Employer-initiated elections, 1968–1992

In 1968, employers filed 1,091 petitions resulting in 377 elections, 42.4 percent of which unions won. In 1992, the most recent year for which data are available, employers filed 247 petitions, 66 elections were held, and the union victory rate was less than 25 percent. This research examines both the legal environment and the activity levels of employer-initiated (RM) elections over the past 25 years.     

Race differences in abortion attitudes: some additional evidence

Although Combs and Welch reported a trend of decreasing racialdifference in abortion attitudes, Hall and Ferree used datafrom the 1982 General Social Survey to argue that racial differencewere not declining. This paper updates this debate through the1988 General Social Survey and concludes that racial differenceshave indeed declined over time. Morever, when new religiousitems introduced in the 1984 survey are included in the multivariateanalysis, blacks are not significantly different from whitesin their support of legal abortion. This finding obscures amore intersting pattern, however, of offsetting, statisticallysignificant racial differences among respondents of the samegender—black men are significantly less supportive ofa abortion than white men, and black women are significantlymore supportive than white women.     

THE ECONOMICS OF EXOGAMOUS MARRIAGE IN SMALL‐SCALE SOCIETIES

Marriage is a core institution in almost every human society, including small‐scale societies based on foraging or subsistence agriculture. A crucial dimension of the marriage systems in such societies involves endogamy and exogamy, that is, the choice of a marriage partner from within one's own community or from an outside community. We develop a model in which the exogamy rate is higher when good local matches are scarce due to small community sizes, and when productivity differs across communities due to environmental shocks. These theoretical predictions are supported by econometric analysis of data from the standard cross‐cultural sample. (JEL D13, J11, N30, Z13)     

The welfare state as a context for children's development: a study of the effects of unemployment and unemployment protection on reading literacy scores

Data were analysed from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) to examine whether the relationship between parental unemployment status and child reading literacy is modified by the level of unemployment protection provided by the nation. The sample consisted of 61,946 children, nested in 3,918 schools among 17 market economies. The results of multi-level analyses indicated that, after controlling for a range of individual, family and school covariates, children with unemployed fathers in all countries had significantly lower reading literacy scores than those of employed fathers (β = −8.84, SE = 2.01). The contextual effect of unemployment protection was not significant after accounting for fathers' employment status (β = −18.63, SE = 16.26). However, there was a significant negative interaction between unemployment protection and fathers' unemployment, yielding the unexpected suggestion that, in countries with higher levels of unemployment protection, children with unemployed fathers fare worse, both in relation to children with unemployed fathers in lower protection countries, and in comparison with children with employed fathers (β = −26.96, SE = 8.08). Possible explanations are advanced for this result, including the potential for a 'discouraged child effect' arising from the potential association between unemployment protection and higher local unemployment rates (though unemployment rates at the national level were not significant).     

Factors in the length of stay of homeless families in temporary accommodation

Data relating to 526 homeless families in temporary accommodation were collected in a study directed mainly to the examination of support networks of a sample of these families. The data, however, have allowed the authors to examine the effects of certain characteristics of these families on the average length of stay in temporary accommodation before they were housed permanently. Log-linear analysis was used to establish the independent effect of various attributes available from the data. In general the feature which seemed to influence the length of stay most was the time of the year when the family was admitted into temporary accommodation followed by the sort of reason the families gave for being homeless at the time of admission. Those who had been illegally evicted tended to take longer to be rehoused whilst those with rental or tenant difficulties took less time to be rehoused. The authors are then able to produce profiles based on this analysis of those families which are likely to stay longest in temporary accommodation as against those likely to stay the shortest time.     

The growth of American families studies an assessment of significance

This is a review focused mainly upon the book Fertility and Family Planning in the United States, by Pascal K. Whelpton, Arthur A. Campbell, and John E. Patterson, published by Princeton University Press in 1966, and representing the results of the second GAF survey (1960). The initial GAF survey was conducted in 1955 and resulted in the book Family Planning, Sterility, and Population Growth, by Ronald Freedman, Pascal K. Whelpton, and Arthur A. Campbell, published by McGraw-Hill in 1958.A basic purpose of the GAF studies, as contrived by Whelpton, was that of trying to improve the bases for population estimates by learning from young women themselves the number of children that they expected to have altogether and during the next five years. By repeating the study five years later, it was hoped to test the validity of replies on expectations by comparing them with subsequent performance. This involved interviewing not the same women but the same types of women in 1955 and 1960.The GAF studies have indicated the usefulness of questions on number of children expected. They suggest that the replies of 1955 have low predictive value for individual behavior but high predictive value for group behavior. They have provided invaluable data on other aspects of fertility unavailable from official sources, such as family planning, fecundity, and the influence of religion. The chief inadequacies of the GAF studies have been those associated with small numbers. Moreover, definitive comparisons of expectations with performance would seem to require longitudinal studies of the same women rather than periodic studies of the same types of women. On the other hand, the latter type of design doubtless is preferable for other purposes.Besides the yield of new data on fertility, the GAF studies have been significant in that one government agency provided the funds for the National Fertility Survey of 1965, which was essentially a third round of the GAF studies, and another government agency is considering the institution of regular surveys of the GAF type in order to provide a wider scope of data relating to fertility. The volume under review is at once a fitting living memorial to the senior author and the Scripps Foundation, a credit to the coauthors, and a worthy model for future studies.     

Working the ‘spaces’ between policy and practice: the contributions offered by resilience theory and action research

The policy‐practice dimension often presents challenges particularly in the policy arena of child well‐being. Policy designers identify risk factors and design programmes intended to develop protective factors in areas of need. The 2004 Australian Communities for Children (CfC) initiative aimed to improve the social, health and educational outcomes for young children living in socio‐economically disadvantaged localities. Its method was to engage local community members to contribute towards developing protective factors. Rather than considering this national–local arrangement, an unworkable alliance, we examine the performance of CfC through three examples and demonstrate how resilience theory and action research can assist this programme achieve its social inclusion aims and well‐being outcomes. We choose not to disregard policy programmes like CfC, rather we emphasize the possibilities offered when working these complex spaces involving multiple and inherent contradictions. The spaces that often exist between the policy and its implementation are rethought to allow a greater opportunity for the growth of innovation and change.     

Portfolio analysis and the product life cycle

This paper explains how the product life cycle and Boston Consulting Group's portfolio matrix can be combined to provide a more comprehensive framework for strategic analysis. The integrated model is more powerful than either concept taken separately because it provides an exhaustive system for classifying a diverse assortment of business units or product/market categories.