THE FEMA TRAILER PARKS: NEGATIVE PERCEPTIONS AND THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF AVOIDANCE

In recent years, negative media attention has fostered the impression that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) parks are social wastelands filled with criminal elements and other undesirables. FEMA parks have subsequently come to be viewed by some as a major threat to the safety and quality of life of the local communities in which they are situated. This analysis addresses attitudes toward FEMA trailer parks in Baton Rouge after Hurricane Katrina among Baton Rouge residents. Drawing on the Locally Undesirable Land Use/Not in My Backyard (LULU/NIMBY) literature, the contact hypothesis, and a broad paradigm of social status and social control, we hypothesize that spatial proximity, contact, and social status will influence negative perceptions of the parks, while these same factors along with the negative perceptions will influence avoidance behaviors. The results indicate that living near a FEMA park is associated with less negative perceptions, while actually seeing trailer park residents is associated with more negative perceptions and a greater odds of avoidance, particularly changing driving routes. Whites are particularly concerned about crime associated with the parks, but interracial trust reduces negative perceptions of the parks and the likelihood of avoidance. Those who are likely to end up in a FEMA park if they were in the same situation are more friendly toward the parks and less likely to use avoidance techniques, and negative perceptions themselves are strong predictors of avoidance behaviors. We conclude with a discussion of directions for future research.     

Gender-related Effect of Cultural Participation in Psychological Well-being: Indications from the Well-being Project in the Municipality of Milan

Gender differences have been observed in the way males and females process cognitive stimuli coming from exposure to works of art and participation in leisure activities. For this reason, we designed a project to assess this issue, with a cross-sectional study in Milan, on a sample of the population consisting in 1,000 inhabitants. Our objective was to assess how cultural participation affects subjective well-being, measured with the Psychological General Well-being Scale, which gives a global index of psychological well-being ranging from 0 (lowest level of well-being) to 110 (highest level of well-being). The survey was conducted with the assistance of Doxa, an Italian pollster company, through telephone interviews, according to the Computer Aided Telephone Interview system. A significant statistical difference in variable distribution between the two genders was found for civil status (more males resulted as being single and more women widowed), income (higher income in males), cultural participation (higher in males) and psychological well-being (higher in males). As expected, state of health has the maximum impact on the level of psychological well-being. The increase in the number of concomitant diseases is in fact linearly associated with a progressive increase in psychological distress with average scores of around 60 (very low level of well-being), in the presence of 5 or more concomitant diseases, in both males and females. The impact profile of nine major determinants on subjective well-being resulted to be clearly different in the two genders. Health status dominates in both, but its impact is higher in females than in males. The obtained results remained substantially unchanged also when the two gender groups were matched according to civil status and income level distribution. Leisure activities play an important role in females (second place after health status), while in males they result as being less important (fourth place after health status, civil status and occupation). Education is quite important for females (third place), while it is given the least importance in males. This different profile probably reflects different social and environmental influences on the two genders. The social and psychological implications of these findings are discussed.     

Educating undergraduate group workers: increasing confidence through experiential learning

This article documents the results of a study examining the extent to which undergraduate social work students attained increased confidence in group work facilitation. Social work students participated in 8-week experiential groups with the expressed purpose of exploring their own viewpoints and experiences of diversity. The study highlights the application and effectiveness of experiential learning theory in social work education Results indicate students perceived enhanced self-assurance in group leadership. Outcomes also denote increased sensitivity to issues of diversity. As a consequence, students expressed a commitment to continuing their education regarding cultural diversity. Implications for group work training and culturally competent practice are incorporated.     

Health and the educational attainment of adolescents: evidence from the NLSY97

This article examines the mechanisms linking health to the educational attainment of adolescents. In particular it investigates the role of cognitive/academic achievement and a variety of psychosocial adjustment factors in explaining this relationship. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort (NLSY97), we estimate models of timely high school completion and of post-secondary enrollment using both standard logit estimation and sibling fixed-effects models. We find that, net of sociodemographic background and stable unobserved family characteristics, adolescents who experience worse health are substantially less likely to complete high school by their 20th birthday and to transition to post-secondary education. Cognitive/academic achievement and psychosocial factors appear to explain a large portion of these health-related educational deficits. However adolescent health continues to be significantly associated with these key educational transitions. The findings highlight a potentially important role of health selection processes in generating socioeconomic inequalities in early adolescence to young adulthood.     

Child abuse in the context of domestic violence: prevalence, explanations, and practice implications

This article addresses the following questions: (a) How common is child abuse among domestically violent families? (b) Are there specific patterns of child abuse among domestically violent families? (c) What may explain occurrences of child abuse in domestically violent families? (d) How might domestic violence affect treatment for child abuse? We review research on child abuse in the context of domestic violence. We discuss implications of this research for service-delivery programs for domestically violent families.     

The size-density hypothesis in Great Britain: Analysis of a deviant case

Recent studies have found size of territorial units to vary inversely with population density, the only exception to this regularity being Great Britain, where size and density were found to be unrelated. The present research accounts for this anomaly by demonstrating Britain's historical conformity to the size-density relation. The size-density hypothesis is further supported by direct test, made possible by a recent reorganization of british counties. Results show that reorganization has restored the expected inverse relation between size and density and has restructured the size and density of counties in a manner precisely specified by underlying theory.     

Why was the berdache ridiculed?

Several anthropological explanation of why North American Indian berdaches were riduculed are considered and rejected in favor of the proposal that berdaches were laughed at largely in the context of traditional joking relationships. Consequently, reports that Indians ridiculed berdaches need not be interpreted as evidence that they held negative views of homosexuality.     

Changes in wealth in the United States, 1962–1983

A simulation model is developed to account for observed changes in mean household wealth both overall and by age cohort over the 1962–1983 period in the United States. There are three major findings. First, capital gains are the major factor explaining overall wealth changes and account for 77% of the simulated growth in wealth over the entire period. Second, for cohorts under age 40, inheritance and inter vivos transfers dominate observed changes in wealth. Indeed, the oldest age groups appear to have transferred sizable amounts of their wealth to younger generations inter vivos, raising the wealth of these younger groups substantially above what it would be based on saving. Third, while differences in portfolio composition favored the younger cohorts over this period, such differences do not explain a large portion of the great variation in real wealth changes by cohort over the two decade period.The authors wish to thank Kevin Camerlo, Maury Gittleman and Kim Hiskey for research and programming assistance.     

Private transfers with incomplete information: A contribution to the “altruism-exchange motivation for transfers” debate

We examine the role of altruism in determining optimal transfers from a principal (a mother) to selfish agents (her children) in return for attention services. Transfer-attention contracts are studied in a setting in which informational asymmetries arise from the inability of a parent to determine the extent of her children's selfishness. We find a predominating exchange motive for transfers in the symmetric informational regime we study. However, both altruism and exchange are important motives under asymmetric information. We show that altruism facilitates transfer-attention exchange arrangements with certain trade partners under incomplete information, but diminishes trade with others. Received: 19 November 2000/Accepted: 17 May 2001 The paper was written while Edward Seiler was a fellow at the department of Agricultural Economics and Management at the Hebrew University. The authors wish to thank Elad Aharoni for research assistance, and Judith Rivlin, Yacov Tsur, two anonymous referees and seminar participants at the Hebrew University for helpful comments. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.