Maternal employment and time investments in children

We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the American Time Use Survey to estimate the effect of maternal employment on time spent with children. We find that each additional 10 h of maternal work reduces mother–child quality time interaction by about 7.5 % and time reading together by 8 %. This relationship between work and quality time does not vary much based on mothers’ education and is robust to the inclusion of family or child fixed effects. There is no evidence that fathers or other relatives fill the gap in time investments due to maternal employment.     

Marriage and State-level Economic Outcomes

Past research has examined various state-level measures that predict state economic growth and other economic and social indicators. This research has largely ignored the potential role of family structure in contributing to state-level outcomes, despite the extensive literature on links between family structure and economic outcomes at the individual level. We estimated a state-level panel model and found that both the proportion of adults and the proportion of parents who are married are strongly related to important state-level economic outcomes, including economic growth, median household income, median personal income, and poverty.     

Creating a community of practice among college campus food pantry directors in Michigan

There is increased awareness of hunger and food insecurity on college campuses. Recent estimates suggest that food insecurity affects as many as 4 out of 10 college students. As a result, over 650 US colleges have established campus food pantries. The College and University Pantries (CUP) research team at the University of Michigan–Dearborn has worked to create a community of practice in Michigan among campus pantry directors by hosting 2 summits designed around networking, problem-solving, and sharing best practices. This article describes the Michigan community of practice as an example for other regions doing similar work.     

Vocational education: A clean slate for disengaged students?

Students’ social psychological adjustment to school is an important determinant of achievement growth as well as school continuation and post-secondary educational attainment. Yet many students begin high school with low levels of efficacy and self-worth, and low levels of identification with and liking of school. In this study, we investigate the hypothesis that vocational education in high school provides disengaged students with an educational clean slate, leading to a recovery of engagement for at-risk students. Using propensity score models, we assess the relationship between vocational course taking and changes in effort, extracurricular participation, sense of belonging, interest in school, attitudes toward school and teachers, educational expectations, career aspirations, locus of control, and self-concept with the NELS:88 database.     

Unwelcoming communities: youth observations of racism in St. John's,Newfoundland and Labrador,Canada

While studies of racism have focused primarily on large urban centres, its effect on young visible minorities living in smaller centres has only recently been given increased attention. Using data collected from over 850 surveys, this article will analyse junior and senior high school students’ observations of racism. The results suggest that youth living in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada believe that racism is more as a problem at the provincial- and national-level despite overwhelming evidence that they have witnessed it at their school and in their city. While for these youth racism is both fluid and contextual, they also employ a number of strategies in order to appear non-racist.     

Partnering for Mental Health Promotion: Implementing Evidence Based Mental Health Services Within a Maternal and Child Home Health Visiting Program

This article details the clinical foundations of a social work focused community-based participatory research project promoting women’s mental health during and around the time of pregnancy. Specifically, we discuss the theoretical, empirical and organizational implementation of an enhanced engagement model of mental health service delivery that integrates evidenced based practices into the structure and services of an existing non-profit maternal and child health home visiting agency. The model is grounded in literature addressing barriers to accessing mental health care among minority women living in low-income communities. We discuss informing the intervention through direct consumer involvement, as well the rationale supporting the inclusion of Interpersonal Psychotherapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy into the design and implementation of the model which emphasizes adequate training of staff with varying levels of mental health experience. Finally, we describe typical client situations and responses reflected by the Enhanced Engagement model and discuss future implications of this approach as a way to offer meaningful intervention to women and families who may not have access or eligibility to utilize specialty mental health services.     

The employment adjustment of male immigrants in England

In this paper the employment performance of native and foreign born men in England is examined, using 1993–1994 data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey of the United Kingdom. Chiswick's (1982) hypotheses of immigrant employment adjustment are investigated using logistic regression analysis. We show that there are interesting and important employment effects arising from immigrant characteristics. Recent white immigrants experience a transitory employment disadvantage. However non-white immigrants never attain employment equality with native born white men. Education, potential experience, family characteristics and country of birth are also found to be important determinants of employment. Received: 13 September 1998/Accepted: 15 July 1999     

Multiple Interacting Risk Factors: On Methods for Allocating Risk Factor Interactions

A persistent problem in health risk analysis where it is known that a disease may occur as a consequence of multiple risk factors with interactions is allocating the total risk of the disease among the individual risk factors. This problem, referred to here as risk apportionment, arises in various venues, including: (i) public health management, (ii) government programs for compensating injured individuals, and (iii) litigation. Two methods have been described in the risk analysis and epidemiology literature for allocating total risk among individual risk factors. One method uses weights to allocate interactions among the individual risk factors. The other method is based on risk accounting axioms and finding an optimal and unique allocation that satisfies the axioms using a procedure borrowed from game theory. Where relative risk or attributable risk is the risk measure, we find that the game‐theory‐determined allocation is the same as the allocation where risk factor interactions are apportioned to individual risk factors using equal weights. Therefore, the apportionment problem becomes one of selecting a meaningful set of weights for allocating interactions among the individual risk factors. Equal weights and weights proportional to the risks of the individual risk factors are discussed.