It is Hard to Swim Upstream: Dietary Acculturation Among Mexican-Origin Children

Health and immigration researchers often implicate dietary acculturation in explanations of Mexican children of immigrants’ weight gain after moving to the U.S., but rarely explore how diet is shaped by immigrants’ structural incorporation. We used data from the 1999/00-2009/10 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to assess how indicators of Mexican-origin children’s acculturation and structural incorporation influence two outcomes: how healthy and how “Americanized” children’s diets are. Indicators of acculturation were strongly associated with more Americanized and less healthy diets. However, structural incorporation indicators were mostly unrelated to diet outcomes net of acculturation. An exception was that parental education was positively associated with consuming a healthy diet. Finally, children of natives consumed more Americanized, unhealthy diets than children of immigrants and these differences were largely explained by differences in the acculturation. Children of natives would have consumed an even less healthy diet were it not for their higher levels of parental education. Overall, the results suggest that the process of adapting to the U.S. life style is associated with the loss of cultural culinary preferences and less healthy eating behaviors despite improvements in socioeconomic status.     

Partners’ Educational Pairings and Fertility Across Europe

We provide new evidence on the education-fertility relationship by using EU-SILC panel data on 24 European countries to investigate how couples’ educational pairings predict their childbearing behavior. We focus on differences in first-, second-, and third-birth rates among couples with varying combinations of partners’ education. Our results show important differences in how education relates to parity progressions depending on the education of the partner. First, highly educated homogamous couples show a distinct childbearing behavior in most country clusters. They tend to postpone the first birth most and display the highest second- and third-birth rates. Second, contrary to what may be expected based on the “new home economics” approach, hypergamous couples with a highly educated male and a lower-educated female partner display among the lowest second-birth transitions. Our findings underscore the relevance of interacting both partners’ education for a better understanding of the education-fertility relationship.     

Changes in Social Exclusion Indicators and Psychological Distress Among Homeless People Over a 2.5-Year Period

Although homelessness is inherently associated with social exclusion, homeless individuals are rarely included in conventional studies on social exclusion. Use of longitudinal survey data from a cohort study on homeless people in four major Dutch cities (n = 378) allowed to examine: changes in indicators of social exclusion among homeless people over a 2.5-year period after reporting to the social relief system, and associations between changes in indicators of social exclusion and changes in psychological distress. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was applied to investigate the associations between changes in indicators of social exclusion and changes in psychological distress. Improvements were found in various indicators of social exclusion, whereas financial debts showed no significant improvement. Changes in unmet care needs, health insurance, social support from family and relatedness to others were related to changes in psychological distress. This study demonstrated improvements in various indicators of social exclusion among homeless people over a period of 2.5 years, and sheds light on the concept of social exclusion in relation to homelessness.     

On the Output Orientation of the Benefit-of-the-Doubt-Model

While Benefit-of-the-Doubt (BoD) models, as used in the context of composite indicator construction, seek to aggregate outputs only, they are formally equivalent to an input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model in multiplier form. Strictly read, this introduces conceptually ambiguous results, as input adjustments have no real significance in the context at hand. At heart of this ambiguity lies a double interpretation of what is essentially a binding constraint in BoD’s underlying linear-fractional program. Moreover, there is a direct, reciprocal relation between the BoD-model and an earlier output-oriented DEA model introduced by Lovell et al. (Eur J Oper Res 87:507–518, 1995) for similar purposes. Although these models are essentially similar, I also show that there are instances (i.e. when adding additional weight restrictions) in which the results of one alternative are easier to communicate. The models surveyed in this paper are complemented with a short application on human development data for females living in Brussels municipalities.     

Invisible golden girls? Post-feminist discourses and female ageing bodies in contemporary television fiction

Abstract

The popular television series The Golden Girls (1985–1992) seems to be an exception in the history of the representation of third-age women femininities and bodies in television fiction. This series about four mature women living in the same house in Miami made ageing women visible in television representations. Older women are generally invisible in popular television fiction. Despite this absence, a discourse on ageing and femininities is present in all sorts of popular media texts. We will question post-feminist discourses on ageing bodies and femininities. Are the post-feminist claims regarding ageing bodies present in popular television fiction? Moreover, are these discourses represented by the portrayal of ageing bodies? We will analyse the representations of ageing femininities in television fiction labelled as “post-feminist television fiction.” The series Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, and Girls will be studied using a textual analysis to look for discourses on ageing female bodies and their particularities in relation to post-feminism. We distinguished a limited set of three sets of discourses (losing femininity, masking of ageing, and the wisdom of ageing) on ageing femininities. Although ageing feminine bodies are absent, a discourse on ageing, “good” ageing, and acceptance of ageing is present in the narration in all three series. The discourse on the masking of ageing, however, is predominant.     

How is participation related to well-being of homeless people? An explorative qualitative study in a Dutch homeless shelter facility

The majority of homeless people is socially excluded which negatively affects their well-being. Therefore, participation-based programs are needed. The current research is conducted within a Dutch homeless shelter facility that offers educational, recreational, and labor activities to clients in an environment which is designed to feel safe (an enabling niche). The main aim of these activities is to facilitate social participation. We conducted two qualitative studies consisting of 16 semi-structured interviews, to explore clients’ experiences with participation in activities in relation to their well-being. The findings showed that clients experienced that participation had led to an improvement of physical, social, and mental well-being. In general, clients reported that due to participation in activities they have strengthened their social support network, improved their (mental and physical) health, self-esteem and personal growth. We concluded that in order to facilitate long-term positive outcomes of participation in practice, it is necessary to focus on group cohesion, and on the social worker’s behavior and attitude.     

Mother–Adolescent Conflict Interaction Sequences: The Role of Maternal Internalizing Problems

Adaptive mother–adolescent conflict interactions are characterized by the ability to move from negative to positive emotions. The current micro‐observational study investigated how mothers and adolescents make transitions between positive, neutral and negative emotions and whether these transitions depend on maternal internalizing problems. We used three annual waves of conflict interaction observations among 102 mother–adolescent dyads. Mothers were more likely than adolescents to initiate positivity after negativity whereas adolescents were more likely than mothers to reciprocate negativity. Mothers high and low in internalizing problems were equally likely to drive transitions toward positivity. Our study indicates that an active role of mothers in regulating negativity toward positivity is desirable because adolescents are likely to maintain dysfunctional interaction patterns of rigid negativity.     

Living Maoist gender ideology: experiences of women ex-combatants in Nepal

Studies of women’s participation in civil conflict as armed combatants have attributed diverse motivations to such participation and examined the implications of participation for women’s empowerment in the aftermath. The authors contribute to these studies through an in-depth analysis of female combatants’ struggles for equality and empowerment during and after Nepal’s decade-long Maoist conflict. Scholars have argued that the emphasis of Maoist ideology in Nepal on the emancipation of women and on ending gender discrimination attracted a large number of women to the cause. Based on narratives of Maoist female ex-combatants, the authors investigate women’s engagement with Maoist ideology during and after the conflict. These narratives reveal that despite discourses of gender equality in Nepal’s Maoist struggle, promises around gender equality remain unkept in the period after the war. A reintegration program has offered women ex-combatants few options and has pushed women back into traditional gender roles. Struggles continue in this terrain. Incorporating intersectionality, the paper highlights how women ex-combatants’ gender identities intersect with caste and other social locations to produce diverse challenges for their lives.     

An economic analysis of nanofood labeling

The paper examines the economic effects of labeling food nanotechnology products using an analytical framework of heterogeneous consumers and imperfectly competitive suppliers. Labeling results in increased costs for nanofood producers (the cost effect of the labeling policy), reduced consumer uncertainty regarding the nature of the food product (certainty effect), and can affect consumer attitudes towards nanofoods by being perceived as a warning signal (stigma effect). In this context, nanofood labeling can change the perceived quality differences between nanofoods and their conventional and organic counterparts, with such changes being more salient when the stigma effect is large, when consumers have low awareness of food nanotechnology in the absence of labeling, and/or when competition among nanofood suppliers is more intense. Despite its empirical relevance, the impact of a labeling policy on consumer preferences (and the economic ramifications of such impact) has largely been ignored by the theoretical literature on the economics of labels. Our analysis shows that it matters. Specifically, our study shows that the market and welfare effects of labeling are case-specific and dependent on consumer awareness of, and attitudes towards food nanotechnology before and after the introduction of the policy as well as the relative magnitude of the cost, certainty and stigma effects of nanofood labeling. Our analytical findings also suggest that the effects of nanofood labels on consumer welfare are asymmetric with certain groups of consumers benefiting even when labeling has a stigma effect on nanofoods.