Compassionate Conservatives? Evangelicals,Economic Conservatism,and National Identity

In the United States, white evangelicals are more economically conservative than other Americans. It is commonly assumed that white evangelicals oppose redistributive social policies because of their individualistic theology. Yet Canadian evangelicals are just as supportive of redistributive social policy as other Canadians, even though they share the same tools of conservative Protestant theology. To solve this puzzle, I use multi‐sited ethnography to compare how two evangelical congregations in the United States and Canada talked about poverty and the role of government. In both countries, evangelicals made sense of their religious responsibilities to “the poor” by reference to national identity. Evangelicals used their theological tools differently in the United States and Canada because different visions of national solidarity served as cultural anchors for religious discourse about poverty. To understand the political and civic effects of religion, scholars need to consider the varied ways that religious groups imagine national community within religious practice.     

Do Economic Reforms Alleviate Subjective Well-Being Losses of Economic Crises?

Major economic crises tend to be followed by crises in subjective well-being. Following the financial and debt crises, politicians and social scientists have engaged in heated discussions of ways to alleviate such losses. In particular, should governments intervene more or less? This paper explores whether liberalizing economic institutions, a type of reform favoured by some economists, is likely to alleviate such loses. Estimating the effects of crises across European states 1975–2011 suggest that countries with relatively easy market regulations suffered smaller well-being losses.     

Economic Pressure,Individual and Family Processes,and Children’s Reticence in Romanian Families

Using Conger’s family stress model as a theoretical framework, a series of mediated associations among economic hardship, perceived economic pressure, parental depression, marital conflict, psychologically controlling parenting, and children’s reticent behaviors in Romanian families were studied. The sample consisted of 121 Romanian mothers and fathers of 4–5-year-old children. Children’s kindergarten teachers living in urban and rural locations evaluated child reticence. Findings generally support the family stress model. Structural equation modeling showed that after controlling for living in a rural location, economic pressure was indirectly linked with marital conflict through depression. Depression was indirectly related to psychological control through marital conflict, and marital conflict was indirectly linked to child reticence through psychological control. Directions for future research and recommendations for interventions and public policy are described.     

Reinforcement,Rationality, and Intentions: How Robust Is Automatic Reinforcement Learning in Economic Decision Making?

Reinforcement learning is often observed in economic decision making and may lead to detrimental decisions. Because of its automaticity, it is difficult to avoid. In three experimental studies, we investigated whether this process could be controlled by goal intentions and implementation intentions. Participants' decisions were investigated in a probability‐updating task in which the normative rule to maximize expected payoff (Bayes' rule) conflicted with the reinforcement heuristic as a simple decision rule. Some participants were asked to set goal intentions designated to foster the optimization of rational decision making, while other participants were asked to furnish these goal intentions with implementation intentions. Results showed that controlling automatic processes of reinforcement learning is possible by means of goal intentions or implementation intentions that focus decision makers on the analysis of decision feedback. Importantly, such beneficial effects were not achieved by simply instructing participants to analyze the feedback, without defining a goal as the desired end state from a first‐person perspective. Regarding intentions supposed to shut down reinforcement processes by controlling negative affect, effects were more complex and depended on the specified goal‐directed behavior. The goal intention to suppress the disappointment elicited by negative feedback was not effective in controlling reinforcement processes. Furnishing this goal with an implementation intention even backfired and strengthened unwanted reinforcement processes. In contrast, asking participants to keep cool in response to negative decision outcomes through the use of goal intentions or implementation intentions increased decisions in line with Bayes' rule. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relation of Economic and Social Conditions to Voting Behavior in Iowa, 1924–1936

Summary

Using a three-variable design, this study investigated conformity to male and female group pressures among Chinese and American male college students. Methodologically, it departed from traditional group pressure studies in a number of ways: (a) the study was conducted outside the psychological laboratory where demand characteristics of the situation were believed to resemble college life conditions more closely, (b) it utilized changes in personal opinions about beliefs rather than perceptual judgments, (c) it employed unobtrusive, as well as conventional, means of measuring conformity. Another major difference was that S presented his opinion prior to those of the confederates who expressed contradictory opinions to those of S. Five confederates, all male or all female were used. S and confederate opinions and degree of strength of opinions were assessed on six controversial issues. Latency between hearing the controversial statement and S's announcing his opinion was recorded. When S and all confederates had made their statements, S and confederates were permitted to alter their earlier stated opinions or the degree of strength of their opinions. It was found that Chinese Ss increased their hesitancy to respond, from the first to sixth issue, to a greater degree than did Americans. Hesitation for all Ss was longer in the presence of male confederates than in the presence of females. Americans made greater shifts of opinion after the group pressure experience, but Chinese made a greater number of shifts. Americans showed a far greater tendency toward anticonformity than did Chinese.     

Economic Hardship, Neighborhood Context, and Parenting: Prospective Effects on Mexican�CAmerican Adolescent��s Mental Health

This study examined family and neighborhood influences relevant to low-income status to determine how they combine to predict the parenting behaviors of Mexican-American mothers and fathers. The study also examined the role of parenting as a mediator of these contextual influences on adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Study hypotheses were examined in a diverse sample of Mexican-American families in which 750 mothers and 467 fathers reported on their own levels of parental warmth and harsh parenting. Family economic hardship, neighborhood familism values, and neighborhood risk indicators were all uniquely associated with maternal and paternal warmth, and maternal warmth mediated the effects of these contextual influences on adolescent externalizing symptoms in prospective analyses. Parents' subjective perceptions of neighborhood danger interacted with objective indicators of neighborhood disadvantage to influence maternal and paternal warmth. Neighborhood familism values had unique direct effects on adolescent externalizing symptoms in prospective analyses, after accounting for all other context and parenting effects.     

Good and Bad Years: An Index of American Social,Economic, and Political Threat (1920–1986)

Information provided by 196 U.S. history professors, indicating the degree to which they considered each of the years from 1920 to 1986 threatening to the established order and way of life in America, was pooled to form a social, economic, and political threat (SEPT) index. Interrater reliability was high, and substantial test-retest reliability was evident for a selected subsample over a 6-month period. The index significantly correlated with 11 objective indices of threat, including the suicide rate, unemployment rate, rise and fall of common stocks, and number of military men on active duty. Several studies involving threat and authoritarianism were replicated and in some instances extended with the SEPT index (McCann & Stewin, 1984; Sales, 1972, 1973). The pseudo-archival SEPT index has utility when relatively global estimates of prevailing threat are required for historiometric research testing a diversity of hypotheses gleaned from psychological, sociological, historical, and political science theories.     

Examining Family Living Arrangements,Economic Development,Education Expenditure and Children’s Weight from the Welfare Mix in China

Applied Research in Quality of Life - There is increased social concern regarding children’s weight in China, but there is a relative lack of research concerning its social determinants....     

Economic correlates of violent death rates in forty countries, 1962–2008: A cross-typological analysis

ObjectivesOur goal was to identify if there might be advantages to combining two major public health concerns, i.e., homicides and suicides, in an analysis with well-established macro-level economic determinants, i.e., unemployment and inequality.MethodsMortality data, unemployment statistics, and inequality measures were obtained for 40 countries for the years 1962–2008. Rates of combined homicide and suicide, ratio of suicide to combined violent death, and ratio between homicide and suicide were graphed and analyzed. A fixed effects regression model was then performed for unemployment rates and Gini coefficients on homicide, suicide, and combined death rates.ResultsFor a majority of nation states, suicide comprised a substantial proportion (mean 75.51%; range 0–99%) of the combined rate of homicide and suicide. When combined, a small but significant relationship emerged between logged Gini coefficient and combined death rates (0.0066, p < 0.05), suggesting that the combined rate improves the ability to detect a significant relationship when compared to either rate measurement alone. Results were duplicated by age group, whereby combining death rates into a single measure improved statistical power, provided that the association was strong.ConclusionsViolent deaths, when combined, were associated with an increase in unemployment and an increase in Gini coefficient, creating a more robust variable. As the effects of macro-level factors (e.g., social and economic policies) on violent death rates in a population are shown to be more significant than those of micro-level influences (e.g., individual characteristics), these associations may be useful to discover. An expansion of socioeconomic variables and the inclusion of other forms of violence in future research could help elucidate long-term trends.     

The Impact of an Economic Boom on the Level and Distribution of Subjective Well-Being: Ireland, 1994–2001

The impact of increased affluence on life satisfaction is a matter of some controversy. This paper examines the impact of the recent economic boom in Ireland upon the level and distribution of various domains of well-being. There is evidence of a substantial increase in life satisfaction in the domain of finance and of an improvement in mental well-being. There is a reduction in inequality and polarisation for virtually all domains of life satisfaction. A social welfare function which is increasing and concave in individual well-being would show an improvement in social welfare over the period.     

Economic disparities in middle childhood development: does income matter?

A large literature has documented the influence of family economic resources on child development, yet income's effects in middle childhood have been understudied. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,551), the author examined the influence of family income in early and middle childhood on academic skills and behavior problems during middle childhood. Early childhood income had enduring effects on children's behavior problems and academic skills in middle childhood. Middle childhood income did not influence academic skills but did affect the development of behavior problems during middle childhood. Children from low-income households were particularly sensitive to the effects of family income. The quality of home environment during early and middle childhood explained a portion of the effects of income on academic skills and behavior problems.     

Intra-EU Migration: Legal and Economic View on Jobseekers’ Welfare Rights

International migration influences economies of both the home and the host country. Some countries perceive immigration as a threat and consider limitations to their social security system to protect the domestic economy. Within the European Union, both the economic and the legal side of the issue must be taken into account. The paper presents an empirical analysis of natives’ and immigrants’ unemployment rates in EU15 countries and discusses a possible use of the findings in intra-EU migration policy. Using Labour Force Survey Data for 2012, we estimate a series of logistic regressions in order to compare the immigrant/native unemployment rates, considering the differences in the structure of both subpopulations (in terms of age, sex, education and types of jobs). We conclude that a substantial part of the gap between natives’ and immigrants’ unemployment rates can be explained by these additional characteristics in most of the EU15 countries.     

Isolating Representations Versus Credible Constructions? Economic Modelling in Theory and Practice

This paper examines two recent approaches to the nature and functioning of economic models: models as isolating representations and models as credible constructions. The isolationist view conceives of economic models as surrogate systems that isolate some of the causal mechanisms or tendencies of their respective target systems, while the constructionist approach treats them rather like pure constructions or fictional entities that nevertheless license different kinds of inferences. I will argue that whereas the isolationist view is still tied to the representationalist understanding of models that takes the model-target dyad as the basic unit of analysis, the constructionist perspective can better accommodate the way we actually acquire knowledge through them. Using the example of Tobin’s ultra-Keynesian model I will show how many of the epistemic characteristics of modelling tend to go unrecognised if too much focus is placed on the model-target dyad.

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Economic,Environmental and Moral Acceptance of Renewable Energy: A Case Study—The Agricultural Biogas Plant at Pěčín

The production of renewable energy in agricultural biogas plants is being widely criticized because—among other things—most of the feedstock comes from purpose-grown crops like maize. These activities (generously subsidized in the Czech Republic) generate competitive pressure to other crops that are used for feeding or food production, worsening their affordability. Unique pretreatment technology that allows substitution of the purpose-grown crops by farming residues (such as husk or straw) was built 6 years ago on a commercial basis in Pě?ín (Czech Republic) under modest funding and without publicity. The design of the concept; financial assessment and moral viewpoint were analyzed based on practical operating data. It showed that the apparatus improves economic, environmental and moral acceptance as well. However, according to the government’s view, public funding for this type of processing was shortened, “because waste materials represent a lower cost”. The impact of such governance was analyzed as well.     

Does Economic Inequality Affect the Quality of Life of Older People in Rural Vietnam?

By combining data from the 2011 Vietnam National Aging Survey and the 2011 Rural, Agricultural and Fishery Census, this study examined whether expenditure inequality has any effect on the quality of life (life satisfaction or happiness) among the elderly in rural Vietnam. It was confirmed from our regression analysis that individuals who live in the communes with high inequality tend to self-report as being less happy, even after controlling for various individual and household attributes. The findings are robust to the choice of inequality measures and the specification of econometric models. We also find that older rural people who are farmers or poor are more sensitive to inequality. Given that these people tend to be less happy than others, the result shows the risk that inequality further lowers their subjective well-being. This finding, in part, supports the view that rural Vietnam is not a mobile society.     

Impact of Immigration on Economic Growth in Canada and in its Smaller Provinces

This paper evaluates the potential impact of education levels of immigrants and Canadian-born on economic growth in Canada and its smaller provinces by using data for the period 2006–2013. We specify a production function in which levels of educational attainments of immigrants and Canadian-born workers are entered separately. Feasible generalized least square (FGLS) method is applied to estimate the production function separately for all immigrants, and also for established immigrants (those who have been in Canada for 10 years or longer). The results show that all educational levels of immigrants have positive and statistically significant effects on economic growth. A similar conclusion applies to Canadian-born workers, although the impacts of their university degree holders is lower than that of immigrant university degree holders. Both immigrant and Canadian-born workers have smaller effects on economic growth in smaller provinces, which have attracted larger numbers of immigrants in recent years. The results also show that the economic growth effects are similar for all and established immigrants. Although these results are consistent with previous findings on discounting of immigrants’ educational credentials, more data are needed to strengthen their validity. We also suggest that the higher economic growth impact of immigrant university degree holders than that of Canadian-born is indicative of greater social returns to higher education resulting from increased diversity of population which in turn, as some previous studies suggest, can result in increased technological innovation, new ideas, and production of a wide variety of goods and services.