A European perspective: The Nonprofit Almanac and the development of European profiles

Conclusion The Independent Sector approach to measuring the US non-profit sector, as summarised inThe Almanac, provides a valuable and instructive model for European and other attempts to describe and measure the sector. The aim of mappers in those other countries should not be to replicateThe Almanac, but to imitate its broad approach, using it to stimulate and encourage statistical efforts elsewhere. Although the time for whole-Europe mappings has not yet come — in fact, it is very many years away — individual European countries could and should make substantial progress. As I have argued, progress will generally be greatest when an imaginative blend of five main approaches is employed. This is exemplified by the Independent Sector's work, and would-be mimics should endeavour to match both this blending and the energy and zest with which the task has been tackled.Professor of the Economics of Social Care and Deputy Director of the Personal Social Services Research Unit, University of Kent at Canterbury and Co-editor,Voluntas.I would like to acknowledge a number of European colleagues whose comments assisted my preparation of this paper, in particular Edith Archambault, Paulo Barbetta, Andrea Bassi, Rudolph Bauer, Andrew Crook, Jim Jackson, Jeremy Kendall, Éva Kuti, Susan Saxon-Harrold, Wolfgang Seibel, Justin Davis Smith and Tymen van den Ploeg. This paper is lodged in the Personal Social Services Research Unit as Discussion Paper 873.     

Review Essay: What Is Left of the Left?

Sociological Forum -     

A Comparison of Partially Adaptive and Reweighted Least Squares Estimation

The small sample performance of least median of squares, reweighted least squares, least squares, least absolute deviations, and three partially adaptive estimators are compared using Monte Carlo simulations. Two data problems are addressed in the paper: (1) data generated from non-normal error distributions and (2) contaminated data. Breakdown plots are used to investigate the sensitivity of partially adaptive estimators to data contamination relative to RLS. One partially adaptive estimator performs especially well when the errors are skewed, while another partially adaptive estimator and RLS perform particularly well when the errors are extremely leptokur-totic. In comparison with RLS, partially adaptive estimators are only moderately effective in resisting data contamination; however, they outperform least squares and least absolute deviation estimators.     

The Role of Family Income in the Intergenerational Association of AFDC Receipt

Daughters from low‐income families who did not receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) are compared to daughters from low‐income families who did receive assistance to better account for family income in the intergenerational association of AFDC. The research models the timing of a daughter's first birth and, for those who become mothers, the number of years a daughter receives any AFDC. Women whose families received AFDC during their childhood are more likely to receive AFDC as adults relative to those women whose families did not receive AFDC. Controlling for family income in a more careful and comprehensive way than past research explains part but not all of the effects of childhood AFDC receipt. Among daughters from chronically poor families, however, parental AFDC use is not associated with additional years of AFDC participation. Although the present research cannot confirm or deny a causal role for parental welfare use, the intergenerational transmission of financial resources does explain part of the intergenerational association of welfare use.     

What is good taste good for?

Bourdieu afflrme que le capital cultural est utile lorsque Ton veut obtenir une situation de classe supérieure, particuliérement dans certains secteurs, et n'est en fait qu'une seule chose: une culture de condition supérieure. Mais son argument, établit pour une France centralisée, est moins valable pour le Canada plus subdivisé. Cet article étudie les idées de Bourdieu sous tous leurs aspects pour un échantillon quota de Torontoniens. Les résultats suggèrent qu'un capital culturel de condition supérieure existe à Toronto, mais qu'il a peu d'effet sur les relations de classe au travail, ou le véritable capital culturel dirige la culture d'entreprise qui domine les entreprises privées. La culture d'entreprise est aussi repartie en classes et pourrait jouer un role dans la reproduction de classes qui est tres similaire a ce que Bourdieu revendique comme culture de condition supérieure.
Bourdieu argues that cultural capital is useful in gaining higher class location, especially in some sectors, and is essentially a single thing: high status culture. But his argument, developed for centralized France, is less suitable for more subdivided Canada. This paper explores Bourdieu's ideas through a quota sample of 40 Torontonians. Results suggest that high status cultural capital does exist in Toronto, but has little part in class relationships at work, where the true cultural capital is command of the business culture which dominates private enterprises. Business culture is also class stratified, and may play a role in class reproduction which is quite similar to that which Bourdieu asserts for high status culture.     

Job Insecurity and the Timing of Parenthood: A Comparison between Eastern and Western Germany

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the economic determinants of fertility behavior by addressing the role of job insecurity in couples’ intentions concerning parenthood and its timing. It starts from the hypothesis that cultural values moderate individuals’ reactions to job insecurity and the way it is related to family formation. With a systematic thematic content analysis of a set of semi-structured interviews with childless men and women around the age of 30 in eastern and western Germany, we are able to show that there are substantial differences in the consequences of job insecurity on intentions to have a first child. In western Germany, a relatively secure job career is expected to precede family formation, and this sequence of transitions is rather rigid, whereas in eastern Germany job security and family formation are thought of and practiced as parallel investments. We suggest that the lack of convergence in family formation patterns between eastern and western Germany after the unification of the country in 1990 is partially related to different attitudes toward job insecurity in the two contexts.     

Classifying At‐Risk High School Youth: The Influence of Exposure to Community Violence and Protective Factors on Academic and Health Outcomes

Using cluster analysis, 789 predominately Latino and African American high school youth were classified into varying academic at‐risk profiles using self‐reported levels of academic confidence, motivation to attend school, perceived family support, connections with teachers and peers, and exposure to violence. Six clusters emerged, 5 of which were identified as “at‐risk.” The clusters were examined in relation to academic stress, health status, grades, and school retention. Exposure to violence was one distinguishing feature of youth identified as most vulnerable, vulnerable, and resilient; however, youth identified as resilient recorded better academic outcomes.