Income mobility among the elderly in Sweden during the 1990s

Using a large panel dataset, this article investigates the degree of, and explanatory factors for, income mobility amongst the elderly in Sweden during the 1990s. It contributes to literature on welfare indicators for the older population as it supplements the welfare picture of the income adequacy with insights into income certainty during old age. Our methodological approach is to work with the administrative register data for Sweden, and this allows us to use a reliable record of incomes for a large sample of the elderly. Results for Sweden-born and foreign-born elderly persons are analysed separately and compared with corresponding groups of people of working age. Not surprisingly, nearly all of our results indicate that the income of the older population is more stable than that of the working age population, and upward income mobility is not as usual among the elderly as among other groups. The multivariate regression analyses identify several explanatory factors affecting those elderly who experienced income mobility. Most importantly, the death of a spouse increases the probability of downward income mobility, particularly amongst women. These and other findings of this research point to triggers of income poverty in old age that should be taken into account in policies concerned with the level and indexation of retirement income of future pensioners.     

Relations Among Intimate Partner Violence,Maternal Depressive Symptoms,and Maternal Parenting Behaviors

The authors examined the relations among intimate partner violence (IPV), maternal depressive symptoms, and maternal harsh intrusive parenting. Using a cross‐lagged, autoregressive path model, they sought to clarify the directionality of the relations among these 3 variables over the first 2 years of the child's life. The results indicated that, in this diverse sample of families living in predominantly low‐income rural communities (N = 705), higher levels of early IPV were associated with increases in maternal depressive symptoms, which in turn were associated with increases in maternal harsh intrusive parenting behaviors. These findings suggest that interventions aimed at improving the parenting of women exposed to domestic violence may want to simultaneously target IPV and depressive symptomatology.     

Transforming the public sphere: the case of Moscow’s city libraries

ABSTRACT

This article aims to explore the link between civil society and the public sphere in present-day Russia by studying a recent library reform project in Moscow. In 2013, a comprehensive reconstruction of Moscow's network of 448 public libraries was initiated by a group of intellectuals, architects and urbanists. The project team aimed at modernizing Moscow's city libraries by making them more accessible and appealing to the public. The reconstruction gained support from the city administration that sought to strengthen the function of public libraries as cultural and educational institutions and, at the same time, improve the city's image in the eyes of its citizens. The article poses the question of whether this reform has been successful in making Moscow's city libraries more open, accessible and inviting for the public, and whether the reform has contributed to the development of a public sphere in the city by providing new spaces for participation and civic engagement. The article explores the reform process based on interviews with key informants and document analysis. It looks into the project objectives, its implementation process and its legacy. The analysis of the library reform project revealed contradictory results, as the reform did not develop beyond the pilot phase, but was stopped due to fading support from the city administration. Overall, the library reform thus remained an unfinished process. For developing the public sphere, the legacy of the reform project is ambivalent. On the one hand, the project has proved that creating new public spaces in Moscow is possible. On the other hand, it showed that the public sphere remains limited in today's Russia, as civic initiatives cannot develop beyond a cultural niche project. Due to a lack of political support for societal pluralism, a true autonomous public sphere remains beyond reach in present-day Russia.     

Motherhood status and union formation in Moshi, Tanzania 2002-2003

Age at first union is increasing throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa at the same time that not all couples are waiting for marriage before their first sexual intercourse. We assessed the effect of a premarital first birth on entrance into a first union in an urban area in East Africa -- Moshi, Tanzania. The data come from the Moshi Infertility Survey of 2002-2003. Women who spent less than a year in single motherhood were significantly more likely than childless women to enter into a first union, although the magnitude of this relationship was weaker for more recent cohorts. Women who had been single mothers for 5 or more years (about two-thirds of women with a premarital birth) were significantly less likely than women without children to enter into a first union.     

Normal childbirth and evidence based practice

This paper was presented at a Health Conference in March 2007, celebrating the 150th birthday of the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne. It discusses the definition of "normal childbirth", and the pros and cons of three medical technologies: caesarean section, epidural analgesia during labour and routine ultrasound screening during pregnancy, and whether clinical practices, in Australia and Sweden (author is Swedish), in relation to these methods are evidence based. It also discusses the impact of non-scientific reasons, such as anxiety, on clinical decision making.     

Intimate Partner Violence and Children's Attachment Representations During Middle Childhood

Despite long‐standing hypotheses that intimate partner violence (IPV) may undermine children's ability to form secure attachment representations, few studies have empirically investigated this association. Particularly lacking is research that examines IPV and attachment during middle childhood, a time when the way that children understand, represent, and process the behavior of others becomes particularly important. Using data from a sample of African American children living in rural, low‐income communities (N = 98), the current study sought to address this gap by examining the association between physical IPV occurring early in children's lives and their attachment security during the first grade. Results indicate that, even after controlling for child‐ and family‐level covariates, physical IPV was associated with a greater likelihood of being rated insecurely attached. This effect was above and beyond the influence of maternal parenting behaviors, demonstrating a unique effect of physical IPV on children's attachment representations during middle childhood.     

Long-term profiles of work-related rumination associated with leadership,job demands,and exhaustion: A three-wave study

This study extends previous research on recovery from work stress by investigating the role of qualitative job demands and leadership in employees’ work-related rumination (WRR). The long-term development of WRR was examined from a person-centred approach across 22 months. Drawing on the stressor-detachment framework and conservation of resources theory, we investigated whether different WRR profiles could be understood in terms of levels of and changes in quantitative, cognitive, and emotional job demands, several aspects of supervisory leadership, and exhaustion that was expected to result from the impeded energy restoration process. A three-wave questionnaire study was conducted among Finnish municipal employees in heterogeneous occupations. Factor mixture modelling was used to identify latent classes (i.e. subgroups of participants with similar mean levels and mean-level changes) of WRR. The results indicated five distinct classes of WRR. Participants in the higher WRR classes reported higher levels of job demands, less supervisor fairness, and more abusive supervision. In the decreasing class, WRR decreased concurrently with decreasing job demands. Exhaustion showed considerable congruence with WRR both between and within persons. The findings are discussed from the point of view of a loss cycle concerning energetic psychological resources and difficulties in goal attainment.     

Capturing daily family dynamics via text messages: development of the mobile diary

In this paper we introduce a new tool, the mobile phone, for use in diary research. We demonstrate, with reference to two family studies conducted in Finland, how daily family dynamics can be captured by using the mobile diary. In both studies family members sent text messages (SMSs) in answer to structured diary questions three times a day over a one-week period. The participants kept also paper-and-pencil diaries. Two mobile diary items measuring mood (stressfulness and feelings of competence) both at home and at work are reported here as examples. For both items we found statistically significant daily and weekly variation as well as individual fluctuation. The data gathered by the mobile diary were congruent but not identical with the data gathered by the paper-and-pencil diary. The mobile phone method of data collection facilitated participants’ answers at the agreed times and the participants reported that answering was easy and did not take too much time. The main limitation is the lack of space for answers; therefore, the few questions that are used have to be reliable and valid.     

Sense of coherence during unemployment

The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between different forms of hardship during unemployment and the sense of coherence (SOC). These hardships were considered in the framework of the finances–shame model, which has been developed to help provide a greater understanding of why unemployment is so painful to some whilst others are hardly affected by it. The hypothesis in this study was that the greater the financial hardships during unemployment and the more a person has been subjected to shaming by others because they are unemployed, the lower his or her SOC will be, and vice versa. The empirical data were collected by means of a cross-sectional survey of 1,249 unemployed people in a region in southern Sweden who at the time of the survey were engaged in some form of labour-market training or workfare programme. The dropout rate was 23%. The results from the study lent strong support to the finances–shame model. Among those who were exposed to a greater degree of financial hardship and also had more shaming experiences, the mean SOC score was 42.14 for women and 42.41 for men. The corresponding figures for those facing a lesser degree of financial hardship and with fewer shaming experiences were 67.10 and 66.66 respectively, i.e. figures which are on a par with or somewhat higher than for population studies covering the whole population.