scholarly journals Jitters on the Eve of the Great Recession: Is the Belief in Divine Control a Protective Resource?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Upenieks ◽  
Scott Schieman ◽  
Alex Bierman

Abstract One factor that has received surprisingly little attention in understanding the mental health consequences of the 2007–2008 financial crisis is religion. In this study, we ask: what is the relationship between two economic stressors—job insecurity and financial strain—and depression? And how do changes in religious belief, indexed by the sense of divine control, moderate those relationships? We use two waves of the U.S. Work, Stress, and Health (US-WSH) project (2005–2007), which occurred on the eve of the Great Recession. Results suggest that increases in job insecurity and financial strain are associated with increased levels of depression. However, those associations are (1) buffered among individuals who simultaneously increased in the sense of divine control and (2) exacerbated among individuals who decreased in the sense of divine control. Moreover, the buffering and exacerbating effects of divine control are significantly stronger among workers with lower levels of education.

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (061) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cashin ◽  
◽  
Jamie Lenney ◽  
Byron Lutz ◽  
William Peterman ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Sten Hartnett ◽  
Alison Gemmill

The U.S. period TFR has declined steadily since the Great Recession, to 1.73 children in 2018, the lowest level since the 1970s. This pattern could mean that current childbearing cohorts will end up with fewer children than previous cohorts or this same pattern could be an artifact of a tempo distortion if individuals are simply postponing births they plan to eventually have. In this research note, we use data on current parity and future intended births from the 2006-2017 National Survey of Family Growth to shed light on this issue. We find that total intended parity declined (from 2.26 in 2006-2010 to 2.16 children in 2013-2017), and the proportion of women intending to remain childless increased slightly. Decomposition indicated that the decline was not due to changes in population composition, but rather changes in the subgroup rates themselves. The decline in intended parity is particularly notable at young ages and among Latinxs. These results indicate that although tempo distortion is likely an important contributor to the decline in TFR, it is not the sole explanation: U.S. individuals are intending to have fewer children than their immediate predecessors, which may translate into a decline in cohort completed parity. However, the change in intended parity is modest and average intended parity remains above two children.


Author(s):  
Natalie Chen ◽  
Wanyu Chung ◽  
Dennis Novy

Abstract Using detailed firm-level transactions data for UK imports, we find that invoicing in a vehicle currency is pervasive, with more than half of the transactions in our sample invoiced in neither sterling nor the exporter’s currency. We then study the relationship between invoicing currencies and the response of import unit values to exchange rate changes. We find that for transactions invoiced in a vehicle currency, import unit values are much more sensitive to changes in the vehicle currency than in the bilateral exchange rate. Pass-through therefore substantially increases once we account for vehicle currencies. This result helps to explain why UK inflation turned out higher than expected when sterling depreciated during the Great Recession and after the Brexit referendum. Finally, within a conceptual framework we show why bilateral exchange rates are not suitable for capturing exchange rate pass-through under vehicle currency pricing. Overall, our results help to clarify why the literature often finds a disconnect between exchange rates and prices when vehicle currencies are not accounted for.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Cóndor

The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) was a loan modification program introduced in 2009, in the U.S., to assist highly indebted homeowners with avoiding foreclosure. This program also encouraged private lenders to offer more sustainable modifications. This paper studies the role of HAMP in preventing higher foreclosures rates during and after the Great Recession, in the context of a general-equilibrium heterogeneous-agents model with two types of households (Borrowers and Savers), uninsurable idiosyncratic risk, and both private and HAMP modifications. The main result is that, without HAMP, the peak in the foreclosure rate could have been 50% larger (3.2 percent vs 2.2 percent in data).


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