Vulnerability, Unemployment and Poverty: A Class of Distribution and Sensitive Measures, Its Axiomatic Properties and Applications

Measures of unemployment and poverty have tended to focus solely on those currently unemployed or below the poverty line. This approach has ignored the members of society that are vulnerable to becoming unemployed or falling into poverty. Current literature in this area has implicitly assumed that since someone who is vulnerable experiences pain from the chance of becoming unemployed or falling into poverty, our standard measures of unemployment and poverty do not accurately account for this pain. The implication is that vulnerability is a `bad' and policies should aim to reduce the number of people who are vulnerable in a society. In this paper we argue that, at the macro level, vulnerability can be viewed as a �good� because, with unemployment remaining constant, the presence of vulnerable people implies that there must also exist currently unemployed people who expect to find work in the near future. And a society where unemployment is more equitably shared is better than a society where the burden of unemployment is carried by only a few. Given this view of vulnerability we then suggest a class of measures that, unlike the standard unemployment rate, account for the amount of vulnerability that exists in a society. We show some attractive axioms that our measure satisfies, fully characterize our measure and apply it to data from the U.S. and South Africa.

Will The Real Family-Friendly Employer Please Stand Up: Who Permits Parents To Reduce Working Hours For Purposes of Childcare?

Balancing work and family life can be a challenge, especially when a person needs to adjust her work schedule to deal with a family crisis. If the crisis involves a long term problem, such as caring for a sick or injured child that requires several months of care, the balancing act can require major shifts in the role an employee plays in a firm. This paper examines how an employer reacts to such a family-work issue: an employee who want to move from full-time to part-time in order to care for a young child. Most empirical work in this area deals with formal policies such as maternity leave, paternity leave, or leave beyond that required by the Family and Medical Leave Act and maps the type of formal policies a firm has into some "family-friendly" index. Switching from full-time to part-time is usually an informal process and it is not obvious how a firm ranking high on an index based of formal "family-friendly" policies would respond to such a request. Indeed, organizations with codified formal policies may be precisely the kinds of employers who do not permit such a shift from full-time to part-time. This is in fact what we find. Larger organizations are much more likely to provide formal policies such as paid maternity and paternity leave, while establishments that are not part of larger organizations are more likely to permit an employee to shift to part-time in order to care for a young child. These results suggests that family-friendly indexes that are based on formal policies may be unfairly labelling smaller firms "unfriendly" towards families simply because they use informal approaches to deal with family crises.

Salience, Risky Choices and Gender

Risk theories typically assume individuals make risky choices using probability weights that differ from objective probabilities. Recent theories suggest that probability weights vary depending on which portion of a risky environment is made salient. Using experimental data we show that salience affects young men and women differently, even after controlling for cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Men are significantly more likely than women to switch from a certain to a risky choice once the upside of winning is made salient, even though the expected value of the choice remains the same.gender, salience, risk-aversion, probability weights, cognitive ability

Choosing To Compete: How Different Are Girls and Boys?

Using a controlled experiment, we examine the role of nurture in explaining the stylized fact that women shy away from competition. Our subjects (students just under 15 years of age) attend publicly-funded single-sex and coeducational schools. We found robust differences between the competitive choices of girls from single-sex and coed schools. Moreover, girls from single-sex schools behave more like boys even when randomly assigned to mixed-sex experimental groups. Thus it is untrue that the average female avoids competitive behaviour more than the average male. This suggests that observed gender differences might reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.

Gender Differences in Risk Behaviour: Does Nurture Matter?

Women and men may differ in their propensity to choose a risky outcome because of innate preferences or because pressure to conform to gender-stereotypes encourages girls and boys to modify their innate preferences. Single-sex environments are likely to modify students' risk-taking preferences in economically important ways. To test this, we designed a controlled experiment in which subjects were given an opportunity to choose a risky outcome - a real-stakes gamble with a higher expected monetary value than the alternative outcome with a certain payoff - and in which the sensitivity of observed risk choices to environmental factors could be explored. The results of our real-stakes gamble show that gender differences in preferences for risk-taking are indeed sensitive to whether the girl attends a single-sex or coed school. Girls from single-sex schools are as likely to choose the real-stakes gamble as boys from either coed or single sex schools, and more likely than coed girls. Moreover, we found that gender differences in preferences for risk-taking are sensitive to the gender mix of the experimental group, with girls being more likely to choose risky outcomes when assigned to all-girl groups. This suggests that observed gender differences in behaviour under uncertainty found in previous studies might reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.

Gender Differences in Risk Behaviour: Does Nurture Matter?

Women and men may differ in their propensity to choose a risky outcome because of innate preferences or because their innate preferences are modified by pressure to conform to gender-stereotypes. Single-sex environments are likely to modify students’ risk-taking preferences in economically important ways. To test this, our controlled experiment gave subjects an opportunity to choose a risky outcome – a real-stakes gamble with a higher expected monetary value than the alternative outcome with a certain payoff- and in which the sensitivity of observed risk choices to environmental factors could be explored. The results show that girls from single-sex schools are as likely to choose the real-stakes gamble as much as boys from either coed or single sex schools, and more likely than coed girls. Moreover, gender differences in preferences for risk-taking are sensitive to the gender mix of the experimental group, with girls being more likely to choose risky outcomes when assigned to all-girl groups. This suggests that observed gender differences in behaviour under uncertainty found in previous studies might reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.gender identity, controlled experiment, risk aversion, risk attitudes, single-sex schooling, coeducation

Gender Differences in Risk Behaviour: Does Nurture Matter?

Women and men may differ in their propensity to choose a risky outcome because of innate preferences or because their innate preferences are modified by pressure to conform to gender-stereotypes. Single-sex environments are likely to modify studentsâ risk-taking preferences in economically important ways. To test this, our controlled experiment gave subjects an opportunity to choose a risky outcome − a real-stakes gamble with a higher expected monetary value than the alternative outcome with a certain payoff − and in which the sensitivity of observed risk choices to environmental factors could be explored. The results show that girls from single-sex schools are as likely to choose the real-stakes gamble as much as boys from either coed or single sex schools, and more likely than coed girls. Moreover, gender differences in preferences for risk-taking are sensitive to the gender mix of the experimental group, with girls being more likely to choose risky outcomes when assigned to all-girl groups. This suggests that observed gender differences in behaviour under uncertainty found in previous studies might reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.gender identity, controlled experiment, risk aversion, risk attitudes,

Gender Differences in Risk Aversion: Do Single-Sex Environments Affect their Development?

Single-sex classes within coeducational environments are likely to modify students' risk-taking attitudes in economically important ways. To test this, we designed a controlled experiment using first year college students who made choices over real-stakes lotteries at two distinct dates. Students were randomly assigned to classes of three types: all female, all male, and coeducational. They were not allowed to change group subsequently. We found that women are less likely to make risky choices than men at both dates. However, after eight weeks in a single-sex environment, women were significantly more likely to choose the lottery than their counterparts in coeducational groups. These results are robust to the inclusion of controls for IQ and for personality type, as well as to a number of sensitivity tests. Our findings suggest that observed gender differences in behaviour under uncertainty found in previous studies might partly reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.gender, risk preferences, single-sex groups, cognitive ability

Gender Differences in Risk Aversion: Do Single-Sex Environments Affect their Development?

Single-sex classes within coeducational environments are likely to modify students' risk-taking attitudes in economically important ways. To test this, we designed a controlled experiment using first year college students who made choices over real-stakes lotteries at two distinct dates. Students were randomly assigned to classes of three types: all female, all male, and coeducational. They were not allowed to change group subsequently. We found that women are less likely to make risky choices than men at both dates. However, after eight weeks in a single-sex environment, women were significantly more likely to choose the lottery than their counterparts in coeducational groups. These results are robust to the inclusion of controls for IQ and for personality type, as well as to a number of sensitivity tests. Our findings suggest that observed gender differences in behaviour under uncertainty found in previous studies might partly reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.gender, risk preferences, single-sex groups, cognitive ability

The effect of health insurance reform: Evidence from China

This paper estimates the impact of a health insurance reform on health outcomes in urban China. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey we find that this reform increases the rate of health insurance coverage significantly among workers in Non-State Owned Enterprises. The double difference (DD) estimations show that the reform also leads to better health outcomes: workers are less likely to get sick and more likely to use preventive care. Using an instrumental variable (IV) approach to look at the causal effect of health insurance, we find those with health insurance use more preventive care but do not report significantly better health outcomes, an increase in health care utilisation, or an increase in out-of-pocket medical expenditure