can't be sure about fun, but female blondes do make more money: This study contributes to the economics literature that links physical characteristics to labour market outcomes, by investigating the influence of hair colour on women's own wages and also their spouse's wages. Using U.S. panel data, we find that blonde women receive large wage premiums. Source: "Physical appearance and wages: Do blondes have more fun" from Economics Letters Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.…
nny, I'd been planning to do a bit on commuting for a while. Yesterday I saw Jonah Lehrer's excellent post on the subject and figured now might be a good time. As he and David Brooks both note, commuting dramatically and negatively affects happiness. I agree. Everyone hates commuting. Even sex offenders hate commuting. Married women have a pretty dramatic relationship with commuting -- it stops them from working: These points were confirmed when Black and his coauthors examined Census data…
ttle is known about why some human beings make risky life-choices. This paper provides evidence that people's health decisions and addictive actions are influenced by the gender of their children. Having a daughter leads individuals -- in micro data from Great Britain and the United States -- to reduce their smoking, drinking, and drug-taking. The paper's results are consistent with the hypothesis that human beings "self-medicate‟ when under stress. Source: "The Effects of Daughters on Health Choices and Risk Behaviour"…
end more time out in nature: Four studies examined the effects of nature on valuing intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations. Intrinsic aspirations reflected prosocial and other-focused value orientations, and extrinsic aspirations predicted self-focused value orientations. Participants immersed in natural environments reported higher valuing of intrinsic aspirations and lower valuing of extrinsic aspirations, whereas those immersed in non-natural environments reported increased valuing of extrinsic aspirations and no change of intrinsic aspirations. Three studies explored experiences of nature relatedness and autonomy as underlying…
, I'm not talking about astrology. (If you're a regular reader of this blog you can guess what my feelings on astrology might be.) This connection is indirect and has to do with who has babies when: Research has found that season of birth is associated with later health and professional outcomes; what drives this association remains unclear. In this paper we consider a new explanation: that children born at different times in the year are conceived by women with…
eviously I've posted on how retirement is correlated with cognitive decline. The proof keeps on rolling in: We investigate the relationship between aging, cognitive abilities and retirement using the Survey on Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), a longitudinal survey that offers the possibility of comparing several European countries using nationally representative samples of the population aged 50+. We use a version of the model proposed by Grossman (1972) as a guide for our empirical specification of the age-profile…
body likes stressing and worrying. And, no, even if you think it keeps you sharp it's not good for you. It can cause all sorts of health problems over time, including messing up your memory and ability to pay attention: The authors report the first direct assessment of working memory capacity when people engage in worry. High and low worriers performed a random key-press task while thinking about a current worry or a positive personally relevant topic. High (but not…
agine an important positive event in your life (like meeting your spouse) never happened. Mentally subtracting cherished moments from your life makes you appreciate them more, makes you grateful and makes you happier: The authors hypothesized that thinking about the absence of a positive event from one's life would improve affective states more than thinking about the presence of a positive event but that people would not predict this when making affective forecasts. In Studies 1 and 2, college students…
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