Reconciling Work, Family and Child Outcomes: What Implications for Family Support Policies?

This paper discusses the potential of family policies to reconcile the multiple objectives that they are expected to serve, over and above their role in offsetting the economic cost of children. We start by emphasizing the need to consider the multiple challenges that family policies in European Union??and/or OECD??countries have to address through a broadening of the standard economic approach to the cost of children. Policies indeed aim to reduce the ??direct?? monetary cost of raising children, but they also aim to minimise the indirect cost arising from the incidence of children on the parents?? work-life balance and on the aggregate level of employment. Moreover, motives for policy intervention such as concerns about child development, gender equity or aggregate fertility levels are not fully captured by cost measurements. We thus analyse how, and to what extent, family policies can successfully reconcile these multidimensional objectives. We offer a holistic approach, pointing out that a coherent family policy mix supporting working parents with preschool children is the only way to reconcile or limit the conflicts between work, family and child outcomes. Three main dichotomies are identified to explain cross-country differences in family policy packages: the emphasis on poverty alleviation; the supposed antagonism between fertility and female employment; and the potential conflict between this latter and child development. Ways to reconcile these objectives and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of family policies are further discussed.     

Multi-Dimensional Deprivation in India During and After the Reforms: Do the Household Expenditure and the Family Health Surveys Present Consistent Evidence?

This paper uses the recent approach of multidimensional deprivation measures to provide a comprehensive and wide ranging assessment of changes to living standards in India during the period, 1992/93–2004/5. This covers the reforms and the immediate post reforms time periods. The study is the first to be based on the simultaneous use of two parallel data sets, namely the National Sample Survey (NSS) and National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data sets, covering proximate rounds and near identical time periods. The results allow a check of consistency on the picture of deprivation in India between these two data sets. The study is conducted both at regionally disaggregated levels and by socio economic groups. The deprivation dimensions range widely from the conventional expenditure dimensions to non-expenditure dimensions such as access to drinking water and clean fuel, to health dimensions such as child stunting and the mother’s BMI. The use of decomposable deprivation measures allows the identification of regions, socio economic groups and deprivation dimensions that are contributing more than others to total deprivation.     

Going to extremes: Family structure, children’s well-being, and social science

In this article I argue that public discussions of demographic issues are often conducted in a troubling pattern in which one extreme position is debated in relation to the opposite extreme. This pattern impedes our understanding of social problems and is a poor guide to sound public policies. To illustrate this thesis I use the case of social scientific research examining how children are affected by not living with two biological parents while they are growing up. Over the last decade, I maintain, most of the public, and even many social scientists, have been puzzled and poorly informed by this debate. In particular I consider Judith Wallerstein's clinically based claims of the pervasive, profound harm caused by divorce and, at the other extreme, Judith Rich Harris's reading of behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology, which leads her to dismiss the direct effects of divorce. Neither extreme gives a clear picture of the consequences of growing up in a single-parent family or a stepfamily.     

Family Size and Children’s Education: Evidence from the One-Child Policy in China

Population Research and Policy Review - Evidence on a causal link between family size and children’s education is still inconclusive. Recent empirical studies have focused heavily on China,...     

Why poverty remains high: The role of income growth,economic inequality,and changes in family structure, 1949–1999

After dramatic declines in poverty from 1950 to the early 1970s in the United States, progress stalled. This article examines the association between trends in poverty and income growth, economic inequality, and changes in family structure using three measures of poverty: an absolute measure, a relative measure, and a quasi-relative one. I found that income growth explains most of the trend in absolute poverty, while inequality generally plays the most significant role in explaining trends in relative poverty. Rising inequality in the 1970s and 1980s was especially important in explaining increases in poverty among Hispanics, whereas changes in family structure played a significant role for children and African Americans through 1990. Notably, changes in family structure no longer had a significant association with trends in poverty for any group in the 1990s.     

Homosexuality,Religion, and the Family: The Effects of Religion on Americans’ Appraisals of the Parenting Abilities of Same-Sex Couples

Although a growing body of research focuses on Americans’ attitudes toward same-sex couples as parents, very few include measures of religion, and those that do fail to capture its multidimensional nature. Furthermore, many past studies relied on convenience samples of college students, or samples gathered outside the United States. Multivariate analyses of the 2012 General Social Survey—a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States—reveal that a slim majority of Americans still do not believe same-sex couples can parent as well as male-female couples, and the religious beliefs, behaviors, and affiliations of Americans are significantly and at times differentially associated with appraisals of same-sex couples’ parenting abilities. It appears that although religion is generally associated with more negative appraisals of the parenting abilities of same-sex couples, it is not uniformly so. Americans’ immediate religious and cultural context can shape their appraisals of homosexuality in diverse ways.     

Zhejiang: Improve the Management and Service Mechanism for Population and Family Planning among the Floating Population

Basic Data in 2005 At the end of 2005, the whole province of Zhejiang had a total number of 11.22 million immigrants of childbearing age, of whom 4.32 million were women and 2.99 million were married women. The number of children born to the floating population totaled 17,315, of which 2,943 were out-of-plan births. The fertility rate of the married women of childbearing     

Clinicians’ Perspective of the Relational Processes for Family and Individual Development During the Mediation of Religious and Sexual Identity Disclosure

Although the psychological literature regarding gay men from religious families is continually expanding, it is also limited in that few studies focus on the use of therapy in the negotiation of the interrelated systems of religion, sexuality, and family. Utilizing a cultural historical activity theory-based process of analysis, this study focuses on the narratives of 12 clinicians discussing 230 conflicts and how those conflicts are mediated in both productive (e.g., seeking secular support) and unproductive ways (e.g., bringing one’s son to an exorcist) by gay men and their religious families independent of and at the advice of their therapists.     

Rongcheng:Origin and Implementation of "Three Stresses" for Family Planning

Ｒｏｎｇｃｈｅｎｇ：ＯｒｉｇｉｎａｎｄＩｍｐｌｅｍｅｎｔａｔｉｏｎｏｆ＂ＴｈｒｅｅＳｔｒｅｓｓｅｓ＂ｆｏｒＦａｍｉｌｙＰｌａｎｎｉｎｇＲｏｎｇｃｈｅｎｇＣｉｔｙｏｆＳｈａｎｄｏｎｇＰｒｏｖｉｎｃｅｉｓｔｈｅｂｉｒｔｈｐｌａｃｅｏｆｔｈｅｇｕｉｄｅｌｉ...     

The Stages of Human Capital and Economic Growth: Does the Direction of Causality Matter for the Rich and the Poor?

This paper demonstrates that key models of human mobility across several disciplines can be considered as specific cases of a broader conceptualisation of mobility in terms of its contribution to wellbeing. It is argued that this wellbeing perspective offers important advantages for the formulation of policy in areas that must respond to mobility in cross-cultural contexts, and particularly in regard to policy relating to highly mobile, indigenous peoples. An applied example is provided through a discussion of how this conceptualisation of mobility offers a different understanding of the mobility of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, one that may have led to superior policy outcomes.     

Answers to Reporter＇s Questions by Wang Peian,Vice Minister of National Health and Family Planning Commission,Regarding Adherance to the Basic National Policy of Family Planning and Start-up of the Policy of Two Children for One Only-child Spouse

The Decision of the Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth CPC Central Committee proposed to start up a policy that allows couples with one spotlse being an only-child to have two children （hereinafter referred to as ＂the policy of two children for one only-child spouse＂）. The policy has received wide attention from the society. Why does the government choose to start up the policy at this stage？     

Functions of the State Family Planning Commission and Its M

ＦｕｎｃｔｉｏｎｓｏｆｔｈｅＳｔａｔｅＦａｍｉｌｙＰｌａｎｎｉｎｇＣｏｍｍｉｓｓｉｏｎ　ａｎｄＩｔｓＭａｊｏｒＣｏｏｒｄｉｎａｔｉｎｇＯｒｇａｎｉｚａｔｉｏｎｓＦｕｎｃｔｉｏｎｓｏｆｔｈｅＳｔａｔｅＦａｍｉｌｙＰｌａｎｎｉｎｇＣｏｍｍｉｓｓｉｏｎａｎ...     

Occupational mobility of American women: Compositional and structural changes, 1980–2007

In this paper, I document trends in women's occupational mobility between 1980 and 2007 in the U.S labor market, and link these trends to two distinct sources: compositional and structural changes. In this context, compositional changes refers to the over time trends in the distributions of men and women in the occupational wage hierarchy, while structural changes are the trends in the relative standing of occupations in the wage hierarchy over time. The findings provide empirical evidence for both processes, indicating that the impressive upward occupational mobility of American women is a consequence not only of their increased access to highly paid occupations, but also of the higher wage increments in their typical occupational profiles relative to men's—a structural change not often acknowledged by sociologists.     

Representations of the cinaedus in Roman art: Evidence of "gay" subculture?

Whereas analysis of ancient Roman texts reveals signs of a possible homosexual subculture, their interpretation is difficult. This article analyzes the content and context of visual representations of male-male intercourse, including wall paintings at Pompeii, a silver cup, and an engraved agate gemstone. Whether presenting negative stereotypes (Tavern of Salvius, Pompeii; Suburban Baths, Pompeii), or positive ones (Warren Cup, British Museum; Leiden gemstone), these representations reveal the presence of well-developed social attitudes toward the practice ofmale-male sex and the practitioners themselves.     

Does Misery Index Matter for the Persistence of Health Spending? Evidence from OECD Countries

Social Indicators Research - This paper employs the panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model to investigate the role of Okun’s misery index in the persistence of health spending in 19...