Investigating the patterns and determinants of life satisfaction in Germany following reunification

This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of life satisfaction in Germany following reunification. We implement a new fixed-effect estimator for ordinal life satisfaction in the German Socio-Economic Panel and find negative effects on life satisfaction from being recently fired, losing a spouse through either death or separation, and time spent in hospital, while we find strong positive effects from income and marriage. Using a new causal decomposition technique, we find that East Germans experienced a continued improvement in life satisfaction to which increased household incomes contributed around 12 percent. Most of the improvement is explained by better average circumstances, such as greater political freedom. For West Germans, we find little change in average life satisfaction over this period.

The causal effect of income on health: Evidence from German reunification

We investigate whether therewas a causal effect of income changes on the health satisfaction of East and West Germans in the years following reunification. Our data source is the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) between 1984 and 2002, and we fit a recently proposed fixed-effects ordinal estimator to our health measures and use a causal decomposition technique to account for panel attrition.We find evidence of a significant positive effect of income changes on health satisfaction, but the quantitative size of this effect is small. This is the case with respect to current income and a measure of ‘permanent’ income.

Comparing multilevel and Bayesian spatial random effects survival models to assess geographical inequalities in colorectal cancer survival: a case study

Background Multilevel and spatial models are being increasingly used to obtain substantive information on area-level inequalities in cancer survival. Multilevel models assume independent geographical areas, whereas spatial models explicitly incorporate geographical correlation, often via a conditional autoregressive prior. However the relative merits of these methods for large population-based studies have not been explored. Using a case-study approach, we report on the implications of using multilevel and spatial survival models to study geographical inequalities in all-cause survival. Methods Multilevel discrete-time and Bayesian spatial survival models were used to study geographical inequalities in all-cause survival for a population-based colorectal cancer cohort of 22,727 cases aged 20–84 years diagnosed during 1997–2007 from Queensland, Australia. Results Both approaches were viable on this large dataset, and produced similar estimates of the fixed effects. After adding area-level covariates, the between-area variability in survival using multilevel discrete-time models was no longer significant. Spatial inequalities in survival were also markedly reduced after adjusting for aggregated area-level covariates. Only the multilevel approach however, provided an estimation of the contribution of geographical variation to the total variation in survival between individual patients. Conclusions With little difference observed between the two approaches in the estimation of fixed effects, multilevel models should be favored if there is a clear hierarchical data structure and measuring the independent impact of individual- and area-level effects on survival differences is of primary interest. Bayesian spatial analyses may be preferred if spatial correlation between areas is important and if the priority is to assess small-area variations in survival and map spatial patterns. Both approaches can be readily fitted to geographically enabled survival data from international settings

Robustness in health research : do differences in health measures, techniques, and time frame matter?

Survey-based health research is in a boom phase following an increased amount of health spending in OECD countries and the interest in ageing. A general characteristic of survey-based health research is its diversity. Different studies are based on different health questions in different datasets; they use different statistical techniques; they differ in whether they approach health from an ordinal or cardinal perspective; and they differ in whether they measure short-term or long-term effects. The question in this paper is simple: do these differences matter for the findings? We investigate the effects of life-style choices (drinking, smoking, exercise) and income on six measures of health in the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) between 1992 and 2002: (1) self-assessed general health status, (2) problems with undertaking daily tasks and chores, (3) mental health indicators, (4) BMI, (5) the presence of serious long-term health conditions, and (6) mortality. We compare ordinal models with cardinal models; we compare models with fixed effects to models without fixed-effects; and we compare short-term effects to long-term effects. We find considerable variation in the impact of different determinants on our chosen health outcome measures; we find that it matters whether ordinality or cardinality is assumed; we find substantial differences between estimates that account for fixed effects versus those that do not; and we find that short-run and long-run effects differ greatly. All this implies that health is an even more complicated notion than hitherto thought, defying generalizations from one measure to the others or one methodology to another.

An analysis of the determinants of job satisfaction when individuals' baseline satisfaction levels may differ.

A growing literature seeks to explain differences in individuals' self-reported satisfaction with their jobs. The evidence so far has mainly been based on cross-sectional data and when panel data have been used, individual unobserved heterogeneity has been modelled as an ordered probit model with random effects. This article makes use of longitudinal data for Denmark, taken from the waves 1995-1999 of the European Community Household Panel, and estimates fixed effects ordered logit models using the estimation methods proposed by Ferrer-i-Carbonel and Frijters (2004) and Das and van Soest (1999). For comparison and testing purposes a random effects ordered probit is also estimated. Estimations are carried out separately on the samples of men and women for individuals' overall satisfaction with the jobs they hold. We find that using the fixed effects approach (that clearly rejects the random effects specification), considerably reduces the number of key explanatory variables. The impact of central economic factors is the same as in previous studies, though. Moreover, the determinants of job satisfaction differ considerably between the genders, in particular once individual fixed effects are allowed for.

Structured Telephone Support or Telemonitoring Programs for Patients with Chronic Heart Failure

Background: Specialised disease management programmes for chronic heart failure (CHF) improve survival, quality of life and reduce healthcare utilisation. The overall efficacy of structured telephone support or telemonitoring as an individual component of a CHF disease management strategy remains inconclusive. Objectives: To review randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of structured telephone support or telemonitoring compared to standard practice for patients with CHF in order to quantify the effects of these interventions over and above usual care for these patients. Search strategy: Databases (the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE) and Health Technology Assessment Database (HTA) on The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED and Science Citation Index Expanded and Conference Citation Index on ISI Web of Knowledge) and various search engines were searched from 2006 to November 2008 to update a previously published non-Cochrane review. Bibliographies of relevant studies and systematic reviews and abstract conference proceedings were handsearched. No language limits were applied. Selection criteria: Only peer reviewed, published RCTs comparing structured telephone support or telemonitoring to usual care of CHF patients were included. Unpublished abstract data was included in sensitivity analyses. The intervention or usual care could not include a home visit or more than the usual (four to six weeks) clinic follow-up. Data collection and analysis: Data were presented as risk ratio (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Primary outcomes included all-cause mortality, all-cause and CHF-related hospitalisations which were meta-analysed using fixed effects models. Other outcomes included length of stay, quality of life, acceptability and cost and these were described and tabulated. Main results: Twenty-five studies and five published abstracts were included. Of the 25 full peer-reviewed studies meta-analysed, 16 evaluated structured telephone support (5613 participants), 11 evaluated telemonitoring (2710 participants), and two tested both interventions (included in counts). Telemonitoring reduced all-cause mortality (RR 0.66, 95% CI 0.54 to 0.81, P < 0.0001) with structured telephone support demonstrating a non-significant positive effect (RR 0.88, 95% CI 0.76 to 1.01, P = 0.08). Both structured telephone support (RR 0.77, 95% CI 0.68 to 0.87, P < 0.0001) and telemonitoring (RR 0.79, 95% CI 0.67 to 0.94, P = 0.008) reduced CHF-related hospitalisations. For both interventions, several studies improved quality of life, reduced healthcare costs and were acceptable to patients. Improvements in prescribing, patient knowledge and self-care, and New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class were observed. Authors' conclusions: Structured telephone support and telemonitoring are effective in reducing the risk of all-cause mortality and CHF-related hospitalisations in patients with CHF; they improve quality of life, reduce costs, and evidence-based prescribing.

Unbiased estimation of the half-life to price index convergence among U.S. cities

Estimates of the half-life to convergence of prices across a panel of cities are subject to bias from three potential sources: inappropriate cross-sectional aggregation of heterogeneous coefficients, presence of lagged dependent variables in a model with individual fixed effects, and time aggregation of commodity prices. This paper finds no evidence of heterogeneity bias in annual CPI data for 17 U.S. cities from 1918 to 2006, but correcting for the “Nickell bias” and time aggregation bias produces a half-life of 7.5 years, shorter than estimates from previous studies.

The mystery of the U-shaped relationship between happiness and age

In this paper, we address the puzzle of the relationship between age and happiness. Whilst the majority of psychologists have concluded there is not much of a relationship at all, the economic literature has unearthed a possible U-shape relationship with the minimum level of satisfaction occurring in middle age (35–50). In this paper, we look for a U-shape in three panel data sets, the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the Household Income Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA). We find that the raw data mainly supports a wave-like shape that only weakly looks U-shaped for the 20–60 age range. That weak U-shape in middle age becomes more pronounced when allowing for socio-economic variables. When we then take account of selection effects via fixed-effects, however, the dominant age-effect in all three panels is a strong happiness increase around the age of 60 followed by a major decline after 75, with the U-shape in middle age disappearing such that there is almost no change in happiness between the age of 20 and 50.

Aromatherapy for treatment of postoperative nausea and vomiting

Background: Postoperative nausea and vomiting is a common and unpleasant phenomenon and current therapies are not always effective for all patients. Aromatherapy has been suggested as a possible addition to the available treatment strategies. Objectives: This review sought to establish what effect the use of aromatherapy has on the severity and duration of established postoperative nausea and vomiting and whether aromatherapy can be used with safety and clinical effectiveness comparable to standard pharmacological treatments. Search methods: We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library 2011, Issue 3); MEDLINE; EMBASE; CINAHL; CAM on PubMed; Meditext; LILACS database; and ISI Web of Science as well as grey literature sources and the reference lists of retrieved articles. We conducted database searches up to August 2011. Selection criteria: We included all randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and controlled clinical trials (CCTs) where aromatherapy was used to treat postoperative nausea and vomiting. Interventions were all types of aromatherapy. Aromatherapy was defined as the inhalation of the vapours of any substance for the purposes of a therapeutic benefit. Primary outcomes were the severity and duration of postoperative nausea and vomiting. Secondary outcomes were adverse reactions, use of rescue anti-emetics and patient satisfaction with treatment. Data collection and analysis: Two review authors assessed risk of bias in the included studies and extracted data. As all outcomes analysed were dichotomous, we used a fixed-effects model and calculated relative risk (RR) with associated 95% confidence interval (95% CI). Results: The nine included studies comprised six RCTs and three CCTs with a total of 402 participants. The mean age and range data for all participants were not reported for all studies. The method of randomization in four of the six included RCTs was explicitly stated and adequate. Incomplete reporting of data affected the completeness of the analysis. Compared with placebo, isopropyl alcohol vapour inhalation was effective in reducing the proportion of participants requiring rescue anti-emetics (RR 0.30, 95%CI 0.09 to 1.00, P = 0.05). However, compared with standard anti-emetic treatment, isopropyl alcohol was not effective in reducing the proportion of participants requiring rescue anti-emetics (RR 0.66 95%CI 0.39 to 1.13, P = 0.13) except when the data from a possibly confounded study were included (RR 0.66, 95% CI 0.45 to 0.98, P = 0.04). Where studies reported data on patient satisfaction with aromatherapy, there were no statistically significant differences between the groups (RR 1.12, 95%CI 0.62 to 2.03, P = 0.71). Authors' conclusions: Isopropyl alcohol was more effective than saline placebo for reducing postoperative nausea and vomiting but less effective than standard anti-emetic drugs. There is currently no reliable evidence for the use of peppermint oil.

Causes of corruption : evidence from China

This study explores the causes of corruption in China using provincial panel data. Using both fixed effects and instrumental variables approaches, we find that provinces with greater anti-corruption efforts, higher educational attainment, historic influence from Anglo-American church universities, greater openness, more access to media, higher relative wages of government employees and a greater representation of women in the legislature are markedly less corrupt; whereas social heterogeneity, regulation and resources abundance breed substantial corruption. We also find that fiscal decentralization depresses corruption significantly. Finally, we identify a positive relationship between corruption and economic development in China, which is driven primarily by the transition to a market economy.

Gender differences in rumination : a meta-analysis

Starting in adolescence and continuing through adulthood, women are twice as likely as men to experience depression. According to the response styles theory (RST), gender differences in depression result, in part, from women's tendency to ruminate more than men. A meta-analysis was performed to evaluate gender differences in rumination in adults (k = 59; N = 14,321); additionally, an analysis of subtypes of rumination - brooding and reflection - was conducted (k = 23). Fixed effects analyses indicated that women scored higher than men in rumination (d = .24, p < .01, SEd = .02), brooding (d = .19, p < .01, SEd = .03) and reflection (d = .17, p < .01, SEd = .03); there was no evidence of heterogeneity or publication bias across studies for these effect sizes. Although statistically significant, the effect sizes for gender differences in rumination were small in magnitude. Results are discussed with respect to the RST and gender differences in depression

Airborne culturable fungi in naturally ventilated primary school environments in a subtropical climate

There is currently a lack of reference values for indoor air fungal concentrations to allow for the interpretation of measurement results in subtropical school settings. Analysis of the results of this work established that, in the majority of properly maintained subtropical school buildings, without any major affecting events such as floods or visible mould or moisture contamination, indoor culturable fungi levels were driven by outdoor concentration. The results also allowed us to benchmark the “baseline range” concentrations for total culturable fungi, Penicillium spp., Cladosporium spp. and Aspergillus spp. in such school settings. The measured concentration of total culturable fungi and three individual fungal genera were estimated using Bayesian hierarchical modelling. Pooling of these estimates provided a predictive distribution for concentrations at an unobserved school. The results indicated that “baseline” indoor concentration levels for indoor total fungi, Penicillium spp., Cladosporium spp. and Aspergillus spp. in such school settings were generally ≤ 1450, ≤ 680, ≤ 480 and ≤ 90 cfu/m3, respectively, and elevated levels would indicate mould damage in building structures. The indoor/outdoor ratio for most classrooms had 95% credible intervals containing 1, indicating that fungi concentrations are generally the same indoors and outdoors at each school. Bayesian fixed effects regression modeling showed that increasing both temperature and humidity resulted in higher levels of fungi concentration.

Genome-wide association identifies genetic variants associated with lentiform nucleus volume in N = 1345 young and elderly subjects

Deficits in lentiform nucleus volume and morphometry are implicated in a number of genetically influenced disorders, including Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, and ADHD. Here we performed genome-wide searches to discover common genetic variants associated with differences in lentiform nucleus volume in human populations. We assessed structural MRI scans of the brain in two large genotyped samples: the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI; N = 706) and the Queensland Twin Imaging Study (QTIM; N = 639). Statistics of association from each cohort were combined meta-analytically using a fixed-effects model to boost power and to reduce the prevalence of false positive findings. We identified a number of associations in and around the flavin-containing monooxygenase (FMO) gene cluster. The most highly associated SNP, rs1795240, was located in the FMO3 gene; after meta-analysis, it showed genome-wide significant evidence of association with lentiform nucleus volume (PMA = 4. 79 × 10-8). This commonly-carried genetic variant accounted for 2. 68 % and 0. 84 % of the trait variability in the ADNI and QTIM samples, respectively, even though the QTIM sample was on average 50 years younger. Pathway enrichment analysis revealed significant contributions of this gene to the cytochrome P450 pathway, which is involved in metabolizing numerous therapeutic drugs for pain, seizures, mania, depression, anxiety, and psychosis. The genetic variants we identified provide replicated, genome-wide significant evidence for the FMO gene cluster's involvement in lentiform nucleus volume differences in human populations.

Genome-wide association study for radiographic vertebral fractures: A potential role for the 16q24 BMD locus

Vertebral fracture risk is a heritable complex trait. The aim of this study was to identify genetic susceptibility factors for osteoporotic vertebral fractures applying a genome-wide association study (GWAS) approach. The GWAS discovery was based on the Rotterdam Study, a population-based study of elderly Dutch individuals aged >55years; and comprising 329 cases and 2666 controls with radiographic scoring (McCloskey-Kanis) and genetic data. Replication of one top-associated SNP was pursued by de-novo genotyping of 15 independent studies across Europe, the United States, and Australia and one Asian study. Radiographic vertebral fracture assessment was performed using McCloskey-Kanis or Genant semi-quantitative definitions. SNPs were analyzed in relation to vertebral fracture using logistic regression models corrected for age and sex. Fixed effects inverse variance and Han-Eskin alternative random effects meta-analyses were applied. Genome-wide significance was set at p<5×10-8. In the discovery, a SNP (rs11645938) on chromosome 16q24 was associated with the risk for vertebral fractures at p=4.6×10-8. However, the association was not significant across 5720 cases and 21,791 controls from 14 studies. Fixed-effects meta-analysis summary estimate was 1.06 (95% CI: 0.98-1.14; p=0.17), displaying high degree of heterogeneity (I2=57%; Qhet p=0.0006). Under Han-Eskin alternative random effects model the summary effect was significant (p=0.0005). The SNP maps to a region previously found associated with lumbar spine bone mineral density (LS-BMD) in two large meta-analyses from the GEFOS consortium. A false positive association in the GWAS discovery cannot be excluded, yet, the low-powered setting of the discovery and replication settings (appropriate to identify risk effect size >1.25) may still be consistent with an effect size <1.10, more of the type expected in complex traits. Larger effort in studies with standardized phenotype definitions is needed to confirm or reject the involvement of this locus on the risk for vertebral fractures.