Saving and consumption patterns of the elderly

The paper provides an empirical analysis of saving and consumption choices of the elderly in Germany, based on the German income and expenditure surveys 1978 and 1983. Main feature of these data is the large sample size making it possible to analyze saving and consumption patterns of the very old (aged 75 and above).The observed age-consumption profiles are very different from those predicted by the pure life-cycle theory. Although wealth is declining between age 60 and 70, it increases again after 70, such that the very old have the highest savings rates among all age groups and accumulate wealth rather than decumulate it. These profiles are not confounded by cohort effects and mortality differences. The corresponding expenditure data suggest the following explanation: due to the generous German pension system and the almost complete coverage of health expenses by the mandatory health insurance in Germany, the declining consumption n very old age cannot exhaust the annuity income of the elderly such that wealth is being accumulated in old age.Research in this paper was supported by the National Institute on Aging, grant no. 3 PO1 AG05842-01. I appreciate the helpful comments by Doug Bernheim, Angus Deaton, Daniel McFadden, Jonathan Skinner, Konrad 'Stahl and David Wise, and two anonymous referees. I am indebted to Hermann Buslei and Johannes Velling who provided most valuable and able assistance.     

The birth of the queen/the modern homosexual: historical explanations revisited

In this paper I review a number of explanations for the emergence of the modern homosexual category in Western (mainly Northwest European) cultures. I suggest there are four different emphases in respect of the social and cultural factors given priority in interpretations of the formation of the homosexual category. Of course, individual studies have often taken into consideration more than one single factor (most notably, Greenberg, 1988; Chauncey, 1994), and the grouping of previous studies that I here suggest only indicates where the focus of a given study is. The social and cultural factors emphasized in these four approaches are: 1) the effects of competitive capitalism on the bourgeois/middle class political economy of sexuality and sexual morals; 2) the rise of expert knowledges, controlling systems, and modern bureaucracies; 3) tensions within gender order and the struggle over new definitions of gender roles; 4) the rise of free wage labour, the proliferation of urban anonymity, and the unfolding of new modes of existence in the life-world of modern pluralist urban society. Finally, the article briefly considers the potential erosion of the homosexual vs. heterosexual divide in the light of the historical background. Almost thirty years have passed since ‘The Homosexual Role’, by Mary McIntosh (1968), the first notable contribution to the historical sociology of homosexuality operating within a social constructionist view of homosexuality. Since then, there have been numerous studies of the formation of the conceptual category and social aggregate of ‘modern homosexual’. Researchers have differed about whether the pedigree of ‘homosexual’ and homosexual identities and subcultures in Western societies can be traced back to the late nineteenth century or to the early eighteenth century, and whether or not some notion of ‘homosexual’ was established in the cultural imagery before the last fifty years or so. It might be fruitful to distinguish between the historically older categories of ‘molly’, ‘queen’, and ‘fairy’ on the one hand, and the more recent ‘homosexual’ on the other hand. It can be argued that the decisive feature of the first-mentioned ‘deviant men’ was their status as gender-crossers (which as a side-effect entailed an interest in homosexual conduct), whereas the modern term homosexual does not necessarily suggest gender-crossing or more generic ‘sexual inversion’(cf. Chauncey, 1994). However, allusions to gay men's purported effeminacy and lesbian women's purported masculinity continue to surface frequently also in contemporary culture. Hence, for the sake of brevity, I here use the term modern homosexual, by which I refer to a notion that there is in some people an inherent sexual desire exclusively for persons of the same sex, and that this so-called sexual orientation is to some degree intertwined with a tendency to gender-crossing conduct. ¹ 1 Historically there has been a mutually re-enforcing dynamics between the forma-tion of the conceptual category and the social aggregate of homosexual(s). Methodological considerations and also certain presumptions about the dynam-ics of culture and society help explain why, until recently, most studies have focused on the trajectory of concepts, identities, and social roles, rather than on the experiential, embodied aspects of the social aggregate of homosexual(s). The idea of sexual inversion predicates that homosexual desire is evidence of a faulty combination of body and soul: there is ‘a female soul in a male body’, or vice versa. On the distinctions between sexual orientation and sexual role see, King, 1984.
     

Dual Career Couples als eine Variante von Work-Life-Integration

Dual Career Couples as a form of work-life-integrationThe author discusses the situation of dual career couples, when both are university graduates following an own career. Basing on a respective publication she delineates the current, mostly American research and reports on several German research projects, which endeavour to analyse the relation between gender and inequality in dual career couples.     

Interne und externe Coachings in Unternehmen

When organizations employ coaching as an instrument for personnel development, the question arises whether they should opt to engage internal or external consultants. In a first step, this article identifies the characteristics of internal and external coaches by means of a series of criteria. It then goes on to discuss the factors which influence the suitability of choice between an internal or external coach at the level of the organization, in terms of the coachee and in terms of the coach. It becomes apparent that there is a situational consideration of the advantages and disadvantages. The article concludes with an actual example which demonstrates possibilities to combine the advantages of internal and external coaching.     

Strukturelle Kränkungen als Thema im Coaching

In this article hurts in the workplace are discussed, which are not aggressions of one person against another person. Rather they are effects of structural conditions in organizations or effects of legal processes in societies. The author presents three case studies with examples of such hurts and she postulates, that the Coach has to reflect political conditions in his work.     

Policy instrument affordances: a framework for analysis

The present study uses the concept of technological efficacy derived from ecological psychology and design studies to offer an alternative way of analyzing how policy instruments affect change. Reasoning from this, the paper outlines a framework for analyzing policy instruments in terms of their affordances. We define affordances as the means through which an instrument exerts influence on its intended target audience. Using this approach, we contend that policy instruments may be analyzed as interfaces that organize social relations and create structures of opportunity and/or restrict possibilities for action. We argue that explicating the pathways through which instruments afford or constrain action is a central task for policy analysis. Our proposed framework of analysis builds on the idea that instruments yield effects by facilitating action and learning. We further contend that the actions that an instrument can facilitate or inhibit are determined by specific affordance modalities of the instrument in conjunction with contingencies of the actor and the policy environment. Examples from research policy are used to illustrate some of these effects.     

Young People Leaving Care: Participatory Research to Improve Child Welfare Practices and the Rights of Children and Young People

Abstract

This paper discusses participatory research with young people who are leaving public care in Finland to begin independent lives. The aim of the research, organised by SOS Children's Villages International, was to bring about change in alternative care arrangements, particularly those involving young people's transition to independence. The project used a participatory research design based on employing care-leaving peers as co-researchers. This paper adheres to the methodological principles of empowerment in analysing the personal experiences of young people leaving alternative care with the goal of informing good practice. The findings suggest that the peer research method can be an effective means of empowering young people to develop research skills and to be involved in knowledge production, as well as serving as a means of promoting improved services for “care-leavers”, those young people who are leaving either foster care or institutional care. The participatory and peer research method challenges the traditional understandings of expertise and knowledge production. Although the hierarchy between adult researchers and young people as co-researchers is still evident, the method provides possibilities for better understanding the social- and health-service systems and their challenges and pitfalls from a user's perspective.