Comparing the New Zealand and Swedish National Surveys of Gambling and Problem Gambling

National surveys of gambling and problem gambling have recently been completed in New Zealand and Sweden. These studies are unique in that data collection was undertaken by official government statistical agencies, involved large, nationally representative samples, and attained high response rates. Comparison of the findings is facilitated by the use of similar procedures and instrumentation and is of interest in that both countries have similar per capita gambling expenditure and welfare states that have recently undergone major economic and social restructuring. Data on gambling participation, problem gambling prevalence and risk factors for problem gambling are presented and discussed. While there are a number of similarities and differences, the Swedish findings are more similar to those of an earlier national survey conducted in New Zealand during 1991. This suggests that risk factors are changing over time in relation to evolving patterns of gambling participation and attitudes towards gambling, a finding that has implications for future patterns of gambling and problem gambling in these and other countries.     

Call for Papers and Invitation

Call for Papers

Call for Papers and Invitation     

Child poverty in South Africa: an assessment based on microdata for 1995

In this study we assess child poverty in South Africa by estimating multivariate models using household-survey microdata from 1995. The applied poverty line defines children as poor if they live in households with a disposable per capita income less than US$1 Purchasing Power Parity. In South Africa, people living under such income conditions must be considered extremely poor. The results show that children living in South Africa face a risk of being poor comparable to that of the average world inhabitant. Child poverty in South Africa is an issue with strong racial connotations. Large variations in child poverty rates across provinces are found and most of South Africa's poor children live in rural areas. The educational level of household head is a strong predictor of child poverty. The probability of child poverty is vigorously reduced if a household receives wage earnings, but is affected by households' demographic structure.     

A conceptual framework for nurse staffing management

Hospitals are under increasing pressure to contain cost and nurse staffing has been singled out as an area with high potential for efficiency improvement. Despite the multitude of nurse staffing studies conducted, many important aspects have been neglected and few innovations have been successfully implemented. This paper presents a framework that includes all management tasks that affect staff effectiveness including systems design, forecasting, planning, coordination, and performance monitoring. A consistent terminology is developed and several previously ignored dimensions of the nurse staffing process are discussed. Finally, an outline for a decision-oriented information system is presented.     

Births that are Later-than-Desired: Correlates and Consequences

Population Research and Policy Review - Prior literature examining women’s evaluations of pregnancy timing has focused on pregnancies that are mistimed (i.e. earlier-than-desired) and...     

Hispanic Familism Reconsidered

Familism has been described as a cultural trait that might explain why the fertility of Hispanic women remains higher than non‐Hispanic white women. Still, few studies have analyzed group differences in childbearing attitudes. This article focuses on two dimensions of childbearing orientation: social value of children and fertility intentions. Using the National Survey of Family Growth, we find limited support for the idea that familism undergirds differentials in fertility between native‐born Hispanics and whites. However, for foreign‐born Hispanics, there are some differences in the perceived value of children compared with whites, and these differences could contribute to fertility differentials.     

Inheritance of Welfare Recipiency: An Intergenerational Study of Social Assistance Recipiency in Postwar Sweden

Intergenerational transmission of welfare dependency has received increasing attention among social scientists, especially in the United States, as greater availability of longitudinal data has shed new light on this issue. It remains unclear, however, to what extent the intergenerational correlation of welfare recipiency observed in the United States reflects or interacts with unobserved variables, the racial composition of the population, and the institutional structure of social policies. This study focuses on Sweden, a country with an ethnically homogenous population and institutional social policy structures that differ from those in the United States. It utilizes an internationally unique longitudinal data set to test hypotheses on the inheritance of welfare benefit recipiency as indicated by reliance on means‐tested social assistance. A clear intergenerational effect is observed. This effect, however, reflects a combination of social assistance in the family of origin, children's school adjustment, and parental criminality. Children who lack this combination of problems do not show signs of intergenerational welfare dependency.     

Stiff surprise on stiffness: an incident in product development in an alliance setting

An incident that occurred in a product development project is analyzed to see how participants cope differently with surprising situations. Variety in coping generates cognitive dissonance in the project team, which means that the situation not only is complex for the individual team member but that it is difficult to trace, here and now, causal chains on a collective level. The situation is aggravated if the problem occurs in an alliance setting, as more consultation is required to trace deviations from the expected and reach agreements on solutions. Furthermore, if the alliance is between companies in the car industry, with its articulated brand values, coping with surprises can be extremely stressful, with time schedules and budgets under pressure. This analysis was made possible by the authors being permitted to video-film project management meetings and project members responding, individually, to the playback of a video sequence from a meeting they attended with the attached question “What is going on here?”     

Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity and Gender

We test whether there are gender differences in downward rigidity, using Kahn's histogram‐location method and longitudinal registry data on all formally employed persons from the Estonian Tax and Customs Board. The results show that women resist pay cuts less than men. Also, in circumstances of increasing unemployment women's opposition to pay cuts decreases substantially, whereas men's attitudes towards pay cuts are not significantly affected by labour market conditions.