The impact of aging out of WIC on food security in households with children

Correlational research suggests that disadvantaged families with young children who are food insecure often participate in the Women Infants and Children program (WIC). While there has been a considerable amount of research on the association between WIC participation and food insecurity, these studies have reported mixed findings and do not explore the effects of WIC at a critical age, when children turn five years old. This paper estimates the effects of aging out of WIC on rates of household food insecurity using the exogenous rule that children are eligible for the WIC program until the day before they turn 61 months old. Using a regression discontinuity design and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth-cohort dataset, we find that there is an increase in rates of food insecurity for children who become age-ineligible for WIC (i.e., reach 61 months of age) and who have not yet started kindergarten. Furthermore, this effect is robust under different models, bandwidths and analytic samples.     

基于社保基金监管的理论探析与制度构建

社会保障基金是整个社会保障制度的物质基础．而基金监管是社会保障基金安全有效运行的重要保证。如何在基金投资运营的同时进行有效的监管．确保基金的安全与保值增值．已成为近年来社保领域关注的热点之一。构建完善的社会保障基金监管制度体系．是保证社会保障基金安全、实现基金既定目标的必然选择．是完善社会保障制度体系、维护基金产权人合法利益的制度安排。是促进我国经济社会健康、稳定、和谐发展的重要制度支撑。     

Assessing the impact of planned social change

It is a special characteristic of all modern societies that we consciously decide on and plan projects designed to improve our social systems. It is our universal predicament that our projects do not always have their intended effects. Very probably we all share in the experience that often we cannot tell whether the project had any impact at all, so complex is the flux of historical changes that would have been going on anyway, and so many are the other projects that might be expected to modify the same indicators.It seems inevitable that in most countries this common set of problems, combined with the obvious relevance of social science research procedures, will have generated a methodology and methodological specialists focused on the problem of assessing the impact of planned social change. It is an assumption if this paper that, in spite of differences in the forms of government and approaches to social planning and problem-solving, much of this methodology can be usefully shared — that social project evaluation methodology is one of the fields of science that has enough universality to make scientific sharing mutually beneficial. As a part of this sharing, this paper reports on program impact assessment methodology as it is developing in the United States today.     

The impact of foster care privatization on multiple placements

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of foster care privatization policy on multiple placements in Florida's foster care system. A variant of the interrupted time series design allowed for an assessment of privatization policy within 282 data points (six years of data nested in 47 counties). Results from hierarchical linear analysis models identified a significant effect for privatization while controlling for a major alternative explanation. Specifically, the percent of children in fewer than three placements was significantly lower in the post-privatization years than in the pre-privatization years. This effect varied across counties. Line graphs revealed a variety of trends among providers, which may explain the variation of privatization's effect across counties. These results have implications for policymakers seeking to address the goal of permanence and for child welfare administrators involved in the implementation of privatization policy.     

The impact of family structure and social change on adolescent sexual behavior

This article presents a biophysical perspective on adolescent sexual feelings and behavior. The study particularly analyzes sexual attraction, desire, and mate selection as evolutionary adaptations just as important to species survival. Sex differences in mating strategies are described as part of this evolutionary adaptation. Recent research findings demonstrate how these strategies explain contemporary sexual and reproductive behavior in Western societies today, as they do sexual behavior in the past or across diverse cultures. The implications of this analysis are significant to intervention efforts to postpone sexual initiation and avert nonmarital births. Discussion on demographic and normative changes that affect adolescent sexual behavior included trends in sexual maturation and changing marriage norms. The author urges greater emphasis on the early pubertal years; increased attention to teaching adolescents more about their own sexual development; a less absolutist focus on sexual abstinence, which may be appropriate and more feasible for 12 year olds but not for 16 year olds; better and more widespread sex education at earlier ages and throughout the school curriculum; frank discussion of all the options available for those who experience an unwanted pregnancy; and same level of attention towards adolescent boys and girls.     

Peasant struggles and social change: migration,households and gender in a rural Turkish society

"This article sheds light on the interrelationship of seasonal migration, subsistence production and peasant relations in a community (Sakli) located in Turkey's northwestern countryside.... While migrant labor is understood by local villagers as forming part of a continual battle to preserve local tradition and kinship ties, this article shows how it reduces the dominion of landlords while creating internal household differentiation and gendered hierarchies."     

The social world of assisted living

This study defines assisted living as a unique social world and is based on a 22-month ethnography in three facilities and completion of the program required of certified assisted living facility (ALF) managers in Oregon. The focus was on how daily operations are affected by central values (i.e., independence, choice, privacy) defined by Oregon Administrative Rules (OAR). In their efforts to legitimize this newly constructed social world, proponents and providers have developed a package consisting of a unique vocabulary and two organizational practices, the Negotiated Service Agreement (NSA) and Managed Risk Agreement (MRA). This package is integral to the maintenance of this social world, providing the means for defining and defending assisted living. These organizational tools offer a contemporary perspective on the rights of chronically ill and disabled seniors to make choices about their health care, even choices that might be defined as risky by medical professionals.     

The welfare impact of microcredit on rural households in China

Microcredit has gained worldwide acceptance in recent years as a flexible mechanism to expand individuals’ (especially the poor's) access to financial services, which is considered as an efficient way to achieve poverty reduction and other social development. A large number of empirical studies have been done to examine the welfare effects of microcredit on the borrowers and such effects are well documented in many other countries such as Bangladesh. However, the impacts of microcredit on China rural households’ livelihood are not well documented. This paper attempts to empirically evaluate the impact of microcredit on household welfare outcomes such as income and consumption in rural China. The estimation is based on the difference-in-difference approach which is an increasingly popular method of tackling the selection bias issue in assessing the impacts of microcredit. The study uses a two-year panel dataset, including both primary and secondary data collected through a household survey in rural China. Our empirical results favour the wide belief in the literature that joining microcredit programme helps improve households’ welfare such as income and consumption. Despite the optimistic findings on how microcredit has changed the rural households’ living conditions, our results show that the vast majority of the programme participants are non-poor, which casts some doubts on the social potential (such as poverty reduction) of China's microcredit programmes.     

Dependency and interdependency: the incomes of informal carers and the impact of social security

Consideration of the income and social security needs of informal carers has remained conspicuously absent from discussions about 'community care'. Similarly, carers have been more or less invisible in the development of social security policies. This paper reports on a study of the financial circumstances of a sample of working age carers, who were living with and providing substantial amounts of help and support to a disabled person in the same household. The study highlights first, the substantial work-related costs incurred by carers with full time employment; and second the financial dependency of carers without full time earnings, on their spouse, sibling or on the person being cared for. The implications of these findings are discussed in the light of recent developments in social security policies.     

The social conditions of cumulation

Unlike philosophy, a sociological theory of cumulation cannot legislate the logical or metaphysical criteria which make cumulation in science universally possible. Instead, sociology must explain under which structural conditions cumulation events are more likely to occur than different varieties of change. Organizationally, cumulation events are rational myths, which tend to surface on ritual and ceremonial frontstages directed at concerned and skeptical outsiders. Historically, cumulation presupposes the retrospective closure and coherent periodization of episodes. Structurally, cumulation tends to occur when the intellectual and design spaces of a network or specialty are highly focussed on narrow and isolated dimensions of performance. Technically, much as in natural evolution, cumulative advances are more likely when experimental controls allow for restrictive tinkering on machines and machine-like devices. Cumulation is local, not global; it occurs in the short, not the long, run, and prefers non-turbulent environments.     

Renegotiating the domestic division of labour? A study of dual career households in north east and south east England

This paper is concerned with extending debate on the renegotiation of the domestic division of labour within the context of contemporary economic restructuring. Our focus is on a form of household which is becoming increasingly common in Britain in the 1990s. This is the dual career household, in which both partners are in full time professional/managerial employment. A sample of 71 households drawn from the North east and South east, forms the basis for the study. The paper is divided into three main sections. In the first we establish a typology of forms of the domestic division of labour, as well as a means of allocating individual households to particular forms of the domestic division of labour. Then we move on to discuss the degree of variation in particular forms of the domestic division of labour found within our sample households and illustrate these with reference to five case studies. In our final section we consider the implications of our findings for the respective arguments of Lydia Morris and Jane Wheelock; point to the significance of gender identities to an understanding of between household variation in form of the domestic division of labour; and suggest how our finding shed light on the debate over women and social class.     

The relative impact of demographic change on future social expenditure increases: an example from Cyprus

"Taking the case of Cyprus, the authors examine the likely implications for social expenditure, under various scenarios of benefit and cost increases, of projected population changes up to the year 2020. The increased expenditure resulting solely from demographic changes could be easily absorbed if unit costs remain unchanged or rise no faster than overall productivity, but not if recent rapid increases in unit costs and in services continue."     

Drawing households and other living spaces in the process of assessment and psychotherapy

This paper introduces a drawing technique developed by the author for use in the assessment and treatment of individuals and families. The client is invited to draw a floor plan of his or her home or apartment, or an aerial view of un outdoor area. The drawing is then discussed and considered as a means of understanding critical elements of the experience of life space. The material derived is discussed from the eerspectives of family systems, psychodynamic, and abuse treatment theories, with special reference to notions of family structure, boundary, the self, and memory. Emphasis is placed on the actual physical layout of the home, as well as the subjective experience of it. Applications of the drawing technique for exploring memories are illustrated. Case examples are presented from clinical trials with children and adults in residential treatment, inpatient, and outpatient settings.The Heller Financial Corporation generously supports the development of household and spatial drawings for treatment and prevention. A version of this paper was presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Psychiatric Services for Children, New Orleans, February 26, 1992. The author wishes to thank Robert B. Bloom, Ph.D., Excutive Director of JCB, for supporting the development of ideas and techniques discribed in this paper.     

The GOAT effects impact upon educational R and D

The GOAT (Goodbye To All That) Effect is introduced as a special research and evaluation “outcome” effect characterizing decision-making unduly influenced by abandoning “write-off” tendencies, especially in the face of mounting problems. GOAT behavior can enter into educational decision-making all too easily because it finds a congenial atmosphere in education's habit of fluctuating with the latest trends and vogues and because it can use the prevailing systems analysis approach in much of educational management and evaluation as a blind. The “gradual refinement” approach offers an antidote to the GOAT Effect primarily because it is a fundamentally different approach from systems analysis and directly opposes the faddish orientation of current education.     

The impact of liquidity constraints and imperfect commitment on migration decisions of offspring of rural households

This paper presents a non-cooperative model of intra-household decision-making regarding investment in migration. It is shown that the combination of liquidity constraints and imperfect commitment are a source of underinvestment in migration. More precisely, we highlight that, if remittances are unenforceable as a repayment for the parent’s contribution in migration transaction costs, then both the migrant and the parent’s liquidity constraints, rather than the household’s liquidity constraint as a whole, matter in determining the investment decision. Besides, the insurance motive for remittances is shown to generate divergence of interest over the characteristics of migration. This result calls for a theoretical approach that properly takes account of potential internalization problems, which the paper intends to offer. Plausibility checks of the model are provided by comparative statics whose outcomes are consistent with previous research on migration and remittances.     

The impact of quantitative research in social work

The importance of quantitative research in the social sciences generally and social work specifically has been highlighted in recent years, in both an international and a British context. Consensus opinion in the UK is that quantitative work is the ‘poor relation’ in social work research, leading to a number of initiatives. However, Sharland’s UK work involves interviews with academics, representing consensus opinion. We have little independent measures of their accuracy. This paper is the first to focus on the academic impact of quantitative research in social work developing measurable outcomes. It focuses on three leading British-based generic journals over a 10-year period, encapsulating 1490 original articles. Impact is measured through three indices: Google Scholar and Web of Science Citations, and downloads. These provide measures of ‘revealed preference’ in relation to individual scholars’ impact (though to use them for a particular methodology is novel), whose particular qualities, strengths and limitations are noted. Contrary to received opinion of quantitative work as the ‘poor relation’ of social work research, findings show that it is not significantly disadvantaged relative to qualitative work in its ‘reach’ as measured by citations and downloads. The implications of this, including caveats and nuances, are discussed.     

The impact of schools and school programs upon adolescent sexual behavior

Because most youth are enrolled in school for many years before they initiate sex and when they initiate sex, schools have the potential for reducing adolescent sexual risk-taking. This paper reviews studies which examine the impact upon sexual risk-taking of school involvement, school characteristics, specific programs in school that do not address sexual behavior, and specific programs that do address sexual risk-taking. Multiple studies support several conclusions. First, involvement in and attachment to school and plans to attend higher education are all related to less sexual risk-taking and lower pregnancy rates. Second, students in schools with manifestations of poverty and disorganization are more likely to become pregnant. Third, some school programs specifically designed to increase attachment to school or reduce school dropout effectively delayed sex or reduced pregnancy rate, even when they did not address sexuality. Fourth, sex and HIV education programs do not increase sexual behavior, and some programs decrease sexual activity and increase condom or contraceptive use. Fifth, school-based clinics and school condom-availability programs do not increase sexual activity, and either may or may not increase condom or contraceptive use. Other studies reveal that there is very broad support for comprehensive sex- and HIV-education programs, and accordingly, most youth receive some amount of sex or HIV education. However, important topics are not covered in many schools.     

The social security system of the Federal Republic of Germany.

This article summarizes the major provisions of the West German social security system, briefly outlining coverage, funding sources, and unique features of insurance programs concerned with old age, invalidity and death, sickness and maternity, work injury, and unemployment. The universal program of family allowance and the means-tested program of social aid are also reviewed.