Influence of Perceived Economic Strain on the Relationship Between Caregiver BMI and Child BMI

As maternal BMI is a risk factor for higher child BMI, this exploratory study investigated perceived economic strain as a protective factor modifying this well-established relationship. Primary low-income female caregivers (n = 432) of preschoolers ages 3–5 years were interviewed using the Family Economic Strain Scale. Caregiver and child heights and weights were measured. Significant differences were found in perceived economic strain between normal versus underweight, overweight, and obese caregivers. A moderating effect approaching significance was noted such that at low levels of reported economic strain, caregiver BMI classification had no effect on child BMI z-score for normal weight, overweight, or obese caregivers. This study is the first to demonstrate that reduced perception of economic strain may act to buffer the impact of maternal overweight/obesity on child weight status. Given this biologically strong relationship, the potential for any modifiable factor to be detected is encouraging. Further collaborative research between economists and family resiliency researchers is suggested.     

Emergency Saving and Household Hardship

Households with limited income and wealth often struggle to access the financial liquidity needed to address unexpected expenses or income drops. Emergency savings can act as form of insurance against such economic shocks and reduce the risk of hardships that influence family wellbeing. Prior research has established that threshold amounts of liquid assets can reduce the risk of economic hardship. This study used a measure of self-reported emergency saving behavior to examine whether households who reported saving for emergencies were less likely to experience subsequent economic hardships in a longitudinal sample of households in disadvantaged neighborhoods from the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Making Connections project. Results across a range of regression models suggest that households who saved for emergencies experienced slightly less overall hardship and were less likely to report several specific hardships, such as food insecurity and having a phone disconnected, three years later. This study supports the idea that small, unrestricted savings may play a protective role for low-income households.     

Sense of School Membership and Associated Academic and Psychological Outcomes in Post-Institutionalized Adopted High School Students

Research highlights lasting cognitive and academic challenges in youth internationally adopted from institutional care. However, there is a lack of research examining internationally adopted students' sense of membership at school and associated academic and psychological outcomes. The current study measured sense of school membership and academic and psychological outcomes in post-institutionalized internationally adopted high school students (n = 29) compared to adolescents internationally adopted from foster care (n = 28) and non-adopted adolescents (n = 32). Post-institutionalized males had a lower sense of school membership than males adopted from foster care or non-adopted males. Group differences in school membership were mediated by academic achievement and psychological well-being.     

Lena Finkle’s magic arc: hybrid influences in the Russian American graphic novel

ABSTRACT

The article examines Anya Ulinich’s graphic narrative Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel and the novel’s use of visual culture from both the author’s Russian and US American backgrounds. The article interrogates the use of history and timelines, Russian art history and Russian art education in Ulinich’s text. It also analyzes other literary constructs that influenced Ulinich’s novel: US American comics/graphic novels and their use of stereotype, and novels by Russian-speaking Jewish American writers, with their thematized Jewishness.     

Modeling Demand For Unionization With Nontraditional Data Analysis Methods

Upon reviewing the extant literature on determinants of unionism, it becomes clear that many areas that have had a plethora of research attention do not converge upon singularly directional findings. This study explores a potential cause of such an apparent anomaly: nonlinearity of data. An exploratory examination of correlation coefficients among typical union determinant variables seems to show different patterns of relationships at different levels of union demand. Thus, a break from traditional linear data analysis techniques is explored in the interest of explaining more variance with typical, theoretically derived variables by using neural network analysis. Results of analyses on industry level data reveal that using neural network analysis to model union demand explained over four times as much variance as multiple regression analysis.     

Disagreement over the immigration of low-income earners in a welfare state

This paper studies natives’ economically motivated preferences over different levels of immigration of low-income earners. Immigration affects natives through both intra- and intergenerational redistribution programmes and in the labour market. Our analysis suggests, in a welfare state that looks after the poor and the aged, economic motivation does not necessarily lead a native to have an extreme opinion on the preferable level of immigration, although it causes disagreement among natives. We find, regardless of parameter values, high-income earners prefer at least as much immigration as low-income earners who, in turn, prefer at least as much immigration as pensioners. The median voter is then likely to be a low-income native.

Parental Leave Policies and Second Births: A Comparison of Czechia and Slovakia

Population Research and Policy Review - The paper investigates the transition to second births in Czechia and Slovakia in the context of the development of parental leave policies since the...     

Writing resistance together

This piece of writing is a joint initiative by the participants in the Gender, Work and Organization writing workshop organized in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2019. This is a particular form of writing differently. We engage in collective writing and embody what it means to write resistance to established academic practices and conventions together. This is a form of emancipatory initiative where we care for each other as writers and as human beings. There are many author voices and we aim to keep the text open and dialogical. As such, this piece of writing is about suppressed thoughts and feelings that our collective picket line allows us to express. In order to maintain the open‐ended nature of the text, and perhaps also to retain some ‘dirtiness’ that is essential to writing, the article has not been language checked throughout by a native speaker of English.     

The Eurovision Song Contest – A Continent (still) Divided?

Credited as one of the most successful major televised music events held annually in Europe, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) still serves as a battlefield between Eastern and Western European aesthetic paradigms. Although the Western paradigm has long been regarded as an almost universal criterion of success, the contemporary ESC presents a unique opportunity for post-communist acts to contest that hegemony while playing with its conventions. This article examines how, in the post-1989 situation, the most successful Eastern European acts purposely exploited, juxtaposed and subverted several aesthetic categories, demonstrating their understanding of the conventions promoted at the ESC on the one hand, while undermining and contesting them on the other. The article argues for greater attention to such strategies as over-exploitation of stereotypes and auto-stereotypes, as well as mocking the prevailing aesthetics by playing with such notions as authenticity, folklore, nationalism, essentialism, camp, kitsch or hyper-reality and challenging the contest's utopian and nostalgic ideals.