Does a Spouse Slow You Down? Marriage and Graduate Student Outcomes

Using data on 11,000 graduate students from 100 departments over a 20 year period, I test whether graduate student outcomes (graduation rates, time to degree, publication success, and initial job placement) differ based on a student’s gender and marital status. I find that married men have better outcomes across every measure than single men. Married women do no worse than single women on any measure and actually have more publishing success and complete their degree in less time. The outcomes of cohabiting students generally fall between those of single and married students

Gendered production and consumption in rural Africa

Recent research underscores the continued importance of gender in rural Africa. Analysis of interactions within households is becoming more sophisticated and continues to reject the unitary model. There is some evidence of discriminatory treatment of girls relative to boys, although the magnitudes of differential investments in health and schooling are not large and choices seem quite responsive to changes in opportunity costs. Social norms proscribing and prescribing male and female economic behavior remain substantial, extending into many domains, especially land tenure. Gender constructions are constantly evolving, although there is little evidence of rapid, transformative change in rural areas

Does Science Promote Women? Evidence from Academia 1973-2001

Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences. We evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track job, promotion to tenure, and promotion to full professor explain these facts using the 1973-2001 Survey of Doctorate Recipients. We find that women are less likely to take tenure track positions in science, but the gender gap is entirely explained by fertility decisions. We find that in science overall, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor after controlling for demographic, family, employer and productivity covariates and that in many cases, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor even without controlling for covariates. However, family characteristics have different impacts on women's and men's promotion probabilities. Single women do better at each stage than single men, although this might be due to selection. Children make it less likely that women in science will advance up the academic job ladder beyond their early post-doctorate years, while both marriage and children increase men's likelihood of advancing.

Young people's housing transitions in context

The transition to adulthood is frequently characterised as delayed or extended in the contemporary period, in the UK as elsewhere. Studies have addressed changing school-to-work transitions, for example, the extension of full-time education and expansion of higher education, as well as changing patterns in family formation and partnership, including the postponement of marriage and childbearing. Some of these changes have been associated with increasing rates of living alone or ‘solo- living’ and living in shared housing. However, the nature of young people’s housing transitions has received less attention and this paper provides a background to a study which specifically addresses the housing transitions of young people aged between 25 and 34 years old living in ‘non-family’ households, that is, living alone or sharing with others. The paper concludes with a short overview of the project and its main research focu

Why Does Spousal Education Matter for Earnings? Assortative Mating or Cross-productivity

In interpreting the positive relationship between spousal education and one's earnings, economists have two major hypotheses: cross-productivity between couples and assortative mating. However, no prior empirical study has been able to separate the two effects. This paper empirically disentangles the two effects by using twins data that we collected from urban China. We have two major innovations: we use twins data to control for the unobserved mating effect in our estimations, and we estimate both current and wedding-time earnings equations. Arguably, the cross-productivity effect takes time to be realized and thus is relatively unimportant at the time of the wedding. Any effect of spousal education on wedding-time earnings should more likely be the mating effect. We find that both cross-productivity and mating are important in explaining the current earnings. Although the mating effect exists for both husbands and wives, the cross-productivity effect only runs from Chinese husbands to wives. We further show that the cross-productivity effect is realized by increasing the hourly wage rate rather than working hours.

Re-envisioning the Local:Spatiality, Land and Law in Botswana

AbstractBased on an ethnographic study located in Botswana, I move beyond conceptions of the local as physically or territorially grounded to one that examines how it is constituted through links between persons and land derived from life histories extended over several generations. This not only takes account of a specific site in which social relations are bounded and locally constituted but also of how perceptions of locality are discursively and historically constructed. Viewing land as both a tangible and intangible universe constructed through social relationships, I highlight ways in which individuals, as part of a ‘local’ community, find their life courses shaped by wider transnational and global processes, including law, that have an impact on their everyday lives. For some, this provides opportunities for upward mobility and future gains, while others find scope for action severely curtailed. In documenting these uneven, diverse effects of globalisation, what emerges are processes of ‘internalisation’ and ‘relocalisation’ of global conditions, allowing for the emergence of new identities, alliances and struggles for space and power within specific populations. Thus what exists in the here and now as a form of temporality is constantly remade, drawing on the past while fashioning new prospects for the future.</jats:p

Welfare Reform when Recipients are Forward-Looking

Welfare Reform, Time Limit, Dynamic Programming

LAND AND GENDER IN MATRILINEAL TIMOR-LESTE

There are few groups’ followers of the matrilineal system in the world but they are present in all continents, except in Europe. In Timor-Leste, the matrilineal organization social system is found among 3 ethno-linguistic groups and seems that, in spite of their resilience, some changes have been taken place in recent years due to some economic, socio and cultural changes. Two different kinship/social systems coexist in Timor-Leste, one patrilineal in force in the majority of the territory and one matrilineal in the regions with dominance of Búnaque, Tetum-Terik and Galoli ethno-linguistic groups. The idea behind this paper is to identify those features related to land that have been characterizing the matrilineal system of the Búnaque in Timor-Leste. To achieve its goals, this paper through, secondary and empirical data collected, analyses women’s reality in the Bunaque communities, relating land tenure with the gender roles performed

Factors Influencing Tenure Choice in European Countries

Homeownership rates are very different across European countries. They range from below 50% in Germany to over 80% in Greece, Spain or Ireland. However the differences lie not only in the overall homeownership rates but also in its structure, and this is the focus of this paper. Its aim is to study the impact of microeconomic factors on household's tenure choice, using a cross-country comparative approach. Logit models are constructed for each country using data for year 2000 from the Consortium of Household Panels for European Socio-Economic Research micro-database. The models show that marriage is a significant determinant of the decision to move to homeownership in all analysed countries, while cohabitating households are more likely to rent, except for Denmark. Nationality, income and age proved to be significant explanatory variables in several countries, while staying insignificant in others.tenure choice, homeownership, housing

Who owns the land? Social relations and conflict over resources in Africa

Using case studies drawn from the authors' own and others’ research, this working paper describes and compares some of the ways land conflicts reflected, intensified or reshaped struggles over authority within and between families, local communities, institutions and states in post-colonial Africa. In the past, many Africans gained access to land through membership in a social group, rather than freehold ownership. In recent decades, with rising demand for land, urgent questions arose about land tenure and debates over land transactions often turned on issues of authority. Who was entitled to sell, lease, mortgage or bequeath land or land use rights to others, and who could decide? Coinciding with Africans’ struggles to work out the conditions of their own self-government following the end of colonial rule, rising competition over land intersected with conflicts over authority and obligation at all levels of social interaction. This essay will focus on processes of ‘privatisation from below’, asking how smaller-scale commercial acquisitions figure as sources of wealth and/or threats to livelihood in different economic and political contexts.Das Working Paper beschreibt und vergleicht einige der Formen, wie sich Kämpfe um Autorität in und zwischen Familien, lokalen Gemeinschaften, Institutionen und in Staaten im postkolonialen Afrika in Konflikten um Land widerspiegelten, intensivierten oder veränderten. Dabei bezieht sich die Autorin auf Fallstudien aus ihrer eigenen und anderer Forschung. Früher bekamen viele Afrikaner_innen Zugang zu Land eher über die Mitgliedschaft in einer sozialen Gruppe als über individuelles Eigentum. In den letzten Jahrzehnten, mit der wachsenden Nachfrage nach Land, kamen wichtige Fragen in Hinblick auf Landbesitz auf und Debatten über Landtransaktionen widmeten sich zunehmend dem Thema Autorität. Wer war berechtigt Land oder Landrechte zu verkaufen, zu verpachten, zu verpfänden oder zu vererben und wer konnte das entscheiden? Die gleichzeitige Suche nach den Bedingungen einer eigenen Regierungsweise nach Ende der Kolonialherrschaft führte dazu, dass sich die zunehmende Konkurrenz um Land mit Konflikten um Autorität und Zwang auf allen Ebenen der sozialen Interaktion verband. Dieser Artikel betrachtet Prozesse der ,Privatisierung von unten‘ und fragt danach, wie kleinere kommerzielle Aneignungen als Basis für Wohlstand und/oder Bedrohung der Lebensgrundlage in verschiedenen ökonomischen und politischen Kontexten fungieren