Freezing time? The sociology of egg freezing

In the past decade, social scientists and bioethicists have produced a significant body of work tracking the technical, legal, ethical, and sociocultural development and implications of human egg freezing. What began as a treatment to “preserve” the fertility of cancer patients has transformed into a technology enabling delayed childbearing. We provide an overview of four research areas that have received the most attention in the sociological and anthropological literature of egg freezing: medicalization, gender, temporality and risk, and markets. What emerges from much of the research is the sense that egg freezing has become entangled with cultural imperatives to take future-oriented responsibility for one's own health, financial, social, and reproductive needs through self-management, risk reduction, calculation, and optimization. Throughout, we consider the implications of this novel reproductive technology within national and transnational “reproflows” that stratify reproduction along raced and classed lines.     

Community worker perceptions of the Income Management regime in Shepparton

This paper focuses on how community workers in Shepparton viewed the impact of the Place Based Income Management (PBIM) trial on the lives of their clients, their clients' families, and the broader community. The paper responds to criticism that there has been a lack of community voices in the development of PBIM or of their inclusion in the formal evaluation framework, raised in Philip Mendes's 2013 study of this trial site. A key policy goal underlying Income Management is that the tool assists low income people to become better money managers. Our study found that Shepparton community workers also used the parlance of ‘tool’ to describe the programmatic value of the BasicsCard in their interactions with clients. However, the BasicsCard appeared marginal to their discussions. Three clear themes emerged from the interviews: Shepparton's focus on voluntary clients, and ascertaining why participation in the local trial had dropped; that support for IM centred on the voluntary measure and the extra resources available to assist clients; and pragmatically locating the program in the middle of a welfare continuum that stretched from the voluntary Centrepay at one end to the highly coercive and restrictive paternalism of State Trustees at the other.     

Additive representation of separable preferences over infinite products

Let \(\mathcal{X }\) be a set of outcomes, and let \(\mathcal{I }\) be an infinite indexing set. This paper shows that any separable, permutation-invariant preference order \((\succcurlyeq )\) on \(\mathcal{X }^\mathcal{I }\) admits an additive representation. That is: there exists a linearly ordered abelian group \(\mathcal{R }\) and a ‘utility function’ \(u:\mathcal{X }{{\longrightarrow }}\mathcal{R }\) such that, for any \(\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y}\in \mathcal{X }^\mathcal{I }\) which differ in only finitely many coordinates, we have \(\mathbf{x}\succcurlyeq \mathbf{y}\) if and only if \(\sum _{i\in \mathcal{I }} \left[u(x_i)-u(y_i)\right]\ge 0\) . Importantly, and unlike almost all previous work on additive representations, this result does not require any Archimedean or continuity condition. If \((\succcurlyeq )\) also satisfies a weak continuity condition, then the paper shows that, for any \(\mathbf{x},\mathbf{y}\in \mathcal{X }^\mathcal{I }\) , we have \(\mathbf{x}\succcurlyeq \mathbf{y}\) if and only if \({}^*\!\sum _{i\in \mathcal{I }} u(x_i)\ge {}^*\!\sum _{i\in \mathcal{I }}u(y_i)\) . Here, \({}^*\!\sum _{i\in \mathcal{I }} u(x_i)\) represents a nonstandard sum, taking values in a linearly ordered abelian group \({}^*\!\mathcal{R }\) , which is an ultrapower extension of \(\mathcal{R }\) . The paper also discusses several applications of these results, including infinite-horizon intertemporal choice, choice under uncertainty, variable-population social choice and games with infinite strategy spaces.     

Social work,poverty, and child welfare interventions

The relationship between children's material circumstances and child abuse and neglect raises a series of questions for policy, practice, and practitioners. Children and families in poverty are significantly more likely to be the subject of state intervention. This article, based on a unique mixed‐methods study of social work interventions and the influence of poverty, highlights a narrative from practitioners that argues that, as many poor families do not harm their children, it is stigmatizing to discuss a link between poverty and child abuse and neglect. The data reveal that poverty has become invisible in practice, in part justified by avoiding stigma but also because of a lack of up‐to‐date research knowledge and investment by some social workers in an “underclass” discourse. We argue, in light of the evidence that poverty is a contributory factor in the risk of harm, that it is vital that social work engages with the evidence and in critical reflection about intervening in the context of poverty. We identify the need for fresh approaches to the harms children and families face in order to support practices that engage confidently with the consequences of poverty and deprivation.     

‘In a perfect world it would be great if they didn't exist’: How Australians experience payday loans

In the last few decades, payday lending has mushroomed in many developed countries. The arguments for and against an industry which provides small, short‐term loans at very high interest rates have also blossomed. This article presents findings from an Australian study to contribute to the international policy and practice debate about a sector which orients to those on a low income. At the heart of this debate lies a conundrum: Borrowing from payday lenders exacerbates poverty, yet many low‐income households rely on these loans. We argue that the key problem is the restricted framework within which the debate currently oscillates. Key Practitioner Message: ● Framing payday borrowing as a problem of market failure leads to one‐sided and ineffective regulatory responses; ● Until governments instigate real alternatives for cheap and readily available credit, and broader anti‐poverty measures, curbing access to payday lenders can have the perverse effect of increasing privation; ● For practitioners seeking to abolish payday lending, campaigns for higher wages and a liveable social welfare income are central.     

The Differential Earnings and Income Effects of Involuntary Job Loss on Workers with Disabilities — Evidence from Sweden

People with disabilities are consistently found to face considerable difficulties in the labour market. In this study we investigated whether their earnings and income trajectories are more adversely affected in case of involuntary job loss. Earnings of those with and without disabilities began to diverge already several years prior to job loss because of larger incidence of sickness. Following job loss much more job losers with disabilities became disability retirees resulting in a considerable and seemingly permanent earnings differential. However, larger uptake of public social insurances among job losers with disabilities resulted in a much smaller income differential.     

A Case Study Evaluating the Risk of Infection from Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS‐CoV) in a Hospital Setting Through Bioaerosols

Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, an emerging viral infection with a global case fatality rate of 35.5%, caused major outbreaks first in 2012 and 2015, though new cases are continuously reported around the world. Transmission is believed to mainly occur in healthcare settings through aerosolized particles. This study uses Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment to develop a generalizable model that can assist with interpreting reported outbreak data or predict risk of infection with or without the recommended strategies. The exposure scenario includes a single index patient emitting virus‐containing aerosols into the air by coughing, leading to short‐ and long‐range airborne exposures for other patients in the same room, nurses, healthcare workers, and family visitors. Aerosol transport modeling was coupled with Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the risk of MERS illness for the exposed population. Results from a typical scenario show the daily mean risk of infection to be the highest for the nurses and healthcare workers (8.49 × 10^?4 and 7.91 × 10^?4, respectively), and the lowest for family visitors and patients staying in the same room (3.12 × 10^?4 and 1.29 × 10^?4, respectively). Sensitivity analysis indicates that more than 90% of the uncertainty in the risk characterization is due to the viral concentration in saliva. Assessment of risk interventions showed that respiratory masks were found to have a greater effect in reducing the risks for all the groups evaluated (>90% risk reduction), while increasing the air exchange was effective for the other patients in the same room only (up to 58% risk reduction).     

Secondary agency conflicts: A synthesis and proposed measurement model

Secondary agency conflicts typically arise when ownership and control are combined in the hands of dominant shareholders who could then seek to misappropriate returns at the expense of minority shareholders. This type of agency conflict has attracted attention from researchers for the past nearly three decades. However, efforts at measuring secondary agency conflicts have been fragmented and scattered. The absence of a coherent and valid approach to assess the scope and intensity of secondary agency conflicts has impeded progress in both empirical and conceptual development of the topic area. Based on a review of the extant body of literature, this paper develops a composite Shareholder Inequity index that measures the potential for secondary agency conflicts employing three different governance dimensions that are grounded in the agency literature: blockholder power, differential control, and the absence of board neutrality. The index is tested and validated empirically using a sample of 748 publicly listed U.S. firms. The resulting Shareholder Inequity index demonstrates high levels of validity and reliability. Future corporate governance studies can utilize this validated measure to investigate potential secondary agency conflicts more consistently and rigorously in order to strengthen organizational theory development and research.