Post-Separation Conflict Trajectories: A Longitudinal Study

Although previous studies have shown that parental separation and parental conflict contribute independently to the adaptation difficulties of young people, there is, as of yet, no precise portrait of how post-separation conflicts evolve. Indeed, some fundamental questions remain unanswered: (1) Do parents who experience few conflicts during their break-up continue to enjoy a harmonious relationship afterward? (2) When parents have a conflictual relationship in the first years after separating, do problems eventually subside? (3) Are a family's characteristics associated with the way a post-separation conflict evolves? The present, exploratory study attempts to provide some answers to these three questions. The sample was composed of 123 boys and girls from 8 to 11 years old. The children and their parents were interviewed on two separate occasions at a 1-year interval. The first interview (time 1) took place 2.5 years after the separation on average. The children were notably asked to give their perception of the parental conflict. Four post-separation conflict trajectories were brought to light. Analysis also targeted three more-specific variables that distinguished these conflict trajectories, namely family income, quality of the relationship with the mother, and the degree of agreement at the time of separation.     

Family Benefits and Fertility: An Econometric Analysis

A population's growth potential is significantly underestimated by conventional calculations of population momentum which assume an immediate drop to replacement level fertility. Here we assume that the growth rate of births linearly declines to zero over a specified time interval, and find simple and intuitively meaningful expressions for the size of the ultimate birth cohort and the resultant population momentum. In particular, we find that the increase in the number of births over the transition is equal to growth at the initial rate for half the time needed to attain a constant birth level. Thus our formula readily calculates the growth potential of a population under a gradual approach to stationarity without the need for a numerical projection. Calculations for actual and hypothetical populations are presented to show the demographic impact of such gradual approaches to zero growth.     

Multidimensional Measurement of Poverty Among Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

Since the seminal work of Sen, poverty has been recognized as a multidimensional phenomenon. The recent availability of relevant databases renewed the interest in this approach. This paper estimates multidimensional poverty among women in fourteen Sub-Saharan African countries using the Alkire and Foster multidimensional poverty measures, whose identification method is based on a counting approach. Four dimensions are considered: assets, health, schooling and empowerment. The results show important differences in poverty among the countries of the sample. The multidimensional poverty estimates are compared with some alternative measures such as the Human Development Index, income poverty, asset poverty and the Gender-related Development Index. It is found that including additional dimensions into the analysis leads to country rankings different from those obtained with the mentioned four measures. Decompositions by geographical area and dimension indicate that rural areas are significantly poorer than urban ones and that a lack of schooling is, in general, the highest contributor to poverty. The paper also conducts robustness and sensitivity analyses of the multidimensional estimates with respect to the number of dimensions in which deprivation is required in order to be considered poor, as well as to the poverty lines within each dimension. Several cases of dominance between countries are found in the first robustness test.     

When it hurts I think: Now the baby dies. Risk perceptions of physical activity during pregnancy

BackgroundA decrease in the level of physical activity from pre-pregnancy to pregnancy seems to be a general problem, despite the obvious health benefits of physical activity. Quantitative studies indicate that pregnant women's fears might explain why they reduce their level of physical activity, but still no qualitative research has investigated the experiences influencing these women.QuestionTo explore healthy women's perceptions of risk associated with physical activity during pregnancy.MethodAn interpretive narrative approach was used to gain insight into pregnant women's personal stories and lived experiences. Five Danish pregnant women aged 26–36 years participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews between September and December 2010. The analysis method was based on two types of narrative inquiry: (1) a narrative analysis to cover the story, and (2) a paradigmatic analysis to cover the themes.FindingsMost of the pregnancy stories highlighted a specific experience, which made the women anxious. These experiences were: previous miscarriages, fertility treatment and shortened cervix. Also bodily challenges and pain scared the women, such as hypertonic pelvic muscles, Braxton Hicks contractions, abdominal pain, exhaustion, and shortness of breath. The stories also described the impacts of women's relatives and friends on their perceptions of risk.ConclusionSpecial consideration should be given to pregnant women who have had negative experiences in previous pregnancies and bodily challenges, which make them anxious and discourage them from being physically active. Healthcare professionals could also pay attention to the fact that women's relatives and friends play a major role in women's perceptions of risk.     

Dialogue and Impromptu Words

Western philosophy and Chinese wisdom seem incommensurable: one employs dialogue the other impromptu words. It seems as if the very notion of universality is tied to the Western notion of dialogue, and that dialogue between the two cultures necessarily will be on Western terms and put Chinese thought in a subaltern position. I show, on the contrary, that it is possible to develop a non-dialogical notion of universality based on Zhuangzi's impromptu words. I compare Zhuangzi's impromptu words with the function of the word in the later Heidegger, and show that it was on the basis of the universal dimension opened up by the impromptu word that Heidegger was able to encounter Chinese thought.     

The rise in absenteeism: disentangling the impacts of cohort, age and time

In recent years, a number of welfare state economies, including Norway, have experienced substantial increases in sickness absence. Using longitudinal individual register data for virtually all Norwegian employees, we examine the remarkable rise since the early 1990s, with emphasis on disentangling the roles of cohort, age, and time. We show that individual age-adjusted absence propensities have risen even more than aggregate absence rates from 1993 to 2005, which casts doubt on the popular hypotheses that the rise was due to the inclusion into the workforce of young or marginal workers with weaker work-norms or poorer health.     

Social security reforms and early retirement

Many reform proposals of the social security systems in various OECD economies suggest to scale down the non-actuarial parts of the pension systems. These reforms have a flavor of increased efficiency at the costs of welfare losses for low-income individuals. Assessing the economic effects, we investigate five different reform proposals by means of a numerical overlapping generations model for the Norwegian economy. The model features an endogenous retirement age and heterogeneous individuals within generations. It turns out that the various reforms, which scale down the public non-actuarial pension system, lead to increases in the retirement age and steady-state welfare gains for all income classes. Received: 7 December 2000/Accepted: 29 January 2002 All correspondence to ?ystein Th?gersen. Financial support from the Research Council of Norway (The Economic Research Program on Taxation) is gratefully acknowledged. We are indebted to Lans Bovenberg, John Ermisch, Erling Steigum and two referees for valuable comments and useful discussion. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

Impact of the 1999 East Marmara Earthquake in Turkey

This paper studies responses to the 1999 Marmara Earthquake (Turkey) in which 18,000 people died, 50,000 people were injured, there were 5,000 building collapses and 340,000 damaged buildings, 14,513 businesses closed, 150,000 people became unemployed, and 129,338 were forced to live in prefabricated houses. This research is based on a survey comprising 500 interviews carried out a year after the earthquake. Responsible behavior as the dependent variable is statistically tested with several socio-demographic and attitude variables. The findings indicate social solidarity, knowledge, basic needs, desire for change and psychological status of the disaster survivors were all adversely affected. It was observed that education, employment, social security, knowledge and fatalism have varying impacts on responsible behavior related to preparedness for future earthquakes.