Son preference,children’s gender and parents’ time allocation: evidence from China

This article investigates the effect of children’s gender on parents’ time allocation in developing countries due to the long-existing tradition of son preference. A collective model generates predictions concerning the impact of the birth of sons on family behaviour when son preference is treated as a premium in the father’s utility function. Using data from China, I show that, with more sons instead of daughters, the time spent by both men and women on housework rises, while men have to increase their work time in the labour market and women can reduce theirs. The results are consistent with theoretical predictions and are robust for use in further tests. For the possible endogeneity of children’s gender, I use the law forbidding the use of ultrasound-B to reveal the gender of a foetus as instrumental variables as the identification strategy.     

INFLUENCES ON THE TIMING OF FIRST CHILDBEARING

This paper presents evidence that women from different population subgroups respond differently to economic and background influences when timing initial childbearing. Among all groups examined, age at first birth tends to increase as education levels increase, and married women with spouses present tend to be older than other women at first childbirth. Among whites, all economic influences considered–hourly pay rate, nonmarket income, and work during the year prior to childbearing–have a significant influence in deferring first childbirth, but family background does not. Among blacks, family background plays a significant role in determining age at first childbirth, but only one economic influence–the hourly pay rate–is significant. Blacks' response to family background is somewhat greater than their response to hourly pay rate. Race as a separate influence is significant among women age 20 years or under, but that influence disappears among older women. Because of their adverse economic consequences, adolescent pregnancies and unwed motherhood are of mounting concern. This study suggests that, contrary to popular belief, welfare programs do not foster early pregnancy nor do programs to reduce unemployment deter it. Educational achievement, however, serves as a deterrent to early pregnancy among all groups.     

Work and Wage Dynamics around Childbirth

In this paper, we investigate how the wage processes of women who are well established in the labour market are affected by having children. We estimate a flexible fixed‐effects wage regression model extended by post‐childbirth fixed effects. We use register data on West Germany, and we exploit the expansionary family policy during the late 1980s and 1990s for identification. On their return to work after childbirth, the wages of mothers drop by 3–5.7 per cent per year of leave. We find negative selection back to full‐time work after childbirth. We discuss the policy implications regarding statistical discrimination and the results concerning the family gap.     

Effects of Pregnancy and Birth on Smoking and Drinking Behaviours: A Comparative Study Between Men and Women

Using panel data obtained from monthly surveys for 3 years, we examined how the effects of life events on smoking and drinking behaviours differ between men and women. The key findings were that: (i) consumption of alcohol and cigarettes by men and women were lower during pregnancy and after childbirth than before pregnancy; (ii) pregnancy and childbirth led women to stop drinking and led men to reduce their alcohol consumption but not to stop drinking; and (iii) marriage, pregnancy and childbirth led women to stop smoking and marriage and birth led men to stop smoking but the effects of pregnancy on men are unclear.     

Medication,equipment, and supply costs for common interventions providing extended post-surgical analgesia following total knee arthroplasty in US hospitals

Aims: To estimate the cost to hospitals of materials (i.e. medications, equipment, and supplies) required to administer common interventions for post-surgical analgesia after total knee arthroplasty (TKA), including single-injection peripheral nerve block (sPNB), continuous peripheral nerve block (cPNB), periarticular infiltration of multi-drug cocktails, continuous epidural analgesia, intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (IV PCA), and local infiltration of bupivacaine liposome injectable suspension (BLIS).

Materials and methods: This analysis was conducted using a mixed methods approach combining published literature, publicly available data sources, and administrative data, to first identify the materials required to administer these interventions, and then estimate the cost to the hospital of those materials. Medication costs were estimated primarily using the Wholesale Acquisition Costs (WAC), the cost of reusable equipment was obtained from published sources, and costs for disposable supplies were obtained from the US Government Services Administration (GSA) database. Where uncertainty existed about the technique used when administering these interventions, costs were calculated for multiple scenarios reflecting different assumptions.

Results: The total cost of materials (i.e. medications, equipment, and supplies) required to provide post-surgical analgesia was $41.88 for sPNB with bupivacaine; $756.57 for cFNB with ropivacaine; $16.38 for periarticular infiltration with bupivacaine, morphine, methylprednisolone, and cefuroxime; $453.84 for continuous epidural analgesia with fentanyl and ropivacaine; $178.94 for IV PCA with morphine; and $319.00 for BLIS.

Limitations: This analysis did not consider the cost of healthcare providers required to administer these interventions. In addition, this analysis focused on the cost of materials and, therefore, did not consider aspects of relative efficacy or safety, or how the choice of intervention for post-surgical analgesia might impact outcomes such as length of stay, re-admissions, discharge status, adverse events, or total hospitalization costs.

Conclusions: This study provided an estimate of the costs to hospitals for materials required to administer commonly used interventions for post-surgical analgesia after TKA.     

THE ROLE OF LABOR AND MARRIAGE MARKETS,PREFERENCE HETEROGENEITY,AND THE WELFARE SYSTEM IN THE LIFE CYCLE DECISIONS OF BLACK,HISPANIC, AND WHITE WOMEN*

Using data from the NLSY79, we structurally estimate a dynamic model of the life cycle decisions of young women. The women make sequential joint decisions about school attendance, work, marriage, fertility, and welfare participation. We use the model to perform counterfactual simulations designed to shed light on three questions: (1) How much of observed minority–majority differences in behavior can be attributed to differences in labor market opportunities, marriage market opportunities, and preference heterogeneity? (2) How does the welfare system interact with these factors to augment those differences? (3) How can new cohorts that grow up under the new welfare system (Temporary Aid for Needy Families) be expected to behave compared to older cohorts?     

Childbirth and poverty in Europe: A dynamic bivariate approach

We use the 2015–2018 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions panel data and a dynamic bivariate probit model to estimate the impact of childbirth on the risk of poverty in 25 European countries. We model both poverty and childbirth mechanisms, identifying genuine state dependence and accounting for feedback effects from past poverty to childbirth. We find that childbirth slightly increases the risk of poverty in Europe, but some heterogeneities emerge at the country level. When disentangling the effects of childbirth conditional on past poverty status, it appears that childbirth determines redistributive effects possibly induced by welfare systems. We find evidence of genuine state dependence and suggests that discouraging factors induced by the experience of poverty itself has increased over time. The risk of poverty is triggered by the presence of dependent members in the household, while education and employment stability are helpful to combat poverty.     

Preferences for environmental quality under uncertainty

Although the expected effects of environmental policies and interventions are rarely known with certainty, stated preference surveys rarely elicit preferences over uncertain environmental outcomes. This article presents empirical results challenging the view that ignoring such uncertainty during preference elicitation is of no consequence so long as people only care about final environmental states. We show that measured preferences for final environmental states, water quality in this case, depend on whether people choose between final states or between lotteries over final states. In contrast to the typical finding for monetary lotteries, we find significant under-weighting of low probability events related to water quality.     

Social Innovation,Gender, and Technology: Bridging the Resource Gap

Some of the most important resources are intangible, such as knowledge and access to networks. In the developing world, technology can facilitate these resources and address basic human needs in a variety of ways: from provision of farmer training and cloud-controlled clean water systems to health information and mobile money services. Some of these services expand access to resources in ways that particularly benefit women. In environments where women are disadvantaged socially and economically, information and communications technologies (ICT) can enable women to access valuable information, consider a broader range of business opportunities, access wider markets, partake in educational programs, and share experiences with and gain mentorship from other women. However, there are large gender gaps in the access to technology, particularly in rural areas. To begin, I briefly discuss the role of technology in development, and consider the extent and significance of technology gender gaps. Next, I review key barriers to reducing these gaps, and discuss the concept of social innovation as it applies to technology interventions. Examples from five social innovations in India — a country with large technology gender gaps — illustrate the range of possibilities for innovative access to and use of ICT for diverse target groups. I conclude with some suggestions for further improvement in this area.     

THE EFFECT OF MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT AND CHILD CARE ON CHILDREN'S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT*

This article develops and estimates a dynamic model of employment and child care decisions of women after childbirth to evaluate the effects of these choices on children's cognitive ability. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate it. Results indicate that the effects of maternal employment and child care on children's ability are negative and sizable. Having a mother that works full‐time and uses child care during one year is associated with a reduction in ability test scores of approximately 1.8% (0.13 standard deviations). We assess the impact of policies related to parental leave and child care on children's outcomes.     

Developing a tool to measure pharmacoeconomic outcomes of post-surgical pain management interventions

Background:

Financial pressures have limited the ability of providers to use medication that may improve clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction. New interventions are often fraught with resistance from individual cost centers. A value realization tool (VRT) is essential for separate cost centers to communicate and comprehend the overall financial and clinical implications of post-surgical pain management medication interventions (PSMI). The goal was to describe development of a VRT.

Methods:

An evaluation of common in-patient PSMI approaches, impacts, and costs was performed. A multidisciplinary task force guided development of the VRT to ensure appropriate representation and relevance to clinical practice. The main outcome was an Excel-based tool that communicates the overall cost/benefit of PSMI for the post-operative patient encounter.

Results:

The VRT aggregated input data on costs, clinical impact, and nursing burden of PSMI assessment and monitoring into two high-level outcome reports: Overall Cost Impact and Nurse & Patient Impact. Costs included PSMI specific medication, equipment, professional placement, labor, overall/opioid-related adverse events, re-admissions, and length of stay. Nursing impact included level of practice interference, job satisfaction, and patient care metrics. Patient impact included pain scores, opioid use, PACU time, and satisfaction. Reference data was provided for individual institutions that may not collect all variables included in the VRT.

Conclusions:

The VRT is a valuable way for administrators to assess PSMI cost/benefits and for individual cost centers to see the overall value of individual interventions. The user-friendly, decision-support tool allows the end-user to use built-in referenced or personalized outcome data, increasing relevance to their institutions. This broad picture could facilitate communication across cost centers and evidence-based decisions for appropriate use and impacts of PSMI.     

The timing of childbearing: The role of human capital and personal preferences

As significant as the shift from quantity to quality in fertility decisions, a rise in the median age at first birth has been commonly observed in the more developed world. This paper attempts to understand the latter demographic trend from the empirical perspective. We first construct a conditional hazard model that incorporates determinants of birth spacing, with a primary emphasis on human capital and personal preference factors. We then examine the importance of these factors, using a rich data set comprised of a selected sample of women from various cohorts reported in the 1980 Taiwan Census. Our results show that, in addition to the age at marriage, human capital factors such as the woman’s education, job security and occupation are all significant in influencing the first spacing. The roles played by these human capital factors become even more important for the second spacing. In the third spacing, the relative importance of education and occupation still persists, while gender preferences become much stronger. Overall, while job security shortens the timing of childbearing, better education and occupation as well as more girls from previous births all lead to delays in births. As for preference factors, we find that elementary school teachers have a shorter birth-spacing compared to junior high school teachers, indicating possible personal preferences for children that are consistent with women’s job selection.     

The wages of motherhood: better or worse?

Data from two British cohort studies show that women with childrenhave lower wages than childless women. We develop an innovativedecomposition of this 'family gap'. The crude pay gap betweenmothers and childless women in their thirties was similar in1978 and 1991, but low pay in part-time work became more importantin explaining this gap, and human capital less so. We find that,among full-time employees, women who broke their employmentat childbirth were subsequently paid less than childless women.In contrast, mothers who maintained employment continuity wereas well paid as childless women, but neither were as well remuneratedas men.     

Market design with endogenous preferences

This paper explores the interdependence between market structure and an important class of cognitive biases. Starting with a familiar bilateral monopoly framework, we characterize the endogenous emergence of preference distortions during bargaining which cause negotiators to perceive their private valuations differently than they would outside the adversarial negotiation context. Using this model, we then demonstrate how a number of external interventions in the structure and/or organization of market interactions (occurring before trade, after trade, or during negotiations themselves) can profoundly alter the nature of these dispositions. Our results demonstrate that many such interventions frequently (though not always) share qualitatively similar characteristics to market interventions that are often proposed for overcoming more conventional forms of market failure. Nevertheless, our analysis underscores the importance of understanding the precise link between cognitive failures and market structure prior to the implementation of any particular proposed reform.     

Cropping system diversification,conservation tillage and modern seed adoption in Ethiopia: Impacts on household income,agrochemical use and demand for labor

The type and combination of sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs) adopted have a significant effect on agricultural productivity and food security. This study develops a multinomial endogenous switching regression model of farmers' choice of combination of SAPs and impacts on maize income and agrochemicals and family labor use in rural Ethiopia. Four primary results were found. First, adoption of SAPs increases maize income and the highest payoff is achieved when SAPs are adopted in combination rather than in isolation. Second, nitrogen fertilizer use is lower in the package that contains system diversification and conservation tillage. Third, conservation tillage increased pesticide application and labor demand, perhaps to compensate for reduced tillage. However, when it is used jointly with system diversification, it does not have a significant impact on pesticide and labor use. Fourth, in most cases adoption of a package of SAPs increases women workload, suggesting that agricultural intensification technology interventions may not be gender neutral. This implies that policy makers and other stakeholders promoting a combination of technologies can enhance household food security through increasing income and reducing production costs, but need to be aware of the potential gender related outcomes.     

Unions, government's preference, and privatization

By introducing the government's preference for tax revenues into the theoretical framework of unionized mixed oligopolies, this study investigates the efficiency of privatization. The results are twofold. First, regardless of the government's preference for tax revenues and the number of private firms, the government and the public firm do not always have an incentive to privatize the public firm even if the government places lesser emphasis on the tax revenues than on social welfare. Second, social welfare increases with an increased number of private firms regardless of the government's preference for tax revenues and decreases with the government's preference for tax revenues regardless of the number of private firms. Hence, the government can use tax more efficiently as a commitment device to control the union's wage demand so as to maintain lower wage level under unionized mixed oligopoly.     

“Opt out” or kept out? The effect of stigma,structure, selection,and sector on the labor force participation of married women in India

Using the 61st and 68th rounds of National Sample Survey data, we investigate the role of stigma, the economy’s structure, potential selection bias, and sectoral differences in explaining the low labor force participation (LFP) of middle and secondary educated women in India relative to low‐ and high‐educated women (the “U‐shape”). Estimating LFP regressions on a sample of prime‐aged married women, we show that, controlling for background characteristics, if a woman’s husband works in a white‐collar job in a region with a high share of blue‐collar jobs, she is less likely to participate in the labor market (stigma). We also find a positive effect of an increase in an index of white‐collar job growth (structure) on married women’s LFP. These effects are present in both rural and urban sectors but are strongest in the rural sector. However, middle and secondary educated women are still found to have substantially lower LFP than low‐ and graduate‐educated women in both sectors. Indeed, over time, the U‐shape persists in the rural sector and deepens in the urban sector. Because unobservables are quite large in the urban sector, we use the method of instrumental variables and find an increasing return at middle levels but stagnation at higher levels.     

31例妊高症剖宫产麻醉配合体会

目的探讨妊高症剖宫产麻醉配合体会经验.方法对2009年4月－2012年3月在牡丹江医学院附属二院妇产科住院的31例妊高症剖宫产产妇资料进行回顾性分析.结果31例患者中,18例行腰-硬联合麻醉,13例行硬膜外麻醉,入ICU率及住院天数,腰硬联合麻醉组明显低于硬膜外麻醉组;新生儿1－5min Apgar评分≤7分的百分率,腰硬联合麻醉组明显低于硬膜外麻醉组,两组患者的术后血压、胎儿娩出时间、术后并发症均无显著性差异.结论腰-硬联合麻醉运用于妊高症剖宫产是疗效确切并且安全的.     

Demand for household sanitation in India using NFHS-3 data

India has the highest number of people defecating in the open, and the Indian Government is trying to eradicate by constructing toilets for its citizens. This paper is about whether the government is likely to succeed in its cleanliness drive mission by a supply-side policy. We examine the household preference and other the factors leading to open defecation in India. We examine preference for having a toilet in the household over the preference of other household durable goods. Our results suggest toilets get a lower preference—ranked 12, out of 21 different types of consumer durables we investigate. The results also indicate a strong case for imparting education and public awareness, especially, among the female cohort. We find the odds of having toilets in a household with an educated woman (18 years of schooling) is 3.1 times more than a household with illiterate or preschool educated women. Among other factors households living in urban areas are 19 times more likely to have toilets in comparison with their rural counterparts.     

Challenges and Changes in Gendered Poverty: The Feminization,De-Feminization,and Re-Feminization of Poverty in Latin America

Despite reductions in poverty generally, recent trends in Latin American countries show processes of both de-feminization and re-feminization of poverty. A rise in the numbers of women to men living in income-poor households has occurred despite feminized anti-poverty programs, most notably conditional cash transfers (CCTs), which target resources to women. This paper shows that methodological differences in what, how, and who is the focus of measurement may influence patterns of poverty “feminization.” It also suggests that feminized policy interventions might in themselves be playing a role in the re-feminization of poverty, not least because of data and definitional limitations in the way female-headed households and, relatedly, women’s poverty are understood. The somewhat paradoxical interactions between the feminization of household headship, the feminization of poverty, and the feminization of anti-poverty programs present interesting challenges for redressing gender gaps in poverty within the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.