"Stratification and Mortality - A Comparison of Education, Class, Status and Income"

In many analyses of social inequality in health, different dimensions of social stratification have been used more or less interchangeably as measures of the individual’s general social standing. This procedure, however, has been questioned in previous studies, most of them comparing education, class and/or income. In the present article, the importance of education and income as well as two aspects of occupation – class and status – are examined. The results are based on register data and refer to all Swedish employees in the age range 35-59 years. There are clear gradients in total death risk for all socioeconomic factors except for income from work among women. The size of the independent effects of education, class, status and income differ between men and women. For both sexes, there are clear net associations between education and mortality. Class and income show independent effects on mortality only for men and status shows an independent effect only for women. While different stratification dimensions – education, social class, income, status – all can be used to show a “social gradient” with mortality, each of them seems to have a specific effect in addition to the general effect related to the stratification of society for either men or women.-

Marital Partner and Mortality: The Effects of the Social Positions of Both Spouses

Background Individual education, social class, social status and income are all associated with mortality, and this is likewise the case for the position of the marital partner. We investigate the combined effect on mortality of own and partner’s positions regarding these four factors. Methods Prospective follow-up of information in the 1990 Census of the Swedish population aged 30-59 (N=1 502 148). Data on all-cause mortality and deaths from cancer and circulatory disease for the period 1991-2003 were collected from the Cause of Death Register. Relative mortality risks were estimated by Cox regression. Results All-cause mortality of both men and women differs by women’s education and status and by men’s social class and income. Men’s education has an effect on their own mortality but not on their partner’s, when other factors are included in the models. Women’s education and men’s social class are particularly important for women’s deaths from circulatory diseases. Conclusions The partner’s social position has a clear effect on individual mortality, and women’s education seems to be particularly important. The results appear above all to support hypotheses about the importance of lifestyle and economic resources for socio-economic differences in mortality.-

McIntosh and Munk's Supposed Test of the Validity of the E-G Class Schema: A Comment

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Early campaign economic perceptions can help to predict the national verdict on Election Day

It is well known that elections are determined by certain fundamental variables: internal factors that reflect voters’ long-term political predispositions and external factors that are unique to each campaign. Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien examine how one external factor, the state of the economy, compares to how voters’ internal factors evolve over the final 200 days of presidential campaigns. They find that while noneconomic factors dominate at the outset of the campaign, the economic component increases in salience as Election Day draws nearer and offers greater electoral predictability overall

Equilibria in Campaign Spending Games: Theory and Data

This paper presents a formal game-theoretic model to explain the simultaneity problem that has made it difficult to obtain unbiased estimates of the effects of both incumbent and challenger spending in U.S. House elections. The model predicts a particular form of correlation between the expected closeness of the race and the level of spending by both candidates, which implies that the simultaneity problem should not be present in close races, and should be progressively more severe in range of safe races that are empirically observed. This is confirmed by comparing simple OLS regression of races that are expected to be close with races that are expected not to be close, using House incumbent races spanning two decades. The theory also implies that inclusion of a variable controlling for total spending should successfully produce reliable estimates using OLS. This is confirmed

The Spending Game: Money, Votes, and Incumbency in Congressional Elections

This paper takes a game-theoretic approach to the analysis of the spending-votes relationship in Congressional elections to reinvestigate the surprisingly weak effects of incumbent spending measured in previous studies. Rather than focusing narrowly on the impact of spending on electoral outcomes, we attempt to take account of the reciprocal effect of (anticipated) closeness on spending using several statistical approaches. We also offer improvements in the specification and measurement of the vote equation, by using a better measure of district party strength adjusted for year-effects, and by including a variable that measures the heat of the campaign in terms of total spending by the incumbents and challengers. The latter measure partially corrects for the simultaneously determined (and highly positively correlated) levels of incumbent and challenger spending. A more rigorous multiequation simultaneous equations model, identified by uncorrelated errors, provides even more leverage for sorting out the effects of incumbent and challenger spending on votes. That analysis indicates (in a complete turnaround from findings reported elsewhere) that incumbent spending effects are highly significant and of a magnitude that is, if anything, greater than challenger spending effects. The paper concludes by using a game theoretic model to estimate the effect of anticipated closeness on spending and to estimate differences in campaign financing costs between incumbents and challengers

Forecasting House Seats from General Congressional Polls

According to the frequent polling on the generic ballot for Congress, the Democrats hold a large advantage leading up to the vote on November 7. But does this Democratic edge mean that the Democrats will win a majority of House seats? Doubts are often expressed about the accuracy of the generic ballot polls. And even if the polls are correct in indicating a majority of votes going to Democratic candidates, further doubts are expressed about whether the Democrats' vote margin will be sufficient to win the most seats. This paper is intended to provide some guidance for translating the results of generic congressional polls into the election outcome

National polls and district information point to a 10 seat GOP midterm swing in the House to 244 seats

This midterm cycle, much commentary has been focused on Senate races, given that the Republican Party looks very likely to hold and increase its seats in the House of Representatives. But how many House seats should the GOP expect to win? With a week to go, Joseph Bafumi, Robert S. Erikson, and Christopher Wlezien give an updated House forecast. They write that a combination of the GOP’s incumbency advantage, their domination of state legislatures (and thus, redistricting) since 2010, and U.S. internal migration, mean that the Republican Party are likely to win about 244 seats on November 4th

Forecasting House Seats from General Congressional Polls

According to the frequent polling on the generic ballot for Congress, the Democrats hold a large advantage leading up to the vote on November 7. But does this Democratic edge mean that the Democrats will win a majority of House seats? Doubts are often expressed about the accuracy of the generic ballot polls. And even if the polls are correct in indicating a majority of votes going to Democratic candidates, further doubts are expressed about whether the Democrats' vote margin will be sufficient to win the most seats. This paper is intended to provide some guidance for translating the results of generic congressional polls into the election outcome