New Indices of Money Supply and the Flexible Laurent Demand System

The article begins by surveying the existing results on the new Divisia monetary aggregates. Charts display the differences in behavior between the Divisia aggregates and the Federal Reserve's official simple-sum monetary aggregates. The article then compares system-wide fit for the simple-sum and Divisia monetary aggregates when used as data in the joint estimation of a system of demand equations. The demand system is derived from a new Laurent expansion approximation to the reciprocal indirect utility function. The Laurent expansion provides a better-behaved remainder term than that of the more commonly used Taylor series. The results favor the Divisia aggregates.     

Mentoring as a Bridge to Positive Outcomes for Teen Mothers and Their Children

This paper compares historical and psychosocial realities of teenage parenting to prevailing contemporary myths. The authors explore the negative consequences of current remedies based on these myths. Community volunteer mentoring programs are suggested as a cost-effective intervention that can benefit communities and promote positive outcomes for at-risk pregnant teenagers. The authors suggest strategies for implementation of a community volunteer mentoring program based on an existing program in an urban community health center. Detailed information for social workers in community agencies is provided with regard to community education, recruitment, training, and ongoing support and supervision of mentors; funding requirements; and program evaluation.     

Functional specificity in discussion networks: The influence of general and problem-specific networks on health outcomes

Though commonly used in social science research to measure the influence of social networks, the link between discussing “important matters” within networks and the achievement of instrumental ends is frequently unspecified or untested. To address this gap, we explore the consequences of using the general “important matters” approach versus one in which the substance of discussions is directly linked to the outcomes of interest. The egocentric social networks of people experiencing an acute health crisis are examined. We identify the characteristics of and the degree of membership overlap between “important matters” and “health matters” discussants, and explore their relative power in explaining a wide range of health and health services-related outcomes. We find no evidence for the influence of “important matters” networks, while characteristics of “health matters” networks demonstrate a significant effect across all models.     

The effects of climate change on the geography and timing of human mobility

Human mobility over different distances and time scales has long been associated with environmental change, and the idea of climate change is now affecting movement in new ways. In this paper, we discuss three cases from the South Pacific to explain the ways anticipated climate futures are changing mobility in the present. First, we examine village relocation in response to coastal erosion and inundation in Fiji, drawing on our study of the unfolding experience of Narikoso village in Kadavu Province. In contrast to this spatially constrained process of permanent relocation, we examine the spatially extended yet temporally constrained seasonal migrant worker programme that aims to support economic development in the Pacific Islands by providing temporary work visas in Australia and New Zealand. Finally, we examine the likely effects of proposed open labour markets as a means to promote climate change adaptation, through a study of the analogous example of Niuean migration to New Zealand which has resulted in both permanent migration and a slow circulation of people between both countries. Across these examples, we highlight emerging and potentially constructive ways in which climate change is altering the spatio-temporal patterns and rhythms of mobility.     

Barriers to antenatal psychosocial assessment and depression screening in private hospital settings

Problem

The evidence of benefit for antenatal psychosocial assessment and depression screening has been sufficient to lead the implementation of screening in public hospitals in all states of Australia. Details of the implementation of perinatal screening in private obstetric settings is less well known.

Private versus public old-age security

We directly compare two institutions, a family compact—a parent makes a transfer to her parent in anticipation of a possible future gift from her children—with a pay-as-you-go, public pension system, in a life cycle model with endogenous fertility wherein children are valued both as consumption and investment goods. Absent intragenerational heterogeneity, we show that a benevolent government has no welfare justification for introducing public pensions alongside thriving family compacts since the former is associated with inefficiently low fertility. This result hinges critically on a fiscal externality—the inability of middle age agents to internalize the impact of their fertility decisions on old-age transfers under a public pension system. With homogeneous agents, a strong-enough negative aggregate shock to middle-age incomes destroys all family compacts, and in such a setting, an optimal public pension system cannot enter. This suggests the raison d’être for social security must lie outside of its function as a pension system—specifically its redistributive function which emerges with heterogeneous agents. In a simple modification of our benchmark model—one that allows for idiosyncratic frictions to compact formation such as differences in infertility/mating status—a welfare-enhancing role for a public pension system emerges; such systems may flourish even when family compacts cannot.     

Linking Changes in Parenting to Parent–Child Relationship Quality and Youth Self‐Control: The Strong African American Families Program

A randomized prevention trial was conducted contrasting families who took part in the Strong African American Families Program (SAAF), a preventive intervention for rural African American mothers and their 11‐year‐olds, with control families. SAAF is based on a conceptual model positing that changes in intervention‐targeted parenting behaviors would enhance responsive‐supportive parent–child relationships and youths' self‐control, which protect rural African American youths from substance use and early sexual activity. Parenting variables included involvement‐vigilance, racial socialization, communication about sex, and clear expectations for alcohol use. Structural equation modeling analyses indicated that intervention‐induced changes in parenting were linked with changes in responsive–supportive parent–child relationships and youth self‐control.     

The spaces and ethics of organic food

Initial assessments of the potential for organic food systems have offered an optimistic interpretation of the progressive political and ethical characteristics involved. This positive gloss has prompted a stream of critique emphasising the need to explore the ambiguities and disconnections inherent therein. In this paper, we consider the case of Riverford Organic Vegetables,¹ arguably the largest supplier of organic vegetables in the UK, and suggest that existing debates assume too much about the “goods” and “rights” of organic food and leave important questions about the spaces and ethics of organic food. We argue that, in the case of Riverford, the space of organic food production and distribution is neither the small, local, counter-cultural farm nor the large, transnational, corporate firm. Rather, simultaneously, the spaces of organic food production and distribution are the national network, the regional distribution system and the local farm. In addition, in the case of Riverford, the ethics of organic food exhibit few grand designs (of environmental sustainability, for example). Rather, the ethics of organic food are best characterised as: ordinary, since they relate to concerns about taste, value for money, care within the family and so on; diverse, since multiple practices steer the production and distribution of organic food; and graspable, in that both vegetables and box have material and symbolic presence for consumers.     

The Transition from Public Residential Schools for Retarded People to Custodial Facilities: An Economic Explanation

Conventional histories of residential services for mentally retarded persons in the United States explain the development of custodial care as the result of the failure of early residential schools to achieve their educational goals. Review of the historical evidence indicates that the conventional explanation is inadequate. An alternative explanation is suggested based on an economic model of the structure of the residential services industry. The economic model explains the decline of education and transition to low-quality custodial care in terms of economic incentives. Particularly important is the role of the mental retardation profession as monopolists of expertise regarding mentally retarded people and in rationing residential services to parents of retarded people. It is argued that the profession used its expertise monopoly to generate demand for residential services by portraying retarded persons first as in need of protection and later as a 'menace' to society.