Affective Social Competence and Teacher–child Relationship Quality: Race/Ethnicity and Family Income Level as Moderators

This study examined whether race/ethnicity and family income level moderated associations between children's affective social competence and teacher–child relationships among 132 Black, White, and Latino preschoolers. Boys and girls were equally represented in the sample. Of the three racial/ethnic groups, Latino children scored lowest on emotion regulation, were less close to their teachers, and experienced more teacher–child conflict and dependence. In contrast, Black children had closer, less conflict‐laden, and less dependent teacher–child relationships than children of other racial/ethnic backgrounds. Emotion regulation served as a protective factor against problematic teacher–child relationships, particularly for Latino and Black children compared with high‐income White children. Emotion regulation was positively associated with teacher–child closeness for Black children. However, it was negatively associated with teacher–child conflict for Latino children, regardless of income. For all outcomes, teacher characteristics accounted highly for the differences in teacher–child relational quality. Findings are discussed in terms of the functional role of emotions for teacher–child relationships and suggest important contextual influences on the associations.     

The Effect of Infancy Childcare Center Use and Maternal Employment on Toddlers’ Language Development in South Korea

Using first to fourth wave data of the Panel Study of Korean Children (PSKC), this study explores the effects of childcare center use, maternal employment, and other child and familial characteristics on the language development of toddlers in Korea. Among the 2078 families with children in the PSKC, those who completed the Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test at the fourth wave were selected, and a small number of disabled or prematurely born children were excluded. In addition, to clarify the effects of maternal employment, families with mothers who were either employed or unemployed for three consecutive years during the child's infancy were selected. Regression analysis showed that neither childcare center use nor maternal employment during infancy had significant effects on toddlers’ expressive and receptive vocabulary at the fourth wave. Family characteristics, such as household poverty and maternal education level, as well as child characteristics, such as gender and birth order, had significant effects on expressed vocabulary. However, only children's gender significantly affected the receptive vocabulary level of toddlers.     

The use of intensive family preservation services with adoptive families

With the increase in special needs adoption, there is growing concern about the adjustment of these children and families beyond legalization. The purpose of this study was to explore in greater depth the use of intensive family preservation services with adoptive families and the factors related to the family’s ability to stay intact beyond services. Multiple regression analyses were used to determine factors that were predictive of the family’s ability to remain intact at 6 and 12 months post services. Potential predictors of family intactness included child characteristics, family characteristics, previous placement history and service characteristics. Results at 6 months found no significance in the full model; however, the individual factors of ethnic origin of the child, full‐time employment of the primary parent and initial placement reason were significant predictors of family intactness. At 12 months post services, the full model was highly significant, with service characteristics being the greatest predictor of the family’s ability to remain intact.     

Social policy and health: transition countries in a comparative perspective

T. Ferrarini, O. Sjöberg. Social policy and health: transition countries in a comparative perspective Int J Soc Welfare 2010: ??: ??–??© 2010 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and International Journal of Social Welfare. This article analyses the development and design of unemployment insurance and family policy benefits and their links to health outcomes in Estonia, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary from the mid‐1990s. Comparing these six transition countries with long‐standing welfare democracies reveals important similarities and differences in policy and health. Unemployment benefit schemes resemble corporatist schemes in important respects, however, with lower coverage and average benefits. Subjective wellbeing is also comparatively low among both employed and unemployed in the transition countries. Several transition countries have mixed family policy strategies that simultaneously support dual‐earner families and traditional gender roles. One clear exception is Slovenia, which has a highly developed dual‐earner support. Family policy generosity is related to lower rates of poverty, infant mortality and child injuries. The article demonstrates the fruitfulness of institutional analyses of the link between social policy and population health in a broader welfare state context.     

Young Children's Psychological Selves: Convergence with Maternal Reports of Child Personality

The present research examined five‐year‐old children's psychological self‐concepts. Non‐linear factor analysis was used to model the latent structure of the children's self‐view questionnaire (CSVQ; Eder, 1990 ), a measure of children's self‐concepts. The coherence and reliability of the emerging factor structure indicated that young children are capable of meaningfully reporting about their own emotions and personalities. Moreover, these self‐reports from five‐year‐olds converged with maternal perceptions of child personality. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the study of emergent personality, continuity/discontinuity in personality assessment across the lifespan, and self‐concept formation in early childhood.     

A comparison of youth resilience across seven South African sites

The resilience of children and youth is an increasingly important area of research. Young people growing up in distressed communities, characterized by poverty, crime and family troubles, are particularly vulnerable. Resilience can assist these young people in navigating through these challenges towards independent living, particularly as they transition out of adolescence and into young adulthood. Children in South Africa are almost universally vulnerable, but children growing up in residential care facilities and children from poverty‐stricken communities are particularly in need of resilience. This quantitative study of 575 South African children compared their resilience in terms of individual, family and community protective factors across seven sites, including child and youth care centres, schools in poor communities and schools in middle‐class suburban communities. Contrary to expectations, the study found that children in one of the children's homes and one of the poor communities had the highest levels of resilience. Moreover, all but one of the sites scored very high on at least one of the resilience variables, suggesting unique profiles of resilience across the sites. Practice implications for child and family social work are discussed.     

Children's and adults' perceptions of child necessities in Hong Kong

There is growing interest in child poverty and well‐being in East Asia. However, empirical studies predominantly adopt “expert‐led” measures (such as adult‐derived child deprivation measures), which usually assume that parents or guardians provide reliable reports about all their children's needs and that the allocation of household resources is effectively equal across all members. Studies of child poverty from a child‐rights or child‐agency perspective are rare in East Asia. Using a consensual deprivation approach, this article examines the extent of agreement between children and adults about which child possessions and activities constitute necessities of life in Hong Kong. The data are drawn from the second wave of the Strategic Public Policy Research project—Trends and Implications of Poverty and Social Disadvantages in Hong Kong: A Multi‐disciplinary and Longitudinal Study. A total of 595 adults and 636 school‐aged children from the first wave of the study were reinterviewed and asked if they considered 16 possessions and activities as essential for children in contemporary Hong Kong. The results showed that adults were significantly more likely to believe that almost all material and social deprivation items were necessities compared with their children, even after controlling for individual‐level factors (i.e., gender and birthplace) and household‐level factors (i.e., number of children in the household, number of working adults, and household income). The findings highlight the importance of incorporating children's views into our understanding of child poverty.     

GAUGING NEW ZEALAND'S SUCCESS AT POVERTY REDUCTION IN THE NEW MILLENIUM

This paper presents the results of the New Zealand Poverty Measurement Project's analysis of the effects of the 1990s social reforms in New Zealand on the incidence and severity of poverty, and assesses the impact of five social and economic policies introduced by the Labour‐led coalition governments since 1999: New Zealand superannuation, income‐related rents on state houses, active labour market policies for an employment‐rich economy, the Primary Health Care Strategy and the planned income support policy to reduce child poverty. Superannuation is assessed as both adequate and sustainable, rents for state houses are found to be affordable, and GDP growth and employment have increased incrementally as unemployment and benefit numbers have decreased. The Primary Health Care Strategy is an innovative initiative that will increase affordable access to general practitioners, but it and the proposed child assistance initiatives are too new to be adequately assessed. Of the challenges that remain, policy priorities should centre on housing alternatives, including home ownership for low‐income households not in state houses; income support for poor households, particularly those with children; and multi‐sector development of education and training aimed at lifting economic and social capacity.     

Poverty and family structure effects on children's mathematics achievement: Estimates from random and fixed effects models

As children grow up, they may encounter changing family structures and poverty status. Any attempt to measure the effects of these statuses on children's school achievement runs the risk of spurious effects due to child- and family-heterogeneity. An analytic strategy for avoiding these spurious effects is to use longitudinal data on families, children, and their academic achievement to estimate random coefficient growth-curve models in which a large number of causally prior control variables are allowed to impact both the intercept and slope of the child's achievement trajectory, while poverty and family structure at each point in time enter the model as time-varying covariates. An even more powerful strategy is to use Allison's [Allison, P. D. (2005). Fixed effects regression methods for longitudinal data using SAS. Cary, NC: SAS Institute, Inc.] “hybrid” version of this model, in which a fixed-effects specification differences away all unchanging child and family characteristics. We use CNLSY79 data to estimate both types of models for the effects of poverty status and family structure on children's mathematics achievement between ages 5 and 14. We find that poverty status exerts a modest, statistically significant negative effect on math achievement, but only among younger children. The correlation between family structure and children's mathematics achievement is largely spurious, due instead to child- and family-heterogeneity on causally prior variables.     

Inequalities in English child protection practice under austerity: A universal challenge?

The role that area deprivation, family poverty, and austerity policies play in the demand for and supply of children's services has been a contested issue in England in recent years. These relationships have begun to be explored through the concept of inequalities in child welfare, in parallel to the established fields of inequalities in education and health. This article focuses on the relationship between economic inequality and out‐of‐home care and child protection interventions. The work scales up a pilot study in the West Midlands to an all‐England sample, representative of English regions and different levels of deprivation at a local authority (LA) level. The analysis evidences a strong relationship between deprivation and intervention rates and large inequalities between ethnic categories. There is further evidence of the inverse intervention law (Bywaters et al., 2015): For any given level of neighbourhood deprivation, higher rates of child welfare interventions are found in LAs that are less deprived overall. These patterns are taking place in the context of cuts in spending on English children's services between 2010–2011 and 2014–2015 that have been greatest in more deprived LAs. Implications for policy and practice to reduce such inequalities are suggested.     

Why Did Poverty Become Less Geographically Concentrated in the 1990s?*

Objective. After increasing sharply in the 1970s and 1980s, the number of high‐poverty neighborhoods in the United States unexpectedly and dramatically declined in the 1990s. This article examines the roles that residential and income mobility played in this decline. Methods. Using geocoded data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study analyzes changes during the 1990s and early 2000s in: (1) patterns of residential mobility between high‐poverty and lower‐poverty neighborhoods; and (2) patterns of income mobility for residents who remained in high‐poverty neighborhoods. Results. Both patterns of residential and income mobility changed in the 1990s and early 2000s. While patterns of residential migration to high‐poverty neighborhoods were largely unchanged over this period, patterns of residential migration from high‐poverty neighborhoods changed significantly, with poor individuals—especially poor blacks—becoming more likely to relocate from high‐poverty to lower‐poverty neighborhoods. Patterns of income mobility for residents who remained in high‐poverty neighborhoods also changed significantly, with nonpoor residents becoming less likely to become poor and poor residents becoming more likely to exit poverty. Conclusion. Poverty rates in high‐poverty neighborhoods fell primarily because of the net upward income mobility of residents who remained in these neighborhoods.     

Child Poverty and Ecological Contexts of Deprivation and Well‐being: A Critical Review of Budgeting and Social Policy in India

In the context of global developments in the measurement of child poverty, this article critiques the limited success of the Indian government to develop a comprehensive social policy approach to address multi‐faceted deprivation suffered by Indian children. Since independence in 1947, Indian governments have focused on childhood deprivation through various programmes to improve food security, education and health. However, these programmes have functioned in siloes without any linkages to each other, along with poor budgetary commitment which has resulted in sub‐optimal policy outcomes. Based on the theoretical approaches of Amartya Sen's capability approach and Townsend's consensual approach to poverty measurement, this article highlights the intrinsic importance of child well‐being to society. To achieve its objectives, the article is organized into four main parts. First, the article provides an overview of Indian children's deprivation and poverty, and the policy approach. Second, it provides conceptual advancements globally on the measurement of child poverty and deprivation. Third, it highlights the importance of utilizing these indicators to measure child poverty in the Indian context. Fourth, it concludes with a critical analysis of children's budgets and social policy in India to highlight that the Indian government's approach towards child well‐being is not only conceptually flawed, but that its commitment is extremely poor.     

Gender Equality Revisited – Changes in Nordic Childcare Policies in the 2000s

The Nordic childcare policy model is often reviewed and even recommended internationally for its contribution to gender equality, high female labour force participation and, perhaps more indirectly, to a high fertility rate. Nordic childcare services and parental leave schemes have thus been portrayed in the literature as policies which have managed to facilitate a work–family model of dual earners and dual carers. However, the recent introduction of cash‐for‐care schemes seems to go against the Nordic dual earner/dual carer model and ideals of gender equality, in supporting parental (maternal) care of the child in the home. At the same time, new upcoming trends of political fatherhood and the perspective of lifelong learning for the child are also changing the Nordic childcare model. This article provides an analysis of how new childcare policy goals have been articulated into policies from the late 1990s to the late 2000s and how these may challenge the traditional goals of the Nordic welfare states.     

Child poverty in South Africa: an assessment based on microdata for 1995

In this study we assess child poverty in South Africa by estimating multivariate models using household-survey microdata from 1995. The applied poverty line defines children as poor if they live in households with a disposable per capita income less than US$1 Purchasing Power Parity. In South Africa, people living under such income conditions must be considered extremely poor. The results show that children living in South Africa face a risk of being poor comparable to that of the average world inhabitant. Child poverty in South Africa is an issue with strong racial connotations. Large variations in child poverty rates across provinces are found and most of South Africa's poor children live in rural areas. The educational level of household head is a strong predictor of child poverty. The probability of child poverty is vigorously reduced if a household receives wage earnings, but is affected by households' demographic structure.     

Ethnicity and Occupational Pension Membership in the UK

Reflecting a relatively low‐value Basic State Pension, occupational pensions have historically been a key aspect of pension protection within Britain. Existing research shows that minority ethnic groups are less likely to benefit from such pensions and are more likely to face poverty in later life, as a result of the interaction of their labour market participation and pension membership patterns. However, the lack of adequate data on ethnic minorities has so far prevented the direct comparison of different ethnic groups, as well as their comparison to the White British group. Using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, this article explores patterns of employment and the odds ratios of membership in an employer's pension scheme among working‐age individuals from minority ethnic groups and the White British population, taking into account factors not used by previous research, such as one's migration history and sector of employment (public/private). The analysis provides new empirical evidence confirming that ethnicity remains a strong determinant of one's pension protection prospects through being in paid work, being an employee and working for an employer who offers a pension scheme. However, once an individual is working for an employer offering a pension scheme, the effect of ethnicity on that person's odds of being a member of that scheme reduces, except among Pakistani and Bangladeshi individuals for whom the differentials remain. The article also provides evidence on the pension protection of Polish individuals, a relatively ‘new’ minority group in the UK.     

Working poverty in Michigan, 1998/1999 and 2007/2008: Changes in the magnitudes and policy and socio-demographic determinants

Michigan has undergone enormous labor market changes since the 1990s affecting employment, income, and poverty. This paper examines changes in poverty among working families and their policy-related and socio-demographic determinants between 1998/1999 and 2007/2008 in Michigan. Findings suggest the rates of ‘poverty’ and ‘near poverty’ to be between 5 and 19% among working families, with slightly higher rates for the latter period. Public transfers combining taxes and means-tested supports, albeit making some impact among poor families with children, were unable to lower these rates. While the major socio-demographic characteristics of poverty and near poverty including large families with children and young, never married, single mother, and immigrant householders apply to working families, the roles of gender, race, marital status, and education manifest through many policy-related variables such as work hours, wages, and transfer incomes. These findings have important implications for understanding working poverty in Michigan and beyond.     

Following Families: Working Lone‐Mother Families and their Children

Analysis of poverty dynamics based on large‐scale survey data shows that there is limited mobility across the income distribution for most individuals and families. This includes lone parents, who are one of the groups most likely to stay poor over time. This high income poverty risk is reduced for those lone parents who are in employment and who receive state financial support through tax credits to supplement their wages. But income security in work can be difficult to achieve. This article reports on longitudinal qualitative research which has involved repeat interviews with lone mothers and their children over a period of three to four years. The analysis explores the experiences of sustaining employment while living on a low, but complex, income and highlights the challenges faced in seeking financial security in this context.     

Principles and Practicalities for Measuring Child Poverty

This paper has three objectives. The first is to discuss the major issues involved in defining and measuring child poverty. The choices that must be made are clarified, and a set of six principles to serve as a guide for public policy are stated. The second objective is to take stock of child poverty and changes in child poverty in the majority of OECD countries since about 1990 when the Convention on the Rights of the Child came into force. Finally, the third objective is to formulate a number of suggestions for the setting of credible targets for the elimination of child poverty in the rich countries. This involves a method for embodying the ideal of children having priority on social resources into a particular set of child poverty reduction targets, it involves the development of appropriate and timely information sources, and finally it involves the clarification of feasible targets that may vary across the OECD.     

Middle Childhood Feelings Toward Mothers: Predictions From Maternal Directiveness at the Age of Two and Respect for Autonomy Currently

The goals of this study were to examine (1) stability of maternal directiveness during interactions with their children from toddlerhood to late middle childhood, (2) direct and mediated relations between mothers' directiveness when children were two years old, mothers' respect for autonomy and children's positivity and negativity toward their mothers when children were in late middle childhood, and (3) differences in these paths by ethnoracial group. Participants included 876 European‐American, 789 African‐American, and 411 Mexican‐American mothers and their children from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project. Maternal respect for autonomy at Time 2 partially mediated an association between Time 1 directiveness and observed child positivity toward mothers at Time 2. There was also a direct inverse link between Time 1 maternal directiveness and children's observed positivity toward mothers at Time 2. Relations were similar across ethnoracial groups and for boys and girls. The discussion focuses on heterotypic stability in directive parenting and its implications for children's feelings toward their mothers.     

Recognizing the ‘big things’ and the ‘little things’ in child protection cases

In this article, we explore how ‘family’ is conceptualized and negotiated in a Mexican and a Chilean child protection institution. We draw on empirical material from two qualitative studies, employing a multi‐method approach. By using a theoretical framework from family sociology, we explore how ‘family’ is done and displayed by families of children in residential care despite socio‐economic, structural and institutional constraints. These displays consist mainly of ‘little things’ of a mundane character, such as homemade food, sweets, gifts, clothing and family photos, and more intangible displays as family narratives, affection and parental responsibility. The empirical material reveals how professionals commonly disregard these displays in favour of ‘big things’ such as housing, employment, nuclear family structure, therapy and parental school attendance. The professionals' recommendations and decisions in child custody cases can be interpreted as recognitions or rejections of family displays, as the acceptable limits of unconventionality are legally, socially and culturally drawn.