Households,Families and Prospective Economic Mobility in Mexico

The study analyzed poverty as a function of households’ demographic composition using a longitudinal random sample of 4268 urban and rural households that were followed-up from 2005/6 to 2009/12 in Mexico to estimate short-term changes in living conditions. Well-being was measured as the dwelling unit’s number of rooms, water source, sanitary services, garbage disposal, and fuel. Mobility paths included not poor–not poor, poor–poor, not poor–poor, and poor–not poor. Independent variables included household composition, family characteristics, residential changes, schooling, and occupation. Female headship and older adults negatively impacted poverty, whereas economic dependents may be negatively or positively associated. Fertility incentives for low-income populations are not advisable. Working-age adults contribute only if income-generating opportunities exist locally.     

How Integrated are Finns in the Swedish Labour Market? Outcomes of Free Labour Mobility

DANS QUELLE MESURE LES FINLANDAIS SONT-ILS INTÉGRÉS AU MARCHÉ DU TRAVAIL SUÉDOIS ? RÉSULTATS DE LA LIBRE MOBILITÉ DE LA MAIN-D'OEUVRE
En raison d'un accord instituant un marché commun nordique du travail, les Finlandais constituent, depuis des décennies, le plus grand groupe d'immigrés en Suède. Pourtant, rares sont les études qui ont spécifiquement tenté de déterminer dans quelle mesure ils sont intégrés au marché du travail. Cet article vise à combler en partie cette lacune en examinant comment les Finlandais ont réussi avant et après la crise économique des années 90. Les niveaux d'emploi et les salaires des immigrés finlandais dans la force de l'âge sont comparés à ceux des Suédois de souche à l'aide d'échantillons représentatifs de la population totale de 1990 et 2001. Nous cherchons à déterminer dans quelle mesure tout écart peut être attribuéà de simples facteurs de base tels que l'âge, le sexe, le niveau d'éducation et la région de résidence. D'après nos constatations, les salaires et niveaux d'emploi des Finlandais de sexe masculin sont environ 10% moins élevés que ceux des Suédois de souche et cet écart tend à devenir plus marqué au fil du temps. Il existe toutefois des variations considérables entre les cohortes d'immigrés, et les différences de niveaux d'éducation ne jouent un rôle significatif qu'en ce qui concerne les écarts de salaire. Les Finlandaises semblent en revanche mieux intégrées, leurs résultats sur le marché du travail étant très semblables à ceux des Suédoises de souche.     

Trends in Women's Career Patterns and in Gender Occupational Mobility in Britain

This paper uses retrospective data from the SCELI surveys to make a detailed investigation of changing career patterns and gender differences in occupational status over the period 1946–86. A summary variable is developed and used to examine the relationships between changing employment trends and respondents' occupational status. Occupational status, as the Hope-Goldthorpe scale value, is measured throughout the life-course and changes over time are examined. The main findings of the study are that despite the increase in women's qualifications and the proportion of women in the workforce, their human capital has not greatly increased although their careers have become increasingly variable. Men and childless women experience occupational status increasing over life-course and time but part-time employed women do not. Class of origin is more important to status for men than for women, while qualifications are important for both. Women's careers are increasingly affected by discontinuity and part-time employment.     

Farming Patterns,Rural Restructuring,and Poverty: A Comparative Regional Analysis1

Abstract This study examines the contentions of two recent perspectives on rural economic organization and their implications for poverty. Building from (1) agrarian political economy and (2) the rural restructuring literatures, we present a comparative regional analysis of how farming patterns and other aspects of economic organization differentially affect poverty in rural areas. Data are based on 2,349 nonmetropolitan U.S. counties for the 1970–1980 period. Nonhired labor-dependent, family-operated farming (smaller and larger family farming) has relatively similar cross-regional effects on rural poverty. The effects of industrialized farming are more spatially variant, suggesting that this type of farming is integrated into regional political economies in different ways than are simple commodity units. However, farming patterns have only a small effect on rural poverty relative to other factors, such as the local employment structure, characteristics of the population, and geographic location. The results of this study highlight the need to move beyond the farm sector to understand both the dynamics of this sector and the socioeconomic consequences of rural restructuring. More broadly, the study underscores the importance of testing general sociological relationships under different spatial (e.g., regional) contexts.     

Gambling Households in Canada

This paper examines the distribution of gambling dollars in Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan and Canada and studies the impact of this spending on households. We focus first on how gambling expenditures are related to the level and source of household income as well as to other demographic characteristics such as age, education, household composition, geographical area, and sources of income. Next we analyze how gambling expenditures are distributed among those households that gamble. We show how expenditure patterns differ in the intensity of gambling as measured by the proportion of household income or total amount of dollars spent on gambling. Then we study the affects that gambling has on spending on household necessities, changes in net worth, retirement savings and household debt. Finally we determine whether gambling expenditures act as a substitute or a complement to other recreational spending on entertainment products and services. Throughout the paper we offer a comparative analysis of provincial and national data.     

Farming Far Jay

EVERY weekend,the Green FoodHome beside Jingshun Road in theeastern suburbs of Beijing welcomes agroup of townspeople who have cometo take care of the vegetable fields.They are all members of the Home,paying 800 yuan per year for the rightto plant a plot of land.     

How Retired Households and Households Approaching Retirement Handle Their Equity Investments in the United States

This study examines how U.S. retired households and households approaching retirement change their equity holdings over time. Applying a decomposition analysis on the repeated cross-sectional U.S. Survey of Consumer Finances from 1989 to 2004, this study presents the effects of change in population size including mortality, change in financial wealth, and change in preference on the change in aggregate financial asset share invested in equity. A formal regression-based decomposition is also provided. It was found that there is a convex relationship between age and equity holdings as a share to financial assets for the older population. In addition, the risk-taking attitude-equity holdings profile shifted upward during the period of 1989 to 2004 for the older population. It is further documented that 70% of those senior equity investors chose financing retirement and financing future liquidity as the primary saving goals. Therefore, longevity pattern plays an important role for older population to hold equity.

The Rise of Three-Generation Households Among Households Headed by Two Parents and Mothers Only in Australia

This study offers knowledge about factors associated with a key type of family change, namely, two- to-three-generation household transformations, which are poorly understood, despite increasing numbers of three-generation households, especially ones headed by females. Using a representative sample of 5,874 Australian children, results showed that the circumstances of children in two-generation households differed greatly by family structure. Thus, before investigating determinants of three-generation household formation, children were first grouped as living in either two-parent or single-mother households. For both groups of children, several factors were found associated with three-generation household formation. In two-parent households, the odds of three-generation household formation decreased with mothers?? ages, fathers?? higher educational attainments, and more children, but increased as children grew older. In single-mother households, the odds of three-generation household formation decreased with mothers?? higher educational attainments, increasing income, and more children, but increased if mothers had never been married and worked more hours. Living in rural areas decreased odds of three-generation household formation for children in both types of households. Overall, grandparents appear to play a relatively more important resource role in three-generation, mother only households than in three-generation, two-parent households.     

Optimal Times to Contact Sample Households

Finding a suitable respondent at home is an essential and expensivecomponent of a household survey. This article reports on theresults of a study of the probabilities of finding someone aged14 or older at home and discusses the application of such datato survey design and budgeting.     

Education Financing of Rural Households in China

The purpose of this paper was to examine children’s education financing alternatives among households in rural China. Data on education financing was from a household survey conducted in three poverty villages in Guizhou, China. The difference in financing education by households was verified through non-parametric testing. Findings show that private savings is dominant in financing education of children in school. Formal loans are almost absent even in the highest wealth group examined. The findings implied that the extension of financial services to children’s education could motivate parents to send their children for more education, increase disposable income of rural households by reducing precautionary savings, and provide better-educated labors in rural China.     

Polish Households During the Economic Transformation

Two topics are presented in this paper: a short history of the Polish economic transformation, begun in 1989, and analyses of aggregate data describing the life conditions of Polish households in the period immediately following the transformation.     

Break-up of New Orleans Households after Hurricane Katrina

Theory and evidence on disaster-induced population displacement have focused on individual and population-subgroup characteristics. Less is known about impacts on households. I estimate excess incidence of household break-up due to Hurricane Katrina by comparing a probability sample of pre-Katrina New Orleans resident adult household heads and non-household heads (N = 242), traced just over a year later, with a matched sample from a nationally representative survey over an equivalent period. One in three among all adult non-household heads, and one in two among adult children of household heads, had separated from the household head 1 year post-Katrina. These rates were, respectively, 2.2 and 2.7 times higher than national rates. A 50% higher prevalence of adult children living with parents in pre-Katrina New Orleans than nationally increased the hurricane's impact on household break-up. Attention to living arrangements as a dimension of social vulnerability in disaster recovery is suggested.     

The Changing Financial Circumstances of Households with Children

SUMMARY. The last fifteen yeas have seen rapid changes in the financial circumstances of households with children. They are increasingly found among those on the lowest incomes and are over-represented among households dependent on income support for their survival. At the same time, changes in the social security system have left claimant families with greater financial responsibility and reduced access to additional sources of financial support from the state. The article reviews these changes in the economic welfare of households with children, paying particular attention to the circumstances of low-income families. It looks in turn at trends in household income, at changes in the social security system and at the patterns of debt and unmet needs reported by parents caring for children on low incomes.     

Measuring Differences in Living Standards Within Households

This article presents a quantitative approach used to investigate differences in living standards between spouses within households. Adopting a specially adapted, standard poverty measurement approach—nonmonetary indicators—it explores differences between spouses in terms of possessions and access to certain goods and services and the control and management of household resources. Using data from a unique module in the Living in Ireland Survey (N = 2,248 individuals) as an exemplar, the article focuses on 3 methodological issues: (a) the development of specially designed nonmonetary indicators to explore differences in living standards within households rather than between households (including the role played by qualitative findings in developing those indicators and how focus groups were used to assess and validate the method), (b) the use of multivariate analysis to assess the impact of a wife's independent income in ameliorating differences in living standards between spouses, and (c) the deployment of a mechanism for use in quantitative surveys to record spousal presence and allow measurement of any subsequent difference in individual responses.     

Residential Mobility and Adolescent Achievement and Behavior: Understanding Timing and Extent of Mobility

Residential mobility is generally viewed as an adverse event for adolescents' development. Less is known about whether moving during adolescence, childhood, or both periods explains this connection and whether the extent of mobility matters. Analytic shortcomings with much of the research call into question extant findings. We examined associations between childhood, adolescent, and child–adolescent mobility and adolescents' achievement (math and reading) and behavior problems (internalizing and externalizing). With a multisite, longitudinal sample (N = 1,056), we employed propensity score methods, which mitigate concerns about selection bias on observed variables, to investigate relationships. Results suggest that multiple, child–adolescent movers had more internalizing problems in adolescence than their stable peers, but did not differ on externalizing problems or achievement.