Life Shocks and Homelessness

We exploited an exogenous health shock—namely, the birth of a child with a severe health condition—to investigate the effect of a life shock on homelessness in large cities in the United States as well as the interactive effects of the shock with housing market characteristics. We considered a traditional measure of homelessness, two measures of housing instability thought to be precursors to homelessness, and a combined measure that approximates the broadened conceptualization of homelessness under the 2009 Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act (2010). We found that the shock substantially increases the likelihood of family homelessness, particularly in cities with high housing costs. The findings are consistent with the economic theory of homelessness, which posits that homelessness results from a conjunction of adverse circumstances in which housing markets and individual characteristics collide.     

Governmentality and the ‘selling’ of school surveillance devices

In late modernity there has been a massive growth in ‘new’ surveillance devices situated within schools. This paper explores the reasons behind this proliferation, considering the role of key protagonists and the promises made regarding these technologies. It is suggested that there is strong connection between notions of neoliberal governmentality (Foucault, 2008 ; Gane, 2012 ) and arguments relating to increased security, improved efficiency, the desirability of techno‐surveillance devices and desensitization to pervasive monitoring. In particular, it is maintained that the devolution of state power, the marketization of education, increased responsibilization and the nature of observation in the viewer society all help to explain the emergence of ‘surveillance schools’. It is concluded that failure to recognize these new dynamics may result in schools quietly, subtly becoming experimental labs and then junkyards for our surveillance futures.     

Breaking the Food Chains: An Investigation of Food Justice Activism*

This article develops the concept of food justice, which places access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate food in the contexts of institutional racism, racial formation, and racialized geographies. Through comparative ethnographic case studies, we analyze the demands for food justice articulated by the Karuk Tribe of California and the West Oakland Food Collaborative. Activists in these communities use an environmental justice frame to address access to healthy food, advocating for a local food system in West Oakland, and for the demolition of Klamath River dams that prevent subsistence fishing. Food justice serves as a theoretical and political bridge between scholarship and activism on sustainable agriculture, food insecurity, and environmental justice. This concept brings the environmental justice emphasis on racially stratified access to environmental benefits to bear on the sustainable agriculture movement's attention to the processes of food production and consumption. Furthermore, we argue that the concept of food justice can help the environmental justice movement move beyond several limitations of their frequent place‐based approach and the sustainable agriculture movement to more meaningfully incorporate issues of equity and social justice. Additionally, food justice may help activists and policymakers working on food security to understand the institutionalized nature of denied access to healthy food.     

Effects of financial insecurity on social interactions

Little is known about the effects of financial insecurity on social interactions despite consistently observed income effects on social capital and a growing recognition of the potential importance of income volatility in affecting hardships, distress, and other aspects of well-being. We use data on women participating in a longitudinal study in the U.S. to investigate the effects of financial insecurity measured along two dimensions (safety nets and hardships) on two types of social interactions (participating in community organizations and having close friends). In auxiliary analyses we explore the potential mediating effects of mental health. We find that safety nets in the form of bank accounts, credit cards, and ability to borrow money increase both participation in organizations and friendships, whereas material hardships decrease friendships but increase participation in organizations. We find no evidence that mental health, as we have measured it, mediates the observed effects of financial insecurity on social interactions, although it has strong and negative independent associations with having close friends.     

Child Health and Family Emotional Climate in Early Childhood

This study tied together literature from the fields of family sociology, child development, and social work to investigate the impact of child health and developmental challenges on family emotional climate spanning the first 5 years following birth. To measure emotional climate, three family determinants (interparental discord, parenting concordance, and parenting challenges), which served as either the product or process for six empirical models of interest, were examined. Overall, children’s poor health and development could open up more opportunities for parental discord, undermine parental ability to compromise, and increase challenges in parenting. Practice implications aimed at strengthening family ties were also discussed.     

Rising prices,financial statements and fundamental research

Adequate consideration cannot be given to the subject of inflation accounting without a rigorous reappraisal of the nature and usefulness of published financial statements. It is argued that much fundamental research is a necessary prerequisite for the evaluation of methods of accounting in a period of inflation. Such research should begin with a consideration of the purposes to be served by the publication of financial statements. A framework is presented for such fundamental research and the results of some preliminary work outlined to assess the usefulness of financial statements in providing information to assist investors to make investment decisions. The use of financial statements by investors for this purpose is one of a number of possible objectives for financial statements.     

The effects of child health on marital status and family structure

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence on the effect of child health on marital stability and family structure in an economic framework. We use the 1988 National Health Interview Survey's Child Health Supplement, with a sample of about 9,000 families, to test whether having an unhealthy child decreases the mother's chance of being married and whether it increases her chance of living in an extended family. Using two different measures of child health, we find that having an unhealthy child decreases the mother's likelihood of being married. Our results imply that children in poor health are more likely to face obstacles beyond their illness because they also are more likely to suffer the consequences of poverty and the poor schooling outcomes that result from being raised in a female-headed household. The only mitigating factor is that unhealthy white children are more likely than their healthy counterparts to be living in an extended family.     

Effects of Welfare Reform on Education Acquisition of Adult Women

Education beyond traditional ages for schooling is an important source of human capital acquisition among adult women. Welfare reform, which began in the early 1990s and culminated in the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996, promoted work rather than education acquisition for this group. Exploiting variation in welfare reform across states and over time and using relevant comparison groups, we undertake a comprehensive study of the effects of welfare reform on adult women’s education acquisition. We first estimate effects of welfare reform on high school drop-out of teenage girls, both to improve upon past research on this issue and to explore compositional changes that may be relevant for our primary analyses of the effects of welfare reform on education acquisition among adult women. We find that welfare reform significantly reduced the probability that teens from disadvantaged families dropped out of high school, by about 15%. We then estimate the effects of welfare reform on adult women's school enrollment and conduct numerous specification checks, investigate compositional selection and policy endogeneity, explore lagged effects, stratify by TANF work incentives and education policies, consider alternative comparison groups, and explore the mediating role of work. We find robust and convincing evidence that welfare reform significantly decreased the probability of college enrollment among adult women at risk of welfare receipt, by at least 20%. It also appears to have decreased the probability of high school enrollment among this group, on the same order of magnitude. Future research is needed to determine the extent to which this behavioral change translates to future economic outcomes.     

The Jazziness of Local Food Practice Work: Organization‐Level Ingenuity and the Entrepreneurial Formation and Evolution of Local Food Systems

Local food systems (LFSs) are complex and diverse social structures. The processes that influence the formation and evolution of LFSs are obscure, relatively uncoordinated, and somewhat mysterious. This study develops a stronger understanding of such processes through a qualitative exploration of the influence of routine practice work at the organization level on the entrepreneurial development of two distinct LFSs in the Southwest region of the United States: southeastern Arizona and Albuquerque?Santa Fe. We gathered data between August 2014 and September 2017 through semistructured interviews with and direct observations of 53 local food practitioners operating in one of the two LFSs. Theoretical principles of institutional entrepreneurship, embedded agency, and practice work guided the study. The findings reveal three forms of ingenuity (technological, organizational, policy) that regularly emerge through the day‐to‐day organization‐level work of local food practitioners. We argue that the system‐level influence of these forms, whether intentional or not, are indicators of the embedded agency of the practitioners and their capacities to serve as institutional entrepreneurs. We discuss implications for both practice and future research.