“Sleep is on the back burner”: Working students and sleep

The current study examines on a potential high-risk sleep loss population: working students at a metropolitan university in a mid-sized Midwestern city in the United States. Open-ended interviews with nineteen working university students provide insight into their beliefs and behaviors regarding how they think about and “do” work, attend university and sleep. Sleep diaries provide information on perceived sleep duration, latency and quality. While students value sleep and recognize the connection between sleep loss and ill health, they accept tiredness as “normal” for their situation. For many students sleep is the one demand that can be “put off”, in the struggle to balance work, school and family demands, “until the bill comes due” when they fall ill. Exchanging sleep loss for educational progress is explored through “health capital” as part of a human capital conceptual framework.     

Is the Person-Affecting Intuition Paradoxical?

This article critically examines some of the inconsistency objections that have been put forward by John Broome, Larry Temkin and others against the so-called "person-affecting," or "person-based," restriction in normative ethics, including "extra people" problems and a version of the nonidentity problem from Kavka and Parfit. Certain Pareto principles and a version of the "mere addition paradox" are discussed along the way. The inconsistencies at issue can be avoided, it is argued, by situating the person-affecting intuition within a non-additive form of maximizing consequentialism – a theory which then competes with such additive, or aggregative, forms of maximizing consequentialism as "totalism" and "averagism."     

Capital goods imports and long-run growth: Is the Chinese experience relevant to developing countries?

In this paper, we analyze the role played by capital goods imports in the long-run growth of developing countries. We focus in the case of the Chinese economy in the last few decades. We find evidence that the ratio of imported to domestic capital goods, that is, the composition of investment, as well as the capital accumulation (both physical and human), was key determinants of the long-run growth rate of per capita GDP over the analyzed period. Furthermore, our results are also consistent with the hypothesis that the link between trade openness and long-run growth operates mainly through imports. This finding supports some recent developments of Schumpeterian models of growth, and the very specific economic policy recommendations arising thereof. In short, these models state that, in the early stages of growth, government intervention to encourage an investment-based strategy, with emphasis on large investment efforts and the adoption of foreign technology, could be an appropriate strategy for development.     

Should failure to protect laws include physical and emotional sibling violence?

Physical and emotional sibling violence is a problematic occurrence for many children, adults, and families, yet this form of violence rarely falls within the purview of state laws and policies. Failure to protect laws offer one avenue through which sibling violence can be addressed by holding parents and caregivers accountable for harm that occurs to a child in their custody. This article provides background information on physical and emotional sibling violence as well as a general overview of failure to protect laws in the context of intimate partner violence with particular consideration of these laws in addressing sibling violence. In addition, the role social work practitioners can play in intervening and addressing sibling violence through psychoeducation leading to policy (i.e., failure to act laws) is presented.     

Housing Stability and Problem Gambling: Is There a Relationship?

ABSTRACT

Despite negative consequences, few studies have explored problem-gambling risk and housing stability. This article examined whether gamblers with stable housing would be at lower problem-gambling risk than those with transient/unstable housing. Community-recruited 15- to 85-year-old gamblers (n = 312) provided structured telephone interviews of their gambling problems, substance and psychiatric conditions, and sociodemographics, including current living situations. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition, Text Revision gambling criteria classified three gambling groups. Results show that for every one non-problem gambler, 0.24 subthreshold gamblers experienced stable housing (95% CI = 0.08–0.79). Future research necessitates further delineation of the relationship of housing stability and problem-gambling risk.     

End-of-life care and social work education: what do students need to know?

Social workers are major service providers to people who are facing end-of-life issues including the terminally ill and their families. Yet, exemplary models for social work education and intervention methods are limited in rural states. A statewide survey conducted in Kentucky found only two social work courses dedicated to end-of-life care currently being offered by accredited undergraduate and graduate institutions. Another statewide survey found that many hospice social workers are relatively inexperienced and have a need and desire for more education on death, dying and loss. Also, unique cultural, economic and geographic areas, such as Appalachia are enigmas when it comes to the provision of end-of-life care. This partnership provides a varied perspective on delivery of end-of-life care services with an emphasis on social work interventions and education.     

Where Is Russia Going and Why?

Russia is in the throes of economic and social change.¹ The changes are being monitored by VTsIOM [the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research]. VTsIOM processes its data in time series, and some of these series are published in the VTsIOM bulletin.² VTsIOM's bulletin and sociological data bank are extremely valuable sources of information regarding the "historic scale" of the Russian model for change in the 1990s. This article makes secondary use of dynamic indices, both unpublished indices and those published in the VTsIOM bulletin, based on public opinion surveys reflecting economic and social changes since March 1993 in order to engage in multidimensional analysis of the factors involved in Russia's evolution and the developmental alternatives.     

End of double taxation: Is the policy better when announced?

This paper examines the effectiveness of the “end of double taxation” (on dividends) policy in stabilizing an economy. Both announced and unannounced policies are considered. A reduction in double taxation stimulates investment and improves welfare, but its impact on output is moderate and it has a negative effect on work hours. A temporary cut creates an investment boom but also generates an investment slump when the tax cut expires. Announcements of future tax cuts are found to have important effect on output dynamics. Agents respond to the tax policy even before it is implemented. If the tax cut is announced to be temporary, its impact on output is greatly reduced. Our study suggests that a temporary dividend tax cut is most effective in stabilizing a recession stricken economy when the policy change comes as “news” to the economy.     

The Great Recession and Welfare State Reform: Is Retrenchment Really the Only Game Left in Town?

By 2010, when the Greek sovereign debt crisis changed into an existential crisis of the euro, all developed democracies entered a phase in which they had to consolidate their budgets, typically implying a politics of austerity. The scholarly literature, as well as the popular press, suggests that – consequently – welfare retrenchment and cost containment became the only games left in town. In this article, we study the welfare state reform measures taken between 2010 and 2012 in four countries characteristic of mature welfare state regimes (liberal, UK; conservative, Germany; social democratic, Denmark; and hybrid, the Netherlands) to examine empirically whether austerity has indeed become the only item left on the policy menu. Our analysis reveals that retrenchment features prominently on the agenda everywhere, but nowhere by itself. While compensation for income loss is rare since 2010, this still happens. More unexpectedly, reforms in line with a social investment agenda (like expansion of child care or active labour market policies) are still being pursued in all our four cases.     

Legal families and environmental protection: Is there a causal relationship?

In this paper we build on the analysis of La Porta et al. [La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Shleifer, A., & Vishny, R. W. (1998). Law and finance. Journal of Political Economy, 106(6), 1113–1155], to investigate the importance of legal families in explaining the dissimilar levels of environmental quality indicators among countries with different legal systems. The main intuition behind our analysis is that the nations in which the rights of shareholders are more protected promote real and financial investment; this increases the speed at which the per capita income corresponding to the declining branch of the Environmental Kutznets Curve (EKC) is achieved. In econometrics different regressions analyses were performed, using as dependent variables three different kinds of pollutants (CO₂, fine suspended particulates and waste), and including as an explanation some financial variables never before considered in this kind of study.     

Connecting sleep,the neurocognitive memory system,and Bourdieu's habitus concept: Is sleep a generative force of the habitus?

Bourdieu's habitus theory has been criticized for allegedly being static and deterministic. This is partly due to insufficiently elaborated microstructural aspects of the habitus. Previous works have tried to elaborate the habitus' individual side by drawing on neuropsychological and neuroscientific concepts including the neuropsychological memory system. Despite its relevance for several social processes, sleep has not been considered in this context. The present work investigates the interrelatedness of habitus, sleep, and the memory system with particular focus on the determinism and staticity critique. It shows that the neuropsychological memory system overlaps largely with implicit memory and sleep plays an important role in the formation of habitus‐relevant memory. Moreover, sleep enhances processes such as memory consolidation, reflexivity, associative creativity, and dream‐associated simulation of unknown situations which counter the determinism and staticity critique. The present article argues that habitus, memory, and sleep are closely related and memory and sleep represent operational micro‐structures of the habitus. Moreover, sleep‐related processes represent a generative force that renders the habitus more dynamic. Finally, strengths and weaknesses of the habitus‐memory‐sleep nexus are discussed and further lines of research are outlined.     

Adult obesity prevalence and state policymaking in the United States: Is problem severity associated with more policies?

This study explores the relationship between adult obesity prevalence and obesity-related state policymaking in the United States. We examine whether 2009 obesity prevalence and the change in prevalence between 2000 and 2009 are associated with obesity-related state laws and regulations introduced or enacted between 2009 and 2011. Policies that exclusively target youth are eliminated from our analysis. Adult obesity prevalence increased in all 50 states over the decade studied, with a slight decrease in Washington, DC. Increases in prevalence are significantly associated with fewer policies in the South and Midwest Census regions and the East North Central and South Atlantic Census divisions. Findings suggest the need for greater advocacy and an opportunity for obesity to rise on state policy agendas.