The role of information search and its influence on risk preferences

According to the ‘Description–Experience gap’ (DE gap), when people are provided with the descriptions of risky prospects they make choices as if they overweight the probability of rare events; but when making decisions from experience after exploring the prospects’ properties, they behave as if they underweight such probability. This study revisits this discrepancy while focusing on information-search in decisions from experience. We report findings from a lab-experiment with three treatments: a standard version of decisions from description and two versions of decisions from experience: with and without a ‘history table’ recording previously sampled events. We find that people sample more from lotteries with rarer events. The history table proved influential; in its absence search is more responsive to cues such as a lottery’s variance while in its presence the cue that stands out is the table’s maximum capacity. Our analysis of risky choices captures a significant DE gap which is mitigated by the presence of the history table. We elicit probability weighting functions at the individual level and report that subjects overweight rare events in experience but less so than in description. Finally, we report a measure that allows us to compare the type of DE gap found in studies using choice patterns with that inferred through valuation and find that the phenomenon is similar but not identical across the two methods

Like mother, like child : investigating perinatal and maternal health stress in post-medieval London.

Post-Medieval London (sixteenth-nineteenth centuries) was a stressful environment for the poor. Overcrowded and squalid housing, physically demanding and risky working conditions, air and water pollution, inadequate diet and exposure to infectious diseases created high levels of morbidity and low life expectancy. All of these factors pressed with particular severity on the lowest members of the social strata, with burgeoning disparities in health between the richest and poorest. Foetal, perinatal and infant skeletal remains provide the most sensitive source of bioarchaeological information regarding past population health and in particular maternal well-being. This chapter examined the evidence for chronic growth and health disruption in 136 foetal, perinatal and infant skeletons from four low-status cemetery samples in post-medieval London. The aim of this study was to consider the impact of poverty on the maternal-infant nexus, through an analysis of evidence of growth disruption and pathological lesions. The results highlight the dire consequences of poverty in London during this period from the very earliest moments of life

Social patterning of chronic disease risk factors in a Latin American city

Most studies of socioeconomic status (SES) and chronic disease risk factors have been conducted in high-income countries, and most show inverse social gradients. Few studies examine these patterns in lower- or middle-income countries. Using cross-sectional data from a 2005 national risk factor survey in Argentina (a middle-income country), we investigated the associations of individual- and area-level SES with chronic disease risk factors (body mass index [BMI], hypertension, and diabetes) among residents of Buenos Aires. Associations of risk factors with income and education were estimated after adjusting for age, sex (except in sex-stratified models), and the other socioeconomic indicators. BMI and obesity were inversely associated with education and income for women, but not for men (e.g., mean differences in BMI for lowest versus highest education level were 1.55 kg/m2, 95%CI = 0.72-2.37 in women and 0.17 kg/m2, 95%CI = -0.72-1.06 in men). Low education and income were also associated with increased odds of hypertension diagnosis in all adults (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.48, 95%CI = 0.99-2.20 and AOR = 1.50, 95%CI = 0.99-2.26 for the lowest compared to the highest education and income categories, respectively). Lower education was strongly associated with increased odds of diabetes diagnosis (AOR = 4.12, 95%CI = 1.85-9.18 and AOR = 2.43, 95%CI = 1.14-5.20 for the lowest and middle education categories compared to highest, respectively). Area-level education also showed an inverse relationship with BMI and obesity; these results did not vary by sex as they did at the individual level. This cross-sectional study of a major urban area provides some insight into the global transition with a trend toward concentrations of risk factors in poorer populations.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78528/1/FleischerDiezRoux2008_JUrbanHealth.pd