Social assistance and inclusive growth

The expansion of social assistance in low- and middle-income countries raises important issues for inclusive growth. Labour is by far the principal asset of low-income groups. Changes in the quantity, quality, and allocation of labour associated with social assistance will impact on the productive capacity of low-income groups and therefore on inclusive growth. The article re-assesses the findings reported by impact evaluations of social assistance in low- and middle-income countries to address this issue. Most studies have tested for potentially adverse labour supply incentive effects from transfers but have failed to find supportive evidence. The article highlights findings from this literature on the effects of social assistance on human capital accumulation and labour reallocation. They point to the conclusion that well-designed and well-implemented social assistance contributes to inclusive growth.     

A Decade of Sub-national Pro-poor Growth in Pakistan

The literature on subjective well-being has highlighted the negative effects associated with the restrictions and inequality imposed by the hukou system on China’s rural population. However, quantifying the cost of holding a rural hukou has generally been challenging because it can reflect unobserved individual characteristics related to educational and occupational choices. Thanks to RUMiC, a new longitudinal database on China, this limitation can be overcome by exploiting exogenous changes in hukou status due to land expropriation. The results support that receiving an urban hukou substantially enhances subjective well-being within the household, especially for males. The results complement a growing literature on subjective well-being focusing on China.     

Cross-national co-operation and human mobility: an introduction

This special issue contains four chapters that are part of the results produced within the IGU Commission on Global Change and Human Mobility by a wide network of researchers from a hundred-odd countries on every continent. International collaboration in the social sciences is part of a tradition that began 50 years ago on the initiative of UNESCO. Cross-national co-operation projects are a basic prerequisite for the global spread of knowledge and innovation. Human mobility – an element of synergy and overlap between migration and tourism – is a key research theme for social scientists worldwide. People flows are both the cause and consequence of the flow of capital, goods, and culture.

The complexity of the phenomenon and the lack of data to adequately illustrate it require the ‘innovative’ use of traditional statistical indicators.     

Essentialist beliefs about sexuality-related categories / Creencias esencialistas sobre diferentes categorías relacionadas con la sexualidad

People form essentialist beliefs about social categories as a strategy to organize their world and to make sense of the similarities and differences between different categories. This research examines four dimensions of essentialist thinking (biological basis, immutability, clarity of discreteness and informativeness) across different sexuality-related categories. Specifically, the categories of gays, lesbians, transsexuals, paedophiles, rapists and prostitutes were studied. Results show that essentialist beliefs of the six categories vary across dimensions and that essentialist dimensions function independently. Therefore, we discuss the relative usefulness of taking a global measurement as opposed to analysing the dimensions of essentialism separately.     

Discrepancies Between Retrospective and Actual Self‐Reports of Peer Victimization Six Years Earlier

Retrospective peer victimization reports may be inaccurate. With an ethnically and sexually diverse sample, this study compared adolescents’ self‐reported peer victimization in 6th grade to their own retrospective reports of 6th‐grade victimization when they were in the 12th grade, controlling for past and current adjustment. Overall, 12th graders’ retrospective victimization reports correlated with their own earlier 6th‐grade self‐reports and there was a general tendency to underreport retrospectively. Underreporters were distinguished by worse past 6th‐grade adjustment, whereas overreporters were distinguished by worse current (12th‐grade) adjustment. Higher current depressive symptoms and social anxiety, and lower current self‐worth may be important control variables when collecting retrospective reports of victimization because current adjustment may augment participants’ recollection of past experiences.     

Interorganizational collaboration in social service organizations: A study of the prerequisites to success

Organizational scholars have identified four prerequisites to effective interorganizational collaboration: incentive, willingness, ability, and capacity. This study analyzes data drawn from participants in eight family services collaboratives in order to assess the relationships identified in the literature. Our findings support the premise that each of these prerequisites is positively related to collaborative effectiveness. Implications for collaboration leaders are suggested.     

On kissing and sighing: Renaissance homoerotic love from Ficino's De Amore and Sopra Lo Amore to Cesare Trevisani's L'impresa (1569)

This essay investigates the homoerotic connotations present in the so-called treatises on love, a popular philosophical and literary genre of the Italian Renaissance. The referential text of this sixteenth- century genre is Marsilio Ficino's De amore (1484), a deeply innovative interpretation of Plato's Symposium. Focusing on the initial section of Ficino's text, Maggi highlights some important structural differences between the De amore and the Symposium. Moreover, by comparing Ficino's Latin text with his own subsequent Italian translation (Sopra lo amore, 1544), Maggi examines how Ficino interprets some key terms such as appearance and splendor. The second part of the essay studies Cesare Trevisani's L'impresa (1569), a later treatise on love with an explicit homoerotic foundation.     

Peers’ emotionality and children's academic achievement in second grade: Testing the moderating role of children's behavioral self-regulation

Although there is interest in the role of peers in children's schooling experiences, few researchers have examined associations and related underlying processes between peers’ emotionality, an aspect of temperament, and children's academic achievement. This study evaluated whether target children's (N = 260) own self-regulation, assessed with two behavioral measures, served a moderating function for associations between peers’ emotionality and children's own academic achievement in second grade. There was a positive association between peers’ positive emotionality and reading scores for children with higher self-regulation. Peers’ negative emotionality was negatively related to target children's reading scores, particularly for children with higher self-regulation levels, but was unrelated to math scores. Peers’ positive and negative emotionality did not predict math scores, and there was no strong evidence for the moderating role of target children's self-regulation in this association. This study highlights the potential role of children's self-regulation in modulating peer effects on academic achievement, particularly reading.     

Pensions,poverty and wellbeing in later life: Comparative research from South Africa and Brazil

This paper draws on two linked studies of social policy and wellbeing in later life. The studies make comparisons between distinct groups of older people at the national and sub-national levels, as well as over time. The paper reflects on some of the main challenges for operationalising this complex design, as well as for interpreting findings and identifies lessons for other studies. The first study, conducted in 2002, included a questionnaire survey of around 2000 households containing at least one older person in South Africa and Brazil, supplemented by a set of in-depth qualitative interviews. Intriguingly, these countries had remarkably similar pension programmes, providing the majority of older people a reliable payment of roughly US$3 a day. This offered the prospect of exploring the effects of similar interventions in distinct developmental and cultural settings. In both countries, we found that these pensions had a substantial impact on the prevalence and depth of poverty in the study households, and were usually shared between older people and other family members. The second survey took place in 2008/9 and involved revisiting the households included in the 2002 survey, along with a separate set of in-depth interviews. This provided an opportunity for dynamic analysis of economic and wellbeing effects, against a backdrop of increased divergence in the wider national settings. Among other things, this revealed high and increasing levels of life satisfaction across all the study groups, although the extent to which this was directly related to generous pension provision cannot be ascertained.