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Assessing the role of tax-benefit policies during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from the Andean region
No full textThis paper aims to assess the role of tax-benefit policies in mitigating the effects of COVID-19 on the distribution of household disposable income in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. We exploit data from phone surveys collected during the pandemic combined with tax-benefit microsimulation techniques to nowcast the distribution of household disposable income. Our results show a sharp drop in household disposable income and a dramatic increase in poverty and inequality during the second quarter of 2020. By the end of 2020, the economy recovers but poverty and inequality remain above the pre-pandemic levels. COVID-related policies cushion the effect of the crisis at the bottom of the distribution, and their effect on poverty and inequality largely depends on the generosity of the benefits implemented. By contrast, automatic stabilizers mitigate the impact of the income shock at the top of the distribution due to the effect of social insurance contributions and personal income tax, whereas social assistance programs in place before the pandemic fail to act as automatic stabilizers due to their design as proxy means-tested benefits. We validate our nowcasting estimates with actual survey data from the end of 2020 and show that our results match closely poverty and inequality indicators in all three countries
Gender differences in socioemotional skills among adolescents and young adults in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam
No full textThis paper examines the emergence of gender differences in socioemotional skills and traits during adolescence, and the socioeconomic and cultural factors that may explain such gaps, in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. Findings from Young Lives longitudinal data showed that the gender gap in self-efficacy emerges around age 19, with males scoring more highly than females in Ethiopia, India and Vietnam. Similar, but less consistent, patterns were observed for self-esteem and peer relations. At age 22, males also scored more highly than females, in at least one country, in emotional stability, conscientiousness, grit, and teamwork. In India and Ethiopia, the two countries with higher poverty and more unequal gender attitudes, we found gender differences in a greater number of socioemotional skills or traits. A predictive analysis of self-efficacy, emotional stability and teamwork found that time spent in paid and unpaid household activities, having a more equal attitude to gender roles, and socioeconomic status were associated with the gender gap in socioemotional skills. These covariates explained gender gaps more in India and Ethiopia than in other countries. However, substantial portions of gender differences remained unexplained by available variables. Our findings may help clarify the origins of gender inequalities in life outcomes and how they can be addressed through socioemotional programmes in adolescence
How to count sore throats
No full textKamm’s sore throat case gives us a choice: save one life or save a distinct life and cure a sore throat. We defend the fairness explanation of the judgement that one should flip a coin to decide whom to save: it is disrespectful to let a sore throat act as a tie-breaker, because an individual would be forced to forgo a 50% fair chance of living (given to them by a coin flip), which cannot be outweighed by any number of sore throats. We show that this explanation of when and why claims can permissibly break ties generates new problem cases for theories of aggregation, including theories that have been thought to accommodate the judgement that one should flip a coin in Kamm’s sore throat case. We then generalize the fairness explanation to cases involving multiple groups
Wealth and class analysis: exploitation, closure and exclusion
No full textWealth inequalities are increasingly prominent in contemporary societies but they have not been systematically addressed by sociological class analysis. However, class analysis should have a lot to offer: in the literature on wealth inequality, wealth is often approached as a unidimensional distribution – a quantity one can possess more or less of, crystallized in notions of the Top 1%. In this theoretical intervention, we discuss ways in which class analysis can address the gravity of wealth inequality by returning to the origins in the thinking of Marx and Weber, where capital accumulation and property organization were given central stage. Drawing on more recent contributions from Bourdieu, and integrating insights from political economy, theories of racial capitalism and feminist perspectives, we outline ways to enrich class theory through attention to housing, finance, business and debt. Our intervention allows class analysis to embrace accumulation, exploitation, closure and exclusion; making it fit for purpose to address 21st-century social changes
White, male, and angry: a reputation-based rationale for backlash
No full textFrom the bottom to the top of society, many white men are angry. This article provides a reputation-based rationale for this anger. Individuals care about their social status (elite vs. non-elite) and their social reputation (how they expect others to perceive them). Everyone is uncertain about how one becomes a member of the elite. When new information reveals that the system is biased in favor of white men, the social reputation of all white men decreases, causing a payoff loss. In contrast, policies meant to reduce inequalities in the access to the elite can be supported by some white men and opposed by others. The article highlights how the backlash from white men in recent years needs not be driven by racial animus or sexism and may instead be caused by a loss of status and/or reputation
Narcissism and affective polarization
No full textThere are increasing concerns about affective polarization between political groups in the US and elsewhere. While most work explaining affective polarization focuses on a combination of social and ideological sorting, we ask whether people’s personalities are associated with friendliness to their political in-group and hostility to their political out-group. We argue that the personality trait of narcissism (entitled self-importance) is an important correlate of affective polarization. We test this claim in Britain using nationally representative survey data, examining both long-standing party identities and new Brexit identities. Our findings reveal that narcissism, and particularly the ‘rivalry’ aspect of narcissism, is associated with both positive and negative partisanship. This potentially not only explains why some people are more susceptible to affective polarization, but also has implications for elite polarization given that narcissism is an important predictor of elite entry
Why might animals remember? A functional framework for episodic memory research in comparative psychology
No full textOne of Clayton’s major contributions to our understanding of animal minds has been her work on episodic-like memory. A central reason for the success of this work was its focus on ecological validity: rather than looking for episodic memory for arbitrary stimuli in artificial contexts, focussing on contexts in which episodic memory would serve a biological function such as food caching. This review aims to deepen this insight by surveying the numerous functions that have been proposed for episodic memory, articulating a philosophically grounded framework for understanding what exactly functions are, and drawing on these to make suggestions for future directions in the comparative cognitive psychology of episodic memory. Our review suggests four key insights. First, episodic memory may have more than one function and may have different functions in different species. Second, cross-disciplinary work is key to developing a functional account of episodic memory. Third, there is scope for further theoretical elaboration of proposals relating episodic memory to food caching and, in particular, future-oriented cognition. Finally, learning-related functions suggested by AI (artificial intelligence)-based models are a fruitful avenue for future behavioural research
Call me maybe: does customer feedback seeking impact nonsolicited customers?
No full textAcademics and practitioners acknowledge the value of customer feedback in improving firm performance. Companies routinely solicit feedback from different customer subsets. However, the extent to which this feedback impacts nonsolicited customers depends on whether firms implement meaningful business-level changes that resonate with customers. This paper assesses customer feedback’s impact on firm learning and business improvements as well as its spillover effects on nonsolicited customers using a randomized, controlled field experiment conducted in Rwanda over two years. We hypothesize that private feedback seeking could operate through two broad mechanisms: (a) directly influencing solicited customers and/or (b) prompting firms to improve their offerings, leading to spillover effects on other customers. Our results demonstrate a 38.2% increase in recall and a 77.4% increase in purchases for customers not engaged in the feedback process. The analysis further suggests that business-level changes driven by customer feedback fuel these spillovers. Additionally, customer feedback seeking significantly improves treatment firm performance, resulting in a 62.0% revenue increase and 54.5% profit increase compared with control firms. Our study also introduces a basic customer feedback-seeking technology for small businesses to improve performance. These findings can guide firms in leveraging customer feedback to undertake business changes and generate greater revenues/profits
Risk-sharing in pension plans: multiple options
No full textA response to pressures on pension finance caused by population ageing and economic turbulence has been a substantial move from traditional defined-benefit plans in which, at least in principle, all risk falls on the contributions side, to defined-contribution plans in which risk during accumulation all falls on the benefits side. This paper argues that both designs are ‘corner solutions’ and hence generally suboptimal, and goes on to set out a range of designs that offer different ways of sharing risk among workers, employers, future pensioners and current pensioners
Poverty imputation in contexts without consumption data: a revisit with further refinements
No full textSurvey-to-survey imputation has been increasingly employed to address data gaps for poverty measurement in poorer countries. We refine existing imputation models, using 14 multi-topic household surveys conducted over the past decade in Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Vietnam. We find that adding household utility expenditures to a basic imputation model with household-level demographic and employment variables provides accurate estimates, which even fall within one standard error of the true poverty rates in many cases. The proposed imputation method performs better than several commonly used multiple imputation and machine learning techniques. Further adding geospatial variables improves accuracy, as does including additional community-level predictors (available from data in Vietnam) related to educational achievement, poverty, and asset wealth. Yet, within-country spatial heterogeneity exists, with certain models performing well for either urban areas or rural areas only. These results offer cost-saving inputs into future survey design