Noted Elsewhere on Family and Relationships
Drinking Laws and Unplanned Pregnancies
30 Jun 08 States with lower minimum drinking ages also have a higher incidence of low birth weight babies and premature births, according to two economists who examined state vital statistics collected between 1978 and 1999. The effect is largest among black women. They suspect that relaxed drinking laws lead to poor birth outcomes because they increase the number of unplanned pregnancies.
(NBER)
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Home is Where the Heart Is
19 May 08 New Orleans residents who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina were more than five times more likely to suffer serious psychological distress in the year following the disaster than those whose homes were spared by the storm, according to results of a pilot study presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America. In all, about two-thirds of the 144 study participants reported their homes were badly damaged or destroyed.
(University of Michigan)
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You Can Be Too Happy
14 Jan 08 Don't worry, be happy. But if you want to be rich, it may pay not to be too happy. A team of psychologists analyzed national survey data on happiness and found that the happiest people were the most successful in developing close relationships with others and engaged in more volunteer work than other Americans. But people who were slightly less happy "are the most successful in terms of income, education and political participation," they report in the December issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science.
( Perspectives on Psychological Science)
Journal abstract
Talking Makes You Smarter
3 Dec 07 Spending 10 minutes a day chatting with another person improves your memory and boosts performance on cognitive tests, according to a new University of Michigan study. In one experiment, volunteers discussed a social issue for 10 minutes and then took tests designed to measure their mental processing speed and memory. Researchers found the scores of those in the discussion group increased more than those in a control group that watched a 10-minute clip from "Seinfeld." (University of Michigan)
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What are Friends For?
12 Nov 07 Selfish people tend to have selfish friends, and generous people have generous ones. An experiment among Harvard University students found that altruistic people are treated better by their friends, though they do not have more friends than selfish people do. (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston)
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Baby, or Not?
12 Nov 07 A growing share of women in their 40s do not have children, even as Americans have become more accepting of childlessness. Now comes evidence of a gender gap in attitudes. Two University of Florida scholars find that women are more likely than men to "hold positive attitudes about childlessness." (University of Florida)
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