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Everywhere, education is well rewarded, roughly 5% to 15% for each additional year of university, hence a major source of income inequality. Why do ordinary people see income rewards to education as legitimate? Two key theories: (1) their moral views might align with classical equity arguments asserting a moral entitlement to rewards in proportion to contributions. (2) Alternatively, they might see rewards to education as fair returns on investment, a morally infused folk version of human capital. These share almost all their predictions, but they differ if an employer fully finances the education. Analysis of a large representative Australian sample reveals that the public’s ideal returns to education match equity justifications (~80%), not economists’ fair return on investments (~10%).

Occupation is the single best indicator of a person's place in the social hierarchy and is sometimes used as a measure of "permanent income". Occupations are critical elements in institutional structures of modern societies and in careers, so devising measurements to represent key features of occupations has elicited continuing research over many decades. Why a new measure? (1) The field has several excellent detailed measures, based on verbatim self-reports in two questions on job title and duties/ tasks on the job. Hence, they are costly in survey data collection time and also require hand coding by trained coders which is both expensive and slow. Thus far, automated coding has not proven satisfactory. The measure we advocate, VOS, overcomes these difficulties. Moreover, unlike other short scales in current use, it predicts outcomes at least as well as the leading detailed measure.The Vertical Occupational Status Method (VOS) methodology consists of •[1] a concise self-coded survey question for measuring occupation that defines eleven logical and intuitively clear functional categories of occupation in a status hierarchy from low to high (VOSqnr); This is what the respondent sees;•[2] quantitative occupational status scores for these categories which are applicable worldwide (VOSstatus); •[3] links between the VOS categories and the 4-digit International Standard Classification of Occupations (VOSISCO). It has been used successfully in internet, paper-and-pencil, and show-card formats. To establish its quality, we provide here a detailed comparison with current best practice of occupational measurement. Thus, Ockham’s Razor – prefer the simpler method or explanation unless the more complex is demonstrably better – clearly favors the use of VOS over other approaches for data collection and analysis of occupational status.

Purpose: To inhibit the spread of COVID-19 Public health officials stress, and governments often require, restrictions on social interaction ("social distancing"). While the medical benefits are clear, important questions remain about these measures' downsides: How bitter is this medicine? Data: Ten large non-probability internet-based surveys between April and November 2020, weighted statistically to reflect the US population in age, education, and religious background and excluding respondents who even occasionally role-played rather than giving their own true views; N=6,223. Pre-epidemic data from 2017-2019, N= 4,032.Measurement: Reliable multiple-item scales including subjective wellbeing (2 European Quality of Life Survey items, Cronbach's alpha=.85); distancing attitudes (5 items, alpha=.87); distancing behavior e.g. standing 6' apart in public (5 items, alpha=.80); emotional cost of distancing and restrictions on social interaction (8-12 items, alpha=.94); and an extensive suite of controls (19 variables).Methods: Descriptive statistics, OLS regression, structural equation models. Results: Subjective wellbeing is greater for those who approve of distancing, for those who practice distancing, and particularly for those whose distancing attitudes and behavior are congruent, either both in favor or both opposed (multiplicative interaction). The emotional cost of distancing is strongly tied to wellbeing and is heterogeneous, with some disliking distancing much more than others. An SEM model suggests causality: that emotional costs strongly reduce wellbeing but not vice-versa. During the epidemic, COVID issues constitute two of the top 5 influences on wellbeing, behind only subjective health and religious belief and tied with income. All this is net of family background, religious origins, age, ethnicity, race, gender, rural residence, education, occupational status, marriage, unemployment, income, health, religion, and political party.

In surveys conducted in the last few years a dangerous new bias has emerged. Many respondents – varying erratically somewhere between 10% and 30% or more – spontaneously choose to role-play, pretending to be someone else instead of giving their own true views. These ‘recreational’ role-players are not dissembling for financial gain and are not screened out by current methods detecting incentive-motivated non-genuine respondents. They are not "lying" to mask socially unacceptable views or enhancing self-image. To our knowledge, there is no prior research on them. When respondents do role-play, means are biased. Worse yet, including role-players in multivariate analyses often leads to serious, scientifically harmful biases. We provide a dozen significant (p

Huntington claimed that today’s major conflicts are most likely to erupt between religiously defined ‘civilizations,’ in particular between Christianity and Islam. Using World Values Surveys from 86 nations, we examine differences between Christians and Muslims in preferences for religious political leaders. The results suggest a marked difference between Muslims and Christians in attitudes toward religious politicians, with Muslims more favorable by 20 points out of 100. Adjusting for devoutness and education (at the individual level), and degree of government corruption and status as a formerly Communist state (at the national level) accounts for most of the difference. Little support is found for the clash-of-civilizations hypothesis. Instead we find a clash of individual beliefs—between the devout and the secular—and enduring differences between the more developed and the less developed world accounts for almost all of the difference between Islam and Christianity with regards to preferences for religious political leaders.

A rich tradition of research has addressed income inequality and health, but the issue has achieved a fresh currency with the reversals of economic fortunes wrought by the Great Recession. This paper analyses the degree to which changing inequality induced by the Great Recession impacted Europeans’ subjective health (self-rated health and satisfaction with health). To address this question, we analyse the multilevel European Quality of Life Survey conducted mainly in 2003, 2008, and 2012 which provides representative samples from 24 European countries at all three time points, as well as national-level data on inequality (Gini coefficient) and appropriate national-level and individual-level controls. We find that, net of GDP, inequality has no statistically significant impact before, during or after the Great Recession. Turning to determinants, our variance-components multi-level models controlling for known individual-level predictors show that inequality remains insignificant at all time points, while individual family income is strongly related to subjective health GDP per capita has little effect except indirectly through income. We also assessed impacts specifically for vulnerable, at-risk groups. Including GDP per capita, Gini coefficient, and individual level controls, our model explains about one quarter of the variance in health status (R-squared >.23). All in all, our results support a rational choice, materialist hypothesis: that absolute prosperity of the individual matters to subjective health, but income inequality does not, in Europe in this period. This supports a policy emphasis on increasing levels of pay, and on poverty relief, rather than on reducing inequality.

This paper depicts the trajectory of Americans' confidence in their police across five months before, during, and after the nation was riveted by Minnesota police murdering a Black civilian and the implications thereof for our civic community and our national commitment to equal protection. Data from the International Social Science Survey and the international WVS/EVS surveys show that Americans' confidence in their police is, on average, fairly typical of other advanced societies, coming 30th out of 110 nations worldwide. Within the US there was sharp political divergence. Democrats' confidence in the police plunged dramatically around the time of the killing, and then rebounded even more strongly later. But this was only among Democrats. Republicans' views were stable across the period. Regression analysis reveals that that this pattern holds controlling for social and demographic factors, including race. The patterns of change in confidence in the police were replicated for trust in the police. In addition, Blacks and Whites were equally confident in the police across most of the period, except that shortly after the murder Black's confidence plunged briefly and temporarily lower than their White peers'; the subsequent rebound in confidence was especially large among Blacks. Further multivariate analysis reveals that the degree of confidence people feel in the government as a whole is by far the largest determinant of how much confidence they feel in the police. Sociodemographic factors other than race play no clear role. Racial prejudice is irrelevant. In short, all this is mainly party politics.

"Social distancing", a set of "nonpharmaceutical interventions" or NPIs in the medical literature, is a primary defence, perhaps the primary defence, against infectious disease, universally advocated by medical authorities in the US and throughout the world during the current coronavirus pandemic. The idea is not new. Perhaps the first government-directed quarantine system was mid-fourteenth-century Venice's “quaranta giorni", forty days of mandated isolation for incoming ships. We propose a 5-item primary scale of "social distancing" behavior (KEK-3) and a slightly extended variant (KEK-3m), developed for use during the COVID-19 epidemic (and, potentially, beyond). The candidate items all had 7 answer categories. Assessment aligns very well with the classical measurement model for multi-item scales: interitem correlations are high; alpha reliability is 0.86; correlations with criterion variables are similar across the candidate items; factor analysis (oblimin rotation) finds a single dimension with an eigenvalue over 1 and loadings around .7. We provide behavioral norms for America during the 2020 pandemic and describe KEK-3's links to demographic and socioeconomic factors. Developing a replicable scale is especially important now, because many researchers are making erroneous comparisons using the same terminology to describe aspects of the epidemic which have been measured differently. To successfully assess the "...meaning of social change related to COVID-19, the newly emerging social practices due to lockdown measures..." (Esposito, Stark and Squazzoni 2020), high-quality measurements sufficiently reliable and robust to be replicated in different times as the epidemic evolves and in different settings are desperately needed: KEK-3 contributes to such a set of measures. Data: four large national sample surveys conducted April - July, 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. Data collection was through Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk. This scale may be freely used by other researchers so long as its origin is acknowledged.

In the US, new vaccines are banned until accepted as safe and effective by the FDA. But the approval process is slow and cautious. The faster, but perhaps riskier, Russian system (like the Chinese) produced an approved coronavirus vaccine months more quickly, leaving Americans at risk of dying for months longer than Russians. Despite widespread fears that many would be hesitant to accept vaccination at all, and understandable doubts about vaccine approval processes outside the US, data from two national surveys in September 2020 show, very surprisingly, that a majority of Americans at that time would have willingly taken the Russian vaccine. Moreover a two-to-one majority of Americans – rich and poor, young and old, Democrat and Republican alike – believed that they ought to be allowed to buy it. Based on those figures, we estimate that making the Russian vaccine (or the Chinese) immediately available would have saved 70 or more American lives each day in the autumn of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. To put that in context, US government prohibitions on Russian and Chinese vaccines cost more lives each day than the roughly 45 people killed daily by all American murderers combined. For the US government, a less authoritarian domestic policy, and a clearer appreciation of the globalization of medical technology, would seem to be indicated.

In the US new vaccines are banned until shown to be safe and effective. But the approval process is slow and cautious and no vaccine has yet been approved. The faster but perhaps riskier Russian system produced an approved coronavirus vaccine months more quickly, leaving Americans at risk of dying for months longer than Russians. Our data from two national surveys in September show that a majority of Americans would willingly take the existing Russian vaccine and that a two-to-one majority – rich and poor, young and old, Democrat and Republican alike – believe that they ought to be allowed to do so. We estimate that making the Russian vaccine immediately available would save approximately 40 to 100 American lives each day after the first month and many more subsequently, To put the matter bluntly, current US government policy will kill some 40 to 100 people each day for a considerable period later this year and early next. To put those deaths in context, all American murderers combined kill only 45 people each day – not a record the US government should wish to emulate. There are also implications for the 2020 election; Since feelings about the Russian coronavirus vaccine are strongly favorable, and the benefits of allowing it in the US are large, making it available should be attractive politically. The Republican government has the power to adopt that policy and gain the credit. Alternatively, the Democratic opposition has the opportunity to advocate that policy, and claim the credit.

Research question: Why do some Americans evaluate income inequality as too high whereas others do not? Does envy of the rich (the desire to "chop the top"), matter to these evaluations, even above and beyond other well-known influences? We explore this issue by extending a standard model of social-structural and political influences on inequality aversion/ desire to reduce income inequality to include self-reported income envy (and including perceived self-interest as a control variable). Key findings: (1) Envy of the rich has a moderately strong relationship with seeing the current income distribution as too unequal: The total effect of envy on inequality aversion is positive and moderately strong. (2) This effect persists unchanged after taking family political and stratification background, demographics, and current social class/stratification position into account. (3) It persists when we also control perceived economic self-interest in inequality reduction. (4) Part of the effect is indirect through political party preference, but the direct effect of envy remains moderately important even when party is taken into account (5) The effect is strong among Republicans, but absent among Democrats. Data and methods: Data are from the International Social Science Survey Round 20, USA 2016-2017, a representative US national sample (N=1,778 in the main wave and 2496 in two developmental waves). Methods include descriptive statistics; CFA for scale construction; OLS and multilevel regression analysis; and SEM to check causal issues. Theoretical implications: Attitude towards income inequality, also called inequality aversion or norm on income inequality, is the offspring of many parents; envy is one of the generative influences, in addition to structural and political roots of public opinion and policy-relevant attitudes. Support for redistribution, therefore, encompasses not only a desire for social cohesion through mechanical solidarity based on equality of condition, not only a self-interested desire to reap some of the redistributed riches, not only a fixed political commitment to this goal, but also an envy component, specifically among people on the right of politics.

Background: The European PharmaCog study (http://www.pharmacog.org) has reported a reduction in delta (1–6 Hz) electroencephalographic (EEG) power (density) during cage exploration (active condition) compared with quiet wakefulness (passive condition) in PDAPP mice (hAPP Indiana V717F mutation) modeling Alzheimer’s disease (AD) amyloidosis and cognitive deficits. Objective: Here, we tested the reproducibility of that evidence in TASTPM mice (double mutation in APP KM670/671NL and PSEN1 M146V), which develop brain amyloidosis and cognitive deficits over aging. The reliability of that evidence was examined in four research centers of the PharmaCog study. Methods: Ongoing EEG rhythms were recorded from a frontoparietal bipolar channel in 29 TASTPM and 58 matched “wild type” C57 mice (range of age: 12–24 months). Normalized EEG power was calculated. Frequency and amplitude of individual delta and theta frequency (IDF and ITF) peaks were considered during the passive and active conditions. Results: Compared with the “wild type” group, the TASTPM group showed a significantly lower reduction in IDF power during the active over the passive condition (p

The Great Recession increased income inequality by an average of 6%. We assesses the impact of that on subjective wellbeing (happiness, life satisfaction). Data: European Quality of Life survey, 25 representative national samples at three time points, over 70,000 respondents. Analysis: variance-components multi-level models controlling for GDP per capita (an essential point) and individual-level predictors. Findings: income inequality has no statistically significant impact before, during, or after the Great Recession. Instead (contrary to much previous research) a straightforward individualistic utilitarian–materialist understanding is supported: money does increase wellbeing but inequality itself—the gap between rich and poor—is irrelevant.

With a few notable exceptions, sociologists, economists, and public opinion researchers have generally neglected the role of personality in status attainment, well-being, and related research on non-cognitive skills. This is partly because the existing measurement instruments for the well-known Big Five personality traits are far too long for inclusion in the large nationwide (as opposed to clinical) surveys where status attainment and well-being are typically analyzed. Accordingly, with the goal of identifying a powerful, concise collection of items measuring key personality traits, we included the classical full 60-item NEO-5 personality test measurements in a special follow-up to the Czech edition of the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC; n = 2198). Using classical measurement techniques of factor analysis, supplemented by structural equation analyses which also take into account correlations with criterion variables, we assess the value of the different potential items. We arrive at a concise set that, for general social science as opposed to clinical purposes, adequately measures two of the Big Five personality traits: extraversion (4 items) and conscientiousness (4 items). We also find an empirically highly reliable measure of third, neuroticism (6 items), but have some doubts about its conceptual meaning. We do not find adequate measures of openness to experience or to agreeableness, the remainder of the Big Five.

Based on earlier, mainly aggregate analyses, conventional wisdom previously held that income inequality reduces happiness. But aggregate models consistently yield misleading results in this domain, substantially because of intractable problems of sample size, confounding omitted variables, and conditional effects differing between poor developing nations, rich advanced nations, and nations in transition from Communism. Based on more recent evidence, scholarly views are beginning to merge on a consensus that national income inequality is irrelevant to individuals' subjective well-being in advanced nations and normal times, as shown by multi-level models with appropriate controls (including socioeconomic development, an engine of happiness and foe of inequality). For developing nations, consensus is not as strong, but the bulk of the evidence indicates a neutral to positive effect for inequality. Building on this foundation, this paper provides exploratory analyses to stimulate future research, extending our understanding of the social psychological and cultural forces that generate these results; dissects changes over time and expectations for the future; and addresses the possibility that inequality may reduce well-being in extraordinary circumstances and for particular groups - for example creating differences in formerly Communist nations between the political left and the right, and between older and younger cohorts.

People differ vastly in perceptions of inequality, some seeing a small elite at the top of their society with a vast impoverished mass at the bottom, others a prosperous society with most people in the middle. This was found first for two nations, Australia and Communist-era Hungary. We extend these results to 43 nations and to the post-Communist era. The results support our original middle-range “reference group and reality blend” hypothesis. We extend the original findings to show that, for analogous reasons, socioeconomic development makes societies seem more egalitarian, that societies’ actual income inequality shapes perceptions, and that the collapse of Communism dramatically increased perceptions of inequality. In sharp contrast to these diverse perceptions, ideals are shared, almost everyone preferring prosperous egalitarian societies. Data are from 92 large representative national samples in 43 nations with more than 100,000 respondents, analyzed by multilevel generalized least squares (GLS) methods.

In formulating views of just reward for high-status and low-status work, do ordinary citizens take cues from their nation's public stance on income inequality as institutionally embedded in their welfare state, i.e. their social welfare and labor market policies, their "welfarism"? How large a morally correct earnings gap flows from that? Our multilevel analyses (fixed effects, random intercepts) replicate prior research on the impact of individual characteristics and socioeconomic development. They open new territory with the discovery that public opinion on legitimate/just earnings of high-status occupations aligns moderately strongly with welfarism, ceteris paribus, with welfare state citizens advocating lower pay for the elite but not higher pay for working-class occupations: The welfare state is not (or no longer) a matter of helping the poor but instead of bringing down the elite, "cutting down the tall poppies". Data: World Inequality Study v2.1: 30 countries, 71 surveys, and over 88,000 individuals.

The scientific understanding of the causes of global warming is based on a vast body of rigorous, peer-reviewed research, but there is little systematic empirical evidence on consequences for humans. Using direct questions about satisfaction with winter and with summer weather, I show that warming’s effects on subjective well-being can be reliably estimated from cross-sectional survey data across a broad temperature spectrum and, moreover, that these effects are large. Combining a US national survey (N = 2295) and standard National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data on actual month-by-month temperatures at each location over many years, shows that changes to be expected from the widely discussed, allegedly “dangerous”, 2 °C of global warming are both familiar and small, equivalent to moving from Wisconsin to Michigan, or Virginia to North Carolina, or more generally 180 miles south. Such warming will greatly increase Americans’ satisfaction with winter weather, especially in the north, but somewhat decrease satisfaction with summer weather in both north and south. On balance, the nation benefits slightly. Regional differences are large, with northerners’ gains roughly equivalent to a 1–2 % increase in their GDP, while southerners losses are about the same size. These changes are important, about as large as the combined financial implications of all other aspects of global warming. They have important policy implications, suggesting that prompt action to reduce carbon emissions may not be optimal because that would restrict warming both in the summer and in the south (gains) but also in the winter and in the north (losses).

This paper investigates how the drastic educational reforms during the Communist period changed the effects of family background on education in China, in comparison to other nations. Data are from the Life Histories and Social Change in Contemporary China survey and the World Inequality Study; N=130,109 in 28 societies. Since World Warii, the mean number of years of education in China paralleled, at a lower level, the rises in Eastern European Communist countries and in Western market economies. Multi-level regression analysis shows that China’s educational level is not higher than would be predicted on the basis of worldwide patterns linking education togdpand family background. Overall, the drastic educational reforms of the Communist period do not seem to have raised educational attainments, contrary to the Rousseau/Marx understanding of the primacy of private property as a generator of social inequality.

Group-mean centering of independent variables in multi-level models is widely practiced and widely recommended. For example, in cross-national studies of educational performance, family background is scored as a deviation from the country mean for student’s family background. We argue that this is usually a serious mis-specification, introducing bias and random measurement error with all their attendant vices. We examine five diverse examples of “real world” analyses using large, high quality datasets on topics of broad interest in the social sciences. In all of them, consistent with much (but not all) of the technical literature, group-mean centering substantially distorts results. Moreover the distortions are large, substantively important differences pointing towards seriously incorrect interpretations of important social processes. We therefore recommend that group-mean centering be abandoned.

How tightly linked are the strength of a country&rsquo, s welfare state and its residents&rsquo, support for income redistribution? Multilevel model results (with appropriate controls) show that the publics of strong welfare states recognize their egalitarian income distributions, i.e., the stronger the welfare state, the less the actual and perceived inequality, but they do not differ from their peers in liberal welfare states/market-oriented societies in their preferences for equality. Thus, desire for redistribution bears little overall relationship to welfare state activity. However, further investigation shows a stronger relationship under the surface: Poor people&rsquo, s support for redistribution is nearly constant across levels of welfarism. By contrast, the stronger the welfare state, the less the support for redistribution among the prosperous, perhaps signaling &ldquo, harvest fatigue&rdquo, due to paying high taxes and longstanding egalitarian policies. Our findings are not consistent with structuralist/materialist theory, nor with simple dominant ideology or system justification arguments, but are partially consistent with a legitimate framing hypothesis, with an atomistic self-interest hypothesis, with a reference group solidarity hypothesis, and with the &ldquo, me-and-mine&rdquo, hypothesis incorporating sociotropic and egotropic elements. Database: the World Inequality Study: 30 countries, 71 surveys, and over 88,0000 individuals.

A growing body of evidence supports the contention of scholarly culture theory that immersing children in book-oriented environments benefits their later educational achievement, attainment and occupational standing. These findings have been interpreted as suggesting that book-oriented socialization, indicated by home library size, equips youth with life-long tastes, skills and knowledge. However, to date, this has not been directly assessed. Here, we document advantageous effects of scholarly culture for adult literacy, adult numeracy, and adult technological problem solving. Growing up with home libraries boosts adult skills in these areas beyond the benefits accrued from parental education or own educational or occupational attainment. The effects are loglinear, with greatest returns to the growth in smaller libraries. Our evidence comes from regressions with balanced repeated replicate weights estimated on data from 31 societies which participated in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) between 2011 and 2015.

Prior research shows that coming from a book-oriented family is a great advantage for children’s education, especially for the “ordinary success” of children from disadvantaged families. Focusing on the next career stage, our multi-level analysis (58,944 respondents in 31 societies) shows that it furthers children’s later occupational career even more than parents’ education or occupation, especially in developing nations where there is a small additional advantage beyond the educational gains. This evidence supports the scholarly culture hypothesis that book-oriented socialization provides a “toolkit” of competencies, skills, and knowledge (Kohn, Spaeth). It is not consistent with elite closure/cultural capital theories that elites use cultural signals to recognize members and hoard advantages by discriminating on the basis of culture (Bourdieu, Goblot).

University days generally start at fixed times in the morning, often early morning, without regard to optimal functioning times for students with different chronotypes. Research has shown that later starting times are crucial to high school students' sleep, health, and performance. Shifting the focus to university, this study used two new approaches to determine ranges of start times that optimize cognitive functioning for undergraduates. The first is a survey-based, empirical model (SM), and the second a neuroscience-based, theoretical model (NM). The SM focused on students' self-reported chronotype and times they feel at their best. Using this approach, data from 190 mostly first and second year university students were collected and analyzed to determine optimal times when cognitive performance can be expected to be at its peak. The NM synthesized research in sleep, circadian neuroscience, sleep deprivation's impact on cognition, and practical considerations to create a generalized solution to determine the best learning hours. Strikingly the SM and NM results align with each other and confirm other recent research in indicating later start times. They add several important points: (1) They extend our understanding by showing that much later starting times (after 11 a.m. or 12 noon) are optimal; (2) Every single start time disadvantages one or more chronotypes; and (3) The best practical model may involve three alternative starting times with one afternoon shared session. The implications are briefly considered.

Resting state electroencephalographic (EEG) rhythms reflect the fluctuation of cortical arousal and vigilance in a typical clinical setting, namely the EEG recording for few minutes with eyes closed (i.e., passive condition) and eyes open (i.e., active condition). Can this procedure be back-translated to C57 (wild type) mice for aging studies? On-going EEG rhythms were recorded from a frontoparietal bipolar channel in 85 (19 females) C57 mice. Male mice were subdivided into 3 groups: 25 young (4.5–6 months), 18 middle-aged (12–15 months), and 23 old (20–24 months) mice to test the effect of aging. EEG power density was compared between short periods (about 5 minutes) of awake quiet behavior (passive) and dynamic exploration of the cage (active). Compared with the passive condition, the active condition induced decreased EEG power at 1–2 Hz and increased EEG power at 6–10 Hz in the group of 85 mice. Concerning the aging effects, the passive condition showed higher EEG power at 1–2 Hz in the old group than that in the others. Furthermore, the active condition exhibited a maximum EEG power at 6–8 Hz in the former group and 8–10 Hz in the latter. In the present conditions, delta and theta EEG rhythms reflected changes in cortical arousal and vigilance in freely behaving C57 mice across aging. These changes resemble the so-called slowing of resting state EEG rhythms observed in humans across physiological and pathological aging. The present EEG procedures may be used to enhance preclinical phases of drug discovery in mice for understanding the neurophysiological effects of new compounds against brain aging.

Context Public acceptance of routine medical procedures is nearly universal, but controversy over dramatic or invasive procedures like transplants is common. Objectives To assess the distributions and organization of public opinion on organ transplant and to discover the magnitude of the direct and indirect impacts of religion, scientific knowledge, and acceptance of evolution on individuals' support for organ transplant. Participants A representative sample (N = 2069) of the US adult, English-speaking population in 2009. Intervention Participants were administered the International Social Science Survey/USA 2009. Results Organ transplants were warmly endorsed by most Americans in 2009, as earlier, but support is not universal. Confirmatory factor analysis shows that Americans' opinions on heart, kidney, and pancreas transplants all reflect the same underlying attitude toward major organ transplants. Structural equation modeling shows that scientific knowledge is the most important influence on these attitudes, with more knowledgeable persons being more supportive. Acceptance of the theory of evolution is the second most important factor, also associated with greater support for transplant. Growing up in a church-going family encourages people to support organ transplant, even after adjusting for other influences. Otherwise denomination and religious belief have only small indirect influences. Demographic differences are small. Conclusions These results provide clues about future trends. A religious revival, were it to occur, would not be likely to alter support for transplants. If public knowledge of science continues to increase, or acceptance of the theory of evolution grows, support for transplant will most likely increase.

Exposure to books and high culture provides important academic advantages. But the reasons for this are hotly disputed. Elite closure theory posits that culture merely signals children’s elite status to gatekeepers who then grant them unjust advantages. But other theories suggest that scholarly culture provides cognitive skills that improve academic performance, which schools justly reward. We attempt to adjudicate between these theories using data on academic performance from 42 national samples with 200,144 cases from OECD’s PISA. We find that a key aspect of scholarly culture, the number of books in the family home, exerts a strong influence on academic performance in ways consistent with the cognitive skill hypothesis, regardless of the nation’s ideology, political history, or level of development.

This paper analyses the effect of income inequality on Europeans’ quality of life, specifically on their overall well-being (happiness, life satisfaction), on their financial quality of life (satisfaction with standard of living, affordability of goods and services, subjective poverty), and on their health (self-rated health, satisfaction with health). The simple bivariate correlations of inequality with overall well-being, financial quality of life, and health are negative. But this is misleading because of the confounding effect of a key omitted variable, national economic development (GDP per capita): Unequal societies are on average much poorer (r = 0.46) and so disadvantaged because of that. We analyse the multi-level European Quality of Life survey conducted in 2003 including national-level data on inequality (Gini coefficient) and economic development (GDP) and individual-level data on overall well-being, financial quality of life, and health. The individual cases are from representative samples of 28 European countries. Our variance-components multi-level models controlling for known individual-level predictors show that national per capita GDP increases subjective well-being, financial quality of life, and health. Net of that, the national level of inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, has no statistically significant effect, suggesting that income inequality does not reduce well-being, financial quality of life, or health in advanced societies. These result all imply that directing policies and resources towards inequality reduction is unlikely to benefit the general public in advanced societies.

Arne Duncan, US Secretary of State for Education, tweeted in 2013: 'let teens sleep, start school later'. This paper examines early starts and their negative consequences in the light of key research in the last 30 years in sleep medicine and circadian neuroscience. An overview of the circadian timing system in adolescence leading to changes in sleep patterns is given and underpins the conclusion that altering education times can both improve learning and reduce health risks. Further research is considered from education, sleep medicine and neuroscience studies illustrating these improvements. The implementation of later starts is briefly considered in light of other education interventions to improve learning. Finally, the impact of introducing research-based later starts synchronized to adolescent biology is considered in practical and policy terms. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor and Francis.