Household finances and well-being in Australia: An empirical analysis of comparison effects

This paper explores the importance of the household’s financial position for an individual’s level of well-being. Initially, the empirical analysis, based on the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a large nationally representative panel survey, aims to ascertain the impact of the household’s monetary financial position on overall life satisfaction and financial well-being, with the latter being measured by financial satisfaction and subjective prosperity. The empirical analysis confirms that the household’s level of net wealth, assets and debt are important determinants of overall life satisfaction and financial well-being. The paper goes on to explore whether the financial situation of households in a comparison group influences an individual’s overall life satisfaction and financial well-being. The results suggest that the financial position of households in the comparison group is an important determinant of an individual’s level of overall life satisfaction and financial well-being, with information effects generally dominating comparison effects. In addition, the effects of the comparison group are asymmetric depending on whether a household’s financial position is above or below the average of the reference group.     

Economic justice in adolescence: An Australian-Japanese comparison

This cross-national study examines adolescents' allocations of economic rewards according to perceived family need. Japanese and Australian boys responded to situations corresponding to all possible combinations of four evaluative dimensions: worker effort, ability, work outcome and family need. When outcome was presented as high. Japanese adolescents with increasing age allocated a significantly greater income increment to workers with high family need than did their Australian counterparts. In addition. Japanese adolescents allocated significantly more income to low ability workers. In both samples, high need was rewarded significantly inore than low need, except when workers' ability was high but their effort and work outcome were stated as low. The results are discussed in terms of Western and Japanese economic arrangements, and point to changes in concern for family need which continue to develop beyond childhood as influenced by the cultural context.     

Disability and social policy: an international perspective

SUMMARY. The paper presents a broad overview of the major issues facing those responsible for facilities and services for children and young people with disabilities. The author was associated with an OBCD/CERI project on transition from school to adult and working life and the discussion arises from that international experience. The paper draws attention to the need for statutory and voluntary agencies to work towards agreed objectives and for policies on disability to be an integral part of policies for all children and young people     

Understanding the typologies of child subjective well-being: A cross-country comparison

Comparative international studies on children's happiness and life satisfaction using child-centric measures are gathering much interest. The aim of this exploratory study is to expand the literature in this area by examining the typologies of children's well-being across various domains of their lives. The present study utilizes data from ten countries that participated in the first wave of the International Survey of Child Well-Being (ISCWeB). Latent Profile Analysis was utilized to identify the latent classes extracted from the Personal Well-being Index—School Children (PWI-SC). We then examined how children's overall life satisfaction and happiness differ across classes using ANOVA. We found the 6-class model to be the best fitting model. Children were identified to be in classes entitled, “high satisfaction overall,” “high overall satisfaction but low satisfaction for outside activity” “medium satisfaction overall,” “low satisfaction with health and safety,” “high satisfaction with health and low satisfaction with safety and ability,” and “low overall satisfaction.” Findings from ANOVA analysis suggest that classes significantly differ in terms of their overall life satisfaction and happiness. The implications of the study findings are discussed.     

Economic theory and international migration

The modern literature on the economics of immigration focuses on 3 related issues: 1) what determines the size and skill composition of immigrants flows to any particular host country; 2) how do the immigrants adapt to the host country's economy; and 3) what is the impact of immigrants on the host country's economy? This article reviews the theoretical framework and empirical evidence provided by the economics literature on these questions. It demonstrates that the economic approach, using the assumption that migration behavior is guided by the search for better economic opportunities and that the exchanges among the various players are regulated by an immigration market, leads to substantial insights in to these issues.     

Economic socialization: Basis for international comparisons

The aim of this article is to discuss some theoretical backgrounds concerning children's development and socialization, particularly centered on economic socialization; this paper also describes how an international comparative research project reached maturity. The joint object is to investigate, through cross-cultural comparisons, a general picture of children's economic socialization throughout the world. Common points and differences according to specific social, economical and political situations in the countries are brought to the fore by an international comparative research project. A common method based on interviews centered on economic understanding, economic reasoning and economic attitudes was applied in 15 different countries.     

Effects of international law on migration policy and practice: the uses of hypocrisy

Classical learning recognizes no role for international law in affecting migration policy and practice, but in modern times the salutary effects are increasing, although they remain modest. International law influences migration policy primarily through effective invocation of various forms of "soft law" in internal and international political forums. More limited prospects exist for beneficial changes enforced by international institutions and domestic courts. The article cautions against inflated expectations in the latter settings, however, particularly because overly ambitious claims can be counterproductive. It then offers a few predictions about near-term effects of international law, having to do with departures from a country, refugee law, and the integration of migrants into their new homelands.     

Child support guidelines: Economic theory and policy considerations

Federal legislation has mandated that all states develop numeric guidelines for child support awards in divorce and paternity suits. The purpose of this article is to review the theoretical models currently used in guidelines development and to present an analysis of issues pertinent to the development and use of guidelines. A familiarity with the principles underlying child support guidelines will assist family scientists who may be called upon to provide expertise on this public policy issue.Barbara R. Rowe is Family Resource Management Extension Specialist, College of Family Life, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322-2949. Her research interests include the economics of divorce and at-home-income-generation. She received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University.     

International migration,international relations and foreign policy

Recent literature on migration, international relations, and foreign policy is reviewed in this article, stressing applications of global systems paradigms, studies of state entry and exit rules, and anatomies of domestic policy-setting processes on migration. After a concise assessment of the contemporary theory of global political economy, the paper argues for seeking mid-range generalizations on the international relations of migration. It also suggests that analysis begin with the policy-setting processes of the state. Especially through the use of comparative perspectives available from domestic policy making studies and from the field of international comparative public policy, this approach offers the opportunity to fix empirically the political roles of transnational social forces, which often present themselves as participants in domestic policy contests. Promising future directions in the study of state-to-state relations are also evaluated, with the anticipation that verifying regional or other intermediate patterns of world migration politics may contribute to more general theories of international political economy.     

Economic development: the middle class and international migration in the Dominican Republic

"The Dominican Republic is classified as one of a group of Latin American and Caribbean countries whose international migratory flows appear to be primarily composed of the urban middle class, rather than the rural poor. It is argued that Dominican middle class international migration has emerged as a partial solution to a political economic crisis that was dramatized by the April Revolution of 1965 and deepened through the 1970s with the failure of industrialization strategies to generate significant changes in the class structure."     

Marital status and psychological well-being: An individual-environment congruence perspective

The role of the individual's relationship to his environment has achieved central prominence in social science theory, but has not yet been adequately represented and measured through numerical methods. A variety of multivariate regression techniques have been proposed to incorporate individual and environmental level measures in a single regression equation. This article presents a special case of a contextual analysis model in which two sets of predictor variables are statistically treated to create a third set of predictor variables called congruence measures. Each of the three sets of predictor variables are then run separately in multiple regression equations against a fourth set of individual level outcome variables to determine the relative gain in predictive power of the congruence measures over the individual and environmental level variables when they are run alone. Martital status variables are used to illustrate and examine the model.     

Migrant labor in agriculture: an international comparison

The May 1984 Conference on Migrant Labor in Agriculture at the University of California-Davis discussed papers by 22 farm labor experts from 12 nations. Each industrial nation utilizes a different set of public and private policies to supply workers for labor-intensive agriculture, but none is entirely satisfactory. Labor-intensive agriculture is becoming more dependent on workers who are shut out of labor markets. Some countries have simply accepted foreign workers in agriculture, while others have adopted policies to integrate farm and nonfarm labor markets. Polices to reduce agriculture's reliance on workers-without-options include restructuring employment practices to employ fewer seasonal workers for longer periods, mechanizing production, and importing fruits and vegetables from nearby developing countries. This article explains the salient features of labor-intensive agriculture, the various polices for obtaining seasonal farmworkers, and options to reduce farming's dependence on migrant labor.     

Influencing international child labour policy: The potential and limits of children-centred research

How did research with working children influence child labour policy in the late 1990s and early 2000s? What were the constraints to research findings exerting greater influence over international policy? This paper explores these questions against the backdrop of studies with working children in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1994, 1995 and 1999. It is suggested that rights-based, children-centred research is a potential means of gaining insights into the lives of working children. As such, research has a role to play in informing policy. An analysis of international debates during the 1990s indicates that the findings of research with children did exert some influence over international child labour policy in the 1990s, but there were limits to the extent of that influence. In seeking to explain these limits, this article explores the tension between research that recognises and reports children's agency and the structural constraints that militate against children's views, experiences and priorities being translated into policy.     

Social class in the educational system: an international comparison*

Nous avons construit un schéma objectif pour les classes sociales fondamentales de la société capitaliste en utilisant deux dichotomies de base: L'engagement directement dans le processus de production ou non, et L'exercise d'une fonction de contrôle ou non. Nous trouvons quatre classes sociales: les capitalistes, les professions idéologiques, les cols blancs, et les ouvriers. Pour L'étude d'une société capitaliste spécifique, il nous faut au moins deux autres classes, plus périphériques, les petits propriétaires indépendants dans la production et dans le commerce. Nous étudions les enfants des six classes sociales dans les systèmes d'éducation de sept pays de capitalisme avancé par rapport aux trois variables principales: le type de programme, les notes en mathématiques, et le souhait de poursuivre les études. Des ressemblances frappantes se trouvent pour les variables de chaque pays et à travers les pays. Une polarisation existe entre les deux classes de contrôle et les deux classes ouvrières dans les pays européens. Par contre, aux Etats-Unis, les classes idéologique et col-blanc forment une ‘classe moyenne.’ Les positions des deux classes de petits propriétaires varient selon le pays. Les contradictions de classe dans le système d'éducation en Belgique et en France indiquent les causes des conflits récents sur la politique de L'éducation. Le ‘capital culturel’ de L'education des parents paraît aider le plus les enfants de la classe idéologique. II maintient et reproduit les rapports capitalistes de domination/subordination. An objective schema for the fundamental social classes of capitalist society is developed by means of two basic dichotomies: direct involvement in the production process or not, and exercise of a function of control or not. This yields four classes: the capitalist, ideological, white collar, and manual working classes. In the study of a given capitalist society, at least two other, more peripheral, social classes are also required - the small proprietors involved in production and in commerce. Children from these six social classes are studied within the educational systems of seven advanced capitalist countries using three principal variables: enrolment in a school program, mathematics test score, and desire for further education. Strong similarities are found both among variables within countries and across countries, with a polarization of the two control classes versus the two working classes in the European countries, while the ideological and white collar classes form a ‘middle class’ in the USA. The positions of the two small proprietor classes vary with the country. Class contradictions within the school systems of Belgium and France