1,721,189 research outputs found
Trust me, you will be in better health
Full text linkAlong the pathway traced by few recent contribution that attempt to identify the causal effect of social capital on health, this paper analyzes whether individual social capital reduces the probability of experiencing 11 long-lasting and chronic diseases. The empirical problems related to reverse causation and unobserved heterogeneity are addressed by means of a procedure that exploits the within-individual variation between the timings of first occurrence of the 11 diseases considered. Estimates indicate that the probability of occurrence is on average 14–18 percent lower among individuals reporting to “trust most of the other people”. This result is robust to two alternative specifications as well as the inclusion or omission of individual controls
Social capital and smoking behavior
No full textIn this paper, we explore one mechanism that may underlie the negative relationship between social capital and smoking: whether social capital strengthens the effect of anti-smoking regulations. We use data on smoking behaviors collected immediately before and after the implementation of smoking bans in public places in Germany in order to determine whether the impact of these bans on smoking prevalence and intensity is greater among individuals richer in social capital. We find that smoking bans reduce both smoking prevalence and intensity mainly among men and that individual social capital strengthens the effect of the bans.JRC.DDG.01 - Econometrics and applied statistic
Provoking a Civil War
No full textNondemocratic governments under the rule of weak institutions use repression against the opposition to remain in power. Repression both muffles the opposition’s voice and strengthens the government’s supporters. Nevertheless, when repression becomes strong enough, it becomes intolerable to its victims who revolt and initiate a civil war. The government is aware of the mechanism and determines the level of repression accordingly. This paper studies the circumstances in which the ruler’s best alternative is to intensify repression to the point of provoking civil war. Although the model is abstract, its implications are discussed using the recent civil war in the Ivory Coast as a case study
The Labor Market Effects of Academic and Vocational Education over the Life Cycle: Evidence Based on a British Cohor
No full textSeveral commentators have argued that the short-term advantage of vocational versus academic education, which is a smoother school-to-work transition, trades off with long-term disadvantages, which are lower employment and/or lower wages. Using data based on the careers of individuals born in the United Kingdom in 1958, we find evidence of a trade-off, but only for real wages and only for the group with lower vocational education. These results are confirmed when the careers of individuals born in 1970 are examined. The presence of a trade-off does not imply, however, that individuals with vocational education have lower long-term utility
Is social capital good for health? A European perspective
No full textThe aim of the research reported here was to examine the causal impact of social capital on health in 14 European
countries. Using data from the European Social Survey for 14 European countries, supplemented by regional-level
data, the authors studied whether individual and/or community-level social capital positively affects health. The authors
controlled for other relevant factors that are also expected to affect health, and addressed – via an instrumental variable
approach – the challenge of assessing causality in the relationship between social capital and health. The large variance
of the error term due to measurement errors calls for strong instruments to obtain reliable estimates in a finite sample.
The dataset is rich enough in information to allow the finding of a seemingly strong causal relationship between social
capital and individual health. Community social capital (defined at regional level) appears not to affect health once
individual-level social capital is controlled for. Taken at face value, the findings suggest that policy interventions
should be targeted at improving primarily individual social capital. In doing so they would achieve a double effect: on
the one hand they would directly improve individual health; on the other they would contribute to community social
capital, which reinforces the beneficial role of individual social capital
A tale of minorities: evidence on religious ethics and entrepreneurship
No full textDoes Protestantism favour entrepreneurship more than Catholicism does? We provide a novel way to answer this question by comparing Protestant and Catholic minorities using Swiss census data. Exploiting the strong adhesion of religious minorities to their denomination’ ethical principles and the historical determination of the geographical distribution of denominations across Swiss cantons, we find that Protestantism is associated with a significantly higher propensity for entrepreneurship. The estimated difference ranges between 1.5 and 3.2 % points, it is larger the smaller the size of the religious minority, it is mainly driven by prime age male entrepreneurs and it stands up to a number of robustness checks. No effects are found when comparing religious majorities, suggesting that the implications of religious ethical norms on economic outcomes emerge only when such norms are fully internalized
The effect of migration on the school performance of natives : cross country evidence using PISA test scores
Full text linkWe use aggregate PISA data for 19 countries over the period 2000–2009 to study whether a higher share of immigrant pupils affects the school performance of natives. We find evidence of a negative and statistically significant relationship. The size of the estimated effect is small: doubling the share of immigrant pupils in secondary schools from its current sample average of 4.2–8.4 percent would reduce the test score of natives by 1–3.4 percent, depending on the selected group of natives. There is also evidence that – conditional on the average share of immigrant pupils – reducing the dispersion of this share between schools has small positive effects on the test scores of natives. Whether these findings can be generalized to a larger sample of countries is an open question that we leave to future research
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