Growing Up in Ireland Report Published

From TCD's website - While the macro situation is getting understandable attention at present, Ireland is still a country that spends a lot of money on public services. The task of making sure that our public resources and infrastructures are set up to help this generation of children lead fulfilling lives should get more attention in the policy debate.

Key findings from the report include:

* 86% of nine-month-olds lived in two-parent families with 14% living in lone-parent families.
* Traditional family types are still the norm. Over 70% of the mothers of nine-month-olds were married and a further 15% were cohabiting with a partner.
* 27% of mothers and 24% of fathers were not born in Ireland.
* Nearly one in five mothers (18%) had smoked at some stage during the pregnancy and a similar proportion (20%) had drunk alcohol at some stage. Mothers with the lower levels of education were more likely to smoke, but less likely to drink alcohol, during pregnancy than mothers with the highest education.
* Just over half of all infants (57%) were breastfed at some point, with just over 49% being breastfed on leaving hospital. Irish-born mothers were less likely to have breastfed (48%) than mothers born elsewhere (83%). Rates of breastfeeding also increased in line with better education of the mother.
* One in ten mothers had ‘no intention of ever getting pregnant’ at the time they conceived the Study Infant.
* The vast majority of mothers reported their infant’s health to be good at birth (97%) and at nine months (99%).
* 38% of nine-month-olds were in some form of non-parental childcare. Grandparents were the most frequent provider of childcare (12%), followed by crèche/daycare centres (11%).
* Infants in non-parental childcare spent an average of 25 hours per week in childcare and this cost an average of €5.14 per hour. The most important consideration when choosing childcare was the quality of the care provided. However, a substantial proportion (17%) recorded that their choice had been determined by costs, either completely or to a large degree.
* A total of 57% of mothers of infants are currently working outside the home
* Mothers in higher income groups as well as those with higher education were more likely than others to report that they had missed out on home or family activities because of their work. In contrast mothers from the lowest income group were most likely to record having turned down work activities or opportunities because of their family life

Growing up in Ireland: data analyst/post doc position

Growing Up in Ireland is the National Longitudinal Study of Children. University College Dublin is recruiting a Data Manager-Analyst post-doc as part of a Research Program dedicated to the data.

Applications are made on-line, job reference 004122. The deadline is 6 September 2010. A brief description is below:

This 3-year post-doctoral post arises under the UCD Growing Up in Ireland Research Programme which is currently being designed and initiated in order to promote, coordinate and support research on data now coming on stream from the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) Survey – the National Longitudinal Study of Children. The GUI Data Manager-Analyst will act in two main roles:
• a researcher carrying out independent and/or joint research on the GUI data;
• a data manager and technical statistical adviser serving other UCD researchers working on the programme.
The post-holder may also be requested to contribute to postgraduate teaching in UCD directly relevant to the GUI Research Programme. It is envisaged that the post-holder’s working time will be divided approximately as follows: 45 per cent on research, 45 per cent on data management and technical advice and 10 per cent on teaching.
Salary range: €35,000 to €52,000 p.a.
Appointment on the range will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Informal enquiries ONLY to: Professor Tony Fahey, Head, School of Applied Social Science & Coordinator, UCD Growing up in Ireland Research Programme
email: tony.fahey@ucd.ie
phone: + 353 1 716 8231

Growing up in Ireland: obesity amongst 9 year olds

I have been looking at the Key Findings for the Growing up in Ireland data (9 year olds). There is lots of interesting information there. One thing that caught my eye was the extent of obesity:
Apparently 26% are overweight or obese. The figure for girls is 30%. This is much higher than I would have expected (never having studied the topic) & seems pretty alarming. Does anyone know how this compares internationally?
The incidence is also much higher amongst lower SES groups.

http://www.growingup.ie/index.php?id=62

Children - gift or curse!?

The Psychologist (UK) discussion on whether or not children promote parental happiness.

Correlational evidence shows parents are less happy than non-parents. Longitudinal evidence shows happiness to shoot up in the year before a child is born then flattens out and drops below initial levels in the four years tha follow. So why would have kids if they reduce our well-being?

The general explanation from Kahneman, Gilbert and others is that we don't anticipate a decline in well-being. We think of the prototypical idea of joyous child rearing experiences and this is what we expect. This is referred to as a focusing illusion where the predicted impact of a single factor on well-being is exaggerated.

As the Corrs lyrics say: "Would we be happier if we were someone together, would we be wonderful if it wasn't for the weather". It sometimes seems that way but research says otherwise (living in California doesn't actually make you happy)..

To follow-up this logic in the study of why people have children Kahneman and colleagues used the day reconstruction method to show that people report less positive affect when with their kids in normal everday activities than when doing other things like sport, outdoor activities, socializing, praying or eating. Thus, on the surface it may appear that children are costly both financially and in terms of well-being!

However, what's not mentioned in the above article is a recent study by Mathew White & Paul Dolan showing that whilst children may not increase positive affect per se they may increase eudaimonic well-being. The authors included standard positive affect items and items tapping into eudaimonic aspects of well-being in a day reconstruction study. They found child rearing to be worthwhile and meaningful for many and thus rewarding whilst not necessarily increasing positive affect.


Refs: Would you be happier if you were richer? A focusing illusion

Accounting for the Richness of Daily Activities

Patience amongst children

E Bettinger, R Slonim, Journal of Public Economics , 91, 1-2 , February 2007, 343-363 .

Recent policy initiatives offer cash payments to children (and often their families) to induce better health and educational choices. These policies implicitly assume that children are especially impatient (i.e., have high discount rates); however, little is known about the nature of children's patience, how it varies across children, and whether children can even make rational inter-temporal choices. This paper examines the inter-temporal choices of 5- to 16-year-old children in an artefactual field experiment. We examine their choices between varying levels of compensation received in 2 or 4 months in the future and in 0 or 2 months in the future. We find that children's choices are consistent with hyperbolic discounting, boys are less patient than girls, older children are more patient and that mathematical achievement test scores, private schooling and parent's patience are not correlated with children's patience. We also find that although more than 25% of children do not make rational inter-temporal choices within a single two-period time frame, we cannot find variables that explain this behavior other than age and standardized mathematical achievement test scores