Author: Samuel Bowles Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400835496 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 315
Book Description
Is the United States "the land of equal opportunity" or is the playing field tilted in favor of those whose parents are wealthy, well educated, and white? If family background is important in getting ahead, why? And if the processes that transmit economic status from parent to child are unfair, could public policy address the problem? Unequal Chances provides new answers to these questions by leading economists, sociologists, biologists, behavioral geneticists, and philosophers. New estimates show that intergenerational inequality in the United States is far greater than was previously thought. Moreover, while the inheritance of wealth and the better schooling typically enjoyed by the children of the well-to-do contribute to this process, these two standard explanations fail to explain the extent of intergenerational status transmission. The genetic inheritance of IQ is even less important. Instead, parent-offspring similarities in personality and behavior may play an important role. Race contributes to the process, and the intergenerational mobility patterns of African Americans and European Americans differ substantially. Following the editors' introduction are chapters by Greg Duncan, Ariel Kalil, Susan E. Mayer, Robin Tepper, and Monique R. Payne; Bhashkar Mazumder; David J. Harding, Christopher Jencks, Leonard M. Lopoo, and Susan E. Mayer; Anders Björklund, Markus Jäntti, and Gary Solon; Tom Hertz; John C. Loehlin; Melissa Osborne Groves; Marcus W. Feldman, Shuzhuo Li, Nan Li, Shripad Tuljapurkar, and Xiaoyi Jin; and Adam Swift.
Author: Anne H. Gauthier Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1402044801 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
This book explores how demographic changes affect inter-generational transfers of time, money, goods, and services, all things that play a role in the well-being of individuals and families. It details the nature and measurement of transfers, their motives and mechanisms, and their macro-level dimensions, especially in the context of demographic transitions. Coverage includes original empirical analyses of datasets from some twenty countries and extends the traditional analysis of inter-generational transfers by examining different types of transfers.
Author: Bartha Maria Knoppers Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers ISBN: 9789004136786 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 674
Book Description
Thirty-five papers from the third International DNA Sampling Conference, held in Montreal in September 2002, provide a critical discussion of the socio-ethical and legal issues surrounding DNA sampling in communities and populations around the globe. Contributors address topics related to biobanks and databases; community engagement; confidentialit.
Author: Bartha Maria Knoppers Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers ISBN: 9789041103611 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 486
Book Description
"Human DNA: Law and Policy" provides the first international debate on a topic of universal concern. No book has brought together such a diverse range of multidisciplinary ethical and legal expertise on the highly controversial issues surrounding the use, storage, exchange and sale of the very stuff' of which we are made - human genetic material. Testing of human genetic material involves a variety of samples (pathological samples, newborn screening samples, samples leftover' after testing, and research samples), shared around the world. This places consent issues on an individual, familial, and societal level. The comparative and international perspectives presented reveal the transnational nature of genetic studies. This book focuses on the issues of DNA sampling and testing, consent and confidentiality, banking policies, genetic epidemiology and diversity. Since financial and technological pressures are inextricably linked to human genetics research, commercialization and patents are also examined. Academic researchers, policy makers and industry will benefit from the learned papers and reports of the discussion, which is rich in diversity of opinion, controversial in the diversity of policy and approaches presented, anchored on scientific facts and yet sensitive to cultural, political and economic differences.
Author: Clark C. Gibson Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 9780262571371 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
People and Forests explores the complex interactions between local communities and their forests, focusing on the rules by which communities govern and manage their forest resources.
Author: John B. Shoven Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226754723 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 444
Book Description
Demographics is a vital field of study for understanding social and economic change and it has attracted attention in recent years as concerns have grown over the aging populations of developed nations. Demographic studies help make sense of key aspects of the economy, offering insight into trends in fertility, mortality, immigration, and labor force participation, as well as age, gender, and race specific trends in health and disability. Demography and the Economy explores the connections between demography and economics, paying special attention to what demographic trends can reveal about the sustainability of traditional social security programs and the larger implications for economic growth. The volume brings together some of the leading scholars working at the border between the two disciplines, and it provides an eclectic overview of both fields. Contributors also offer deeper analysis of a variety of issues such as the impact of greater wealth on choices about marriage and childbearing and the effects of aging populations on housing prices, Social Security, and Medicare.
Author: Steven Hecht Orzack Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521598361 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 424
Book Description
These essays are intended to provide useful advice to "biologists in the trenches" but also to assess the larger theoretical and conceptual issues that form the basis of the current controversy." "This volume will serve to substantially advance the debate over adaptationism. It will be of interest to biologists, philosophers and historians of biology, anthropologists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Raziel Joseph Davison Publisher: Stanford University ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 137
Book Description
Populations living in natural environments experience fluctuations in environmental conditions that drive variability in demographic rates. This dissertation develops new and existing mathematical methods for studying environmental stochasticity and uses these tools to investigate the role of environmental stochasticity in driving observed population dynamics and plant life history evolution. In the first two chapters I develop new approaches to a classic method in population biology, the life table response experiment (LTRE). Whereas existing methods used time-averaged demographic rates and deterministic sensitivities to decompose observed differences in population growth rates, this new method allows estimation of the contributions to those differences made by variances in demographic rates as well as by mean rate values. I use this stochastic LTRE to show how differential variability in the vital rates of Anthyllis vulneraria (kidney vetch) contribute to differences in the population growth rates of nine populations growing in southwest Belgium; we also show how the effects of demographic rate variability depend on soil depth, where the greater moisture retention of deeper soils buffers populations against the otherwise negative effects of demographic variability. The second chapter provides a different approach to LTRE that uses an iterated two-factor decomposition of the small noise approximation of the stochastic population growth rate to quantify contributions to that growth rate made by: (i) mean vital rates, (ii) temporal variability in vital rates, (iii) elasticities of the population growth rate to individual vital rates, and (iv) correlations between vital rates across the study period. Contributions of elasticities tell us about differences in local selection pressures acting on distinct populations and contributions of correlations tell us about differences in the phenotypic tradeoffs associated with vital rates. I use this new method to show how these differences drive dynamics in two species: Anthyllis vulneraria (the same populations studied in the first chapter) and Cypripedium calceolus (lady's slipper orchid). In Anthyllis vulneraria, variability in large adult fertility and seedling survival made the largest contributions; there were also effects of differences in elasticities of large adult fertility and survival, as well as differences in the correlations between rapid growth and survival in seedlings (a survival cost of rapid early development), between large adult fertility and survival (a survival cost of reproduction) and between large adult fertility and seedling survival. In Cypripedium calceolus, population growth rates were driven most by differences in the elasticities to the probabilities of adult stasis vs. entering dormancy, as well as by differences in the variability and tradeoffs associated with adult dormancy; correlation played a role through differences in the survival payoff of dormancy vs. the complimentary fertility cost of dormancy in terms of lost opportunity for reproduction. The third and final chapter investigates the role of fire disturbance in driving the life histories and population-level dynamics of five woody plant species growing in the Brazilian cerrado, a savannah-forest mosaic in which woody vegetation cover is primarily mediated by fire disturbance. This study presents a set of diagnostics that use demographic responses to recurring disturbance to categorize species along a continuum of adaptation: on one end we find 'resistant' species that must weather disturbance in order to attain large sizes that are buffered against fire-induced mortality; on the other end we find 'resilient' species that are relatively indifferent to disturbance and harness transient opportunities afforded by early post-fire successional habitats in order to take advantage of increased nutrient availability and reduced competition. Each of these chapters uses stochastic demographic analysis to extend theory describing the dynamics of populations in variable environments; together, these studies present a variegated perspective on the role of environmental stochasticity that provides new methods and novel perspectives that should be useful in the study of population biology and life history evolution.
Author: Samuel Bowles
Author: Anne H. Gauthier
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Author: Bartha Maria Knoppers
Author: Bartha Maria Knoppers
Author: Clark C. Gibson
Author: John B. Shoven
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Author: Steven Hecht Orzack
Author: Raziel Joseph Davison