Disability and Household Welfare in Ghana: Costs and Correlates

Journal of Family and Economic Issues - Persons with disabilities face substantial barriers that impede their integration and participation in social and economic activities. Households with...     

A new era in Australian migration policy

The discussion traces the evolution of Australian migration policy since 1975, arguing that the primary factor shaping policy has been interparty competition for influence within Australia's ethnic communities. Since late 1975 when the Liberal/National Country Party (LibNCP) Conservative Government returned to power, Australian immigration policy has moved in different directions from the previous post World War II experience. The demographic implications have been profound. In 1975 the LibNCP government returned to office committed to restoring an active migration program. By 1980-81 it had largely succeeded in this numerical goal. Australia's migration growth rate at .82% of the total population exceeded almost all other Western society. What was new, in comparison to previous policy, was the migrant selection system and source countries. By the time the government lost office in March 1983, family reunion had become the major migration program souce and Asia was rapidly becoming the dominant place of migrant origin. This emphasis on family reunion was not intended by government immigration planners but was a product of domestic political change and resultant new influences over migration policy. As to the increasing Asian component, it has mainly been an unintended consequence of the expansion in the family reunion program. Although the liberalization of family reunion eligibility has largely been designed to appease the major Southern European ethnic communities, few applications have been forthcoming from these countries. Asian applicants have been numerous. Labor government policy since March 1983 has shown remarkable continuity with that of the LibNCP both in its selection system and in the size of the migrant intake. The motivation for the commitment to immigration derived first from longstanding traditions within the Australian business community that Australia's economic growth and dynamism depended on rapid population growth. More specifically there remained a group of businesses whose fortunes seemed directly tied up with population growth, including those in the housing industry and manufacturers dependent on tariff protected growth in Australia's home market. This group has constituted the most vocal business pressure goups behind migrant intakes throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. At first the migrant intake was increased cautiously. The 1st major move toward expansion came with the introduction of the selection system in January 1979. This substantially liberalized entry for independent applicants by reducing the relative significance of scarce occupational skills and increasing that for other migrant qualities, including skill attainment, competence in English, and other qualities likely to favor the prospective migrant in his/her search for a job and in assimilating readily with Australian society.     

Parental Linguistic Input and Its Relation to Toddlers’ Visual Attention in Joint Object Play: A Comparison Between Children with Normal Hearing and Children With Hearing Loss

Parent–child interactions are multimodal, often involving coordinated exchanges of visual and auditory information between the two partners. The current work focuses on the effect of children's hearing loss on parent–child interactions when parents and their toddlers jointly played with a set of toy objects. We compared the linguistic input received by toddlers with hearing loss (HL) and their chronological age‐matched (CA) and hearing age‐matched (HA) normal‐hearing peers. Moreover, we used head‐mounted eye trackers to examine how different parental linguistic input affected children's visual attention on objects when parents either led or followed children's attention during joint object play. Overall, parents of children with HL provided comparable amount of linguistic input as parents of the two normal‐hearing groups. However, the types of linguistic input produced by parents of children with HL were similar to the CA group in some ways and similar to the HA group in other ways. Interestingly, the effects of different types of linguistic input on extending the attention of children with HL qualitatively resembled the patterns seen in the CA group, even though the effects were less pronounced in the HL group. We discuss the implications of these results for our understanding of the reciprocal, dynamic, and multi‐factored nature of parent–child interactions.     

Transgender experiences and transphobia in higher education

While categories like “campus climate” highlight variation across institutions, trans people's experiences also vary within an institutional context. By studying trans people's experiences in higher education, however, we can better understand and respond to the differentiated and changing needs of transgender people in other arenas. In this paper, I review key qualitative and quantitative findings along several themes: (a) disclosing trans identities, (b) trans communities, and (c) resources and career‐level support. Specifically, I use the concept of microclimates to explain how trans people encounter various forms of support and discrimination on campus. For example, someone might receive support from particular individuals, such as an advisor, or spaces, like a gender studies classroom, but not others. Researchers also report both similarities and differences between binary and nonbinary trans people, as well as between transgender men and transgender women, suggesting that there is no universal trans experience, nor a one‐size‐fits‐all approach to supporting trans students and faculty members. Challenging interpersonal and systemic transphobia requires context‐specific interventions.     

“Where Have All the Good Men Gone?” Gendered Interactions in Online Dating

This article explores gendered patterns of online dating and their implications for heterosexual union formation. Using 6 months of online dating data from a midsized Southwestern city (N = 8,259 men, 6,274 women), the authors found that men and women tend to send messages to the most socially desirable alters in the dating market regardless of their own desirability levels. They also found that male initiators connect with more desirable partners than men who wait to be contacted, but female initiators connect with equally desirable partners as women who wait to be contacted. Female‐initiated contacts are also more than twice as likely as male‐initiated contacts to result in a connection, but women send 4 times fewer messages than men. Finally, the authors compared partner desirability levels over repeated exchanges and concluded that couple similarities are more likely to result from relationship termination (i.e., nonreciprocity) than initial homophilous preferences.     

Function-Altering Effects of Rule Phrasing in the Modulation of Instructional Control

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - This study evaluated the effects of four instructional variants on instruction following under changing reinforcement schedules using an operant task based on...     

Early Sexual Initiation and Mental Health: A Fleeting Association or Enduring Change?

The present research examined how the within‐person association between sexual initiation and internalizing symptoms decays over time, using data with annual measurement occasions across adolescence (N = 1,789) and statistical models of within‐person change. Sexual initiation was associated with increased levels of internalizing symptoms for early‐initiating girls (ninth grade, approximately age 15), but not for on‐time‐initiating girls or for boys. The association between girls' early sexual initiation and internalizing symptoms declined precipitously over time. Indeed, 1 year after sexual debut, early‐initiating girls were similar to on‐time or noninitiating girls on internalizing symptoms, suggesting early sexual initiation does not produce lasting detriments to girls' mental health. Findings inform how researchers perceive sexual initiation, both as a developmental milestone and as a prevention target.     

Teaching Trump: A Case Study of Two Teachers and the Election of 2016

This case study investigated how two 8th-grade teachers planned for, delivered, and reflected on their teaching of the 2016 Presidential Election. Data sources included classroom observations, teacher interviews, and lesson plans. Despite integrating student-centered lessons about the election with social and political events in US History from1792-1861, one teacher, Ms. Smith, struggled to navigate burgeoning issues that galvanized students. During the six-week unit, both teachers maintained neutral positions on the candidates; however, after the election, Ms. Smith allowed her disdain for Donald Trump to seep into her teaching. Because exigent political events, such as presidential elections, hold great potential to accelerate students' political socialization, more needs to be learned about how teachers do and should manage the teaching of controversial issues in the social classroom.