Seminar Series

A large body of work in economics and other disciplines has investigated the relationship between family structure- including birth order, family size, and sibling composition- and children's outcomes. However, the age difference between siblings (spacing) has received much less attention in the economic literature, despite the fact that child spacing "may well be the most important aspect of fertility differentials in low-fertility societies" (Wineberg and McCarthy 1989).

Good survey practice requires the computation and presentation of the response rate for the realized sample. The response rate is an indicator of the potential bias associated with sample-specific estimates of population parameters, but it is only an indicator, since the extent of bias due to non-response also hinges on the differences in the population between respondents and non-respondents. This latter quantity is oft-surmised but rarely known, and in practice reactivity to response rates is generally a gestalt, with summary assessments on the order of "too low" or "good enough".

Little is known about the situation facing widows andtheir dependent children in West Africa especially afterthe widow remarries. Women in Malian society arevulnerable to the loss of husbands especially in ruralareas. Households headed by widows have significantlylower living standards on average than male or otherfemale headed households in both rural and urbanareas; this holds both unconditionally and conditionalon observable household and individual characteristics including age.

There has been great interest in one dimension of mortality change, aggregate human life expectancy. I focus on a distinct dimension, the variance in the age at adult death. I explain why this measure matters, discuss historical trends in this variance, and compare trends across countries. I discuss the relationship between the pattern of adult death and socioeconomic inequalities, in factors such as education and income, using data from the US. Finally I examine the sources of variance in the context of models of the life cycle.

This paper provides a systematic analysis of identification in linear social networks models. This is both a theoretical and an econometric exercise in that it links identification analysis to a rigorously delineated model of interdependent decisions. We develop a Bayes-Nash equilibrium analysis for interdependent decisions under incomplete information in networks that produces linear strategy profiles of the type conventionally used in empirical work and which nests linear social interactions models as a special case.

Prior estimates of the magnitude of the association between obesity and mortality have varied widely and have been a source of ongoing debates and controversies. Some prior studies have indicated that mortality attributable to obesity rivals that of cigarette smoking, while other research points toward a more modest role for obesity. In my talk, I will review prior controversies and discuss relevant methodological challenges pertinent to estimating obesity risks. I will present selected evidence from my prior work on this topic.

Dr. Valente will discuss the field of social network analysis and introduce several key hypotheses that show how networks influence behavior. He will present data from individual and community level studies on adolescent smoking, substance use, community coalitions, physician behavior, and transnational policy change among others. He will also present a taxonomy of network-based interventions and explore the utility of using social network data for accelerating the diffusion of innovations.

This seminar will be co-presented by two Duke Doctoral students. Ryan Brown (Economics) will present his talk titled "The Intergenerational Impact of Terror: the Extended Reach of the 9/11 Tragedy", and Wendy Brynildsen (Sociology) will be presenting her talk "The Structure of Support: How Social Convoys Shape the Mental and Physical Health of U.S. Women and Men".

Since the twilight of the 20th century, the era of a normative, discrete, and permanent retirement at age 65 has begun to wane. For many, it has been replaced with heterogeneous pathways to final retirement. In this emergent retirement life course, the relationships between work and health have important implications for the lives that older workers and retirees are able to live. One factor that may play an important role in this process is access to private insurance coverage.

There is increasing interest in discovering mechanisms that mediate the effects of childhood stress on late-life disease morbidity and mortality. Previous studies have suggested one potential mechanism linking stress to cellular aging, disease, and mortality in humans: telomere erosion. We examined telomere erosion in relation to children's exposure to violence, a salient early-life stressor which has known long-term consequences for well-being and is a major public health and social-welfare problem.