The Value of Seeking Financial Advice

Retirement planning data gathered from an online survey at a large university in October 2009 are used to examine differences in a variety of retirement planning measures between people who have and have not met with a financial advisor. Problems of self-selection and endogeneity are addressed through the use of propensity scores. The study’s major finding is that working with an advisor is related to several important financial planning activities, including goal setting, calculation of retirement needs, retirement account diversification, use of supplemental retirement accounts, accumulation of emergency funds, positive behavioral responses to the recent economic crisis, and retirement confidence. Use of a financial advisor was not related to self-reported retirement savings or short-term growth in retirement account asset values.     

Ethnic Prejudice and Discrimination in Europe

This article provides an introduction to research on European prejudice and discrimination. First, we list the distinctive characteristics of a European perspective and provide a short sketch of European immigration and ethnic groups. Europe has become a multicultural community. Nevertheless, public opinion and the continent's politics often do not reflect this empirical fact. Prejudice and discrimination directed at immigrants are a widespread phenomena across Europe. Several cross-European surveys support this conclusion, although theoretically driven surveys on prejudice and discrimination in Europe remain rare. Cross-European research studies classical and modern theories of prejudice and discrimination and attempts to uncover the psychological mechanisms that explain individual readiness to exclude ethnic groups. A brief sketch of recent European research is presented. This issue offers both important cross-national perspectives as well as needed comparisons with the more studied case of racial prejudice and discrimination in the United States.     

Relative Deprivation and Intergroup Prejudice

Using three diverse European surveys, we test the relationship between relative deprivation (RD) and anti-immigrant prejudice. We find that both group relative deprivation (GRD) and individual relative deprivation (IRD) are found primarily among working-class respondents who are politically alienated. We also find that GRD, but not IRD, serves as a proximal correlate of prejudice. IRD's effects on prejudice are largely mediated through GRD. In addition, GRD partially mediates the effects of such distal predictors of prejudice as education and family income. Finally, blaming the victim mediates in part the GRD link with prejudice. These results lead to a socially situated path model of RD's effects on prejudice with public policy implications.     

Remarriage patterns among recent widows and widowers

Remarriage is one of the most important determinants of physical and economic well-being among the widowed. The goal of this study is to estimate how hazard rates for remarriage vary among widows and widowers on the basis of both observable and unobservable characteristics. The remarriage estimates rely on nationally representative samples of widows and widowers from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Continuous-time hazard rate regressions indicate strong age and duration dependence effects for middle-aged widows and widowers and for older widowers. Among middle-aged widows, blacks and those with dependent children in the home have lower rates of remarriage. For middle-aged widowers, living in urbanized areas limits the prospects of remarriage. For older widowers, education and, to some extent, economic status appear to have positive effects on the remarriage rates. Overall, age and time since widowhood have the strongest and most consistent effects on remarriage rates for different widowed groups.     

Linked lives,dependent demise? Survival analysis of husbands and wives

Past research has found that married individuals have substantially lower risks of mortality than their single counterparts. This paper examines how household characteristics affect spouses’ risks of mortality. A paired hazard rate model is estimated and tests are made to ascertain whether the estimated coefficients associated with risk factors differ between husbands’ and wives’ equations. Cigarette smoking, risk-avoidance behavior, poverty, and children are found to affect wives’ and husbands’ mortality in similar ways. Divorce, which can be interpreted as the termination of this shared household environment, is found to affect spouses differently.     

Time Spent Eating and Its Implications for Americans’ Energy Balance

The upward trend in Americans’ weight has precipitated research aimed at identifying its underlying causes. In this paper we examine trends in Americans’ time spent eating in an attempt to gain a better understanding of Americans’ changing eating habits and their predictors. Data used in the analyses come from four national time use surveys conducted between 1975 and 2007. We find that Americans’ total eating time has risen over the past 30 years largely because of increases in secondary eating time. Multivariate analyses reveal that shifts over time in wage rates, food prices, household income, and racial/ethnic composition may be contributing to Americans’ changing eating patterns.     

Toleranz versus Vorurteil?

Is tolerance the opposite of prejudice? The widely shared belief that tolerance implies low levels of prejudice is put to the test. Four conceptions of tolerant attitudes are differentiated, as the basis for an empirical scale for measuring tolerant attitudes, which was tested in a representative survey in 2009. Analysis of the data supports the differentiation into four conceptions of tolerance, but the structural equation model shows a significant negative relationship with prejudice only for social esteem. It is questionable whether this conception can still be called tolerance, since it lacks the component of rejection which is inherent to tolerance.