Marriage Meets the Joneses: Relative Income, Identity, and Marital Status

This paper investigates the effect of relative income on marriage. Accounting flexibly for absolute income, the ratio between a manÂ’s income and a local reference group median is a strong predictor of marital status, but only for low-income men. Relative income affects marriage even among those living with a partner. A ten percent higher reference group income is associated with a two percent reduction in marriage. We propose an identity model to explain the results.marriage, relative income, inequality, identity

Marriage Meets the Joneses: Relative Income, Identity, and Marital Status

In this paper we investigate the effect of relative income on marital status. We develop an identity model based on Akerlof and Kranton (2000) and apply it to the marriage decision. The empirical evidence is consistent with the idea that people are more likely to marry when their incomes approach a financial level associated with idealized norms of marriage. We hypothesize that the marriage ideal is determined by the median income in an individual’s local reference group. After controlling flexibly for the absolute level of income and a number of other factors, the ratio between a man’s income and the marriage ideal is a strong predictor of marital status but only if he is below the ideal. For white men, relative income considerations jointly drive coresidence, marriage, and fatherhood decisions. For black men, relative income affects the marriage decision only, and relative income is tied to marital status even for those living with a partner and children. Relative income concerns explain 10-15 percent of the decline in marriage since 1970 for low income white men, and account for more than half of the persistent marriage gap between high- and low-income men.marriage, relative income, inequality, identity

Who earns, who shares and who decides: Does it matter for individual deprivation in couples? ESRI Research Bulletin 2016/1/3

Research on poverty usually assumes that household income is shared equally among household members so that they all benefit from the same living standard. This assumption has been criticised, however, by some who argue that differences in power within the household – typically linked to who receives the income or who makes the decisions – may mean that some members of households enjoy better access to goods and services than others. One possibility is that since women are less likely to have earned income, their bargaining power will be decreased and they will have higher levels of deprivation than their male partners. This study examined couple families in Ireland to test whether this was the case

Strategic approaches to science and technology in development

Watson, Crawford, and Farley examine the ways in which science and technology (S&T) support poverty alleviation and economic development and how these themes have been given emphasis or short shrift in various areas of the World Bank's work. Central to their thesis is the now well-established argument that development will increasingly depend on a country's ability to understand, interpret, select, adapt, use, transmit, diffuse, produce, and commercialize scientific and technological knowledge in ways appropriate to its culture, aspirations, and level of development. The authors go beyond this tenet, analyzing the importance of S&T for development within specific sectors. They present policy options for enhancing the effectiveness of S&T systems in developing countries, review previous experience of the World Bank and other donors in supporting S&T, and suggest changes that the World Bank and its partners can adopt to increase the impact of the work currently undertaken in S&T. The authors'main messages are: 1) S&T has always been important for development, but the unprecedented pace of advancement of scientific knowledge is rapidly creating new opportunities for and threats to development. 2) Most developing countries are largely unprepared to deal with the changes that S&T advancement will bring. 3) The World Bank's numerous actions in various domains of S&T could be more effective in producing the needed capacity improvements in client countries. 4) The World Bank could have a greater impact if it paid increased attention to S&T in education, health, rural development, private sector development, and the environment. The strategy emphasizes four S&T policy areas: education and human resources development, the private sector, the public sector, and information communications technologies.Public Health Promotion,Environmental Economics&Policies,ICT Policy and Strategies,Decentralization,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Economics&Finance,Poverty Assessment,Agricultural Research

Firms and the Welfare State: A Test of Employer Support for Economic Security

Research project funded in academic year 2008-09The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.During the 20th century, Western nations have adopted social protection as a way to stem conflict between capital and labor, and to ensure economic growth. Measures such as employment protection, unemployment insurance, and wage bargaining have helped pave the way for an era of social stability in Europe and the United States. Using France and Germany as cases, Watson plans to test this idea by analyzing data from the stock market. Specifically, she is looking at what happens to a company's stock price when social protection measures are passed. Her idea is that the type of skills a company requires from its labor force will determine how its share price responds to protectionist legislation because such laws affect the incentives for workers to invest in different types of skills.Mershon Center for International Security StudiesProject summar

Moving In

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Toward a Constructive Technology Criticism

In this report, the author draws on interviews with journalists and critics, as well as a broad reading of published work, to assess the current state of technology coverage and criticism in the popular discourse, and to offer some thoughts on how to move the critical enterprise forward. Tow Fellow Sara Watson finds that what it means to cover technology is a moving target. Today, the technology beat focuses less on the technology itself and more on how technology intersects with and transforms everything readers care about—from politics to personal relationships. But as technology coverage matures, the distinctions between reporting and criticism are blurring. Even the most straightforward reporting plays a role in guiding public attention and setting agendas. Further, she finds that technology criticism is too narrowly defined. First, criticism carries negative connotations—that of criticizing with unfavorable opinions rather than critiquing to offer context and interpretation. Strongly associated with notions of progress, technology criticism today skews negative and nihilistic. Second, much of the criticism coming from people widely recognized as “critics” perpetuates these negative associations by employing problematic styles and tactics, and by exercising unreflexive assumptions and ideologies. As a result, many journalists and bloggers are reluctant to associate their work with criticism or identify themselves as critics. And yet she finds a larger circle of journalists, bloggers, academics, and critics contributing to the public discourse about technology and addressing important questions by applying a variety of critical lenses to their work. Some of the most novel critiques about technology and Silicon Valley are coming from women and underrepresented minorities, but their work is seldom recognized in traditional critical venues. As a result, readers may miss much of the critical discourse about technology if they focus only on the work of a few, outspoken intellectuals. Even if a wider set of contributions to the technology discourse is acknowledged, she finds that technology criticism still lacks a clearly articulated, constructive agenda. Besides deconstructing, naming, and interpreting technological phenomena, criticism has the potential to assemble new insights and interpretations. In response to this finding, she lays out the elements of a constructive technology criticism that aims to bring stakeholders together in productive conversation rather than pitting them against each other. Constructive criticism poses alternative possibilities. It skews toward optimism, or at least toward an idea that future technological societies could be improved. Acknowledging the realities of society and culture, constructive criticism offers readers the tools and framings for thinking about their relationship to technology and their relationship to power. Beyond intellectual arguments, constructive criticism is embodied, practical, and accessible, and it offers frameworks for living with technology

Marriage Meets the Joneses: Relative Income, Identity, and Marital Status

In this paper we investigate the effect of relative income on marital status. We develop an identity model based on Akerlof and Kranton (2000) and apply it to the marriage decision. The empirical evidence is consistent with the idea that people are more likely to marry when their incomes approach a financial level associated with idealized norms of marriage. We hypothesize that the "marriage ideal" is determined by the median income in an individual's local reference group. After controlling flexibly for the absolute level of income and a number of other factors, the ratio between a man's income and the marriage ideal is a strong predictor of marital status -- but only if he is below the ideal. For white men, relative income considerations jointly drive co-residence, marriage, and fatherhood decisions. For black men, relative income affects the marriage decision only, and relative income is tied to marital status even for those living with a partner and children. Relative income concerns explain 10-15 percent of the decline in marriage since 1970 for low income white men, and account for more than half of the persistent marriage gap between high- and low-income men.

Religion, Mindfulness, and Resilience as Strategies to Cope With Anxiety

This study examined mindfulness, resilience, and anxiety in adults adhering to either traditional or progressive, more flexible, faith beliefs. Participants (n = 98) were college students (64% Caucasian; 85% women) with a mean age of 21.78 (SD = 5.44). Twenty-nine percent had previously received a diagnosis of anxiety. Participants responded to the following scales: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being, Mindfulness Attention Awareness, Spiritual Experience Index, and Brief Resilience. Additionally, participants were asked about their level of agreement with religious tenants in order to categorize participants as having traditional, progressive, or non-differentiated religious beliefs. It was found that mindfulness and resilience emerged as better predictors of anxiety level than did religion. Contradicting the hypothesis, higher mindfulness did not predict lower anxiety; instead, lower anxiety related to lower mindfulness and higher resilience. Perhaps a mindful, or intentional, focus on daily experiences increased anxiety in anxious people, and the current sample of college students reported high levels of anxiety. Traditionally religious college students reported using religion to cope with stress; however, they were no more or less anxious than other students. This study also found that adults who agreed with liberal theology looked more like non-religious than conservatively religious adults in terms of religion’s impact on their lives. These findings emphasize the fact that adults who consider themselves to be religious are not a homogeneous group and that the trait of resilience might be a more consistent buffer against anxiety than is mindfulness or religion