Poverty and time

We examine the measurement of individual poverty in an intertemporal context. Our aim is to capture the importance of persistence in a state of poverty and we characterize a corresponding individual intertemporal poverty measure. Our first axiom requires that intertemporal poverty is identical to static poverty in the degenerate single-period case. The remaining two properties express decomposability requirements within poverty spells and across spells in order to reflect the persistence issue. In addition, we axiomatize an aggregation procedure to obtain an intertemporal poverty measure for societies and we illustrate our new index with an application to EU countries.     

An Overview of and Rationale for Changes Proposed for Pathological Gambling in DSM-5

The fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is scheduled for publication in 2013. It will include several changes to the diagnosis of pathological gambling: the name of the disorder will be altered, the threshold for diagnosis will decrease, and one criterion will be removed. This paper reviews the rationale for these changes and addresses how they may impact diagnosis and treatment of the disorder, as well as potential for future research in the field.     

Negotiating Solidarity: Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People and the ‘NGO-ization’ of Postcolonial Narrative

This essay examines the relationship between transnational non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and postcolonial disasters as represented in literature. After the 1990s expansion of humanitarian organizations, a wide array of NGO-related literature emerges, including depictions of aid workers in fiction as well as humanitarian-authored narratives. While these texts contain a capacity for self-critique typically lacking in transnational NGO campaign materials, they remain mired in a ‘bureaucratic imagination’, sequestered from supposed beneficiaries. Alongside this literary development is an increasing pressure on postcolonial fiction to align with narrowly defined NGO missions, or what might be called an ‘NGO-ization of postcolonial narrative’. This essay interprets Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People as a vociferous refutation of such humanitarian pressure. Sinha stages the interaction between subaltern survivor and humanitarian benefactor not in terms of heroic salvation or radical rejection but as a conditional and negotiated solidarity. Disaster thus creates an opportunity to reimagine the subaltern-humanitarian relationship.     

中国养老保险缴费对消费和储蓄的影响

考虑到家庭可能面临信贷约束,同时可能有目标储蓄的动机,当期养老金缴费可能会减少当期可支配收入,进而抑制消费,并可能提高储蓄率。使用城镇住户调查2002—2009年9省市的数据,利用养老保险缴费率和养老保险参与率的城市差别随时间的变化,构建家庭养老金缴费的工具变量,实证研究发现:在2006年之前,尽管增加养老保险覆盖率本身有助于刺激消费,在给定缴费前的收入水平以及养老保险覆盖状态时,提高养老金缴费率会显著抑制缴费家庭的消费。另外,养老保险缴费负担对总消费的影响主要也是负面的。     

Mapping the social geographies of autism – online and off-line narratives of neuro-shared and separate spaces

This paper draws together empirical work that has been produced by the authors in two different autistic spaces: the Swedish magazine Empowerment produced by and aimed at adults with autism, and English-speaking autistic communities online. While the two points of data collection are quite different, there are important points of commonality that enable us to explore central issues concerning autistic and neurotypical space and the meanings assigned to these in different contexts. The paper aims to introduce the notion of social geographies of autism, based on talks among adults with autism and a social movement to promote autistic identities, giving examples from our previous work that has spanned both online and off-line spaces. Key issues discussed in the paper include a focus on autistic political platforms and the carving out of both social and political spaces for people with autism. In doing so, neuro-separate and neuro-shared spaces must be negotiated.     

Immigrants and Employer-provided Training

Much has been written about the labour market outcomes for immigrants in their host countries, particularly with regard to earnings, employment and occupational attainment. However, much less attention has been paid to the question of whether immigrants are as likely to receive employer-provided training relative to comparable natives. As such training should be crucial in determining the labour market success of immigrants in the long run it is a critically important question. Using data from a large-scale survey of employees in Ireland, we find that immigrants are less likely to receive training from employers, with immigrants from the New Member States of the EU experiencing a particular disadvantage. The immigrant training disadvantage arises in part from a failure on the part of immigrants to get employed by training-oriented firms. However, they also experience a training disadvantage relative to natives within firms where less training is provided.     

Research newsnotes

The authors describe the curricular changes made as part of a 20-year commitment by Smith College School for Social Work (SCSSW), a graduate school with a clinical social work specialization, to become an antiracism institution. Unaware of precedents, faculty, administration, and students needed to develop structures and processes to confront inherent institutional racism at the SCSSW. In addition to multiple administrative actions, every aspect of the curriculum was reevaluated, leading to changes in courses offered and everything about them, from syllabi to pedagogy, as well as how faculty are trained and supported. The authors found that explicit and implicit curriculum must work together in intentional and synchronous ways. Critical intention across design, implementation, evaluation, accountability, and openness to process is emphasized here. They conclude that an antiracism commitment requires continuous engagement, connection, challenge, learning, and teaching and a curriculum that is fluid, flexible, proactive, and responsive.     

The Relationship Between Hope,Eustress, Self-Efficacy,and Life Satisfaction Among Undergraduates

The construct of eustress was studied alongside hope and self-efficacy, to explore how these constructs are related to life satisfaction among undergraduates. Questionnaires were administered to undergraduates to test the hypotheses that (1) as eustress levels increase, so will life satisfaction levels; (2) when eustress, hope, and self-efficacy are examined together, they will predict life satisfaction better than eustress alone; (3) eustress, hope, and self-efficacy will all be positively correlated with life satisfaction; and (4) self-efficacy will be the most positively correlated with life satisfaction. The results revealed a significant positive correlation between eustress and life satisfaction. A Hierarchical Linear Regression analysis revealed significant results supporting hypotheses 2 and 3, but not hypothesis 4. Results indicated that hope is the best predictor of life satisfaction. The work reported provides a reliable tool for measuring eustress, examines eustress in a new way at the academic level, and provides helpful information about student wellness to college administrators.     

A New Era in Governmental Reform: Realizing Community

The good government models of the 1990s realized a focus that included reinventing, reengineer-ing, rethinking, quality, empowerment, and devolution of the organization. These organizational reform ideologies sought to increase involvement, improve productivity, manage performance, and drive results. One essential key that has been disregarded in these government models is the involvement of community in the decision-making process. This paper points to the importance of involving and empowering citizens in the decision-making process, particularly in regard to community justice based on the notion of restorative justice system. Community justice, a modern day reform movement with international proportions, is based on the principles of empowering community, repairing harm caused by a crime or disturbance, and reducing risk to the community.