Analyzing gender inequality through large-scale Facebook advertising data

Online social media are information resources that can have a transformative power in society. While the Web was envisioned as an equalizing force that allows everyone to access information, the digital divide prevents large amounts of people from being present online. Online social media in particular are prone to gender inequality, an important issue given the link between social media use and employment. Understanding gender inequality in social media is a challenging task due to the necessity of data sources that can provide large-scale measurements across multiple countries. Here we show how the Facebook Gender Divide (FGD), a metric based on aggregated statistics of more than 1.4 Billion users in 217 countries, explains various aspects of worldwide gender inequality. Our analysis shows that the FGD encodes gender equality indices in education, health, and economic opportunity. We find gender differences in network externalities that suggest that using social media has an added value for women. Furthermore, we find that low values of the FGD are associated with increases in economic gender equality. Our results suggest that online social networks, while suffering evident gender imbalance, may lower the barriers that women have to access informational resources and help to narrow the economic gender gap

The Occupations of Slaves Sold in New Orleans: Missing Values, Cheap Talk, or Informative Advertising

Although plantation records indicate that many slaves in the southern United States were artisans and craftsmen, relatively few slaves were recorded as such on the New Orleans sales invoices. Robert Fogel (1989, p.57, 162) assumes that the slaves without recorded occupations were unskilled workers,concluding that skilled slaves were "less than half as likely to have been sold as were ordinary field hands." Using data from New Orleans newspapers, we find that most sales advertisements include information about the slave's skill or occupation. A comparison of the advertisement with the corresponding invoice shows that the slave's occupation was often omitted from the sales invoice. Because the slave's market price should reflect all relevant information available at the time of sale, the informational value of the slave's advertised occupation can be estimated using regression analysis. Interestingly, we find that the qualitative description of the slave's skill level affected his market price more than his advertised occupation. For example, an "excellent" cook commanded a premium price whereas a "plain" or "tolerable" cook did not. These results suggest that buyers used available information in making their bids and that newspaper advertisements were not simply "cheap talk."slavery, human capital

Preferences for Health Insurance in Germany and the Netherlands – A Tale of Two Countries

This contribution contains an international comparison of preferences. Using two Discrete Choice Experiments (DCE), it measures willingness to pay for health insurance attributes in Germany and the Netherlands. Since the Dutch DCE was carried out right after the 2006 health reform, which made citizens explicitly choose a health insurance contract, two research questions naturally arise. First, are the preferences with regard to contract attributes (such as Managed-Care-type restrictions of physician choice) similar between the two countries? Second, was the information campaign launched by the Dutch government in the context of the reform effective in the sense of reducing status quo bias? Based on random-effects Probit estimates, these two questions can be answered as follows. First, while much the same attributes have positive and negative willingness to pay values in the two countries, their magnitudes differ, pointing to differences in preference structure. Second, status quo bias in the Netherlands is one-half of the German value, suggesting that Dutch consumers were indeed made to bear the cost of decision making associated with choice of a health insurance contract.preference measurement, willingness to pay, health insurance, discrete-choice experiments, health reform, Germany, Netherlands

Some Temperance on the Doctoral Studies and On-Line Education

Toward the goal of doctoral studies, it is necessary to combine two basic characteristics of independent study. I like to call it an independent study, which would be partial to capture the whole of graduate studies. As for its high honor, the title page of dissertation in vast of universities usually use the phrase “...submitted for the partial fulfillment of doctorate degree...”. That phrase implies that the completion of dissertation would be a major part of doctoral studies, but should be partial depending on some of additional factors. Idealistically, that could be the whole quality as an independent researcher or investigator, and possibly the kind of human paradigm as a prospective teacher. In any case, we would not be incorrect if we see our principal work at the graduate level learning the ways of independent scholar. In this context, I would propose some of elements to be addressed in the end to guide the paradigm of doctoral studies and especially involving the e-age

Changing norms about gender inequality in education : evidence from Bangladesh

Using a recent household survey for two cohorts of married women, this paper examines norms about gender equality in education for children and adults. Among the main findings are that gender education gap norms have changed: younger generations of women are more positive about female vs. male education, both as pertaining to child and adult education outcomes. Perhaps the strongest result is that Bangladeshi women are more likely to espouse attitudes of gender equality in education for their children and less so about gender equality among spouses. It is also easier to explain norms regarding children's education and more difficult to explain norms about equality in marriages. The authors believe that question on relative education of boys and girls captures the value of education per se, while the question on educational equality in marriage captures the norms regarding marriage and the relative worth of husbands and wives. The effect of education in determining norms is significant though complex, and spans own and spousal education, as well as that of older females in the household. This indicates sharing of education norms effects or externalities arising from spousal education in the production of gender education gap norms within marriage as well as arising from the presence of older educated females in the household. Lastly, the authors also find associations between gender education gap norms and household poverty, information processing and religion, though the evidence here is more mixed.Gender and Development,Population Policies,Primary Education,Gender and Law,Access&Equity in Basic Education

Digital information services: a boon for the present and future generations

Any document that is not collected and preserved is likely to be lost, unavailable both now and future. Digitization is a viable solution to make it eternal; to maintain the digital collections and provide access digital libraries became essential in the contemporary information society. In a digital environment university libraries have a new role to fill. To fulfill the mission of the library it has to provide the traditional reference services, retrieval and dissemination of information and at the same time it has to stretch its services to information search services, to organize the information resources for easy access, to filter qualitative information from the vast ocean of World Wide Web, to facilitate translation services to resolve both linguistic and format incompatibilities and also to take up publishing service in which libraries also aggregate information, add value to information products, and create new information. Another traditional library activity that will surely expand in University Digital Libraries is the collection and creation of reviews or annotations for information resources

La religiosidad como búsqueda y su relación con la orientación intrínseca y extrínseca

Allport and Ross (1967) originally developed the religious orientation concept, identifying two types: intrinsic and extrinsic orientation. Later, Batson (1976) conceptualized a third type: the quest orientation, measured by the unidimensional Quest Religious Orientation Scale. However, subsequent works have reported the presence of a three-factor structure: preparation, self-criticism and openness. The aim of this work was the adaptation of the Quest Religious Orientation Scale to the Argentinean context in order to account for its dimensionality and to analyze its relationship with I-E Age Universal Scale (intrinsic and extrinsic orientation) in a sample of 334 university students (36.2% men) with an age range of 18 to 42 years (M = 24.8, SD = 2.63). The main results indicate a better fit of the data to the three correlated dimensions model of the Quest Religious Orientation Scale. This model allowed us to distinguish the relationship of each factor and the intrinsic and extrinsic orientations discovering significant differential relationships.El concepto de orientación religiosa fue originalmente desarrollado por Allport y Ross (1967), quienes identificaron dos tipos: intrínseca y extrínseca. Luego, Batson (1976) conceptualizó un tercer tipo: la orientación Quest, evaluada a través de la escala unidimensional de orientación religiosa Quest. Sin embargo, trabajos posteriores señalaron la presencia de una estructura trifactorial: preparación, autocrítica y apertura. El presente trabajo tuvo como objetivo principal la adaptación de la escala Quest al contexto argentino, analizando su dimensionalidad y las relaciones con las orientaciones extrínseca e intrínseca (I-E Age Universal Scale) en una muestra de 334 estudiantes universitarios (36.2% hombres) con una edad que oscilaba entre los 18 y los 42 años (M = 24.8, SD = 2.63). Los resultados indican un mejor ajuste de los datos al modelo de tres dimensiones correlacionadas de la escala de orientación religiosa Quest. Este modelo permitió distinguir la relación de cada factor con las orientaciones extrínseca e intrínseca descubriendo relaciones significativas diferenciales.Fil: Jaume, Luis Carlos. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Psicología; ArgentinaFil: Simkin, Hugo Andrés. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Psicología; ArgentinaFil: Etchezahar, Edgardo Daniel. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

The Utilization of Medicinal Plants to Cure Gastrointestinal Disorders by The Dayak Muara Tribe in Kuala Dua Village, Sanggau Regency

People use medicinal plants to treat various diseases, one of which is gastric disorders. The study aims to analyze the use of medicinal plants to overcome gastric disorders by the Dayak Muara tribe in Kuala Dua Village, Sanggau Regency. The sampling method was purposive sampling, with the number of respondents was 10% of the total number of households in Kuala Dua Village (91 respondents). The information regarding the medicinal plants used by the Dayak Muara tribe to overcome gastric disorders such as diarrhea, intestinal worms, nausea and vomiting, constipation, gastric, flatulence, and stomachache was collected. Furthermore, data obtained analyzed for the use-value (UV), informant consensus factor (ICF), and fidelity level (FL). The Dayak Muara tribe in Kuala Dua village, Kembayan District, has used 17 species of medicinal plants to overcome gastric disorders. Curcuma longa is the plant with a high use value or UV (0.96), followed by Psidium guajava (0.89) and Zingiber officinale (0.45). The highest value of informant consensus factor or ICF includes the diseases category of diarrhea (0.98), gastric, stomachache, nausea, and vomiting, each of which has an ICF value (0.96), constipation (0.94), intestinal worms and flatulence (0.88). The plants with the highest fidelity level (FL) are Allium sativum, Cymbopogon citratus and Centella asiatica for gastric (100), Areca catechu for constipation (100), Moringa oleifera, and Theobroma cacao (100) for stomachache