published_or_final_version / abstract / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The research problem raised to this dissertation thesis is the evaluation of the probable impact of agricultural policy and social transfers on agricultural household income, taking into consideration the possible influence of changing direct support to agriculture payments on the social assistance payments that are granted to households following the principle of population income and economic condition testing. The research aim – to evaluate the impact of agricultural policy and social transfers on agricultural household income with respect to the relation between the both transfers. This dissertation research contributes to scientific discussion about the impact of agricultural policy transactions on agricultural household income with respect to the influence of agricultural policy current transfers on cash social assistance. This aspect has not been analyzed much, although, it is important for the existing reverse connection between agricultural policy current transfers and cash social assistance. In many cases agricultural policy transfers influence agricultural household income and one of the income sources – means-tested social benefit. / Disertaciniam tyrimui keliama mokslinė problema – kaip įvertinti galimą agrarinės politikos ir socialinių pervedimų poveikį žemdirbių namų ūkių pajamoms, atsižvelgiant į tai, kad pasikeitusios tiesioginės paramos žemės ūkiui išmokos gali daryti įtaką toms socialinės paramos išmokoms, kurios namų ūkiams skiriamos taikant gyventojų pajamų ir materialinės padėties testavimo principą. Tyrimo tikslas – įvertinti agrarinės politikos ir socialinių pervedimų poveikį žemdirbių namų ūkių pajamoms, atsižvelgus į ryšį tarp abejų pervedimų. Šiuo disertaciniu tyrimu prisidedama prie mokslinės diskusijos apie agrarinės politikos pervedimų poveikį žemdirbių namų ūkių pajamoms, atsižvelgiant į agrarinės politikos einamųjų pervedimų daromą poveikį piniginei socialinei paramai. Šis aspektas menkai išnagrinėtas, tačiau yra aktualus dėl egzistuojančio atvirkštinio ryšio tarp agrarinės politikos einamųjų pervedimų ir piniginės socialinės paramos. Daugeliu atvejų agrarinės politikos pervedimai įtakoja žemdirbių namų ūkių pajamas bei vieną iš pajamų šaltinių socialinę paramą, skiriamą finansinės padėties ir turto tikrinimo būdu.

Standard finance theory portrays investors as rational utility maximisers. Persisting market anomalies and observed investor practice, however, have led to widespread recognition that the fundamental axioms of rationality are often violated. In response to the limitations inherent in standard theory, the Behavioural Finance approach relaxes the rationality assumption and takes account of psychological influences on individuals’ decision-making processes. Adopting the behavioural approach, this thesis, which includes two empirical studies, examines why, and to what extent, investors depart from rational or optimal investment practices. The thesis examines the effect of Myopic Loss Aversion (MLA) suggested by Benartzi and Thaler (1995) as a response to the Equity Premium Puzzle highlighted by Mehra and Prescott (1985). While previous studies are almost exclusively based on experiments in a laboratory setting, this approach provides more compelling empirical evidence by investigating the effects of MLA on real individual investors’ portfolio allocations through the use of the Dutch National Bank Household Survey. For the first time, the concept of MLA is identified through the interaction of two separate effects, firstly, individuals’ myopia, reflected in portfolio evaluation and rebalancing frequencies, and secondly, loss aversion. The thesis finds that individuals who are less affected by MLA invest more in risky financial assets. Further, individuals who are less myopic increase their share of risky assets invested in their financial portfolios over time, although this is unrelated to their loss aversion. These findings support the prediction of MLA theory that short investment horizons and high loss aversion lead to a significantly lower share of risky investments. In summary, the high equity premium can be explained by the notion of MLA. If individuals evaluate their investment performance over the long-term, they perceive much smaller risks relative to stockholding returns; consequently, they will be prepared to accept smaller equity premiums. The findings suggest possible interventions by policy makers and investment advisors to encourage individuals to remain in the stock market, such as providing long-term investment instruments, or restricting evaluation frequency to the annual reporting of investment performance. In response to the stockholding puzzle (Haliassos and Bertaut, 1995), this thesis also investigates individuals’ stock market returns expectations and their varying levels of risk aversion. Previous studies find that individuals’ heterogeneous stock market expectations determine variations in their stockholdings. The thesis accounts for the effect of risk aversion on stock market expectations, as well as on stockholding decisions. Additionally, the causality issue as between individuals’ expectations and stockholding status is controlled. The thesis finds that more risk averse individuals hold lower stock market expectations, and that the stock market return expectations of more risk averse individuals affect their stock market participation decisions negatively. The portfolio allocation decisions of individuals who already hold stocks are only affected by their expectations, with risk aversion being no longer significant. The thesis argues that persistent risk aversion effects cause individuals to hold pessimistic views of stock market returns, thus contributing to the enduring stockholding puzzle. The thesis reinforces existing perceptions that individuals in the real world may not make fully rational decisions due to their judgments which are based on heuristics and affected by cognitive biases. Individual investors often fail to maximise their utility given their preferences and constraints. Consequently, this thesis draws attention to the possible role of institutions, policy makers, and financial advisory bodies in providing effective interventions and guidelines to improve individuals’ financial decisions.

Daraus leitet sich folgende Forschungsfrage ab: Hat die Intensität der religiösen Überzeugung einer Person Einfluss auf eine ungleiche Arbeitsteilung im Haushalt? Die Basishypothese dieses Aufsatzes besteht in Folgendem: Je religiöser sich eine befragte Person einschätzt, desto häufiger werden in einem partnerschaftlichen Haushalt als weiblich konnotierte Haushaltstätigkeiten von der Ehefrau bzw. Lebenspartnerin ausgeführt. Auf die methodischen Implikationen wird später ausführlich eingegangen. Aus der Basishypothese werden nun empirisch prüfbare Hypothesen gebildet, die weiterführend eine Grundlage für die Prüfung von Interaktionseffekten bilden. Damit soll herausgefunden werden, in welchem Umfang Religiosität mental vernetzt ist, also nachweisbare Wirkungen moderiert und damit als eine zentrale Variable in der Verarbeitung sozialer Bedingungen angesehen werden kann.

Few environmental problems exemplify market-failure better than municipal solid waste does: A direct by-product of economic production and consumption, its collection and disposal (still mainly at landfills, in many countries) incurs high capital and running costs, creates environmental and health impacts and, in European Union countries, risks incurring heavy financial penalties. The main remedy proposed in environmental economics is a marginal tax on the disposal of mixed household waste, intended to incentivise its reduction and separation for recycling. But taxes are politically unpopular, expensive to administer and generate variable response − sometimes stimulating illegal disposal of waste instead of its reduction. Taxes also risk undermining the moral benefits people seem to enjoy from cooperating voluntarily. Inducing voluntary cooperation could cultivate moral motives and generate cooperation, but this has received less attention in environmental economics to date. The aim of this thesis is to examine the determinants of cooperation by households in waste management activities, investigating the role that government policy can play in stimulating it, and focusing on the role of price incentives and of scheme promotion. Chapter 1 introduces the issue of waste management as an economic problem, and the role of household cooperation as a promising solution. Chapter 2 surveys the literature on the topic of what determines household cooperation in waste management and identifies the key gaps which the thesis seeks to address. Three manuscripts are presented in Chapters 3, 4 and 5, each of which examines a distinct question on the determinants of household cooperation in waste management. Chapter 6 concludes with a synthesis of main findings, key policy cues and suggestions for future research. The first manuscript titled “Voluntary recycling despite financial disincentives” employs a unique merged panel data set (n = 4,644) using data from 58 localities over 86 weeks to assess the determinants of participation in a voluntary waste separation scheme in Malta. The two manuscripts that follow are based on a nationally-representative telephone survey (n = 1,037), containing two embedded experiments, and conducted during 2013, in Malta, for this thesis. Manuscript 2 titled “Partisanship, priming and participation in voluntary recycling” tests whether party identification, as distinct from environmental or political ideology, can act as a determinant of participation in a recycling scheme, particularly if the scheme is promoted in a manner that associates it with the party in government. Manuscript 3 titled “The impact of a Pay as You Throw tax level and label on home-composting” examines the potential of a Pay As You Throw (PAYT) tax, and of its labelling, to induce substitution of biodegradable waste away from mixed kerb-side disposal and into home-composting. It also examines the prospect that this type of intervention stimulates illegal disposal. Synthesising the results of three studies, the thesis finds that: 1. The type of households most likely to cooperate in waste management schemes are multiple-person ones facing lower constraints of space and time, where members hold pro-environmental preferences. This confirms findings of similar studies in other contexts, helps forecast uptake and may guide the design and promotion of schemes to target low-lying fruit and tackle relevant constraints. 2. Driven mainly by moral motives, households are willing to recycle voluntarily even if it is less convenientc e than disposing of un-separated waste, and they are willing to pay for it. This is a useful finding for municipalities with low budgets, unable to institute taxes or fearing illegal disposal as a reaction. 3. Political preferences are relevant to recycling: Where negative sentiment towards the party in government exists, (even subtle cues) promoting the scheme as a government scheme and associating it with the party in government can suppress participation. Decoupling political communication from scheme promotion can release more households into cooperative effort. 4. Responses to waste taxes are not just a matter of price level but also of tax salience: A tax label can significantly increase waste separation and home-composting but it also boosts higher illegal-disposal intent. The way a fee is labelled therefore itself forms part of the intervention tool-kit, meriting pre-testing and capable of manipulation. These findings make a marginal contribution to gaps in the environmental economics literature by integrating insights from psychology. They are also intended to offer simple and applicable ideas to policy-makers and to scheme-operators aiming to increase household cooperation in waste management.

The UK government has pledged to end child poverty by 2020. It is not known how far the measure of child poverty used by the government corresponds to differences in children’s experiences. Qualitative research on poverty has not generally been informed by the insights of dynamic research, which investigates duration, timing and transitions, among other temporal topics. Qualitative and quantitative methods have not generally been combined in social policy research on poverty, which limits the explanatory power of both. The thesis presents an analysis of the correspondence or lack of correspondence between qualitative and quantitative research on child poverty as a temporal experience. Semi-structured life history interviews were conducted with 15-21 year olds in Britain with experience of child poverty in the period 1997-2001. These were analysed alongside secondary analysis of the British Household Panel Survey (1991-2005). The qualitative respondents lived in households which took part in the survey, so there is a direct link between the two methods. The assumptions, methods and findings of dynamic poverty research are in general found to be a simplified and decontexualised version, rather than a misrepresentation of, the qualitative findings. Time formed an important part of the experience of poverty for children. It was not possible to fully match together exits from poverty with perceived improvements in circumstances, and entries into poverty with perceived deteriorations in circumstances, though this was partly due to limited recall and lack of contemporaneous knowledge. Nor were these changes clearly placed in time by respondents, in terms of duration and timing. Although most respondents did not explicitly engage with the idea of poverty as a personal experience, poverty-like accounts of disadvantage and difference were found in the accounts of all respondents. Thus, there is evidence for and against the way child poverty is currently measured.

The purpose of this study is to identify the current baseline for lifelong learners (age 50 and better) focused on post-secondary education in the Commonwealth of Virginia (VA), the resulting academic services and public policy implications. While the aging research to date is overwhelmingly focused upon health issues, financial security, legislative initiatives, care-giving, and assisted living, etc., fewer studies or data are available on the increasing post-secondary continuing education that lifelong learners will likely expect to be made available to them. The educational level of the growing aging population will continue to increase. Research has repeatedly proven higher education to be a reliable predictor of continuing lifelong higher education. As proven elsewhere, lifelong learners will benefit physically from the healthy mental fitness and the learning society will benefit from the shared wealth of a lifetime of experience, talent, and community service. The very nature of the traditional withdrawn retirement is being redefined by lifelong learners in active productive retirement by those who vigorously engage in meaningful activities throughout the extended phases of their lives. Many lifelong learners continue to work full or part-time, start new careers or their own businesses, provide volunteer services in their communities and seek post-secondary continuing education into very advanced ages. This powerful graying population is an undeniably huge market as boomers control 70% of $7 trillion dollars total household worth. This researcher anticipated that limited adult education available beyond the legislated minimum requirements for adult basic literacy education is unevenly distributed among private and public agencies serving the aging. For the many relatively healthy adult learners whose attention and resources are not consumed by health and wealth concerns, their continuing education desires will not nearly be met by the small number of programs available to meet adult learners' growing educational needs. A study of academic services currently provided and projections for the academic services required in the future forecasts the educational service needs of the burgeoning adult learner population. This study outlines a baseline of adult learners' services, needs/desires, future plans and public policy choices that will face Virginia as the aging population rapidly grows.

The topic of this thesis is "Property consequences of the divorce of marriage". I have chosen this topic because of the high number of divorces that are filed for. This thesis characterises the two main property consequences of divorce, the settlement of community property of spouses and the settlement of common household of spouses. The purpose of the thesis is to compare the current legislation, contained in the Civil code from 1964 with the proposal of the new Civil code, analyse the advantages and disadvantages of both acts and express my opinion on it. The thesis is composed of eight chapters. Chapter One is introductory and defines the purpose of this thesis. Chapter Two defines the term "divorce", its three types and consequences of divorce. Chapter Three illustrates the conception of property relationships between spouses in the past. Chapter Four defines the term "community property of spouses", its consent, extent and modification. The most important and key chapters are Chapter Five and Chapter Six. Chapter Five is subdivided into seven parts and it deals with the settlement of the community property of spouses. It introduces various solutions how the community property can be divided between spouses after their divorce. Chapter Six focuses on the settlement of common household of...

Master of Science / Department of Family Studies Human Services / Rick J. Scheidt / Currently in the United States there are 2.7 million grandparent caregivers caring for 5.4 million grandchildren, with 883,386 of these grandparents caring for their grandchildren without any assistance from the child’s biological parent. These grandparents have unique needs and require support services that understand and recognize those needs. However, many of the resources currently available are not designed to assist this population. This report explores many of the issues grandparents face when taking over as the primary caregiver for their grandchild. Specifically this report highlights the financial, legal, and medical issues, as well as the need for respite care and housing. These particular issues were selected because they are commonly cited as difficult areas to navigate for grandparent caregivers, and also because there are crucial resources in each of these areas that allow grandparents to successfully raise their grandchild. Without these tools, the process of raising the grandchild can prove extremely difficult for grandparents, which can have negative consequences on the grandchildren. In addition it offers suggestions for grandparents seeking assistance regarding these issues, also providing several resources. This report also offers guidance for grandparent caregiver advocates and encourages future research and scholarship to explore programs assisting this population.

The thesis describes individual forms of funds valorization and compares current savings products offered on the Czech market with respect to different parameters. The last part of the thesis shows the preferences of Czech households in funds valorization and the factors affecting their decision-making, based on survey results.