News by Subject Social & Behavior

With the help of a multidisciplinary register and questionnaire study, Finnish researchers showed that both the educational level and its occupational orientation predict the mother's smoking during early pregnancy.

Paying a living wage could be a step toward global economic and environmental sustainability, finds a first-of-its-kind study by the University of Surrey.

In one of the first needs assessments of its kind, Anne Sebert Kuhlmann, Ph.D., MPH, associate professor of behavioral science and health education at Saint Louis University's College for Public Health and Social Justice and her team have documented the challenges, from affordability to transportation, that low-income people with periods face in accessing basic sanitary supplies.

A significant number of Danes experience being so hard-pressed with their household budgets that they cannot afford enough food. This is particularly the case among single parents and people receiving social assistance, who concurrently experience unhealthier diets, poorer mental well-being and a lower quality of life than the rest of the population. These findings are from a large study, the first of its kind in Denmark, conducted by the University of Copenhagen.

Truffles and caviar have traditionally been delicacies of the upper class, but a new study by UBC sociology professor Emily Huddart Kennedy and colleagues from the University of Toronto finds that free-range and fair-trade foods are becoming increasingly important among the elite.

A novel new way of determining the value of employee stock options has yielded some surprising insights: Options granted to woman and senior managers are worth more because they hold them longer. And options that vest annually rather than monthly are worth more for the same reason.

A study carried out by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania finds that low wages and poor benefits leave many female health care workers living below the poverty line.

Since its introduction in 1990, UN's Human Development Index has contributed to a better understanding of development, but has its flaws. Bocconi University's Simone Ghislandi and colleagues developed a new index that takes into account only the inequality-adjusted life expectancy at birth: at life expectancy parity, a country with many disadvantaged people dying young and many rich people dying old is considered worse off than a country with all the population living about the same age.

Couples who spend from joint accounts are more likely to spend their money on utilitarian purchases rather than pleasurable items.