Tag «IQ»

State funding for education systems fails to take popular demand into account. About 10% of state-funded places are not in areas that interest school-leavers. There are too few options in the humanities, and too many in engineering, research carried out by the HSE’s Institute of Education, School of Mathematics, the Educational Center of Semantic Technology and Faculty of Economics.

Addiction to love may be as dangerous as alcohol or drug addiction. A person in a dependent relationship compensates for their internal deficiency, but at the same time gradually works themselves into exhaustion. By many indicators, love addiction can be attributed as a clinical disorder that can be cured by means of professional psychological help. This discovery was made in a recent study by Svetlana Skvortskova, a graduate of the Master’s programme in the HSE School of Psychology, and Vladimir Shumskiy, Associate Professor at the HSE Department of Psychology of Personality.

The economic and political transformation following the fall of the socialist bloc has affected health and average life expectancy differently in former socialist countries. In nations where reforms led to true political and economic liberalization, health indicators are higher than in countries with hybrid regimes, according to a study by Vladimir Kozlov, a Research Fellow at HSE’s Laboratory of Social and Demographic Policies, and Dina Balalaeva, an Assistant Professor in the School of Political Science.

Russians would like their children to value achievement and wealth more than they themselves do. This stems from the reality and norms of modern life, Maxim Rudnev and Alexandra Savelkayeva from HSE’s Laboratory for Comparative Studies of Mass Consciousness noted in a study on intergenerational value transmission.

The labour market in Russia differs from that in other countries. The Russian labour market does not react to decline and crisis with growing unemployment, and the market recuperates quickly. The reason for this is that employers have a great amount of flexibility; they do not fire employees, instead cutting their pay and work hours, according to the Deputy Director of HSE’s Centre for Labour Market Studies Rostislav Kapeliushnikov.

The mania for a slim body and a phobia of obesity, an obsession with their bodies, constant reflection about their looks and following the ideals of ‘model’ slenderness are the specifics of body culture in the consumerist society, which are widespread among young people, according to Yana Krupets and Nadezhda Nartova, researchers at the HSE Centre for Youth Studies in St. Petersburg.

For the first time since the 2010 heat wave in Moscow, demographers have estimated the effects of abnormal heat, wildfires and air pollution on morbidity and mortality. Extreme heat in Moscow in the summer of 2010 caused nearly 11,000 additional deaths from diseases of the nervous and cardiovascular systems and respiratory and kidney conditions, according to a group of researchers including Tatyana Kharkova and Ekaterina Kvasha of the HSE Institute of Demography, members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, MosEconomMonitoring, and Swedish researchers.

Attitudes towards family and sexual norms vary widely across the former Soviet Union republics. At the country level, economic development and the level of religiosity both help to determine attitudes, while age plays an important role at the individual level. Middle-aged people tend to be more liberal than those who are older or younger, according to a study conducted by Sofia Lopatina, Veronica Kostenko, and  Eduard Ponarin  of the HSE's Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR) in St. Petersburg.