State abstinence education programs and teen birth rates in the US

Title V, Section 510 of the Social Security Act, passed in 1996 and implemented in 1998, appropriates funding to states for the purpose of educating minors on the benefits of abstinence before marriage. Despite considerable research on the impact of abstinence education on teen fertility outcomes, high quality population-level studies on state abstinence education using panel data are absent. This paper uses state-level data to analyze the impact of abstinence education on the birth rates for teens 15–17 years by evaluating the Title V, Section 510 State Abstinence Education (SAE) program. For an average state, increasing spending by 50,000/year on SAE can help avoid approximately four births to teenagers, resulting in net savings of50,000/year on SAE can help avoid approximately four births to teenagers, resulting in net savings of 15,652 to the public for each birth avoided.     

The press,the market and democracy

The newspaper press in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe is currently being re‐organized on market lines. This will produce a much greater reliance upon advertising revenues. The evidence from developed market economies demonstrates that such a press is sharply stratified with regard to the provision of public information. The resulting imbalance produces severe problems for theories of democracy. In order to lessen the impact of these problems, some countries in Europe, for example Sweden, have managed to adopt a policy subsidy without endangering the freedom of the press.     

Do today’s sociologists really appreciate Weber’s essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism?

It is noted that Max Weber is held in very high regard by the majority of contemporary sociologists, while his essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, is generally considered his most important as well as his most famous work. However attention is drawn to the marked contradiction between the practice of today’s sociologists in routinely heaping praise on this essay and the fact that their own self‐confessed theoretical statements constitute a direct rejection of Weber’s approach. This contradiction is illustrated by demonstrating that although The Protestant Ethic is essentially an examination of the role of motives in human action the concept of motive is effectively missing from contemporary sociology. A possible explanation for this apparent contradiction is then considered in the form of the claim that those theoretical positions favoured by contemporary sociologists could be considered as ‘developed out of’ or ‘descended from’ Weber’s theory of ‘motivational understanding’. This however is shown to be an untenable claim, given that the vocabulary of motives perspective, the treatment of motives as reasons, and rational choice theory all represent straightforward rejections of Weber’s position. Consequently it is concluded that there remains an unresolved and largely unrecognised contradiction between the iconic status accorded to Weber’s essay by contemporary sociologists and their own very obvious rejection of his theoretical approach.     

INDIVIDUALS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY AND MENTAL ILLNESS: A LITERATURE REVIEW

This review highlights the urgency for a seamless and co‐ordinated approach to service delivery for people with intellectual disability and mental illness. There is emerging evidence of the high prevalence of mental illness in persons with intellectual disability. The notion that people with intellectual disability can have mental illness has only been recently acknowledged. Furthermore, people with intellectual disability also experience a wide range of psychiatric disorders often seen in the general population. Despite of recent developments in treatment options for these people, many of them continue to experience barriers in accessing mental health services.