Reading Group

Last weeks session went through the following:

Suicide and ecological inference.
We talked again about gary king's work on ecological inference and potential applicability to regional determinants of suicide. We also talked about the role of spending on suicide services in determining the suicide rate

Child Welfare
We talked about philosophical perspectives on child welfare. The argument that children are time inconsistent is one of the most interesting economic perspective on childhood.
The development of the pre-frontal cortex is children is implicated in the development of a range of constructs that seem analgous to economic concepts of time preferences, risk aversion etc., With colleagues, i am currently working on a paper on the development of risk and time preferences in children and there is some recent literature on the topic.

Lisa farrell's paper on child expenditure is available below.

http://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp388.html

Abstract

"This paper uses detailed diary information from the British Family Expenditure Survey (FES) to investigate the expenditure patterns of school-age children. We estimate a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System, and find that, whilst most commodities are normal goods, sweets and toys are luxury items for children. Children of lone parents have lower budget shares for expenditure on soft drinks, leisure, personal goods and books/magazines, but higher budget shares for expenditure on sweets and vice products (alcohol, cigarettes and gambling). Having a working mother increases child expenditure on food products and toys. A higher parental budget share, on any given commodity, is generally associated with an increased child budget share suggesting that children mimic their parent’s expenditure patterns."

Life Expectancy:
We talked a lot about the work of robert fogel. A recent article about him is available at the site below:

http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0726/features/human.shtml

His nobel lecture is available at the site below:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1993/fogel-autobio.html

His ideas page is below:

http://ideas.repec.org/e/pfo15.html

As far as I am aware there is not much literature on the determinants of rising life expectancy in ireland. The completion of the SHARE project combined with the infant mortality data-base being constructed here in Geary will provide one opportunity to examine some of the ideas in Fogel's work.