EUREKA!

EUREKA!

notebook

CAMPUS

NEW FINDINGS AND RESEARCH

Family Finances Kids are great, if you can afford them.

Having children makes parents happy “as long as they do not lead to difficulties in paying the bills,” writes economics professor David Blanchflower in a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. His study analyzed life satisfaction data from a million respondents in the European Union over the past decade. Researchers had previously found that having children made people less happy, but Blanchflower noticed that these studies had not controlled for families’ financial well-being. “It’s not that children make you unhappy. It’s the fact that they bring lots of expenses and difficulties,” says Blanchflower. “It’s bloody obvious. Nobody before actually found that.”

Face Value Your headshot could be test fodder.

“The U.S. government, researchers, and corporations have used images of immigrants, abused children, and dead people to test their facial recognition systems, all without consent,” writes Jacqueline Wernimont on Slate’s “Future Tense” website. The distinguished professor of digital humanities and social engagement made her discovery after reviewing public documents and materials obtained via the Freedom of Information Act from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Technology companies and academic researchers use NIST’s facial recognition testing program— which includes millions of images— to evaluate the accuracy of their algorithms. “Any one of us might end up as testing material for the facial recognition industry, perhaps captured in moments of extraordinary vulnerability and then further exploited by the very government sectors tasked with protecting the public,” writes Wernimont, whose research will be reviewed for publication later this year.