The sectoral labor supply of married couples in Brazil: Testing the unitary model of household behavior

An assumption of the unitary model of household decision-making is that household members maximize one household utility function. This assumption implies that households pool their income and, therefore, the ownership of nonwage income has no effect on household demand. In this paper, this implication is tested by estimating multi-sector labor supply equations for men and women in Brazil. The results indicate that the unitary model is rejected in the informal and self-employment sectors for men and the formal and informal sectors for women; in these cases own nonwage income has a significantly negative effect on labor supply while spousal nonwage income has no significant effect. Received: 29 December 1997/Accepted: 9 December 1998     

Mate Availability,Family Formation,and Family Structure Among Black Americans in Nonmetropolitan Louisiana 1970–19801

Abstract This paper assesses the effects of the community sex ratio on black family formation and family structure in nonmetropolitan parishes in Louisiana. As predicted, the sex ratio is found to have strong positive effects on marriage prevalence for black women, the prevalence of husband and wife families for black families, and the percentage of black children residing in husband and wife families and strong negative effects on the nonmarital fertility ratio for black women. Thus, we conclude that the sex ratio hypothesis should be given greater prominence in discussions of changes in black family structure and that sex ratio effects should be taken into account when framing policies aimed at ameliorating social problems attendant to high relative incidence of nonmarital births and single-parent, female-headed families with young children (e.g., poverty). We also note that, while the literature overwhelmingly concentrates on black family structure in urban areas, changes in the black family are equally pronounced in nonmetropolitan areas suggesting that explanations emphasizing the dynamics of urban ghettos may be too narrow.     

Adult children in the parental household: Who benefits?

Households that include adult children may arise out of collective necessities, not just the needs or shortcomings of the adult child. Therefore living in the parental home does not necessarily preclude the transition to adulthood. An analysis of household income in the 1980 U.S. Census demonstrates that while parents on average contribute a larger share of household income than their adult child does, some parents and children share a need for joint living arrangements. The parental characteristics associated with such needs include an older householder, a female householder, and income close to or below the poverty line.This is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, New York, August, 1986. A post-doctoral training grant from the National Institute on Aging (1-T32-AG00151-01) carried out at the Population Studies Center, University of Michigan provided some of the support for this paper. Deborah Freedman, Barbara Hirshorn and Frances Goldscheider provided helpful comments; However they are not responsible for any errors.Jill S. Grigsby is Associate Professor of Sociology, Pomona College, Claremont, CA91711. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and includes family living arrangements and population aging among her research interests.     

Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Social Work Theory

This paper maintains that much in the contemporary postmodern and relational paradigms in psychoanalysis is a refinding of elements of clinical social work theory. To illustrate that, this paper elucidates the pivotal differences between contemporary psychoanalytic theory and classical ego psychological psychoanalytic theory. I describe my own experiences in training, first as a social worker, then as an ego psychological psychotherapist, and finally as a psychoanalyst to illustrate how I began to realize the homologous nature of clinical social work and contemporary psychoanalysis. The beginnings of social casework theory from Mary Richmond and Charlotte Towle are then described. Like Moliere's bourgeois gentleman who discovered he's been speaking prose for forty years without knowing it, perhaps social work theory has been cutting edge for eighty years without knowing it.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Becvar, D. S. (1997). Soul healing: A spiritual orientation n counseling and therapy .
Duncan, B., Hubble, M., & Miller, S. (1997). Psychotherapy with impossible cases .
Barnes, G. G., Thompson, P., Daniel, G., Burchardt, N. (1998). Growing up in stepfamilies .
Real, T. (1997). I don't want to talk about it: Overcoming the secret legacy of male depression
VIDEOTAPE REVIEW: Heley, J., & Richeport-Haley, M. (1997). Whither Family Therapy .     

‘Zealotry or Nostalgic Regret’?1 Women Leaders in Technical and Further Education in Australia: Agents of Change,Entrepreneurial Educators or Corporate Citizens?

Education has been restructured in many Western post‐industrial nation states during the 1990s. The Australian Technical and Further Education sector (TAFE) has been particularly susceptible to discourses of responsiveness to the market and the new entrepreneuralism. This article explores how women have been repositioned in contradictory and ambiguous ways as the new entrepreneurial middle managers by existing and emergent discourses that circulated in and through TAFE organizations. In turn, it points to how discourses of change management and client responsiveness took on particular readings within specific institutional and professional cultures of the eight Technical and Further Education institutions (TAFEs). At the same time, the restructuring that arose from the corporatization of TAFE, in a highly gendered process, through the twin strategies of marketization and the new managerialism produced new possibilities for individual women educators who moved up into middle management. Yet these individual women were positioned within highly masculinist ‘neo‐corporate bureaucratic cultures’ that co‐opted their passion for the capacity of education to make a difference and incorporated these new entrepeneurial work identities.     

Indicators of child well-being through a neighborhood lens

Adverse child outcomes tend to be concentrated in neighborhoods with constellations of adverse conditions and risk factors. This paper examines the challenges of developing meaningful and useful indicators of child well-being at the level of the neighborhood. Recent technological advances have made it more feasible for communities to develop neighborhood indicators, but there are a number of practical, conceptual and methodological challenges that are involved in this work. In this article, we discuss the potential usefulness of neighborhood indicators, several of the conceptual and methodological challenges and offer some illustrations of neighborhood indicators that are pertinent to the well-being of children. In addition to administrative data, we discuss indicators of child well-being rooted in both child and adult perceptions of neighborhood.     

Specialized foster care and group home care: Similarities and differences in the characteristics of children in care

Until recently, foster children who presented special medical or behavioral problems were largely served in group care environments. Specialized (or “treatment”) foster care has recently been developed to serve some of these challenging children. Although growing evidence points to the special needs of children in foster care, much is still unknown about how children placed in various out-of-home care settings differ from one another. The growth of specialized foster care as an alternative placement to group care, calls for examination of how children in these settings compare on demographic, educational, health, and behavioral characteristics. A cross-sectional mailed survey was distributed to all group care and specialized foster care agencies in a large state to address topics related to children's characteristics. Comparisons point to two groups of very difficult children, with unique mental health and health needs.     

Alignment of Family and Work Roles

This study investigated the similarity of family members and co-workers. A total of 75 human service workers each rated up to four positive and four negative family members, and four positive and four negative co-workers on six dimensions drawn from Holland's (1985) six vocational types. The results indicated that positive family members were significantly more similar to positive co-workers than were negative co-workers. Negative family members were significantly more similar to negative co-workers than were positive co-workers. These results were interpreted to support the general proposition that individuals re-enact family dramas in work, suggesting that a major way that a family drama is established in work involves casting co-workers in customary roles.     

Europe and the European Dimension in a Multicultural Context

This article is based on research into the European Dimension in the primary curriculum undertaken through interviews with primary teachers in a range of different European countries (Denmark, England, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain) during 1995 and 1996 (Ritchie, 1996). Key questions for the research included the relationship between the treatment of the European dimension in the curricula of the countries concerned, and the teachers’ own ideas about Europe and the European dimension which underpin their practice. The article concludes with a discussion of the multicultural dimension in the curricula, and the relationship between this and teachers’ understanding of Europe and the European dimension. Recommendations for curriculum planners, teacher trainers and teachers as a result of the research findings are included.