Measuring Child Poverty in South Africa: Sensitivity to the Choice of Equivalence Scale and an Updated Profile

This paper offers evidence on the sensitivity of child poverty in South Africa to changes in the adult equivalence scale (AES) and updates the child poverty profile based on the Income and Expenditure Survey 2005/06. Setting the poverty line at the 40th percentile of households calculated with different AESs the scope and composition of child poverty are found to be relatively insensitive to the scale used. The rankings of children of different ages, girls versus boys, racial groupings and children living in rural versus urban areas are unaffected by choice of AES, although some provincial rankings on the poverty headcount measure are. The proportions of children and households ‘correctly’ identified as poor for the full range of scales is extremely high. These findings support the argument that it may be appropriate for profiling poverty in South Africa to use a poverty line based on a per capita welfare measure. For the construction of the child poverty profile, per capita income is used as the welfare indicator with the poverty line set at the 40th percentile of household. The profile suggests that poverty amongst children is more extensive than amongst the population or adults even after the massive injection of transfers into households with poor children through the child support grant. The child poverty headcount, depth and severity are all highest amongst children age 0–4 and lowest amongst those aged 15–17, who are not yet beneficiaries of the grants. They are also highest amongst African and Coloured children. Large variations across provinces remain. The analysis underlines the importance of prioritising children in the fight against poverty, particularly in their earliest years.     

Exploring patterns of personal growth initiative and posttraumatic stress: A latent profile analysis

Objective: This study examined the inconsistent relationship found between personal growth initiative (PGI) and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) by exploring potential subgroups. In addition, after identifying the subgroups, potential predictors of these subgroups were examined. Participants: Participants were 534 undergraduate students who experienced a potentially traumatic event (PTE). Data collection occurred from March 2013 to December 2014. Methods: Because this was a preliminary study, archival data was used. Participants consisted of students who experienced a PTE within the past three years. Results: Latent profile analysis indicated a five-class model as the best-fitting model. Direct exposure and intentionality of the event were significant predictors of class membership; length of time since event and gender did not predict class membership. Conclusions: The current study provides a potential explanation of the inconsistent results between PGI and PTSS and also highlights the importance of acknowledging subgroups when utilizing PGI after a PTE.     

A clarifying comparison of methods for controlling the false discovery rate

Traditional multiple hypothesis testing procedures fix an error rate and determine the corresponding rejection region. In 2002 Storey proposed a fixed rejection region procedure and showed numerically that it can gain more power than the fixed error rate procedure of Benjamini and Hochberg while controlling the same false discovery rate (FDR). In this paper it is proved that when the number of alternatives is small compared to the total number of hypotheses, Storey's method can be less powerful than that of Benjamini and Hochberg. Moreover, the two procedures are compared by setting them to produce the same FDR. The difference in power between Storey's procedure and that of Benjamini and Hochberg is near zero when the distance between the null and alternative distributions is large, but Benjamini and Hochberg's procedure becomes more powerful as the distance decreases. It is shown that modifying the Benjamini and Hochberg procedure to incorporate an estimate of the proportion of true null hypotheses as proposed by Black gives a procedure with superior power.     

Back to Brit: retired British migrants returning from Spain

Since the seminal research of O'Reilly, Karen [2000. The British on the Costa del Sol. London: Routledge] and King, Russell, Anthony Warnes, Allan Williams [2000. Sunset Lives: British Retirement Migration to the Mediterranean. New York: Berg Publishers] about British citizens on the Costa del Sol there has been a surge in the publication of lifestyle migration papers, books and research. Nonetheless, there is a part of the lifestyle migration process that has been rarely explored: a return move to the country of origin following retirement migration. Research has indicated a broad increase in the number of older British returnees, yet there has been no substantive research on the topic. This paper therefore attempts to fill this gap by using Spanish registry data to examine the number of British retirees since 2009 who have returned to the UK. In addition, the results of an electronic survey to older British people in Spain are presented which suggest that considerable numbers of British citizens aged over 55 living in the Northern Costa Blanca are likely to return in the next few years. These data therefore indicate the relevance of return migration from Spain to the UK as a significant issue to the academic community as well as to British and Spanish policy-makers.     

Communicative Correlates of Satisfaction,Family Identity,and Group Salience in Multiracial/Ethnic Families

Guided by the Common Ingroup Identity Model ( S. L. Gaertner & J. F. Dovidio, 2000 ) and Communication Accommodation Theory ( C. Shepard, H. Giles, & B. A. LePoire, 2001 ), we examined the role of identity accommodation, supportive communication, and self‐disclosure in predicting relational satisfaction, shared family identity, and group salience in multiracial/ethnic families. Additionally, we analyzed the association between group salience and relational outcomes as well as the moderating roles of multiracial/ethnic identity and marital status. Individuals who have parents from different racial/ethnic groups were invited to complete questionnaires on their family experiences. Participants (N = 139) answered questions about relationships with mothers, fathers, and grandparents. The results of the multilevel modeling analyses are discussed in terms of implications for understanding multiracial/ethnic families and family functioning.     

Social Cognitive Predictors of the Career Goals of Korean American Students

Limited empirical study of the career development of Asian Americans in general and Korean Americans in particular has been conducted. The authors present the results of a theory‐based exploration of the career goals of Korean American university students in which ethnic identity, self‐efficacy, outcome expectations, and career interests were used to predict goal intentions for science and nonscience careers. Outcome expectations and career interests predicted a moderate amount of variance in science career goal intentions and a moderate to large amount of variance in nonscience career goal intentions. Korean American students' career goal development seems similar to that of American college students.     

The U.S. Health System and Immigration: An Institutional Interpretation1

We examine the institutions that comprise the U.S. health system and their relationship to a surging immigrant population. The clash between the system and this human flow originates in the large number of immigrants who are unauthorized, poor, and uninsured and, hence, unable to access a system largely based on ability to pay. Basic concepts from sociological theory are brought to bear on the analysis of this clash and its consequences. Data from a recently completed study of health institutions in three areas of the United States are used as an empirical basis to illustrate various aspects of this complex relation. Implications of our results for theory and future health policy are discussed.     

Three notes on a political economy of youth

The paper seeks to makes a contribution to a recent debate in the Journal about what a political economy of youth might look like. The paper will take up aspects of Sukarieh and Tannock’s [2016. ‘On the political economy of youth: a comment.’ Journal of Youth Studies 19 (9): 1281–1289] response to the initial contributions by Côté [2014. ‘Towards a New Political Economy of Youth.’ Journal of Youth Studies 17 (4): 527–543, 2016. ‘A New Political Economy of Youth Reprised: Rejoinder to France and Threadgold.’ Journal of Youth Studies.] And France and Threadgold [2015. ‘Youth and Political Economy: Towards a Bourdieusian Approach.’ Journal of Youth Studies], and will take the form of three ‘notes’: Capitalism: From the first industrial revolution to the third industrial revolution; Youth as an artefact of governmentalised expertise; The agency/structure problem in youth studies: Foucault’s dispositif and post-human exceptionalism.

These notes will suggest that twenty-first century capitalism is globalising, is largely neo-Liberal, and is being reconfigured in profound ways by the Anthropocene, bio-genetics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT). A political economy of twenty-first century capitalism, let alone a political economy of young people, must be able to account for a capitalism that in many ways looks like the capitalism of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, but which is at the same time profoundly different as it enters what has often been described as the Third Industrial Revolution. It is these profound emergences that pose the greatest challenges for engaging with a political economy of youth.