Why do people volunteer? Obviously it must be because they find some satisfaction in it. But they may be forced to do it (say, by peer pressure or because it improves one's CV), yet one can still argue they appreciate the volunteering because they find a benefit in it: without it, there would be adverse consequences. It thus seems unavoidable to find a positive relation between volunteering and happiness, unless one is able to tease out the circumstances of volunteering. Add to this the endogeneity issue that people may be volunteering because they want to spread their happiness, or because they enjoy good circumstances that allow them to work without pay.
Martin Binder and Andreas Freytag use the British Household Panel Survey to study whether volunteering makes happy. I am not sure their reduced-form estimates are able to capture the subtleties I mentioned in my first paragraph with propensity score matching. I find more promising their inclusion of personality traits to take care of selection bias in volunteering, although personality cannot completely be ruled as exogenous. Also, their quantiles regressions can potentially highlight some heterogeneity that can be useful for our understanding of the relationship. In the end, they find that volunteering makes people happy, no surprise here, and more so the longer they volunteer. The quantile regression, however, reveals that the happiest individuals do not derive happiness from volunteering, presumably they are happy for other reasons. The least happy ones do enjoy volunteering much more. I wonder whether this comes from some decreasing marginal utility of volunteering, and whether this ties in with the fact that the poor are more generous, as discussed before.
Showing posts with label United Kingdom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United Kingdom. Show all posts
Why encourage more students to choose scientific careers?
Everyone is calling for more students to go for diplomas in the sciences, with the idea that why need research and development to promote growth. Everyone is also lamenting that today's students are not prepared for such careers because they are lacking in mathematics skills. So it becomes a real struggle to get students interested in those fields, especially women. It is one thing to get students to take one such studies, it is a different struggle to keep them there. For one, it is a tough field to study and many abandon and go for easier topics. Those who end up graduating in sciences must be seriously dedicated to become scientists.
Not quite. Surveying British graduates, Arnaud Chevalier finds that half works outside of scientific fields within three years. Worse, having a science degree bring no wage advantage outside of sciences. In other words, they endured and persevered through science studies for no visible advantage over those who when through business, political sciences or psychology. This raises the question why everyone is pushing so hard to channel students to the science fields. There does not seem to be a market for them after graduation and/or many to do want to work in the scientific field anyway, as satisfaction studies seem to be revealing, including this one.
Not quite. Surveying British graduates, Arnaud Chevalier finds that half works outside of scientific fields within three years. Worse, having a science degree bring no wage advantage outside of sciences. In other words, they endured and persevered through science studies for no visible advantage over those who when through business, political sciences or psychology. This raises the question why everyone is pushing so hard to channel students to the science fields. There does not seem to be a market for them after graduation and/or many to do want to work in the scientific field anyway, as satisfaction studies seem to be revealing, including this one.
House prices and consumption: how model specification matters
What is the impact of a decrease of house prices on consumption? If you go by the wealth hypothesis, one should see that home owners would reduce their consumption significantly because their wealth has suffered, while young renters are barely affected. According to the common factor hypothesis, both agent classes should respond in the same way, because they respond to common factors, for example future income prospects. It should be easy to test one hypothesis against the other and settle this. It turns out that using the exact same dataset, John Campbell and João Cocco could not reject the first, while Orazio Attanasio, Laura Blow, Robert Hamilton and Andrew Leicester could not reject the second. Well, that is embarrassing.
Annalisa Cristini and Almudena Sevilla Sanz replicate these results and show that because the two models are not nested, they cannot test against each other. Worse, it all boils down to the specification: estimate an Euler equation (which uses consumption growth) and the wealth hypothesis wins; estimate a consumption function, with consumption in levels, and the common factors hypothesis wins. So I am afraid it is not sufficient to estimate a single equation, one needs to estimate the whole structural model jointly.
Annalisa Cristini and Almudena Sevilla Sanz replicate these results and show that because the two models are not nested, they cannot test against each other. Worse, it all boils down to the specification: estimate an Euler equation (which uses consumption growth) and the wealth hypothesis wins; estimate a consumption function, with consumption in levels, and the common factors hypothesis wins. So I am afraid it is not sufficient to estimate a single equation, one needs to estimate the whole structural model jointly.
The impact of poor scheduling of international football tournaments on English GCSE results
For every big sports event, there are two types of economic studies that make the news: the ones about the economic impact, which essentially add up all the expenses somewhat related to the event (sometimes applying a multiplier), never mind the fact that all this could have been spent on something else, and the studies about productivity losses because people are sleepy or distracted at work. I remember from school days that these events would also have a tendency to fall on exam period, which was a serious drag on exam preparation. How much? Someone finally figured it out.
Robert Metcalfe, Simon Burgess and Steven Proud exploit the fact that every two years a major international football tournament overlaps with important exams at the end of compulsory schooling in England. And their results are not pretty: male students as well as disadvantaged students suffer disproportionately from the competition for their attention. From them, exam scores are reduced by 0.2 standard deviations, which substantial, and as the authors note as large as some policy interventions. Just rescheduling those exams could be more effective than pouring money into some school initiatives.
Robert Metcalfe, Simon Burgess and Steven Proud exploit the fact that every two years a major international football tournament overlaps with important exams at the end of compulsory schooling in England. And their results are not pretty: male students as well as disadvantaged students suffer disproportionately from the competition for their attention. From them, exam scores are reduced by 0.2 standard deviations, which substantial, and as the authors note as large as some policy interventions. Just rescheduling those exams could be more effective than pouring money into some school initiatives.
The child quality/quantity trade-off in the Industrial Revolution
Non-economists cringe when they hear us talking about investment in children and the quantity/quality trade-off in this regard. Yet, this is a very real aspect of child rearing pointed out by Gary Becker that is at the core of many models, and has been found wild in nature. This trade-off is though to be an integral part of the demographic transition, where fertility suddenly drops massively in the course of development.
Marc Klemp and Jacob Weisdorf look at data from Anglican parish registers from the 18th century that contain all sort of demographic data to look at the child quality/quantity trade-off during the Industrial Revolution. Theory tells us that if the returns to education and/or the cost of time (wages) get larger, parents switch from having many children with no education to few of them with better education. Klemp and Weisdorf's data indicates clearly that this trade-off is present: each additional sibling reduces by 8% the probability of a child eventually becoming literate. That is a strong effect, in particular considering the larger number of children at the time, and its rather large standard deviation during this time of transition.
Marc Klemp and Jacob Weisdorf look at data from Anglican parish registers from the 18th century that contain all sort of demographic data to look at the child quality/quantity trade-off during the Industrial Revolution. Theory tells us that if the returns to education and/or the cost of time (wages) get larger, parents switch from having many children with no education to few of them with better education. Klemp and Weisdorf's data indicates clearly that this trade-off is present: each additional sibling reduces by 8% the probability of a child eventually becoming literate. That is a strong effect, in particular considering the larger number of children at the time, and its rather large standard deviation during this time of transition.
Energy spending and household poverty
There is broad agreement that energy, especially polluting energy, is too cheap, calling for higher energy taxes. The problem is that such taxes are believed to be highly regressive, as poor households spend a larger share of their income on energy for transportation, heating and cooling. Of course, this could be alleviated by an appropriate redistribution of the proceeds, but to do this properly one first needs to understand well the energy spending of poor households.
Tooraj Jamasb and Helena Meier do this for the United Kingdom. There, households that spend more than 10% of their income on energy are considered "fuel poor" and deemed as having difficulties heating their home. I have always been suspicious of such definitions, as one may choose to spend more to heat at higher temperatures, for example, without being considered at risk. But this definition may indeed capture a good portion of the households of interest. While Jamasb and Meier find the usual conclusions (fuel poor households are poor, have children or are retired, spend more time at home), they also put high hope in smart meters. By showing current energy consumption, they hope that these meters will trigger behavioral changes and in particular help so far ill-informed households manage better the available energy and look for energy efficiency. As so often, good information goes a long way in managing scarcity.
Tooraj Jamasb and Helena Meier do this for the United Kingdom. There, households that spend more than 10% of their income on energy are considered "fuel poor" and deemed as having difficulties heating their home. I have always been suspicious of such definitions, as one may choose to spend more to heat at higher temperatures, for example, without being considered at risk. But this definition may indeed capture a good portion of the households of interest. While Jamasb and Meier find the usual conclusions (fuel poor households are poor, have children or are retired, spend more time at home), they also put high hope in smart meters. By showing current energy consumption, they hope that these meters will trigger behavioral changes and in particular help so far ill-informed households manage better the available energy and look for energy efficiency. As so often, good information goes a long way in managing scarcity.
The smart children of vengeance
As someone who has been raised in a non-violent environment, I am often surprised how people in some circles easily resort to vengeance and violence while a conciliatory attitude could have resolved "issues" quickly and efficiently. There is certainly a good deal of learned behavior that determines whether you are of a conflicting or conciliatory type, and this learning comes from example, in the family, among peers and in society. Society is important (say, compare Scandinavia to the Balkans) but there are also striking differences within societies. That is where parents may come in.
Ruby Henry studies how the use of retaliation is transmitted to children, first using a model of education effort by parents, and then using UK National Childhood Development Survey. The theoretical prediction is confirmed that high-cognitive parents are better able to transmit their values and override the peer culture, as long as the parents are retaliators. Indeed, if a child is told to retaliate and meet a forgiver, he wins and his values are reinforced. If he is a forgiver and meets a retaliator, he looses and is upset by the teachings of his parents. It the long run, this means that humankind will settle on a retaliating culture. But I do not think this is what we observe. In fact, there are less wars, people abide more to contracts and, I think, respect more the rule of law over time. Correct me if I am wrong.
Ruby Henry studies how the use of retaliation is transmitted to children, first using a model of education effort by parents, and then using UK National Childhood Development Survey. The theoretical prediction is confirmed that high-cognitive parents are better able to transmit their values and override the peer culture, as long as the parents are retaliators. Indeed, if a child is told to retaliate and meet a forgiver, he wins and his values are reinforced. If he is a forgiver and meets a retaliator, he looses and is upset by the teachings of his parents. It the long run, this means that humankind will settle on a retaliating culture. But I do not think this is what we observe. In fact, there are less wars, people abide more to contracts and, I think, respect more the rule of law over time. Correct me if I am wrong.
Breastfeeding and cognitive skills
Breastfeeding is now almost universally promoted as the healthiest way to feed a baby. And indeed, while breastfed babies are a little smaller and than bottle-fed ones and gain a little less weight, they are healthier, it is thought mainly because the mother milk transmits antibodies and relevant nutrients. But not every mother breast feeds, maybe because not every mother realizes all the benefits, or because some of the costs are high (time management for working mothers or aesthetic issues). Or there are some other benefits that are not well known.
Maria Iacovou and Almudena Sevilla-Sanz report that breastfeeding has significant positive impacts on cognitive skills (reading, writing and mathematics). While this correlation is well known, it may be spurious because mothers who breastfeed are more likely to be well educated (Irish example), and their children are also more likely to be well educated as well. The obvious way to overcome this statistical issue, a randomized trial, is not feasible on ethical grounds. What Iacovou and Sevilla-Sanz do is use propensity score matching, which essentially matches babies that have the same characteristics but breastfeeding and then compare their cognitive skills. What is particularly impressive in this study is that the retained characteristics are very broad beyond baby demographics and health, including parent characteristics such as education, job, income, and even pre-birth attitude towards breastfeeding or home and neighborhood. And even after controlling for all these variables, the impact of breastfeeding is still significant on babies from Bristol (England), and it may even grow with age.
Maria Iacovou and Almudena Sevilla-Sanz report that breastfeeding has significant positive impacts on cognitive skills (reading, writing and mathematics). While this correlation is well known, it may be spurious because mothers who breastfeed are more likely to be well educated (Irish example), and their children are also more likely to be well educated as well. The obvious way to overcome this statistical issue, a randomized trial, is not feasible on ethical grounds. What Iacovou and Sevilla-Sanz do is use propensity score matching, which essentially matches babies that have the same characteristics but breastfeeding and then compare their cognitive skills. What is particularly impressive in this study is that the retained characteristics are very broad beyond baby demographics and health, including parent characteristics such as education, job, income, and even pre-birth attitude towards breastfeeding or home and neighborhood. And even after controlling for all these variables, the impact of breastfeeding is still significant on babies from Bristol (England), and it may even grow with age.
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