Factors associated with expectation of household's future financial condition

Path analysis is used to examine the causal relationships among selected objective and subjective factors associated with a household's expectation of future financial condition. Results indicate that respondents who perceive the effect of changes in the external environment on their own household's financial condition as positive are younger, have higher net worth, perceive more internal control over their situation, and report that most of the changes in the external environment are positive. Respondents who are younger, have higher income, perceive more internal control over their situation, and believe the effect of changes in the external environment on their household's financial condition are positive are more likely to be optimistic about their financial future. It is important that educators and financial advisors recognize the significant role perception of being in control plays in determining expectations of future financial condition.Journal Paper No. J-15256 of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Project No. 2809. Data were collected in conjunction with the cooperative regional research project NC-182, Family Resource Utilization as a Factor in Determining Economic Well-Being of Rural Families. Cooperating states are Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, and Minnesota.Her current research interests include family financial management and consumer bankruptcy; she received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois; her current research interests include gender roles, family financial management, and economic well-being.She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. Her research interests are economic well-being and quality of life.Her current research interests include the economic well-being of various family forms. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.     

The health care Titanic: women and children first?

The plight of people who lack access to health care has captured national attention and led to a number of proposals to remedy the problem. The authors look at three types of proposals being advanced--"pro-competition" plans, "pay-or-play" plans, and a national health care system--and find that they fail to address adequately the pressing needs of two groups of the poor: women of childbearing age and elderly women.     

The changing character of contemporary migration

"Although the flow of human beings between countries and continents has marked the behaviours of populations for centuries, present international migration is clearly characterized by a number of new factors which make it distinct from international movements of people in the past. This paper aims to identify such new factors relating to the underlying reasons for the international mobility of people, including the motivations of the individuals concerned, and attempts to examine the consequences as they are being faced by the individuals involved, the countries concerned and--in more general terms--the international community." (summary in FRE, SPA)     

An elusive concept: the changing definition of illegal immigrant in the practice of immigration control in the United Kingdom

This paper examines changing concepts of immigration practice in the UK. Immigration control at the port of entry has extended to internal control within the UK. The burden of proof of legality of status is increasingly on the immigrant, against a background of administrative rather than criminal justice. The changing and broadening definition of illegal immigration in the UK is part of a set of policies, which are governmental responses to what is conceived of as public opinion. THE GUARDIAN suggested that the Home Office has tightened up its application of the rules as the price to the Tory Right for their silence over further changes to the immigration law, thus demonstrating the political aspects of the concept of illegality. The Home Office replied that the UK was now one of the most densely populated countries in Europe and that, in terms of services, the country simply could not support all those who would like to come there. Nor can more than a certain number of newcomers be absorbed by any host community without the risk of friction. However, the host community is now multi-ethnic, and there is a black vote. The growth of administrative justice against which there is little effective appeal, the retrospective application of the 1971 Immigration Act, the ever-widening definition of the concept of illegality along with the fact that there is no time limit under the 1971 Act for one of the most common offenses, that of over-staying, have given rise to an increasing number of campaigns in support of individuals or families. These campaigns against the deportation of "illegal" immigrants may be an indication of a change in public opinion.     

Reading,writing and word processing: Toward a phenomenology of the computer age

Ethnographers read cultures and in writing inscribe memory into texts; in literature, a reading is a dialogue with a writer through the medium the text, and writing translates text into action. In a study of humanists using the microcomputer as a writing technology, changes were perceived in the phenomenology of writing, the writer's relation to the text, and the relation to the reader. Typists remarked that the computer enabled them to recover a spoken voice because the screen gave the text a processual and temporal form which replaced the inflexible typed page. Handwriters often remarked that the computer changed humanistic craft labor into industrial production: the screen gave privilege to the lexical in place of the graphic; the sentence replaced the paragraph as a unit of meaning; writing became a medium for transmitting information rather than an artistic performance. Humanists perceived that technical norms were embedded in technical culture and software, and that the computer marked a shift in the reward structure of their professions toward productivity and efficiency. This suggests three issues for the writing crafts of ethnographers. Electronic memory may replace the interpretive text, making fieldnotes public and treating them as information. The technical capacity to organize fieldnotes in data bases may shift the fieldworker's conception of knowledge from interpretation to information. And consuming the norms and concepts of technical culture may shift the craftlike norms of the field worker's culture.

—Mallarme

     

Geographic distribution of undocumented immigrants: estimates of undocumented aliens counted in the 1980 census by state

"This article presents estimates of the number of undocumented aliens counted in the 1980 [U.S.] census for each state and the District of Columbia. The estimates, which indicate that 2.06 million undocumented aliens were counted in the 1980 census, are not based on individual records, but are aggregate estimates derived by a residual technique. The census count of aliens (modified somewhat to account for deficiencies in the data) is compared with estimates of the legally resident alien population based on data collected by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in January 1980." Estimates are provided "for each of the states for selected countries of birth and for age, sex, and period of entry categories.... The origins of the undocumented alien population [are described], as well as some of their demographic characteristics. Some of the implications of the numbers and distribution of undocumented aliens are also discussed." This paper was originally presented at the 1984 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (see Population Index, Vol. 50, No. 3, Fall 1984, p. 435).     

Scientific management and class relations

Conclusion It has been the contention of this article that the true significance of the scientific management movement lies in what it can tell us about the engineering profession. Scientific management was not simply capitalist ideology, nor were the engineers who developed it simply the prisoners of capitalist ideology. Instead, scientific management was the product of the insertion of once-independent engineers into the complex, collective labor process in large corporations. It reflects both their inability to break loose fully from the dominant ideology and the fact that their interests as engineers were in conflict with the interests of their capitalist employers.The significance of this point, however, lies beyond the experience of turn-of-the-century shop culture engineers. For, if even as unpromising a group as the scientific managers could develop a program with implications inimical to the interests of capital, what of other, less commercialized groups? We have already seen that the early school-based engineers initiated a professionalizing project that included a claim to autonomy that was incompatible with the needs of their employers. It seems clear that the engineer's status as an employee, albeit an employee in an ambiguous position in the labor process, constitutes a basis for the development of conflicts with capitalist employers. This has been the thrust of our earlier discussion of the process of class formation. Gramsci's analysis of the situation of engineers in capitalist class relations, then, may not be without foundation:With the urban intellectuals it is another matter. Factory technicians do not exercise any political function over the instrumental masses, or at least this is a phase that has been superseded. Sometimes, rather, the contrary takes place, and the instrumental masses, at least in the person of their own organic intellectuals, exercise a political influence on the technicians.It may very well be that engineers, given a more militant labor movement, a more penetrating ideology, or a weaker capitalist class, could find themselves on the same side as more subordinate employees in conflicts with their employers.It is all the more important, then, that we understand the process by which American engineers have been domesticated. This has not happened automatically; far from it. Although there are ambiguities in the engineer's situation that make this process easier, the rapprochement of engineers with capital has had to be made. In this regard, the active intervention of business interests has been of particular importance, especially their efforts in fostering among engineers a safe variant of professionalism.Nor does this historical lesson apply only to engineers. For, there are other professional occupations that, increasingly, find themselves in situations comparable to engineers. Accountants, nurses, teachers, even certain kinds of lawyers have long been employed in large numbers by complex organizations. More recently, even doctors have begun to experience the condition of being an employee. For each of these occupations, we must avoid the easy assumption that there is something inherent in their social structural position that leads them into an accommodation with capital. On the contrary, as with engineers, we must stress the existence of real conflicts generated by capitalist relations of production, and then examine each occupation historically, asking what specific circumstances explain why its members do or do not enter into explicit conflict with their employers. However, while we must be aware of the possibility that professionals can (and sometimes do) enter into conflict with their employers, we also need to be sensitive to the complexity of the structural position of many professionals. Many professionals find themselves in positions of authority of some kind - either over subordinate workers in the case of engineers, or over clients in the case of doctors. This can be conducive to the attitude that the professionals' interests are different from those of the groups over which they have authority, or that their interests are the same as their employers'. Alternatively, as we saw in the case of engineers, this structural ambiguity may promote the formation of narrow occupational ideologies among professionals - i.e., the idea that their interests differ from those of both employers and subordinates. Therefore, while we need to be aware of the existence of employer/ professional conflict, we also need to recognize the existence of barriers to, and complexities within, the evolution of such conflicts.It is with this in mind that this article has stressed the importance of developing an adequate approach to the process of class formation. To restate briefly some of the arguments made earlier, the process of class formation in capitalist society is set in motion by the antagonisms inherent in capitalist relations of production. This is not, however, all that we need to know about the process of class formation - we also need to recognize the existence of both objective and historical barriers to this process. Nevertheless, one must be clear about what exactly these barriers are. There is, for example, an important difference between the relations of production that constitute class in the first place and workers' functions in the labor process. Similarly, one should not confuse barriers to the process of class formation with full-fledged class divisions. If we fail to distinguish among these various factors, we will be in danger of artificially placing a class barrier between engineers and other forms of wage-labor. If, on the other hand, we do make these distinctions, we will be able to account for both engineers' opposition to their employers and their domestication.

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Mental health services for Chinese in a community health center

Serious mental health problems exist within the Chinese population of the United States. This article describes one center's attempt to meet the psychiatric needs of both nonpsychotic and psychotic Chinese patients through bilingual, culturally relevant treatments.     

Are old-age security and the utility of children in rural India really unimportant?

Abstract Extract In their recent paper in this journal M. and Carol Vlassoff are to be commended for helping to remedy the dearth of empirical studies on the old-age security motive for children (and particularly sons) in rural areas of developing countries.(1) However, while the questionnaire which they applied to 357 ever-married men in a rural village in Maharashtra state in India is potentially useful, several of the conclusions they derive from it are unwarranted and, if left unquestioned, would undoubtedly have the effect of setting back the serious investigation of the effects of this motive rather than furthering it. The invalid or at least questionable inferences are taken up one at a time in the order of their appearance: