The Cash Opportunity Costs of Childbearing: An Approach To Estimation Using British Data

The opportunity costs of rearing British children in terms of cash earnings foregone by their mother are estimated for a typical family. Data from the Women and Employment Survey (1980) provide estimates for hourly pay as a function of work experience and current hours of work. They also make possible the generation of participation and hours profiles for representative women with different numbers of children, which, together with the earnings function are used to simulate lifetime income. Earnings foregone as a result of bearing and rearing two children are roughly equally composed of three effects, on participation, hours and pay. They exceed direct costs, and do not rise proportionally with family size. They are sensitive to the spacing of births but not, undiscounted, to the timing of the first one. The method and results contrast markedly with those of a similarly motivated study of US women, by Calhoun and Espenshade. It is argued that the non-linearity of the earnings function and state dependence in British labour force transitions would violate the assumptions which permitted the US exercise to be based on a multi-state labour force life-table.     

Dissonant Discourses: HIV-Positive Refugees and the Media in New Zealand

Will the authorities ever pluck up the courage to invoke the powers that surely already exist in our health regulations and take these time bombs out of circulation? ( Nelson Evening Mail , June 29, 1994) I didn't have any test in Sudan. I never expected I would have any kind of illness; I am very healthy and strong. I was shocked. My life was very dark and I wasn't expecting to have HIV. How did I get it? What way did I get it? I was very happy when I got to NZ, I was going to have a bright future helping my family, I was going to change my life, I didn't expect it was going to be like this [crying]. (Samuel)     

Inside the Black Box: what constitutes a day in a residential treatment centre?

Residential Treatment Centres (RTCs) provide 24-hour care and mental health services to young people, many of whom are referred from county departments that oversee services to young people involved with child welfare services, mental health services and corrections. While RTCs are required to provide mental health services to young people, the regulations governing these programmes have few specific requirements about the process, content or duration of treatment. Therefore, many questions have arisen about what a typical RTC day looks like and whether it differs among providers or differs based on the severity or type of the young person's mental-health related behaviours and symptoms. This study conducted interviews with RTC providers in the State of Colorado on this topic. Most RTC services were relatively uniform across case types within each RTC. It appears that with a few exceptions, a similar set of services is provided to all young people, regardless of their problems.     

Issues of shared parenting of LGBTQ children and youth in foster care: preparing foster parents for new roles

Foster parents have increasingly assumed new and challenging roles during the past decade. Meeting the developmental, attachment, and grieving needs of children and youth in out of home care is challenging by itself, but can become even more difficult with the issues that arise when the child is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ). Preservice and in-service foster parent training programs can strengthen shared parenting skills by focusing on the universal critical issues of safety, well being, and permanence for children and youth in foster care. This article will focus on these skill areas: (1) sharing parenting to promote healthy growth and development of LGBTQ youth in foster care, (2) threats to safety of LGBTQ youth in foster care, and (3) general challenges and strategies for preparing foster parents of LGBTQ youth to build support systems.     

Comparing the Childrearing Lifetimes of Britain's Divorce-Revolution Men and Women

British men and women who became parents in the 1960s and 1970s were about to experience a new regime of marital instability. The effect of this on the balance between men's and women's contributions to childrearing is potentially very large. This study estimates the co-residential foundations of the new gender balance, focusing on the measurement of lifetime number of years of living with dependent-aged children. A variant of the family-status life table is used to combine two data sources: census panel observations of family status across three points ten years apart, and survey data on the years between censuses. One-quarter of women who became parents in the 1960s, and one-third of women who became parents in the 1970s, have been or will be a lone mother at some point. Lone parenthood is the main way in which women's childrearing lifetimes differ from men's, with seven and eight years respectively of lone motherhood per ever-lone-mother of the 1960s and 1970s parenting cohorts. Men's lone-father years and greater numbers of years spent in second families together provide an average of two years offset against women's lone mother years.     

Climatic conditions and infant care: implications for child nutrition in rural Ethiopia

Population and Environment - We examine the relationships between climatic conditions, breastfeeding behavior, and maternal time use in Ethiopia. Infant feeding practices are important predictors...     

Seasonal activity patterns of sympatric eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) and fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) in a Midwestern metropolitan region

Niche partitioning reduces interspecific competition, facilitating coexistence. In urban ecosystems, however, habitat loss reduces species’ ability to spatially partition activity. Temporal partitioning may thus increase in urban areas as species, unable to avoid each other spatially, partition time to avoid competition. In Midwestern US cities, eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) and fox squirrels (S. niger) co-occur and compete for resources. We identified urban gray and fox squirrel activity patterns and how they vary with season, land cover, and among sites where they do and do not co-occur using camera-trap data. Both species’ activity patterns varied with season and canopy and impervious surface cover. Gray squirrel activity patterns varied in the presence of fox squirrels only in the fall, providing limited support for our temporal partitioning hypothesis. Temporal niche partitioning may thus play a role in supporting these species co-existence when competition is seasonally-elevated (e.g., fall hording), but appears less important in other seasons.

     

Encouraging a Spatial Perspective in Third Sector Studies: Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis and Spatial Regression Analysis

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Geographic space or location is an important aspect of many research topics in the third sector. Methodological advances...