Family policies,employment and poverty among partnered and single mothers

The risk of poverty for single mothers ranges from less than 2% in Sweden to more than 35% in the United States; less extreme cross-national variations also exist for partnered mothers. We explore which family policies are most effective at directly reducing poverty among families with children, and whether these policies indirectly reduce poverty through supporting mothers’ employment. We combine microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study with the Work-Family Policy Indicators dataset, and use multilevel logistic regressions to examine the associations between policy and poverty, controlling for individual-level factors. We find significant effects of family allowances, generous parental leaves and childcare provisions, with more powerful effects for single mothers. We further show that parental leave and childcare operate through boosting mothers’ employment, illustrating that work-family policies are useful for reducing poverty by enhancing mother's employment.     

The Gender Wage Gap in the United States and Cross Nationally

Scholarship in sociology and economics has long explored the gender wage gap. Recent research suggests that these inequalities are indicative of important differences not only between men and women, but among women and men, reflecting rising levels of income inequality among workers in the post‐industrial era. We argue that the most interesting debates in the gender wage gap – those exploring differences among subgroups by class, race, and/or parenthood status (such as the motherhood wage penalty), as well as those considering differences across countries – can bring new insights to the study of wage inequality, as well as to understandings of what drives gendered wage inequality.     

The globalization of care work: Neoliberal economic restructuring and migration policy

Abstract

Significant scholarly research has focused on the ‘globalization of care work’, or how care has been distributed and redistributed in an international system where immigrant workers provide care in wealthier countries. We argue that nation-states, through a range of contradictory policies and bilateral agreements, explicitly create and reinforce the redistribution and internationalization of care work. We show how economic restructuring has helped create both demand for and a supply of immigrant care workers, while migration policies have played a key role in shaping migration flows. We examine two dyads of sending and receiving flows: Morocco/France and Poland/Germany. These cases share both similarities and differences, which allows us to consider how the global political and economic processes shaping the international division of care work play out in different contexts.     

The Inclusion of Minority Groups in Clinical Trials: Problems of Under Representation and Under Reporting of Data

Objective: To evaluate the representation of minority groups in randomized control trials (RCTs), and the frequency with which this information is reported.

Study Design: Reviewers collected data on the racial/ethnic composition of study samples from all RCTs published in six leading medical journals in 1999.

Results: Of the 280 RCTs, most (204, 71.3%) provided no information on the race/ethnicity of participants. Of the 89 U.S.-based RCTs, 50 (56.1%) reported their minority distribution. Relative to other trials, those funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) (n = 52) were more likely to report race/ethnicity data (55.8% vs. 23.7%; χ² = 20.9, p ≤ 0.001) and to include nonwhite participants (13.5% vs. 12.5%; χ² = 22.7, p ≤ 0.001).

Conclusion: Minority groups are currently under-represented in clinical trials. Information on the race and ethnicity of clinical trial participants is currently underreported in six leading medical journals. Reporting of minority group information was significantly better only in NIH funded trials, which also were more likely to include nonwhite participants. This suggests that mandatory reporting policies may have a positive effect on both reporting and representation.