Married Households Research Articles

Understanding Disparities in Receipt of Complex Gastrointestinal Cancer Surgery at a Small Geographic Scale.

To define neighborhood-level disparities in the receipt of complex cancer surgery. Little is known about the geographic variation of receipt of surgery among patients with complex gastrointestinal (GI) cancers, especially at a small geographic scale. This study included individuals diagnosed with 5 invasive, nonmetastatic, complex GI cancers (esophagus, stomach, pancreas, bile ducts, liver) from the Ohio Cancer Incidence Surveillance System during 2009 and 2018. To preserve patient privacy, we combined US census tracts into the smallest geographic areas that included a minimum number of surgery cases (n=11) using the Max-p-regions method and called these new areas "MaxTracts." Age-adjusted surgery rates were calculated for MaxTracts, and the Hot Spot analysis identified clusters of high and low surgery rates. US Census and CDC PLACES were used to compare neighborhood characteristics between the high- and low-surgery clusters. This study included 33,091 individuals with complex GI cancers located in 1006 MaxTracts throughout Ohio. The proportion in each MaxTract receiving surgery ranged from 20.7% to 92.3% with a median (interquartile range) of 48.9% (42.4-56.3). Low-surgery clusters were mostly in urban cores and the Appalachian region, whereas high-surgery clusters were mostly in suburbs. Low-surgery clusters differed from high-surgery clusters in several ways, including higher rates of poverty (23% vs. 12%), fewer married households (40% vs. 50%), and more tobacco use (25% vs. 19%; all P <0.01). This improved understanding of neighborhood-level variation in receipt of potentially curative surgery will guide future outreach and community-based interventions to reduce treatment disparities. Similar methods can be used to target other treatment phases and other cancers.

Rethinking the Welfare State

The United States spends significant amounts on non‐medical transfers for its working‐age population in a wide range of programs that support low‐ and middle‐income households. How valuable are these programs for U.S. households? Are there simpler, welfare‐improving ways to transfer resources that are supported by a majority? What are the macroeconomic effects of such alternatives? We answer these questions in an equilibrium, life‐cycle model with single and married households who face idiosyncratic productivity risk, in the presence of costly children and potential skill losses of females associated with non‐participation. Our findings show that a potential revenue‐neutral elimination of the welfare state generates large welfare losses in the aggregate, although most households support the move as losses are concentrated among a small group. We find that a Universal Basic Income program does not improve upon the current system. If, instead, per‐person transfers are implemented alongside a proportional tax, a Negative Income Tax experiment, it becomes feasible to improve upon the current system. Providing per‐person transfers to all households is costly, and reducing tax distortions helps to provide for resources to expand redistribution.

Determinants of the Willingness to Pay for Solid Waste Recycling among Households in Ilemela, Tanzania

This study aimed to investigate the determinants of willingness to pay for solid wastes recycling among households in Ilemela District, Mwanza-Tanzania. The study design was a cross-sectional survey design which was conducted among households residing in Ilemela District. A multistage sampling technique was useful for selecting representative samples from every ward. Structured questionnaires were used to obtain data from study participants. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, logistic regression was used in analyzing the factors influencing household’s willingness to pay for solid waste recycling and ordinary least square regression was used to estimate the effect of socio-economic factors on the amount households were willing to pay for solid wastes in Ilemela District. The findings of the study show that majority of households were not willing to pay for solid waste recycling in Ilemela District, Mwanza region.The willingness to pay for solid waste recycling was associated with age of the household head, marital status, and education. Information dissemination and logarithm of household’s income while the effect of socio-economic factors on amount households were willing to pay for solid waste recycling was associated with the marital status (married households), households’ years of education, information dissemination on solid waste recycling and logarithm of income was statistically significant in influencing the amount households are willing to pay for solid waste recycling. The study recommends that the government and other interested stakeholders on solid waste management should invest more on education and awareness about importance of waste management to the mass using different mechanisms.

Choice of Use of the Kitchen by the Gender Group: Kitchens in Married Households in Dhaka City

Choice of Use of the Kitchen by the Gender Group: Kitchens in Married Households in Dhaka City

Household and non-household factors influencing multidimensional energy poverty in Bangladesh: Demographics, urbanization and regional differentiation via a multilevel modeling approach

This study offers the first national investigation quantifying the socioeconomic factors affecting household multidimensional energy poverty, a comparatively new challenge facing policymakers in Bangladesh. Using two rounds of the latest household income and expenditure survey as well as population and housing censuses, we employ a multilevel logistic regression modeling approach that incorporates regional-level variables in addition to the traditional focus on a set of household characteristics. The conclusion is robust to a linear probability model and a suite of other sensitivity checks. The results suggest that household characteristics, such as income, age, married household head, living space area, household literacy rate, primary and secondary school completion of the household head, and living in an urban area reduce the likelihood of household multidimensional energy poverty, whereas male-headed household enhances such likelihood. Moreover, regional characteristics like border district, distance from divisional headquarters, and social safety net ratio increase the chance of household multidimensional energy poverty, whereas urbanization rate has the opposite effect. Hence, this research calls for designing suitable policies, such as direct financing for clean cooking equipment under a particular scheme or providing cooking fuels at a concessional price to marginalized groups to address critical issues, including energy deprivation and energy inequality, that arise as a consequence of multidimensional energy poverty.

Robustness of the Poverty Measures: Evidence from Farm Households in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

The use of a plethora of poverty indexes is sometimes fraught with difficulties. The purpose of this research was to quantitatively assess poverty and to examine the robustness of the poverty metrics. Selecting representative farm homes required a multistage sample technique, which was implemented. A total of 150 rural homes were surveyed using questionnaires. Stochastic dominance and the weighted poverty measures of Foster, Greer and Thorbecke were used in this work to examine the weighted poverty measures' resilience and sensitivity to changes in the poverty line. According to the findings, as people become older and their families get larger, the likelihood, severity, and depth of poverty increases. An asymptotic sampling distribution was utilized to infer whether poverty was larger across a variety of hypothetical poverty lines by stochastic dominance analysis. First-order stochastic dominance was found, with the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of households headed by people over 60 years old lying totally above the other distribution functions (CDFs). The CDF of single families was lower than the CDF of married households, according to the findings. At any poverty level, the CDF of families with more than 10 household members stochastically dominated those with fewer family members. Many households will be lifted out of poverty if poverty-reduction initiatives are targeted at those over 60 and those with big families.

Robustness of the Poverty Measures: Evidence from Farm Households in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

The use of a plethora of poverty indexes is sometimes fraught with difficulties. The purpose of this research was to quantitatively assess poverty and to examine the robustness of the poverty metrics. Selecting representative farm homes required a multistage sample technique, which was implemented. A total of 150 rural homes were surveyed using questionnaires. Stochastic dominance and the weighted poverty measures of Foster, Greer and Thorbecke were used in this work to examine the weighted poverty measures' resilience and sensitivity to changes in the poverty line. According to the findings, as people become older and their families get larger, the likelihood, severity, and depth of poverty increases. An asymptotic sampling distribution was utilized to infer whether poverty was larger across a variety of hypothetical poverty lines by stochastic dominance analysis. First-order stochastic dominance was found, with the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of households headed by people over 60 years old lying totally above the other distribution functions (CDFs). The CDF of single families was lower than the CDF of married households, according to the findings. At any poverty level, the CDF of families with more than 10 household members stochastically dominated those with fewer family members. Many households will be lifted out of poverty if poverty-reduction initiatives are targeted at those over 60 and those with big families.

Subsidising Formal Childcare Versus Grandmothers' Time: Which Policy is More Effective?

Abstract This article quantifies the relative effectiveness of childcare subsidies and subsidies on grandmothers’ time on married mothers’ employment and fertility rates, paying special attention to heterogeneous effects. A heterogeneous agent model, populated by married households who make decisions related to labour supply and fertility, and the Spanish economy are used as a benchmark for calibration. The results indicate that childcare subsidies conditional on employment are more effective than subsidies on grandmothers’ time to foster the participation of married mothers in the labour force. However, they induce women to work fewer hours, unless after-school hours are also subsidised. This overtime subsidy is also necessary for the fertility rate to increase, but it implies a significant adjustment in tax rates to maintain the same fiscal balance. If the aim is simply to raise the employment rate of mothers of children aged 2 years or younger, then subsidising childcare costs only is more effective because the fiscal effort is lower. Regarding the heterogeneous effects, in all the policies studied, the growth in female employment is mainly accounted for by the behaviour of women without tertiary education while that of fertility is accounted for by women with tertiary education. Considerations related to inequality and distributional effects of these policies would also seem to favour childcare subsidies versus subsidies on grandmothers’ time.

Linking poverty-targeted social protection and Community Based Health Insurance in Ethiopia: Enrolment, linkages, and gaps

BackgroundCommunity-Based Health Insurance (CBHI) has received increasing attention in low and middle-income countries as a pathway toward universal health coverage. In 2011, the government of Ethiopia piloted CBHI and subsequently integrated CBHI with its flagship social protection programme, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) which was established in 2005. We examined enrolment decisions by PSNP households, including, understanding of the programme, reasons for non-coverage, and factors associated with enrolment decisions. MethodsCross-sectional data for this study come from an Integrated Safety Net Program (ISNP) baseline survey implemented in four rural woredas in Amhara region, Ethiopia between December 2018 and February 2019. We collected data from 5398 PSNP beneficiary households, categorized as either Public Work (PW) or Permanent Direct Support (PDS) types. We used descriptive methods to characterize sample households and fitted binary logistic regression to identify factors associated with households’ CBHI enrolment decisions. ResultsCurrent CBHI enrolment is higher among PW households (70.1 %) than PDS clients (50.3 %). The most common reason for not enrolling in both PW and PDS households is cost. Results further show that the following characteristics are positively associated with CBHI enrolment: the number of children and working-age adults in the household, older household head, female household head, married household head, having been food insecure in the previous 12 months, heads having experienced illness in the past month, and increasing household wealth status. ConclusionWhile demographic factors are important in households’ decisions to enrol in CBHI, various mechanisms could be used to increase enrolment among vulnerable households such as PDS clients. In this regard, while better communication about CBHI could increase enrolment for some households, other poor and vulnerable households will need fee waivers to induce enrolment.

The discipline of context: commercializing a “women’s crop” in Southern Malawi

Commercialization may disempower women if men take control of “women’s crops”. We tested this hypothesis for pigeonpea with a sample of 175 married households in Phalombe district, Southern Malawi. Commercialization did not change women’s control over decision-making for pigeonpea. An experimental game was used to identify preferences for the intra-household distribution of income at two different levels of income from pigeonpea. At both low and high levels of income women and men both preferred to pool income rather than have separate shares. The allocation of income between investment and consumption did not differ between women and men, nor when wives played independently or together with their husbands. Women were only willing to accept a higher income from pigeonpea if this increase was shared equally with their husbands. We conclude that the commercialization of pigeonpea will not disempower women. A matrilineal system of inheritance and matrilocal marriage strengthen the bargaining power of women in Southern Malawi. Context determines who wins from commercialization.

Race, Family Conflict and Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors among 9-10-Year-Old American Children.

Family conflict is known to operate as a major risk factor for children’s suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs). However, it is unknown whether this effect is similar or different in Black and White children. Objectives: We compared Black and White children for the association between family conflict and STBs in a national sample of 9–10-year-old American children. Methods: This cross-sectional study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. This study included 9918 White or Black children between the ages of 9 and 10 living in married households. The predictor variable was family conflict. Race was the moderator. The outcome variable was STBs, treated as a count variable, reflecting positive STB items that were endorsed. Covariates included ethnicity, sex, age, immigration status, family structure, parental education, and parental employment, and household income. Poisson regression was used for data analysis. Results: Of all participants, 7751 were Whites, and 2167 were Blacks. In the pooled sample and in the absence of interaction terms, high family conflict was associated with higher STBs. A statistically significant association was found between Black race and family conflict, suggesting that the association between family conflict and STBs is stronger in Black than White children. Conclusion: The association between family conflict and STBs is stronger in Black than White children. Black children with family conflict may be at a higher risk of STBs than White children with the same family conflict level. These findings align with the literature on the more significant salience of social relations as determinants of mental health of Black than White people. Reducing family conflict should be regarded a significant element of suicide prevention for Black children in the US.

Critical Determinants of Household Electricity Consumption in a Rapidly Growing City

Despite growing urban electricity consumption, information on actual energy use in the household sector is still limited and causal factors leading to electricity consumption remain speculative due to urban expansion and its growing complexity, particularly in developing countries such as Malaysia. This study aims to examine the critical determinants of household electricity consumption by evaluating the patterns and flows of consumption and analysing relationships and their effects on electricity usage among 620 urban households in Seremban, Malaysia. Results suggest that the average urban household electricity consumption is 648.31 kWh/month; this value continues to grow with the increase in the household monthly income (r = 0.360; p &lt; 0.01) and number of rooms (r = 0.360; p &lt; 0.01) as quality of life improves. A large portion of electricity is allocated for kitchen/home consumption, followed by cooling and lighting. Multiple linear regressions revealed that married households with a high monthly income and living in spacious houses together with three to five people are important predictors of electricity consumption in Seremban. This study empirically identified that the number of rooms is the most critical factor of electricity consumption and strategies to increase energy efficiency, maintain resource sustainability and minimise greenhouse gas threat on the urban ecosystem are vital. Therefore, promoting low carbon initiatives for energy conservation and technology improvement and implementing policies in the domestic sector are essential to achieve the greatest potential energy consumption reduction in urban regions.

A dynamic behavioral model of Korean saving, work, and benefit claiming decisions

The Republic of Korea faces a rapidly aging population that is more reliant on public pension support but pension contributions are insufficient to support its long-term obligations. As a result, there is a growing debate on what type of reforms to the current defined-pension system could balance the long-term funding of the system with insuring benefit levels for old and new beneficiaries. In this paper, we develop and estimate a dynamic behavioral model that captures essential elements of the National Pension Scheme (NPS) and behavioral responses in labor supply, savings and benefit claiming to changes in the public pension system using a nationally-representative sample of married couples nearing retirement from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA). We use the model estimates to evaluate the effect of counterfactual policy experiments such as increases in the contribution rate and the extension of normal retirement age on the decision to work or not work, savings and benefit claiming among individuals near retirement. While these policies are aimed at shoring up the NPS, our model demonstrates that changes to the contribution rate could discourage work and savings in married households near retirement. In particular, a 2 percentage point immediate increase in the contribution rate would reduce household savings by 2 percent among poor households, as well as reduce labor participation among wives by 3 percent and among husbands by less than a percent. When we simulate the same increase in the contribution rate in even increments over five years, households anticipate the policy change and increase their savings to compensate for the future fall in income, dissipating undesirable behavioral responses such as decreased work and savings. In contrast, an increase of 2 years in the normal retirement age leads to a 3 percent increase in household savings, and to an increase in both husband and wife labor force participation (less than 1 percent and 3 percent respectively). These finding suggest policy design, such as phase-in periods, can be leveraged to minimize undesirable behavioral responses of households near retirement. Despite their potential detrimental effects in labor supply and savings, findings from a benefit-cost analysis suggest that the costs of undesired behavioral responses to an increase in contribution rates are orders of magnitude smaller than the revenue benefits to the NPS's finances.

Informal Care Shocks and Social Security Claiming Behavior

Long term care needs are growing in the U.S., given an aging population. More than two thirds of these needs are met informally through family members, including spouses and children, caring for their frail loved ones. However, this care arrangement may require re-adjustments in the retirement plans for older working children. Utilizing longitudinal data from the Heath and Retirement Study, we empirically show that parental informal care provision initiate both early retirement and Social Security claiming for married children providing care. At the same, we find that spouses of care providers delay benefit claiming and labor supply exits. We find no statistically significant effect of these caregiving shocks on the benefit claiming and labor supply outcomes of singles. Our findings indicate that married households are perhaps able to utilize the various Social Security spousal benefit claiming pathways, to maximize their joint household retirement benefits, in ways which single households are not.

Impact of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on Labor Supply and Welfare of Married Households

This paper calculates the change in optimal labor supply and total family welfare resulting from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA). We estimate labor supply elasticities for married families in the Current Population Survey from 2015 to 2017, using a joint family utility model. These elasticities are then used to simulate changes in optimal labor supply and resulting change in welfare among families with different characteristics under the new TCJA tax code. We find that optimal hours are lower post-TCJA, relative to before. However, there are differences across family members and family types. Both men’s and women’s optimal hours decline with income starting in the second quintile, but the decline is more dramatic for men. Overall, all families’ welfare increased post-TCJA, with the gains in welfare disproportionately benefiting the wealthy; families with any self-employment income; families with children; and families renting, versus owning, their home.

Beyond the Nuclear Family

Beyond the Nuclear Family Sarah Jones (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Illustration by Molly Crabapple [End Page 54] I recently watched every episode of a show called Marriage or Mortgage. Set in Nashville, tennessee, this Netflix production asks couples to choose between two markers of adulthood: legal union or property ownership. their budgets will only cover one option, so decisions must be made. Almost without fail, couples choose a wedding. the first time I watched the show, I screamed at my television. Why, if you were offered a house, would you get married instead? Marriage is a conservative institution, a way for class to reproduce itself. It is the foundation for the little platoons–family, church, and community– that Edmund Burke thought necessary for an ethical society. to conservatives, marriage will cure poverty and childhood trauma and gun violence. But they long specifically for so-called traditional families, with a breadwinning father and a stay-at-home mother. Our tax code reflects this desire. It is written to benefit wealthy married couples, most of which are white, as Dorothy Brown recently observed in The Whiteness of Wealth. "More than 40 percent of white married households earning between $200,001 and $1 million get tax cuts when they marry, while less than 20 percent pay a penalty," Brown wrote. Most "mirror a historical archetype of a single wage earner with a stay-at-home spouse," attributable to "tax policy decisions made in the first half of the twentieth century." Policy is designed to favor certain family structures over others. A defender of the traditional family might say, so what? Where's the harm? But harm is inherent to coercion, and neither marriage nor the family are neutral constructions. Both are useful weapons to the right. they flatter the religious views of social conservatives, and they limit our political horizons. Some welfare proposals–like universal child care–target parents and child-rearing, and this is inescapable. Others should be broadened beyond the scope of marriage or the family. A child allowance is a good, even transformative social policy. A caregiver's allowance, available to anyone who is responsible for a dependent, would be even better. [End Page 55] Even detached from legal or political regimes, marriage and the family devour outsized attention. Leftists who worry that capitalism threatens family life are correct, but only because capitalism threatens all relationships. Work, as Sarah Jaffe writes in Work Won't Love You Back, frays friendships alongside marriages. Union-busting employers pit workers against each other, and professional advancement can do the same. And work has now seeped into every crevice in modern life, leaving little space for anything or anyone else. In the shadow of precarity, Melinda Cooper has argued, the family might look like a sanctuary, in need of our protection. But why restrict our focus to one sliver of the problem? While left-wing defenders of the family can limit themselves to arguing for policies that help parents, I'd prefer to argue for more free time for everyone. these details matter. We won't end precarity with nostalgia for an era when men were the primary breadwinners. the pandemic has shown how much force those old, gendered divisions still have: women performed most reproductive labor before the pandemic began, and according to surveys, their burdens only increased as children stayed home from school. Meanwhile, women of color in particular lost their jobs in the hundreds of thousands. The past does have lessons to offer. A version of universal child care existed in the United States, a temporary product of the Second World War. But the twentieth century won't provide answers in how best to support newly out-of-work women and their families. Nor is looking backward the only exercise available to us if we wish to spare them the necessity of working at all. We should expand our imaginations and our solutions beyond the nuclear family. this effort requires us to be selective about our allies. Religious conservatives can sound like friends, even potential partners, when they utter choice warnings about unfettered capitalism. their goal, however, is to preserve a family structure that disempowers women and...

Impact of financial debt on borrower’s health based on gender

AbstractThis study investigated whether self‐reported impact of financial debt on health is different for women as compared with men. We found that female respondents are more likely to report that debt has affected their health. The results persisted when the analysis was performed on subsamples of employed individuals, married households and those with underwater mortgage (i.e., outstanding balance on mortgage is higher than the current value of the home). Prior studies have found that for a given level of debt, females are more likely to perceive higher levels of stress. When we controlled for stress perception, the health impact of debt was not higher for females. Some types of debt like credit card debt, student debt and loans from friends and family are known to result in higher levels of stress. Our findings persisted when we limited our sample to top users of credit card debt, to those with student debt or to those with loan(s) from friends and family. Prior studies have shown that mortgage debt is associated with lower levels of stress as compared with other types of debt. We found that in households with underwater mortgage, health impact of debt was higher for females even after we accounted for gender differential in stress perception. Our findings suggest that women’s tendency to experience higher levels of stress for a given level of debt mediates the increased likelihood of women reporting that debt has affected their health. However, there exists a possibility that some types of debt in some situations impact health of women more than men for reasons other than debt‐related stress.

Labor market dynamics and the migration behavior of married couples

Between 1964 and 2000, the intercounty migration rate of married couples declined by 15%. Concurrently, female labor force participation and the relative wages of women increased. In 1964, 36% of married households had both spouses in the labor force and women earned only 50% of the wages of men. Over the following 36 years, the fraction of dual earner households increased to 75% and women's earnings rose to 64% of men's. Using a two location household level search model of the labor market, we show that both the increase in dual earner households and the rise in women's wages contributed significantly to the decline in the migration rate of married households, with each explaining 55% and 16% of the decline, respectively. In addition, we show that the co-location problem has important implications for estimates of lifetime earnings inequality.

Analysis of Household Participation in Urban Agriculture: Empirical Evidence from Urban Households in Kogi State, Nigeria

The study analysed household participation in urban agriculture in Kogi State, Nigeria. It specifically; described the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents; determined the factors that influence household participation in urban agriculture; and determined the effect of urban agriculture on household income. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 60 respondents each from four purposively selected peri-urban/urban centres in Kogi State: Lokoja (Zone A), Anyigba (Zone B), Okene (Zone C), and Idah (Zone D). Primary data obtained through questionnaire administration were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical tools. Findings from the study revealed that 61.7% of the respondents were males and a mean age of 43 years was recorded. Married (90%) household heads dominated the respondents with a mean household size of 7 members. Education (β = -0.862), dependent (β = 1.904), marital status (β = 2.544), access to sufficient food (β = -2.495), employment status (β = 1.307) and access to land (β = 0.505) statistically influenced household participation in urban agriculture, while the OLS output indicated that urban farm income (β = 17.539) and non-farm income (β = 848.798) had significant effect on total household income. The study concluded that urban agriculture has the potential of improving the livelihood of urban dwellers. The study therefore recommends the integration of urban agriculture into urban development plan; easy access to land and other production inputs.

Can employment empower women? Female workers in the pineapple sector in Ghana

The transformation of global agri-food systems has led to the increased establishment of export-oriented horticultural plantations in developing countries. These labor intense production sites are associated with feminized employment patterns and therefore can provide more paid work opportunities for women in rural areas. The social implications of these developments for women's empowerment remain hardly understood; which is why we investigate empowerment among female workers in the pineapple sector in Ghana, in this paper. Our data set contains primary survey data of 420 married households in Ghana, living in areas of large-scale pineapple plantations. We apply entropy balancing, a new re-weighting technique, and combine this with regression analysis. Our regression results show that female employment has a statistically significant and positive effect on overall household income, female income share, female income and asset ownership and a negative effect on female reproductive workload. We also assess the effect of sole male employment and find that it has a negative effect on female household income share, female income and the female spouse's ability to sell assets and a positive effect on reproductive workload. Neither female nor male employment alone but only joint horticultural employment of both spouses seems to lead to female spouses having more input into household decision-making. Our findings for the pineapple sector in Ghana suggest that large-scale, export-oriented horticultural plantations can contribute to women's empowerment through employment creation for both male and female workers. • Horticultural production sites provide jobs in rural areas, particularly for women. • Female horticultural employment has a positive effect on female economic resources. • Male horticultural employment has a negative effect on female economic resources. • Only joint employment leads to more household decision-making for women.