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.     

The Impact of Migration and Remittances on Household Welfare: Evidence from Vietnam

This paper examines the pattern and the impact of migration and remittances on household welfare in Vietnam using fixed-effects regressions and panel data from Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys 2010 and 2012. Overall, the effect of migration as well as remittances on employment of remaining members of home households is small. People in households with migration and remittances tend to work less than people in other households. The effect of migration on household welfare happens mainly through remittances. If migrants do not send remittances to their home households, there are no effects of migration on welfare of home households. Remittances, especially international remittances, help receiving households increase per capita income and per capita expenditure and reduce poverty.     

Dividing Attention Between Tasks: Testing Whether Explicit Payoff Functions Elicit Optimal Dual‐Task Performance

We test people's ability to optimize performance across two concurrent tasks. Participants performed a number entry task while controlling a randomly moving cursor with a joystick. Participants received explicit feedback on their performance on these tasks in the form of a single combined score. This payoff function was varied between conditions to change the value of one task relative to the other. We found that participants adapted their strategy for interleaving the two tasks, by varying how long they spent on one task before switching to the other, in order to achieve the near maximum payoff available in each condition. In a second experiment, we show that this behavior is learned quickly (within 2–3 min over several discrete trials) and remained stable for as long as the payoff function did not change. The results of this work show that people are adaptive and flexible in how they prioritize and allocate attention in a dual‐task setting. However, it also demonstrates some of the limits regarding people's ability to optimize payoff functions.     

Social support in a changing Europe: an analysis of three post‐communist nations

Despite the continuing interest in social transitions among social scientists, there has been little analysis of the impact of societal change on personal relationships. One important factor in helping individuals deal with the stresses associated with rapid transitions is social support. In our first study, 450 manual workers, students and entrepreneurs in Russia, Georgia and Hungary completed structured questionnaires assessing demographic and value predictors of the perception of support availability and the support they obtained to deal with changes in their societies. In our second study, the same respondents participated in semi‐structured interviews investigating the relationship between their work lives and support networks. Our findings demonstrate the importance of culture, occupation and values for both the perception and reception of support, and underline the multifaceted manner in which different work experiences in different nations influence support networks. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The ubiquity of common method variance: The case of the Big Five

The factor structures of the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) and NEO-FFI Big Five questionnaires were examined via confirmatory factor analyses. Analyses of IPIP data for five samples and NEO data for one sample showed that a CFA model with three method bias factors, one influencing all items, one influencing negatively worded items, and one influencing positively worded items fit the data significantly better than models without method factors or models with only one method factor . With the method factors estimated, our results indicated that the Big Five dimensions may be more nearly orthogonal than previously demonstrated. Implications of the presence of method variance in Big Five scales are discussed.     

The mediating effects of time structure on the relationships between time management behaviour,job satisfaction,and psychological well‐being

This article examined the relationship between time structure and Macan's process model of time management. This study proposed that time structure—‘appraisal of effective time usage’—would be a more parsimonious mediator than perceived control over time in the relationship between time management behaviours and outcome variables, such as job satisfaction and psychological well‐being. Alternative structure models were compared using a sample of 111 university students. Model 1 tested Macan's process model of time management with perceived control over time as the mediator. Model 2 replaced perceived control over time by the construct of time structure. Model 3 examined the possibility of perceived control over time and time structure as being parallel mediators of the relationships between time management and outcomes. Results of this study showed that Model 1 and Model 2 fitted the data equally well. On the other hand, the mediated effects were small and partial in both models. This pattern of results calls for reassessment of the process model.     

Fragile X mental retardation protein regulates heterosynaptic plasticity in the hippocampus

Silencing of a single gene, FMR1, is linked to a highly prevalent form of mental retardation, characterized by social and cognitive impairments, known as fragile X syndrome (FXS). The FMR1 gene encodes fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP), which negatively regulates translation. Knockout of Fmr1 in mice results in enhanced long-term depression (LTD) induced by metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) activation. Despite the evidence implicating FMRP in LTD, the role of FMRP in long-term potentiation (LTP) is less clear. Synaptic strength can be augmented heterosynaptically through the generation and sequestration of plasticity-related proteins, in a cell-wide manner. If heterosynaptic plasticity is altered in Fmr1 knockout (KO) mice, this may explain the cognitive deficits associated with FXS. We induced homosynaptic plasticity using the β-adrenergic receptor (β-AR) agonist, isoproterenol (ISO), which facilitated heterosynaptic LTP that was enhanced in Fmr1 KO mice relative to wild-type (WT) controls. To determine if enhanced heterosynaptic LTP in Fmr1 KO mouse hippocampus requires protein synthesis, we applied a translation inhibitor, emetine (EME). EME blocked homo- and heterosynaptic LTP in both genotypes. We also probed the roles of mTOR and ERK in boosting heterosynaptic LTP in Fmr1 KO mice. Although heterosynaptic LTP was blocked in both WT and KOs by inhibitors of mTOR and ERK, homosynaptic LTP was still enhanced following mTOR inhibition in slices from Fmr1 KO mice. Because mTOR will normally stimulate translation initiation, our results suggest that β-AR stimulation paired with derepression of translation results in enhanced heterosynaptic plasticity.     

Stress Among African American Emerging Adults: The Role of Family and Cultural Factors

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of family and cultural variables on stress among African American emerging adults. Data from this study was collected as part of a larger study that examined cultural, family, and contextual factors and smoking among African American youth in 5th, 8th, and 12th grades. Data were collected from high school seniors at the end of their 12th grade year and 6 months post high school. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine whether racial identity, family cohesion, and parental monitoring influence students’ perceived frequency of stress. Higher levels of racial identity were associated with more perceived stress. There were no significant main effects for either parental monitoring or family cohesion on stress. There were significant interactions between racial identity and parental monitoring and between parental monitoring and family cohesion. Study implications are discussed regarding the importance of stress reduction programs for African American emerging adults and for parents of these adults.     

Procrastination's Impact in the Workplace and the Workplace's Impact on Procrastination

Procrastination is a self‐regulatory failure, whose costs are debated. Here, we establish its impact in the workplace. Using an Internet sample, we assessed 22,053 individuals in terms of their sex, employment status, employment duration, income, occupational attainment and level of procrastination. High levels of procrastination is associated with lower salaries, shorter durations of employment, and a greater likelihood of being unemployed or under employed rather than working full‐time. Also, procrastination partially mediates sex's relationship with these work variables. Women tend to procrastinate less than men, evidently giving women an employment advantage. If women procrastinated the same as men, there should be 1.5 million fewer women in full‐time employment in the US. alone. Determining the causes of procrastination in the workplace, we also examined it at an occupational level. The results strongly support the gravitational hypothesis: jobs that require higher levels of motivational skills are less likely to retain procrastinators. However, there was some support that jobs can foster procrastination. Procrastinators tend to have jobs that are lower in intrinsically rewarding qualities.