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Access to health care has improved significantly in the developing world over the past few decades. In Delhi, India, for example, a typical family now lives within walking distance of more than 70 private health-care providers. But a new study by a group of economists suggests that quality of care is just as important as availability—and when it comes to quality in low-income countries, doctors are still failing miserably. The authors observed practitioners on the job in four countries and quizzed them about how they would treat various conditions. In one scenario, they were given the hypothetical example of a mother who brought in an infant suffering from diarrhea. Only 25 percent of doctors in Delhi asked about blood or mucus in the baby’s stool, and only 7 percent checked for a depression in the soft spots on its skull—two key steps to determining whether the child should be hospitalized for severe dehydration. The authors also found that Indian doctors, who see patients for an average of 3.8 minutes, would have to be of above-average competence in order to be more likely to help patients than to harm them. In all the countries studied, the authors found “a large and significant gap between what doctors know they should do … and what they actually do.”
—“The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries,” Jishnu Das, Jeffrey Hammer, and Kenneth Leonard, Journal of Economic Perspectives
Cable news may be obsessed with YouTube videos of “catfighting” high-school cheerleaders, but “there is no burgeoning national crisis of increasing serious violence among adolescent girls,” a study by the Justice Department says. The researchers examined official arrest statistics from the FBI as well as data from two national self-reported crime surveys and found that while teenage girls have not been acting more violently over the past two decades, they are getting arrested much more frequently. The authors believe the discrepancy is due more to shifts in enforcement than to girls’ behavior. The adoption of “zero tolerance” policies for school altercations and “mandatory arrest” for domestic disturbances may have contributed, as may have differing behavioral expectations for females, such as a lower tolerance among parents for girls’ acting out than for boys’. Another reason may be that while boys tend to fight “friends or strangers,” girls are far more likely to assault family members, which might be more likely to land them in the clink.
—“Violence by Teenage Girls: Trends and Context,” [PDF] U.S. Department of Justice
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| Image credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press |
When you think of hockey, you probably think black eyes, missing teeth, and bloody brawls. And although the NHL has tried various schemes to clean up its image—to the dismay of many fans—a study by two economists found that the sport still offers “enormous incentives for foul play and overt violence,” and even a cash enticement for goons to drop their gloves. After analyzing league statistics—including penalty minutes, goals scored, and salary figures—the authors determined that strategic fighting can improve a team’s playoff chances, and that players possessing the unique skills of an enforcer are duly rewarded for their efforts. By fighting, lower-skilled wing players can create scoring opportunities for more-talented centers by intimidating opposing teams and keeping their skilled defenders in the penalty box. While a player earns a “wage premium” of $10,925 when he assists on a goal, they calculated, he earns $18,135 for winning a fight and $11,993 even for losing a fight. To ensure that the sport values skill and finesse over “bad boy” enforcers, they suggest that the league deduct a “fight fine” of roughly $36,000 from the team’s salary-cap allotment for each donnybrook.
—“Blood Money: Incentives for Violence in NHL Hockey,” John P. Haisken-DeNew and Matthias Vorell, Ruhr Economic Papers
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| Image credit: Jim Wilson/The New York Times/Redux |
What makes a woman pick out a sparkling bracelet and low-cut top in the morning, rather than a button-down shirt and slacks? A new study suggests it may be hormones. Researchers have previously found that a woman’s sexual motivation ebbs and flows over the course of her menstrual cycle, peaking just before ovulation, when she’s most fertile. Now, two German psychologists find that women don more-provocative clothing during the five days before ovulation, when sex is on the brain. The psychologists asked 40 women to evaluate their own attractiveness and clothing style over the course of a month. Each day, the women noted whether they thought their clothing choice was “sexy,” “figure-hugging,” or “permissive” and took snapshots of themselves. Although they didn’t report feeling more or less attractive in a cyclic pattern, the women did rate themselves as more provocatively dressed during their “high fertile phases.” The opposite sex seemed to agree: when instructed to peruse the photographs the women had taken, men found them both more provocatively dressed and more attractive during the days before ovulation—suggesting that the partners the women hoped to attract (consciously or not) would have read their signals.
—“Self-Perceived and Observed Variations in Women’s Attractiveness Throughout the Menstrual Cycle—A Diary Study,” Sascha Schwarz and Manfred Hassebrauck, Evolution and Human Behavior
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