A Pound of Flesh

2015 ◽  
pp. 631-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florencia Torche ◽  
Dalton Conley
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Neonatal Health ◽  
Outcome Predictor ◽  
Family Resources ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Moderating Factors ◽  
Fetal Nutrition

Birthweight is increasingly being used by economists and other social scientists to measure health endowment at birth. Research in this tradition has evolved from regression analysis to twin difference models to natural experiment approaches that use such events as natural disasters to capture the effects of fetal nutrition and stress on this measure of neonatal health. Furthermore, causal inference approaches have been used to show that birthweight affects health, cognitive and noncognitive development, and educational achievement and attainment, as well as adult wages. An important recent line of literature investigates the heterogeneous impact of birthweight within and between families, examining such moderating factors as family resources, parental investment, and even genotype. This chapter discusses various methods (and their limitations) to incorporating birthweight into economic models as an outcome predictor or moderator.

Getting the Measure of Twins

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Viney
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Effects ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Human Genetics ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Identical Twin ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Modern Biology ◽  
Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould, the biologist and author, once joked that were he an identical twin raised separately from his brother they could ‘hire ourselves out to a host of social scientists and practically name our fee’. In order to monetise Gould’s fantasy, one would want a form of twinship that could operate according to evidential, experimental, somatic and circumstantial ideals. And Gould admits that he and his brother would need to be viewed as ‘the only really adequate natural experiment for separating genetic from environmental effects in humans’. This chapter seeks to interrogate the evidential and experimental circumstances that may underpin the comic quips that guide modern biology. In human genetics, twins are used as experimental bodies that are made to matter in particular ways and for particular people; they become newly ‘animate’ for being enrolled into scientific research. Raised in cultures assumed to be alike or dissimilar, isolated by researchers for being valuable in the measured disentanglement of assembled molecular agents (which are sometimes distinguished from an assemblage referred to as an ‘environment’), twins achieve a status of experimental significance not just for what they do but also for what they are taken to be.

Cultural Variability in the Educational and Learning Capitals of Australian Families and Its Relationship With Children’s Numeracy Outcomes

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 348-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sivanes Phillipson ◽  
Shane N. Phillipson ◽  
Sarika Kewalramani
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Stepwise Regression ◽  
Standardized Test ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Multiple Comparison ◽  
Comparison Analysis ◽  
The Family

This article explored the variability of parental educational mind-sets among Australian parents toward the accessible educational and learning capitals that may affect their children’s educational achievement. The participants ( N = 1,917) responded to the Family Educational and Learning Capitals Questionnaire as well as their ethnic identity. Parents also reported their children’s numeracy scores in a standardized test of achievement. Six major groups were adequate for statistical analysis, including Australians, British, Chinese, Indian, Other Asian, and Other European. A multiple comparison analysis was performed on the responses by parents from the six ethnic groups to examine the differences in parent responses to access to capitals. Controlled for ethnic groups, stepwise regression analysis showed which capitals predicted numeracy achievement of their children. The results indicated that within this sample of Australian parents, there is variability across different ethnic groups in what is considered important in their children’s educational achievement and this variability is associated with differences in numeracy outcomes.

Evaluating Equity in the Marital Relationship: An Alternative Approach

1982 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 759-762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter R. Schumm ◽  
Julia E. Kirn
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Multiple Regression Analysis ◽  
Multiple Regression ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Difference Scores ◽  
Interaction Terms ◽  
Integrate Theory ◽  
Alternative Approach

Theory concerning the differing perceptions of marital partners often seems to invite the use of difference scores for measuring concepts such as equity, homogamy, inconsistency in social status, consensus regarding various attitudes, and similarity of personality traits. However, as illustrated with an example from equity theory, difference scores should be replaced by interaction terms in multiple regression analysis to evaluate such theory adequately. More careful attention needs to be paid to how family social scientists integrate theory, measurement, and statistical analysis in research.

Prison Versus Western Australia: Which Worked Best, the Australian Penal Colony or the English Convict Prison System?

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 1139-1160
Author(s):  
Barry Godfrey
Keyword(s):  
Western Australia ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Prison System ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Penal Colony ◽  
South Wales

Abstract Between 1850 and 1868, a natural experiment in punishment took place. Men convicted of similar crimes could serve their sentence of penal servitude either in Britain or in Australia. For historians and social scientists, this offers the prospect of addressing a key question posed over 200 years ago by the philosopher, penal theorist and reformer Jeremy Bentham when he authored a lengthy letter entitled ‘Panopticon versus New South Wales: Or, the Panopticon Penitentiary System, and the Penal Colonization System, Compared’. This article answers the underlying tenet of Bentham’s question, ‘Which was best prison or transportation?’ by applying two efficiency tests. The first tests whether UK convicts or Australian convicts had higher rates of reconviction, and the second explores the speed to reconviction.

WEALTH IN THE EXTENDED FAMILY

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ngina S. Chiteji
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Family ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
White Child ◽  
Income Dynamics ◽  
Family Resources ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Family Wealth

AbstractThis paper argues that researchers may be misgauging family resources by focusing narrowly on the nuclear family when measuring these resources. While social scientists have long been interested in the ways that families' material resources affect their ability to provide for their offspring, the traditional measures of family resources have emphasized parents' income and parents' wealth, although the interest in the latter is relatively new (Conley 2009 [1999]; Haveman et al., 2001; Oliver and Shapiro, 2006 [1995]). This paper attempts to shift the focus to the extended family, and it uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the Child Development Supplement (CDS) to paint a portrait of the volume of wealth that is available in the grandparent generation of a child's family tree. After theorizing about the potential ways that grandparent wealth can affect children's life chances, the research shows that there are substantial differences in extended-family wealth by race. The Black/White wealth ratio is on the order of 0.11 in the grandparent generation at the median, which indicates that the typical Black child has grandparents with only about eleven cents of wealth for every dollar that the grandparents of the typical White child possess. Some implications of this wealth gap for children and society are discussed.

scholarly journals LEARNING FROM CRISES? – SOME PHILOSOPHICAL AND POLITICO-ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS IN THE LIGHT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Daumann ◽  
Florian Follert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Economic Considerations

As Boettke et al. (2007, p. 363) emphasize “Disasters, whether man-made or natural, represent a ‘natural experiment’ for social scientists”. They refer to a very famous quote from John Stuart Mill (1849, pp. 74–75) concerning the value of free economics for the recovery after crises: “This perpetual consumption and reproduction of capital affords the explanation of what has so often excited wonder, the great rapidity with which countries recover from a state of devastation; the disappearance, in a short time, of all traces of the mischiefs done by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and the ravages of war. An enemy lays waste a country by fire and sword, and destroys or carries away nearly all the moveable wealth existing in it; all the inhabitants are ruined, and yet, in a few years after, everything is much as it was before.”

Selected Variables and Educational Expectation Among Secondary School Students in Trinidad

1975 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-100
Author(s):  
Ishmael Baksh
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Secondary School Students ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Educational Expectations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
School Students ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Educational Expectation

It is generally accepted that in the United States and other modern industrial societies there is a link between formal schooling (number of years of formal education) and social mobility, though some scholars such as Anderson, Blau and Duncan, and Jencks have disputed the strength of this link. The study of educational plans (or "educational expectations") of secondary school students in such societies derives its significance in part from findings of social scientists such as Hauser and Sewell et al. that a positive relationship exists between educational expectation and educational achievement, the latter being measured by number of years of formal schooling received. In order words, the investigation of educational expectation is valuable partly because it is a predictor - albeit a somewhat crude one - of ultimate educational achievement and hence socio-econmic status.

Behavioral Processes in Long-Lag Intervention Studies

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 454-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale T. Miller ◽  
Jennifer E. Dannals ◽  
Julian J. Zlatev
Keyword(s):  
Field Experiments ◽  
Intervention Studies ◽  
Outcome Measure ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Prejudice Reduction ◽  
Theory Of Change ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Lab Experiments

We argue that psychologists who conduct experiments with long lags between the manipulation and the outcome measure should pay more attention to behavioral processes that intervene between the manipulation and the outcome measure. Neglect of such processes, we contend, stems from psychology’s long tradition of short-lag lab experiments where there is little scope for intervening behavioral processes. Studying process in the lab invariably involves studying psychological processes, but in long-lag field experiments it is important to study causally relevant behavioral processes as well as psychological ones. To illustrate the roles that behavioral processes can play in long-lag experiments we examine field experiments motivated by three policy-relevant goals: prejudice reduction, health promotion, and educational achievement. In each of the experiments discussed we identify various behavioral pathways through which the manipulated psychological state could have produced the observed outcome. We argue that if psychologists conducting long-lag interventions posited a theory of change that linked manipulated psychological states to outcomes via behavioral pathways, the result would be richer theory and more practically useful research. Movement in this direction would also permit more opportunities for productive collaborations between psychologists and other social scientists interested in similar social problems.

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