Inspired by empirical studies of networked systems such as the Internet, social networks, and biological networks, researchers have in recent years developed a variety of techniques and models to help us understand or predict the behavior of these systems. Here we review developments in this field, including such concepts as the small-world effect, degree distributions, clustering, network correlations, random graph models, models of network growth and preferential attachment, and dynamical processes taking place on networks.

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The Structure and Function of Complex Networks

世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.

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From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

We employ recent longitudinal data on unmarried fathers to compare levels of underground activity among fathers living in cities with differing levels of child support enforcement (CSE). The survey from which the data are drawn is unique in that it directly queries fathers about their participation in the underground economy. We also examine the effect of the strength of CSE on fathers' participation in the regular economy. We find that, in general, stricter CSE is associated with fewer hours of underground employment. The effects are stronger among fathers who may be more likely to come into contact with the CSE system. We find little evidence that stronger enforcement is associated with employment or hours in the regular sector.

Child Support Enforcement Policy and Unmarried Fathers’ Employment in the Underground and Regular Economies

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Child Support Enforcement: Incentives and Well-Being. JCPR Working Paper.

Examines gender differences in poverty in eight industrialized countries: US, Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands. Results suggest that gender differences in human capital factors and family factors, as well as religion, culture, and policy, all play a role in accounting for gender poverty gaps within and across countries.

The Gender Poverty Gap: What Can We Learn From Other Countries?

Research shows that stronger child support enforcement increases the amount of formal support received by children from their nonresident fathers. Yet, little is known about: 1) the informal cash and non-cash contributions that nonresident fathers make?especially to nonmarital children, 2) the effect of child support enforcement on these types of contributions, and 3) most importantly, the effect of child support enforcement on total (formal plus informal) child support contributions. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we find that strong enforcement reduces the amount of informal support, increases the amount of formal support, and most importantly, has no effect on the total amount of support received by unwed mothers. The effects on total payments are negative for parents who stopped cohabiting recently and positive for parents who never cohabited or stopped cohabiting three or more years ago. Implications for policy hinge upon future research.

Child Support Enforcement and Fathers' Contributions to Their Nonmarital Children

L’article trace l’evolution des politiques de lutte contre la pauvrete depuis 1965. Il decrit ensuite, statistiques a l’appui, les effets des politiques de transferts de revenu sur la pauvrete, l’insecurite et l’inegalite economique, puis sur le travail, l’epargne et la famille. Il etablit que les politiques de transferts de revenu ont contribue a reduire la pauvrete et les inegalites mais qu’elles n’ont eu qu’un effet palliatif et provisoire. Elles n’ont pas reussi a augmenter la participation des pauvres au marche du travail. Promouvoir une telle participation exige une intervention sur plusieurs fronts : l’education, la qualification professionnelle, les politiques de soutien du revenu, etc. Aucune formule simple ou appliquee de facon isolee ne peut avoir d’impact significatif sur le probleme. Les auteurs formulent une serie de propositions susceptibles de renforcer la lutte contre la pauvrete.

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Irwin Garfinkel

Papers

Child Support Enforcement Policy and Unmarried Fathers’ Employment in the Underground and Regular Economies

Child Support Enforcement: Incentives and Well-Being. JCPR Working Paper.

The Gender Poverty Gap: What Can We Learn From Other Countries?

Child Support Enforcement and Fathers' Contributions to Their Nonmarital Children

Les politiques américaines contre la pauvreté : quelques propositions