Coexisting principles and logics of elder care: Help to self‐help and consumer‐oriented service?

Healthy and active ageing has become an ideal in Western societies. In the Nordic countries, this ideal has been supported through a policy of help to self‐help in elder care since the 1980s. However, reforms inspired by New Public Management (NPM) have introduced a new policy principle of consumer‐oriented service that stresses the wishes and priorities of older people. We have studied how these two principles are applied by care workers in Denmark. Is one principle or logic replacing the other, or do they coexist? Do they create tensions between professional knowledge and the autonomy of older people? Using neo‐institutional theory and feminist care theory, we analysed the articulation of the two policy principles in interviews and their logics in observations in four local authorities. We conclude that help to self‐help is the dominant principle, that it is deeply entrenched in the identity of the professional care worker and that it coexists with consumer‐oriented service and without major tensions in the logics identified in their practices.     

Parenthood and Happiness: a Review of Folk Theories Versus Empirical Evidence

This paper reviews and compares folk theories and empirical evidence about the influence of parenthood on happiness and life satisfaction. The review of attitudes toward parenthood and childlessness reveals that people tend to believe that parenthood is central to a meaningful and fulfilling life, and that the lives of childless people are emptier, less rewarding, and lonelier, than the lives of parents. Most cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence suggest, however, that people are better off without having children. It is mainly children living at home that interfere with well-being, particularly among women, singles, lower socioeconomic strata, and people residing in less pronatalist societies??especially when these characteristics are combined. The discrepancy between beliefs and findings is discussed in relation to the various costs of parenting; the advantages of childlessness; adaptation and compensation among involuntarily childless persons; cognitive biases; and the possibility that parenthood confers rewards in terms of meaning rather than happiness.     

Can higher life expectancy induce more schooling and earlier retirement?

In this paper, we show that it may be optimal for individuals to educate more and retire earlier when life expectancy increases. This result reconciles the findings of Hazan (Econometrica 77:1829–1863, 2009) with theory. Further, the paper contributes to a better understanding of the conflicting empirical findings on the causal effect on income per capita from increased life expectancy.     

Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography: Lillian Wineman and the Trade in Dakota Beadwork, 1893–1929

Qualitative Sociology - How can researchers learn about the social lives of people and cultures who leave little or no written record of their lives? This article introduces the idea that one...     

Threshold Autoregression with a Unit Root

This paper develops an asymptotic theory of inference for an unrestricted two‐regime threshold autoregressive (TAR) model with an autoregressive unit root. We find that the asymptotic null distribution of Wald tests for a threshold are nonstandard and different from the stationary case, and suggest basing inference on a bootstrap approximation. We also study the asymptotic null distributions of tests for an autoregressive unit root, and find that they are nonstandard and dependent on the presence of a threshold effect. We propose both asymptotic and bootstrap‐based tests. These tests and distribution theory allow for the joint consideration of nonlinearity (thresholds) and nonstationary (unit roots). Our limit theory is based on a new set of tools that combine unit root asymptotics with empirical process methods. We work with a particular two‐parameter empirical process that converges weakly to a two‐parameter Brownian motion. Our limit distributions involve stochastic integrals with respect to this two‐parameter process. This theory is entirely new and may find applications in other contexts. We illustrate the methods with an application to the U.S. monthly unemployment rate. We find strong evidence of a threshold effect. The point estimates suggest that the threshold effect is in the short‐run dynamics, rather than in the dominate root. While the conventional ADF test for a unit root is insignificant, our TAR unit root tests are arguably significant. The evidence is quite strong that the unemployment rate is not a unit root process, and there is considerable evidence that the series is a stationary TAR process.     

Understanding Single Mothers’ Parenting Stress Trajectories

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examined single mothers’ (n = 1,229) parenting stress trajectories across the years when their children were ages 1, 3, and 5. Analyses were based on a latent growth curve model incorporating time-invariant and time-varying covariates to better understand single mothers’ parenting stress trajectories. Single mothers’ initial level and rate of change in parenting stress trajectories were significantly predicted by the initial levels of infants’ negative emotionality. The time-varying covariates of work–family conflict and parental engagement were significantly associated with single mothers’ parenting stress when their children were ages 1, 3, and 5.     

Questions from somewhere — who's who in attitude research about ‘immigrants’

The article looks into how the binary opposition ‘we ‘ and ‘them ‘ is reproduced and legitimized in attitudinal surveys, specifically the Eurobarometer series. The Eurobarometer 30 and 39 are among the most widely cited and, therefore, most influential sources among academics and politicians interested in knowing about how Europeans think of those defined as ‘non‐Europeans ‘. The author contends that attitudinal research of the kind exemplified by the Eurobarometerproblematües the ‘other’ instead of recognizing that it is our ability to speak about an ‘other’ as ‘out‐group’ in the first place which constitutes the problem; in that it establishes yet another space in which a stereotypical and debasing language of ‘we and them’ becomes the norm.