Barking Up The Wrong Tree

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Uncommon names have been on the rise since the 80′s and saw a big jump in the 90′s:

In an analysis of the first names of 325 million American babies born 1880 to 2007, parents have increasingly given their children less common names, suggesting a growing interest in uniqueness and individualism. The data are from the Social Security Administration’s database of names, a complete survey of Americans with social security cards. Common names decreased in use from 1880 to 1919 and increased slightly from 1920 to 1949 before becoming steadily less popular from 1950 to 2007, with an unremitting decrease after 1983 and the greatest rate of change during the 1990s. The results are similar when controlled for immigration rate and when examined within the six U.S. states with the lowest population percentage of Hispanics. This behavioral evidence of growing individualism complements previous research finding generational increases in individualistic traits on self-report measures.

Source: “Fitting In or Standing Out: Trends in American Parents’ Choices for Children’s Names, 1880–2007″ from Social Psychological and Personality Science

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This research examined the joint effects of homosexual linguistic variation and sexual orientation on the stigmatization of male students applying for college admission. Participants were asked to listen to a tape of a speaker who was identified as homosexual, heterosexual, or unspecified and spoke with either stereotypical gay speech or standard speech. Participants made admission decisions, indicated the amount of scholarship funding to be offered, and completed a measure of desired social distance. Participants responded more positively to the homosexual speaker when he spoke with stereotypical gay speech than with standard speech but gave a heterosexual speaker less of a scholarship when he spoke with gay speech. Negative attitudes toward homosexuals were related to greater desired social distance toward homosexuals, especially if the individual spoke with gay speech, but did not predict admission or scholarship decision ratings. The results are discussed in terms of the potential negative consequences of expectancy violations versus the benefits of conformity to stereotypes.

Source: “The Interactive Effects of Homosexual Speech and Sexual Orientation on the Stigmatization of Men Evidence for Expectancy Violation Theory” from Journal of Language and Social Psychology

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Over the past thirty years changes in divorce law have significantly increased access to divorce. The different timing of divorce law reform across states provides a useful quasi-experiment with which to examine the effects of this change. We analyze state panel data to estimate changes in suicide, domestic violence, and spousal murder rates arising from the change in divorce law. Suicide rates are used as a quantifiable measure of wellbeing, albeit one that focuses on the extreme lower tail of the distribution. We find a large, statistically significant, and econometrically robust decline in the number of women committing suicide following the introduction of unilateral divorce. No significant effect is found for men. Domestic violence is analyzed using data on both family conflict resolution and intimate homicide rates. The results indicate a large decline in domestic violence for both men and women in states that adopted unilateral divorce. We find suggestive evidence that unilateral divorce led to a decline in females murdered by their partners, while the data revealed no discernible effects for men murdered. In sum, we find strong evidence that legal institutions have profound real effects on outcomes within families.

Source: “Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: Divorce Laws and Family Distress” from Stanford GSB Research Paper Series, #1828

This is the PhD thesis of the always interesting Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson.

I found it in Tim Harford’s wonderful book The Logic of Life.

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