Theorizing Inequality: Comparative Policy Regimes,Gender, and Everyday Lives

Sociological explanations of inequality are incomplete unless they fully recognize the importance of social policy regimes, the policy logics embedded within them, and how policy arrangements work to stratify and shape daily lives. In this address, I develop my arguments by examining two overlapping struggles of everyday life in the contemporary United States: balancing work and family on the one hand, and securing health‐care services, both formal medical care and informal family care, on the other. Both struggles involve care deficits that are significantly more serious in the United States than in other high‐income countries, in part because our policy regime contributes to rather than counters the gendered roots of work–family conflict. Comparative studies hold a key to better understanding the link between policy regimes and everyday lives, as illustrated by the author's own comparative research in Finland and in the United States In terms of policies and policy logics that promote gender equity, paid parental leave for fathers has received much recent attention from social science scholars. Sociologists are challenged to become aware of comparative social policy scholarship and to approach inequalities and the related daily conflicts and struggles—such as over care deficits—by including this work in their analyses.     

The Placement History Chart: A Tool for Understanding the Longitudinal Pattern of Foster Children's Placements

Despite growing concerns about foster placement instability, little information is available regarding the longitudinal patterns of placement histories among foster children. The purpose of the present study was to develop a charting system using child welfare records to facilitate a better understanding of longitudinal patterns of placement history for 117 foster children. The resulting Placement History Chart included all placements that occurred during the observed time period and accounted for various dimensions: number, length, type, and sequence of placements; timing of transitions; and total time in out-of-home care. The Placement History Chart is an effective tool for placing foster care experiences within a broader developmental context. As such, the Placement History Chart can be a valuable research tool for understanding various dimensions and variations of placement transitions among foster children by capturing sequences and cumulative risks over time. Furthermore, this chart can facilitate the development of intervention programs that are developmentally sensitive and effectively address particularly vulnerable subpopulations of foster children.     

Union wage differentials for covered members and nonmembers in Great Britain

I present the first longitudinal estimates of covered union member and covered nonmember wage differentials in Great Britain. Crosssectional estimates show that covered union members receive a premium of about 10 percent over other workers, but covered nonmembers have no significant wage differential. Longitudinal estimates that accounted for fixed effects, selectivity, and measurement error indicated that OLS estimates are downward biased. The “true” union wage differential is likely about 30–35 percent. There is a large negative selection effect to union membership. No robust estimate could be found for covered nonmembers. This paper has benefited from conversations with Martyn Andrews, Wiji Arulampalam, Alison Booth, Tim Hatton, John Hutton, George Jakubson, Costas Meghir, and Andrew Oswald. Alison Booth kindly made extensive comments on an earlier draft, which greatly improved the exposition. John Budd, Hank Farber, and Larry Katz directed me towards related work in the U.S. I am also grateful to seminar participants at the University of York University of Essex, and the CEPR Workshop on Labour Market Issues. Thanks to the ESRC Data Archive for supplying the Family Expenditure Survey (FES) data. All data, computer programs, and results alluded to in the text are available on request. The British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and FES data are available from the ESRC Data Archive at the University of Essex. The Panel Study of Manufacturing Establishments (PSME) data are available from the author on request.     

Jugend, Politik und Vertrauen: Ein Beitrag zur Bedeutung von Vertrauen für das politische Handeln Jugendlicher

Discussions concerning low trust scores in politics and politicians (both refer to a lack of political interest and activity), increasingly focus attention on how, in particular, adolescents relate trust to political activity. Younger people are said to show a lack of political interest. Nevertheless empirical studies about the determinants of missing political commitment and about the combination of trust and political action are extremely rare. Therefore, this empirical study focuses on the impact of trust on juveniles‘ political involvement. The question which characteristics trustworthy politicians must have in adolescents‘ eyes, and if relevant interindividual differences do exist, is of special regard.     

International Patterns of Interpersonal Tactile Communication: A Field Study

An awareness of how touch is employed in communicative interactions among peoples of different nations can be a critical requisite to effective inter-cultural communication. This study examined cross-sex, interpersonal, public touch to determine whether (1) the number of body areas touched varied between members of different societies; (2) the type of relationship between dyadic partners influenced tactile behavior; and (3) the amount of total body areas touched for each society correlated with latitude of origin. Variation in interpersonal touch as a function of nationality was confirmed. Results also confirmed that touch between dyads from an international sample was affected by type of relationship. Correspondence in the occurrence of tactile behavior among dyads from similar latitudes of origin was not confirmed. Findings call into question the designation of Northern European and U.S. cultures as non-contact.     

The polarisation and intensification of parental employment in britain: Consequences for children,families and the community

On the basis of an analysis of UK parental employment between 1984 and 1994, using data from the Labour Force Survey, the authors identify three important trends: increasing integration of women with children, particularly with young children, into the labour market; increasing differentiation in mothers' employment opportunities and growing polarisation in household employment patterns; and an intensification of paid work amongst employed parents, contributing to a growing concentration of work–both paid and unpaid caring work–among women and men in the so-called 'prime working years' of 25 to 50 years. The article considers some possible consequences of these trends for children, families and communities, including the polarisation of children's childhoods, family incomes and neighbourhoods, the increasing workload on individual parents and families, tension between parents over the division of child care and domestic tasks and the issue of lime. The article concludes that the current UK focus on policies to support working parents in 'reconciling employment and family responsibilities' begs the question of how far these, and other activities, are reconcilable–and if they are, under what conditions, what cost and to whom–and may fail to address the difficult, threatening and 'wicked issues' at the heart of the work-family relationship.     

Failings in U.K. transport planning

This discussion of British Government policy on transport, highlights the absence of a coherent strategic plan as a guideline for individual decision-making. Without this framework and a recognition of the close connection between transport and land use planning, conventional methods of project appraisal produce an unsatisfactory piecemeal transport system. As an example, the 1973 Channel Tunnel proposals are examined and found inappropriate for either of the main possible directions of progress sketched out.