Welfare reform in the 1950s.

Contrary to the impression left by historians, neither welfare expansion nor welfare reform died in the 1950s. Even conservatives believed in the necessity of federal spending for welfare. Disagreements came over the proper ways to spend federal money. The Eisenhower administration propagated a rehabilitation approach in an attempt to use federal money to end individual, state, and local dependence on the federal government. The administration's 1954 social security and vocational rehabilitation laws reflected this approach. Bureaucrats in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, working with a Democratic Congress, managed to extend the 1954 laws into a major expansion of federal power, as the passage of disability insurance in 1956 demonstrated. Institutional continuity, not heroic individual effort, provided the dynamic for welfare reform in the 1950s.     

Lactation and fertility in Rural Bangladesh

Summary Analysis of data from various phases of a study of post-partum amenorrhoea in Bangladesh illustrated good aggregate consistency of response on menstrual status, but less individual consistency on duration of post-partum amenorrhoea. Using life table techniques, the median duration of amenorrhoea was calculated as 19.9 months for women with births between February and September 1974. There were substantial seasonal variations in duration, with the median decreasing from 21.5 months for women with February births to 16.9 months for those with September births. By contrast, the median duration of post-partum amenorrhoea varies by only two months for women in the lowest and highest quartiles of weight and weight for height. The seasonal pattern was similar for all weight groups.     

Role of migration in the urbanisation process in third world countries: a case study of India

The author examines the role of migration in the urbanization process in India during the two decades of development planning from 1951 to 1971. Trends in migration are analyzed according to selected migrant characteristics. The relationship between economic conditions, migration, and the urbanization process is studied, and trends in urbanization to the year 2001 are estimated.     

Recent trends in Hispanic immigration to the United States

Recent patterns of Hispanic immigration to the United States are examined using data from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. "From 1960 to 1978 Hispanic immigration increased significantly, reflecting the general acceleration in total immigration to the United States. Demographic trends reveal that Hispanic immigrants are increasingly working-age women. Their occupation composition is primarily blue collar, with operatives emerging as the predominant job category during the 1970s." The authors note that these immigrants settle primarily in a small number of urban centers of Hispanic population and culture in the United States, and thus the effects of immigration will be concentrated on the low-skill segment of particular urban labor markets that already contain large numbers of Hispanic workers.     

Uniform asymptotic linearity of a process based on a signed rank statistic

Consider the process with, cf. (1.2) on page 265 in B1, X₁, …, X_N a sample from a distribution F and, for i = 1, …, N, R${}_{\text{|x}{}_{\text{1}}\text{, - q}{}_{\text{1}}\text{ø|}}$ , the rank of |X₁ - q₁ø| among |X₁ - q₁ø|, …, |X_N - q_Nø|. It is shown that, under certain regularity conditions on F and on the constants p_i and q_i, T^ø_N(t) is asymptotically approximately a linear function of ø uniformly in t and in ø for |ø| ≤ C. The special case where the p_i and the q_i, are independent of i is considered.     

The role of client satisfaction in evaluating university counseling services

Though ubiquitously used for evaluating university counseling services, client satisfaction assessment has been hampered by inadequate instrumentation. Systematic use of a short form of the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ) in one such center over the past 5 years is described, together with strategies to ensure maximal accuracy and utilization of results. Several method factors were investigated. Optional respondent identification was not found to reduce response rate or increase reported satisfaction compared to anonymity, while a substudy obtaining very high response suggested bias from nonresponse to the routine survey (response rate = 40%) was not great. The CSQ was found to have excellent psychometric properties and many advantages for use in student service settings. Relationships between satisfaction and a number of other variables such as demographics, precounseling expectancies, problem type and severity, counselor differences, and duration of counseling are reported. Ways such findings were incorporated in service planning are briefly discussed.     

Public opinion and the privatization of welfare: some theoretical implications

The social policy of the Thatcher government is characterized by an abrupt shift in the direction of the private sector. To what extent does this reflect what people want? The Institute of Economic Affairs conclude from the only suitable national opinion survey that such a move is strongly supported. Our reanalysis of their data shows that this strand in public opinion can coexist with, and need not contradict, an equal public enthusiasm for state welfare. Such results have important implications for our understanding of social policy. We conclude, therefore, with a discussion of contrasting marxist and liberal accounts which seeks to show that the evidence of ambivalence in popular attitudes about the welfare state supports particular developments in theory.