins). Further, these households experience high levels of turnover. The results suggest that the high levels of coresidence observed among recently arrived Mexican immigrants represent a departure from 'traditional' household/family structures in Mexico and are related to the challenges associated with international migration.

The relationship between crime, law, and labor of prisoners in building infrastructure in colonial Asmara during the Italian presence in Eritrea in 1890-1941 is presented. How these developments influenced the postcolonial political and social history of the country is also revealed.

SOCIAL CAPITAL IN ECONOMIC RESEARCH Social capital has been a contested notion among economists since its inception in economic literature in the mid-1990s. Its origins are in sociology, but economists [...]

A study of high school principals to find out if the new shift in curriculum thinking was accompanied by changes in the way students are assigned to curriculum tasks is discussed. It is shown that race and socioeconomic status greatly influence track assignment and principals' expectations leading to the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Social capital is generally recognized as the positive outcome of sociability and social connection and, more specifically, as the capacity to realize economic benefits through social connections. Limited attention has been paid to understanding the potential of social capital at the intersection of socioeconomic disadvantage. The first part of the article examines assumptions of class and gender in the theoretical literature on social capital. The second part explores the influence of class and gender contexts on social networks among women living in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods in Victoria, Australia. The analysis reveals the ways in which social network assets are conditional on socioeconomic and gender circumstances.