Child Health-Related Quality of Life and Parental Social Capital in Greece: An Exploratory Study

In this paper, we examined dimensions of child health-related quality of life in Greece in relation to parental assessments of neighbourhood social capital and social support networks. For the analysis, two main measures were used: (1) child self-reported health-related quality of life in ten dimensions, as measured by the KIDSCREEN questionnaire; (2) subjective measures of parental neighbourhood social capital and social support. Parental assessments of neighbourhood social capital and social support were both independently and positively associated with child self-reported health-related quality of life. However, they were not associated with the same dimensions of child well being, nor were they associated with all dimensions of child well being. These results suggest that greater attention in future research needs to be paid to the differential associations between the various dimensions of social capital and child health-related quality of life, with clear focus implications for social and health policies.     

Structural Analyses Of The Quality Of Life Of Children At Risk

Quality of life (QOL) is usually assessed in terms of levels. This paper, in contrast, examines the structure of the quality of life of its subjects: two groups of children at risk, children who were kept at home and those who were removed from home. The social workers who made the decisions were asked to assess the children’s quality of life using Shye’s Systemic Quality of Life Model. The study’s main finding is that the QOL structure of the two groups of children differs both from the theoretical “ideal” (or “healthy” structure) and from each other. The QOL structure of the children who were kept at home was closer to the ideal than that of the children who were removed. The difference from the ideal in both groups is consistent with the fact that both groups of children at risk, whose QOL is compromised by definition. The greater proximity to the “ideal” of the QOL structure of the children who were kept at home suggests that the social workers who made the decisions viewed these children as having a healthier QOL than the children who were removed from home.     

Family size and the quality of children

If couples decide to have fewer children in order to achieve higher “quality” offspring, are they correct in assuming that the quality of children bears an important and inverse relation to family size? If they are correct, how does number of children operate to affect individual quality? This research (using U.S. whites primarily) takes educational attainment (among adults) and college plans (among youngsters) as the principal indicators of quality, but also directs some attention to measures of intelligence. The analysis supports the “dilution model” (on average, the more children the lower the quality of each child) and indicates that only children do not suffer from lack of siblings, and that other last-borns are not handicapped by a “teaching deficit.” Number of siblings (relative to other background variables) is found to have an important detrimental impact on child quality—an impact compounded by the fact that, when couples are at a stage in life to make family-size decisions, most background factors (however important to the quality of their children) are no longer readily manipulable. A special path analysis of college plans among boys uses a modification of Sewell’s Wisconsin Model as its base. The results show that number of siblings is a negative influence on intervening variables affecting college plans. In general, the research documents the unfavorable consequences for individual siblings of high fertility, even in a country that is (at least for whites) as socially, economically, and politically advantaged as the United States.     

关注一孩政策后续效应：老年人晚年照料意愿及其影响因素分析

伴随着迅速的社会变迁,老年人晚年照料的被期待支持者与实际支持者之间出现了些许矛盾。基于CLASS 的调查数据,对老年人晚年照料负责的主体划分为四类,分别是正式支持、子代支持、非典型自我支持和协同支持。通过交叉分析和逻辑回归发现,虽然独生子女父母和非独生子女父母认为晚年照料由正式支持来负责的比例都不高,但是独生子女父母在该项的责任认定方面明显高于非独生子女父母。相比于非独生子女父母对于子代支持责任的依赖,独生子女父母对于照料责任的认定比较分散,呈现出正式支持、子代支持、非典型自我支持和协同支持平分秋色的特点。个人基本特征、经济状况因素、健康状况因素以及生活态度因素等变量均对老年人晚年照料责任意愿的认定影响显著。     

Frontier settlement and child survival in the Brazilian Amazon

This study uses sample data from the 1960, 1970 and 1980 demographic censuses to estimate child survival rates among children born to native and migrant women in the Brazilian Amazon. Estimates show that by 1980 the probability of death among children was quite similar when comparing native and migrant populations in the aggregate. However, after controlling for household economic activity and income, death rates were higher among migrant children. The findings suggests that nonmigrants are better able than recent colonists to mobilize physical and social environments to safeguard the health of their children.     

Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Associations of Categories of Physical Activities with Dimensions of Subjective Well-Being in Taiwanese Older Adults

Physical activity takes place in different social contexts such as leisure, home, and work. However, the differential associations of these distinct categories of activity with aspects of well-being have rarely been investigated. This study was designed to estimate independent associations of (a) leisure-time, (b) domestic and (c) work-related physical activities with subjective well-being in older adults. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2009 with 2,295 community-dwelling older adults aged 65 or older in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Among them, 307 participants were selected for a 3-year follow-up study in 2012. The results based on cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses demonstrated that leisure-time physical activity, after multivariate adjustment, was positively associated with five dimensions of well-being, including ‘physical’, ‘psychological’, ‘independence’, ‘learning and growth’, and ‘social’ well-being. Household physical activity was positively associated only with ‘social’ well-being. Occupational physical activity was not related to any dimension of well-being. The study suggests that associations between physical activity and dimensions of subjective well-being during later life are dependent on the social context in which the activity takes place. This study indicates that physical activity taken as leisure has greatest potential to enhance the quality of life of older adults.     

农村50岁以上独生子女父母与子女经济互动及养老预期——基于对全国5县调查

根据对全国5县(区)抽样调查,农村50岁以上独生子女老年父母家庭有近6成空巢。尽管这些父母的大多数觉得2个及以上孩子对于养老来说更好,但依靠子女养老和多代同堂观念已大为削弱。这些家庭代际间财富流动以子女对父母反哺为主。6成独生子女父母赞成与子女分开住,即使子女今后搬到城镇住,也有近一半人明确表示不会到子女家住,但他们同时并未显示出对社会养老保障的信任,这种窘境使这些曾为人口控制做出突出贡献的老人面临严峻的养老挑战。     

Child care for preschoolers: Differences by child’s age

Because of the high rates of employment of mothers, a large and increasing number of preschool children receive regular care from someone else. This article develops and tests hypotheses about the choice of child care arrangements for younger and older preschool children, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women. We argue that appropriate care depends on the age of the child. It includes care by the mother or a paid provider in the child's home for children aged 0-2 and mother care and nursery school or center care for those 3-5. We estimate models of the mother's employment and choice of child care separately for younger and older preschoolers. Our results show that need for care, presence of substitutes for the mother, financial resources, and preferences all affect both full-time care by the mother and the type of child care chosen by working women, although they affect these two decisions in different ways.     

Social Exclusion and Quality of Life: An Empirical Study from Turkey

We examine the perception of social exclusion and quality of life and their interactions among a group of Turkish citizens. For this purpose we used the social exclusion scale developed by Jehoel-Gijsbers and Vrooman and the WHOQOL-BREF scale. The study group consists of 2,493 participants who are residents of a city in Turkey. Our study was based on self reporting and voluntary participation. We used SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) for the analysis. We observed significant paths among several dimensions of quality of life and social exclusion. We found that the material deprivation dimension of social exclusion has a direct and negative impact on the environment and social relationships domains of quality of life. The material deprivation dimension explains 36% of the variation in the environment and 16% of the variation in social relationship domains of quality of life. This finding indicates that the material deprivation and social participation play an important role in the perception of environmental and psychological life quality. Physical health, social relationships, and environmental domains of life quality are important in the social participation dimension of perceived social exclusion.     

America's children: mixed prospects

The prospects of US children are uneven and uncertain. Today's youngsters are more apt to have fewer siblings, come from a broken home, have a working mother, and pass time as a "latchkey kid." More children are in child care than in the past and there has been a significant move toward center-based care. Increasingly, preschool-age children, particularly from relatively well-off families, are enrolled in prekindergarten educational settings. Declining family size and recent American prosperity have created material well-being for most of today's children. But the development of an underclass has also increased the number of children trapped in poverty. The stagnant wages of the "working poor" and the growing number of mother-only households have exacerbated income inequality among children from different family circumstances. The decline in educational achievement scores, which characterized the 1970s, has, for the moment at least, ended and the average school performance even improved slightly in the 1980s. In addition, more students, especially black students, completed high school in the 1980s. And the physical health of the average American child has improved dramatically since 1960. Most American children lead happy, healthy lives and several trends portend well for the future of most youngsters. But the picture is marred by the problematic future of the children of the underclass and the uncertain psychological impact of America's transformed family life.     

The Multidimensionality of Child Poverty: Evidence from Afghanistan

This paper examines multidimensional poverty among children in Afghanistan using the Alkire-Foster method. Several previous studies have underlined the need to separate children from their adult nexus when studying poverty and treat them according to their own specificities. From the capability approach, child poverty is understood to be the lack of freedom to do and to be what children themselves value and have reason to value. The case of Afghanistan is particularly relevant as years of conflict aggravated by several severe droughts, political insecurity, bad governance and ongoing violence have significantly increased poverty in the country. The paper discusses the relevant dimensions when analysing child poverty and uses data from a survey carried out by Handicap International which contains information on dimensions of children’s wellbeing that is typically missing in standard surveys. Ten dimension are considered in this paper: health, care and love, material deprivation, food security, social inclusion, education, freedom from economic and non-economic exploitation, shelter and environment, autonomy, and mobility. Our results show that younger children, those living in rural areas, girls and disabled children are the most deprived.     

Familial Influences on Poverty Among Young Children in Black Immigrant,U.S.-born Black,and Nonblack Immigrant Families

This study examines how familial contexts affect poverty disparities between the children of immigrant and U.S.-born blacks, and among black and nonblack children of immigrants. Despite lower gross child poverty rates in immigrant than in U.S.-born black families, accounting for differences in family structure reveals that child poverty risks among blacks are highest in single-parent black immigrant families. In addition, within two-parent immigrant families, child poverty declines associated with increasing assimilation are greater than the respective declines in single-parent families. The heads of black immigrant households have more schooling than those of native-black households. However, increased schooling has a weaker negative association with child poverty among the former than among the latter. In terms of racial disparities among the children of immigrants, poverty rates are higher among black than nonblack children. This black disadvantage is, however, driven by the outcomes of first-generation children of African and Hispanic-black immigrants. The results also show that although children in refugee families face elevated poverty risks, these risks are higher among black than among nonblack children of refugees. In addition, the poverty-reducing impact associated with having an English-proficient household head is about three times lower among black children of immigrants than among non-Hispanic white children of immigrants.     

The Importance of General Self-Efficacy for the Quality of Life of Adolescents with Chronic Conditions

We investigated the influence of general self-efficacy perceived by adolescents with chronic conditions and parents on quality of life. This cross-sectional study used the general self-efficacy scale and DISABKIDS condition-generic module to survey adolescents (92/293; 31 %) with type I diabetes, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, cystic fibrosis, kidney/urological conditions, and neuromuscular disorders; and parents (121/293; 41 %). Self perceived and parents’ perceived general self-efficacy of adolescents was compared using paired t-tests, and adolescents’ quality of life and general self-efficacy were compared among conditions using analysis of variance. Bivariate correlations between general self-efficacy and quality of life were identified, and multiple regression sought predictors of quality of life after controlling for background variables. Social quality of life was lowest among those with neuromuscular disorders. General self-efficacy was highest among adolescents with cystic fibrosis and lowest among those with urological conditions. Parents’ perceptions of general self-efficacy were higher than adolescents’ (p ≤ 0.05), although absolute differences were small. General self-efficacy perceived by parents and adolescents was related to emotional, physical, and social quality of life. Adolescents’ perceived self-efficacy predicted all quality of life domains. Parents’ perceptions of the adolescents self-efficacy predicted the adolescents’ social quality of life (β = 0.19; p ≤ 0.01). General self-efficacy of adolescents with chronic conditions as perceived by themselves and their parents is important for adolescents’ quality of life. Interventions to improve general self-efficacy should benefit quality of life among these adolescents.     

A Comparison of Older Informal Caregivers and Non-Caregivers Living in Non-Metropolitan Areas

The primary purpose of this study was tocompare the quality of life, health, and socialsupport of caregivers and non-caregivers age 65or older. A secondary purpose was to examineage identity in these two groups. This samplewas taken from a large quality of life surveyof 875 individuals age 55 or older living incommunities in northern British Columbia,Canada (Michalos et al.,2001). We restricted our sample to (a)individuals 65 years or older because we wereparticularly interested in seniors, and (b)married individuals because preliminaryanalyses indicated that marital status was apotentially confounding variable in thecaregiver/non-caregiver comparisons. Thus, oursample consisted of 239 married,community-dwelling respondents ranging in agefrom 65 to 86 years, with an average age of71.8 years. Of these respondents, 48.5% werefemales and 26.4% were caregivers. Generallyspeaking, caregivers and non-caregivers werenot significantly different in terms of qualityof life, self-reported health, and most aspectsof social support and age identity. Seniors,whether they were caregivers or not, reportedpositive levels of quality of life and healthstatus. Caregivers and non-caregivers, however,did differ in terms of: (a) their satisfactionwith their romantic relationships, withcaregivers being less satisfied, and (b) theage they felt mentally with caregivers feelingslightly older mentally than non-caregivers.Thus, caregiver status alone does not appear toresult in lower levels of quality of life,poorer mental and physical health, lower levelsof social support, or older age identitiesoverall in older, married adults living innon-metropolitan areas.     

Different Predictors of Quality of Life in Urban Environment

The present study aimed at comparing the effects of different sets of predictors on quality of life in an urban environment. We used secondary data collected by means of a self-report questionnaire on a sample of 343 residents of a big Italian city. The questionnaire included a multidimensional scale elaborated by the World Health Organization (WHOQoL brief scale) assessing quality of life in terms of four different evaluations concerning distinct aspects of life: physical health; psychological status; social relationships; environment. Four different types of predictors were considered: (1) socio-demographic characteristics; (2) quality of social relations (perceived social support); (3) place attachment; (4) healthy lifestyle. To test the influence of different groups of predictors on the dimensions of WHOQoL we performed four hierarchical regression analyses. Several significant influences were found. In particular the results pointed out the great role of perceived social support and place attachment in promoting quality of life. That result suggests the importance of community interventions in urban environment.     

Environmental quality and the well-being of children

There are many reasons for believing that the environment exerts an influence (directly or indirectly) on the wellbeing of children and families. However, while clear evidence is available that low socioeconomic status is associated with lower than average levels of wellbeing, especially among adults, the evidence linking the social and emotional adjustment of children with the quality of the environment is patchy and equivocal. In this paper we focus on three levels of the family environment: the street, the home and the neighborhood. Neighborhood quality was measured by the Vinson-Homel social problems index, street-type as residential or commercial/retail, and housing quality in terms of upkeep, floor occupied, availability of playspace and occupancy type. The research hypothesis was that after allowing for community selection processes children living in lower quality environments would be less satisfied with various areas of their lives, would experience more negative emotions, and would have more restricted and less positive friendship patterns. The sample comprised 321 families which included a 9–11 year old child, drawn from 18 neighborhoods of Sydney. Neighborhood social problem score and street-type, and some aspects of housing, predicted emotional and social adjustment. Before and after controls for family composition, social class and culture, children living in commercial streets, particularly in inner-city areas, stood out from all others in their feelings of loneliness, dislike of other children and feelings of rejection, worry, fear, anger and unhappiness. Children living in high social problems areas showed a pattern of social constriction rather than maladjustment. These results suggest not simply the influence of social class but genuine community socialization effects. Possible sources of, and mechanisms for, these effects are suggested.     

Estimating the completeness of death registration

In this paper, U.S. data from the 1981 Child Health Supplement are used to estimate the effect of a child's disability or serious chronic illness on: (1) the risk of the parents' divorcing before the child reaches the age of 11, and (2) the mother's chances of remarriage after divorce. Divorce is significantly more common among the parents of disabled or sickly children than among those of healthy children, and these disruptive effects of a child's frailty are even stronger when children are between six and nine years old than when they are younger. Possibly, divorce only becomes a viable option for some parents once a sickly child has started to spend part of the day away from home, in school. In contrast, a child's health status does not predict the mother's waiting time to remarriage. A range of potentially confounding demographic factors are controlled in the models, and their effects on children's chances of experiencing parental divorce are as expected. For example, having a mother who married young significantly predicts parental divorce.     

Changes in Young Children’s Family Structures and Child Care Arrangements

Family structure change can disrupt the settings of children’s daily lives. Most scholarship focuses on disruption in the home environment. Moving beyond the home, this study explores the association between changes in family structure and changes in several dimensions of early child care. With longitudinal data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 1,298), first-difference models reveal that family structure transitions are associated with changes in the type and quantity of early care as well as the number of care arrangements used, especially during the latter part of infancy. Given prior evidence linking these child care dimensions to behavioral and cognitive outcomes, these results suggest a policy-relevant mechanism by which family change may create inequalities among children.     

养老院老人的需求与养老机构专业化——对北京市某养老院的个案研究

本文通过对北京市某养老院的个案研究 ,分析了当前中国养老院老人的生活及精神、心理需求。文章指出 ,正是这些需求的出现不断推动着中国养老机构走向专业化的道路。而在提升服务水平 ,迈向专业化的过程中 ,引入社会工作的专业价值与工作手法 ,是中国养老机构拓展生存和发展空间的有效途径     

Growing Parental Economic Power in Parent–Adult Child Households: Coresidence and Financial Dependency in the United States, 1960–2010

Research on coresidence between parents and their adult children in the United States has challenged the myth that elders are the primary beneficiaries, instead showing that intergenerationally extended households generally benefit the younger generation more than their parents. Nevertheless, the economic fortunes of those at the older and younger ends of the adult life course have shifted in the second half of the twentieth century, with increasing financial well-being among older adults and greater financial strain among younger adults. This article uses U.S. census and American Community Survey (ACS) data to examine the extent to which changes in generational financial well-being over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been reflected in the likelihood of coresidence and financial dependency in parent–adult child U.S. households between 1960 and 2010. We find that younger adults have become more financially dependent on their parents and that while older adults have become more financially independent of their adult children, they nevertheless coreside with their needy adult children. We also find that the effect of economic considerations in decisions about coresidence became increasingly salient for younger adults, but decreasingly so for older adults.