After the wave-the Centrelink Social Work response offshore

Communities worldwide were affected by the tsunamis that struck a dozen Indian Ocean nations on 26 December 2004. More than 300,000 people were killed or left missing as a result of the tragedy. The Australian Government played a key role in the disaster response overseas and in Australia. As part of a whole-of-government response to the crisis, eight Centrelink Social Workers were deployed to tsunami-affected areas for two weeks after the initial disaster to provide personal support to Australian victims and their families. This paper presents the service delivery framework adopted offshore and delineates the role undertaken by the social workers. Drawing on their practice experience, the paper examines some of the challenges, dilemmas, learnings and implications for future service delivery.     

Heteronormative bodies,queer futures: toward a theory of interpersonal panopticism

This essay examines the policing of sexual bodies via interactive online technologies. We draw from scholarly discourses regarding surveillance, queer theory, and affect to construct what we call interpersonal panopticism. Interpersonal panopticism serves as a theoretical account of the fluid nature of watching and being watched in relationships, especially in consideration of how intimate relationships and sexualities are surveilled and controlled in a digital era. To articulate the utility and potentials of this theoretical approach, we offer five cultural propositions that serve as a basis for interpersonal panopticism. Collectively these propositions illustrate the utility and potentials of unpacking the interplay of surveillance, heteronormativity, and affect through an interpersonal panoptic lens.     

Choosing Between the Sample-Selection Model and the Multi-Part Model

Hay and Olsen (1984) incorrectly argue that a multi-part model, the two-part model used in Duan et al. (1982,1983), is nested within the sample-selection model. Their proof relies on an unmentioned restrictive assumption that cannot be satisfied. We provide a counterexample to show that the propensity to use medical care and the level of expense can be positively associated in the two-part model, contrary to their assertion. The conditional specification in the multi-part model is preferable to the unconditional specification in the selection model for modeling actual (v. potential) outcomes. The selection model also has poor statistical and numerical properties and relies on untestable assumptions. Empirically the multi-part estimators perform as well as or better than the sample selection estimator for the data set analyzed in Duan et al. (1982, 1983).     

The social cost of the Black Saturday bushfires

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have predicted with high confidence that the risk of bushfires will increase in the future. As this risk increases, so too does the need for appropriate policy responses. In developing these responses, costs need to be weighed against benefits. To fully appreciate the benefits of bushfire risk mitigation policies and strengthen the development of social policies around such events, it is necessary to include the psychological cost of experiencing these events. In this study, we employ the ‘life satisfaction approach’ to place a monetary estimate on the cost of Australia's Black Saturday bushfires (Australia's worst bushfires on record). Results reveal that the bushfires significantly reduce self‐reported levels of life satisfaction, with an implied willingness‐to‐pay of AUD 2,991 in terms of annual household income, or AUD 1,039 per capita, to reduce by one percent the extent to which an individual's immediate local area was affected by the Black Saturday bushfires. In doing so, we identify an apparent gap between current levels of expenditure on bushfire response and mitigation, and that amount which (with the inclusion of associated social benefits) would be welfare maximising.     

Measuring and Modeling Cohabitation: New Perspectives From Qualitative Data

Almost all our knowledge about cohabitation in the United States rests on analysis of nationally representative, large‐scale surveys. We move beyond this work by drawing on 115 in‐depth interviews with a sample of young men and women with recent cohabitation experience. These data allow us to address two issues of central interest to family studies. First, we use our qualitative data to assess the measurement of cohabitation in surveys and the census. We find that current measurement strategies are probably underestimating cohabitation, and we may need to find new ways to measure cohabitation. Second, we employ qualitative findings to address issues relating to how we empirically model union formation. We find that the movement into cohabitation is not akin to marriage. It is often not a deliberate decision. Couples do not appear to be deciding between cohabitation and marriage; rather, their decision seems to center around whether to remain single or cohabit. These results have important implications for our analysis and understanding of cohabitation.     

The Transferability of Welfare Models: A Comparison of the Scandinavian and State Socialist Models in Relation to Finland and Estonia

In this paper, two examples of the close relationship between a national social welfare system, and explicit transnational influences are discussed. Both the state socialist and Scandinavian models have a recognized structure independent of the particular countries in which they have been implemented, although they are both associated with a home base, Russia and Sweden respectively. Our examples, Estonia and Finland, faced both common and specific national problems following 1991, which led to rapid change in each country's economic situation and pressure on their respective welfare systems. There were elements of continuity and discontinuity with the main tenets of their respective welfare models, and both structural factors and cultural diffusion will be explored to understand the origin of these changes. The paper could be seen as a case study of welfare changes in the "borderlands" where "old empires meet". The countries were chosen because they are peripheral to what were rival spheres of influence and because they see themselves as having much in common. We also expect changes to occur more rapidly in peripheral areas.     

Cohabitation and Marital Expectations Among Single Millennials in the U.S.

Cohabitation has surpassed marriage as the most common union experience in young adulthood. We capitalize on a new opportunity to examine both marital and cohabitation expectations among young single women in recently collected, nationally representative data (National Survey of Family Growth 2011–2015) (N?=?1467). In the US there appears to be a ‘stalled’ second demographic transition as single young adult (ages 18–24) women have stronger expectations to marry than cohabit and the vast majority expects to, or has, already married. Among young women expecting to marry, the majority (68%) expect to cohabit with their future spouse but about one-third expect to follow a traditional relationship pathway into marriage (to marry without cohabiting first). In addition, women from disadvantaged backgrounds report the lowest expectations to marry, but there is no education gradient in expectations to cohabit. Marriage expectations follow a “diverging destinies” pattern, which stresses a growing educational divide, but this is not the case for cohabitation expectations. Our results, based on recently collected data, provide insight into the contemporary context of union formation decision-making for the millennial generation.