Immigration and status exchange in Australia and the United States

This paper evaluates the status exchange hypothesis for Australia and the United States, two Anglophone nations with long immigration traditions whose admission regimes place different emphases on skills. Using log-linear methods, we demonstrate that foreign-born spouses trade educational credentials via marriage with natives in both Australian and U.S. marriage markets and, moreover, that nativity is a more salient marriage barrier for men than for women. With some exceptions, immigrant spouses in mixed nativity couples are better educated than native spouses in same nativity couples, but status exchange is more prevalent among the less-educated spouses in both countries. Support for the status exchange hypothesis is somewhat weaker in Australia partly because of lower average levels of education compared with the United States and partly because of the less sharply defined educational hierarchy at the postsecondary level.     

“The Price You Pay”: How Female Professional Chefs Negotiate Work and Family

Work–family conflict can act as an important, and gendered, mechanism underlying women’s under-representation in male-dominated occupations. This study uses in-depth interviews to explore the experiences of female professional chefs in order to understand how women in a prestigious, yet male-dominated service occupation manage barriers relating to their balance of work and family responsibilities. Conflict between work and family responsibilities often stemmed from the long work hours expected of chefs and played a role in some of our participant’s decisions to leave kitchen work. Respondents in this study negotiate work–family conflict using three strategies: (1) delaying/forgoing childbearing to succeed as a chef; (2) leaving kitchen work for another job in the culinary field; and (3) adapting either work or family to make the two roles more compatible. Our conclusion discusses the implications of these strategies for gender inequality in the workplace, particularly for women in male-dominated occupations.     

Steuerreformen durch Tarif-oder Zeiteffekte? Eine Analyse am Beispiel der Thesaurierungsbegünstigung für Personenunternehmen

Zusammenfassung  Der Beitrag diskutiert Tarif- und Zinseffekte anhand der begünstigten Besteuerung nicht entnommener Gewinne von Personengesellschaften, die 2008 in Deutschland eingeführt wurde. Bei Eigenfinanzierung und Betrachtung von Grenzsteuers?tzen zeigt der Beitrag, dass die Thesaurierungsbegünstigung stets nachteilig ist, wenn eine abgeltend besteuerte private Kapitalmarktanlage die Alternativanlage darstellt. Müssen Gewinne thesauriert werden, weil Mittel im Unternehmen ben?tigt werden, so entf?llt die private Alternativanlage und die Thesaurierungsbegünstigung kann bei hohen Zins- und Steuers?tzen vorteilhaft sein. Wird die Einkommensteuerprogression berücksichtigt, zeigt der Beitrag, dass bei schwankenden Gewinnen die Thesaurierungsbegünstigung oftmals vorteilhaft ist, auch gegenüber der Abgeltungsteuer. Bei fremdfinanzierten Investitionen kann die Inanspruchnahme der Thesaurierungsbegünstigung sehr vorteilhaft sein, da die geringere Steuerzahlung bei Gewinnanfall den Umfang des ben?tigten Fremdkapitals mindert. Insgesamt zeigt sich, dass sich Reformen von Steuertarifen wesentlich st?rker auf die Vorteilhaftigkeit von Investitionen auswirken als Zinseffekte.

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Tax reforms by tax rate effects or timing effects? An analysis based an the German tax privilege for retained earnings

Summary  This paper analyzes two typical effects of tax reforms, tax rate effects and timing effects. The example chosen for the analysis is the tax privilege for retained profits of partnerships and sole proprietorships, which was implemented in Germany in 2008. Taking equity-financing and top marginal tax rates into account, the so-called tax privilege turns out to be a disadvantage under most assumptions. If the alternative investment is private capital income taxed at a flat-rate tax, the tax privilege will always be disadvantageous. If profits have to be retained and business income is the alternative investment, then the tax privilege will be advantageous in case of high income tax rates and interest rates. Analyzing progressive tax rates instead of top marginal tax rates reveals favorable results in case of fluctuating profits if the tax privilege is claimed. The same is true if debtfinancing is taken into account. All in all, the paper shows that a reform of tax rates influences the attractiveness of investments much more compared to timing effects.

     

The more-than-human sensorium: sensory engagements with digital self-tracking technologies

In this article, we draw on findings from an empirical project involving talking to Australian women about their sensory and sensemaking engagements with digital health technologies. Adopting a new feminist materialist perspective, our analysis identified a series of relational connections, affective forces and agential capacities generated when our participants came together with digitized modes of self-tracking. The agential capacities engendered through and with these technologies included discovering and uncovering information, motivation, quantifying and automating data collection, distinguishing “false” bodily sensations from “real,” discerning patterns, and enhancing sensory capabilities. Working with these technologies, the women were able to access insights into their bodies, feel more in control of bodily activities by reflecting on this information and any patterns over time it revealed. The limitations of these sensory devices were also revealed in the women’s accounts. The devices sometimes closed off or challenged women’s sensory knowledge in ways they found less than useful or helpful, due to failings in the devices’ design or functionality. Our analysis, therefore, highlights the intra-action of enactments of human sensory responses as they engage with digital devices and digital data, including the ways in which these responses were extended, facilitated, or, in some cases, challenged.     

Health and community services for trafficked women: an exploratory study of policy and practice

The trafficking of women has attracted considerable international and national policy attention, particularly since the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (2000), of which the Australian Government has been a signatory since 2005. The provision of health and community services for trafficked women is a central feature of this Protocol, but in Australia service provision is made difficult by how trafficked women are understood and treated in policy and legal terms. This study aimed to explore the provision of health and community services for trafficked women in the Greater Sydney region through a series of interviews with government and non‐government organisations. The findings reveal that services have been inaccessible as a result of sparse, uncoordinated, and poorly funded provision. The major obstacle to adequate and appropriate service provision has been a national policy approach focusing on ‘border protection’ and criminalisation rather than on trafficked women and their human rights. We conclude that further policy development needs to focus on the practical implications of how such rights can be translated into the delivery of health and community services that trafficked women can access and be supported by more effectively.     

Is Asian ethnicity an independent risk factor for severe perineal trauma in childbirth? A systematic review of the literature

ObjectiveTo undertake a systematic review of the literature to determine whether Asian ethnicity is an independent risk factor for severe perineal trauma in childbirth.MethodOvid Medline, CINAHL, and Cochrane databases published in English were used to identify appropriate research articles from 2000 to 2010, using relevant terms in a variety of combinations. All articles included in this systematic review were assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) ‘making sense of evidence’ tools.FindingsAsian ethnicity does not appear to be a risk factor for severe perineal trauma for women living in Asia. In contrast, studies conducted in some Western countries have identified Asian ethnicity as a risk factor for severe perineal trauma. It is unknown why (in some situations) Asian women are more vulnerable to this birth complication. The lack of an international standard definition for the term Asian further undermines clarification of this issue. Nevertheless, there is an urgent need to explore why Asian women are reported to be significantly at risk for severe perineal trauma in some Western countries.ConclusionCurrent research on this topic is confusing and conflicting. Further research is urgently required to explore why Asian women are at risk for severe perineal trauma in some birth settings.     

The Slope of Change: An Environmental Management Approach to Reduce Drinking on a Day of Celebration at a US College

Abstract

Objective: This research extends the literature on event-specific environmental management with a case study evaluation of an intervention designed to reduce student drinking at a university's year-end celebration. Participants: Cornell University undergraduates were surveyed each May from 2001 through 2009. Sample sizes ranged from 322 to 1,973. Methods: Randomly sampled surveys were conducted after a large, annual spring campus celebration. An environmental management plan was initiated in 2003 that included increased enforcement of the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) law. Results: In the short term, drinking at the campus celebration decreased while drinking before the event increased. Over time, the intervention significantly reduced high-risk drinking on the day of the event, especially among those under the age of 21. Conclusion: These findings are contrary to the argument that enforcement of MLDA laws simply leads to increased high-risk drinking, and therefore have implications for how colleges approach the challenge of student alcohol misuse.     

“My nest is full:” Intergenerational relationships at midlife

Incorporating a life course perspective, this qualitative study used focus groups to explore the experiences of midlife adults who were simultaneously providing support to emerging adult children and aging parents. Results indicated that adults situated in middle generations held beliefs that endorsed family-based responsibility to both younger and older members. Parents gladly supported children despite their longer transition to adulthood. Often unanticipated but accepted, provisions of care to aging parents were experienced with ambivalence — a joy and a burden. The transition of their parents to greater dependence helped participants gain insights into the terrain of late life and encouraged reflections about the intersection of aging, independence, and family responsibility. Participants expressed intentions to preserve their own independence and spare their children of caregiving burdens through self-directed actions. Implications focused on negotiations of family relationships around issues of independence and family responsibilities as a way to reduce intergenerational ambivalence.     

Multiple Disadvantages Among Older Citizens: What a Multidimensional Measure of Poverty Can Show

Using the newly created Freedom Poverty Measure, a multidimensional measure of poverty, it can be seen that there were 534,700 individuals who were in freedom poverty, who had either poor health or poor education in addition to having low incomes. This multidimensional disadvantage would not normally be captured by single measures of poverty, such as income poverty measures. Men were significantly less likely to be in freedom poverty than women (OR = 0.63, 95% CI: 0.54–0.74, p < .0001), and the proportion of individuals in freedom poverty increased with age, with those older than 85 being 2.3 times more likely to be in freedom poverty than those aged 65 to 69 years (95% CI: 1.73–3.11, p < .0001). Policy responses to address the marginalization of disadvantaged older people should take a multidisciplinary approach, addressing health inequalities in particular, not just low income.