The Demographic Foundations of Rising Employment and Earnings among Single Mothers in Canada and the United States, 1980–2000

Despite comparatively modest welfare reforms in Canada relative to those of the United States, employment rates and earnings among single mothers have risen by virtually identical magnitudes in the two countries since 1980. We show that most of the gains in Canada and a substantial share of the change in the US were the result of the dynamics of cohort replacement and population aging as the large and better educated baby boom generation replaced earlier cohorts and began entering their forties. In both countries, demographic effects were the main factor accounting for higher employment and earnings among older (40+) single mothers. Changes among younger single mothers, in contrast, were mainly the result of changes in labor market behavior and other unmeasured variables. Overall, demographic changes dominated in Canada but not in the US for two reasons: (a) Canadian single mothers are significantly older than their US counterparts; and (b) consistent with the welfare reform thesis, the magnitude of behavioral change among younger single mothers was much larger in the US.     

Gypsy students in the UK: the impact of ‘mobility’ on education

This paper argues that Gypsy students in primary and secondary education in the UK are marginalised because of ambiguous understandings of their ‘mobility’. Drawing on research conducted on the south coast of England, it examines Gypsy families’ experiences of education. Despite often describing their identity in relation to travelling or mobility, few families’ lifestyles were characterised by actual movement or nomadism. Teachers and educationalists meanwhile cite the need to deliver a ‘mobile’ rather than a ‘sedentary’ education for Gypsy students. The Department for Communities and Local Government recently defined Gypsy ethnicity in direct relation to a nomadic lifestyle. This is problematic as the association between Gypsy ethnicity and nomadism is itself questionable and may be better understood in more nuanced terms reflecting the relationship between identity and ‘mobility’. This paper argues that ‘mobility’ is understood to define Gypsy difference in a way that excludes students.     

A new procedure for steepest ascent

The procedure of steepest ascent consists of performing a sequence of sets of trials. Each set of trials is obtained as a result of proceeding sequentially along the path of maximum increase in response. Until now there has been no formal stopping rule, When response values are subject to random error, the decision to stop can be premature due to a “false” drop in the observed response.

A new stopping rule procedure for steepest ascent is intro-duced that takes into account the random error variation in response values. The new procedure protects against taking too many observations when the true mean response is decreasing, it also protects against stopping. prematurely when the true mean response is increasing, A numerical example is given which illus-trates the method.     

‘Where are you from?’: Identifying place1

Many social research projects, such as interviews, focus groups, and surveys, take local place as a given: they choose participants from a particular place, take this place as background for what the participants say, ask them about place‐related issues, and correlate responses with different places. But people can identify places in different ways, in geographical or relational terms, and in different levels of scale. This study analyses passages in focus groups in which participants say where they are from, shows that participants generally take the question and answer as routine, and then shows the ways the interaction develops when this routineness is broken, amended, or called into question. When a participant revises their statement of where they are from, they adapt to what they see as the knowledge and stance of their interlocutor, they re‐present themselves, and they create possibilities for further talk, defending, telling stories, or showing entitlement to an opinion. I argue that the ways people answer this question, interactively, can tell us about them, and us, as well as about their map of the world.     

WHERE ARE ALL THE FAMILY THERAPISTS? ABUSE AND VIOLENCE WITHIN FAMILIES AND FAMILY THERAPY'S RESPONSE

This paper draws on a wide range of research from different fields to document the epidemic proportions of physical violence and sexual abuse in North American families. It delineates the gender dimensions of this problem, with men being the predominant perpetrators of sexual abuse of both boys and girls, and the major physical abusers in couple relationships. Family therapy's lack of response to the problem, and its conceptual inadequacies in doing so, are challenged. A feminist perspective for thinking about abuse is presented and guidelines for working with it are suggested. A course on treating violence and abuse in families is recommended as a required part of family therapy training.     

A cohort-based indicator of housing progress

Measuring housing quality has continued to be an elusive task. This article proposes a new social indicator of housing quality that builds on three conceptual decisions. The first step is to define an indicator that measures quality with reference to a standard that households are striving to attain. Single-family homeownership is a standard of housing sought by nine-tenths of Americans under age 45. A second decision is to measure quality not according to absolute attainment of this standard, but rather with reference to the aggregate experience of progress toward attaining the standard. Under this experiential definition, quality is assumed to be high when the average individual moves quickly toward homeownership. The third conceptual decision is to aggregate individuals' progress toward homeownership by measuring the trajectory of cohorts into homeownership. The indicator of housing progress is thus a vector of age-specific ownership rates. Twentieth-century cohorts are compared on this indicator and the implication of differences among them are discussed.Research underlying this article was supported by a Charles Abrams Fellowship awarded by the MIT-Harvard Joint Center for Urban Studies. This article is a revision of a paper presented at the 1981 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, Washington D.C.     

Housing progress in the seventies: New indicators

This article introduces a conceptual model of housing quality that emphasizes consumers' experience of improvements during their lifetime. Following a review of the widely recognized inadequacies associated with the traditional indicators of housing quality, a ‘housing progress’ model is offered as an alternative method for conceptualizing the quality of persons' housing experiences. This model suggests that changes in the level of housing well-being are reflected by changes in the rate at which households move toward their personal housing preferences. To operationalize this concept, four indicators are developed that are based on the pattern of housing unit exchanges achieved by movers each year between 1973 and 1977. The indicators reveal a pronounced downtum in progress (on the order of 20 percent) with the fall in construction between 1973 and 1975. After 1975, progress increased with the rise in construction, but there is evidence of a widening gap between the housing opportunities of owners and renters.