Time use in child care and housework and the total cost of children

The use of time for child care and housework among Swedish families is investigated. We allow the effect of children on child care and housework to vary by age of the child and also by whether the child is cared for outside the home or not. Our estimates allow us to compute the total cost of children in the form of the cost of time, and the cost of goods, services and housing.The result shows that time used for child care decreases sharply with the age of the child but this is not the case for time used for other housework. Considerable economies of scale is found to prevail for time used for child care. Child care outside the home reduces time use for other housework but the effect on time used for child care is quite small. For the average family time use cost make up more than half of total child cost. Our estimates indicate that decreased time use cost for children caused by care outside the home are not very different from a typical parental fee for public day care.This research was supported by a grant from the Swedish Council of Social Research (SFR). We thank Lennart Flood for useful comments on an earlier version.     

Demographic changes in East European countries and Russia

The authors outline demographic trends in Eastern Europe and Russia since 1970. Aspects considered include population size, birth rate and number of births, marriage and divorce, death rate, infant mortality, natural increase, sex ratio, and life expectancy.     

Interrupted stories, interrupted lives

In attempting to manage their practices efficiently, doctors may not allow seriously ill patients enough time to sort out their feelings and raise important questions. What is at stake here is not information about prognosis and treatments but the very survival of the soul.     

The liability of nonprofits to donors

The success of the third sector depends on public confidence, and that confidence rests, in part, on holding managers, directors, and officers of nonprofits responsible for their conduct. This accountability can be accomplished by clearly defining the roles of these individuals and the stands that they are to uphold, and by providing channels for all interested to challenge uncontrolled activities. Though interest in this goal is unanimous, a debate exists over how to ensure oversight and accountability.     

Basic aspects of evolution strategies

Evolution strategies (ESs) are a special class of probabilistic, direct, global optimization methods. They are similar to genetic algorithms but work in continuous spaces and have the additional capability of self-adapting their major strategy parameters. This paper presents the most important features of ESs, namely their self-adaptation, as well as their robustness and potential for parallelization which they share with other evolutionary algorithms.Besides the early (1 + 1)-ES and its underlying theoretical results, the modern ( + )-ES and (, )-ES are presented with special emphasis on the self-adaptation of strategy parameters, a mechanism which enables the algorithm to evolve not only the object variables but also the characteristics of the probability distributions of normally distributed mutations. The self-adaptation property of the algorithm is also illustrated by an experimental example.The robustness of ESs is demonstrated for noisy fitness evaluations and by its application to discrete optimization problems, namely the travelling salesman problem (TSP).Finally, the paper concludes by summarizing existing work and general possibilities regarding the parallelization of evolution strategies and evolutionary algorithms in general.     

Ropes course training for youth in a rural setting: “At first I thought it was going to be boring ...”

Outdoor structured activities, such as Ropes Challenge Courses, are typically utilized as interventions for youth coming from urban settings. Evaluation of such programs is scanty at best. In this instance, the course experience is used as a prevention tool for high risk youth in a remote, rural setting of high unemployment, alcohol problems, and low income. The authors discuss the effectiveness of this approach, and the intended and unintended consequences for the rural community at large. The evaluation design relies on extensive qualitative methodology as well as quantitative methods to capture the unique nature of this rural project.     

The model of place utility revisited

"The purpose of this paper...is twofold: first, to specify a way of calculating place utility so that potential migrants could move to the place where overall place utility is maximized; and second, which is more important, to reveal how decision-makers in the real world, who are acting within 'bounded rationalities'...,make their decisions on where to migrate. This study is supported by an empirical survey of recent Chinese immigrants to Edmonton [Canada].... The findings reveal that when people evaluate different places, they do not necessarily look for the one that generates the highest overall value or utility across all properties.... The study further indicates that the assumption underlying most microeconomic models (that maximizing utility or benefit is the ultimate rule for choosing one location out of several) has not been verified." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

DO RESPONDENTS REALLY "MARK ALL THAT APPLY" ON SELF-ADMINISTERED QUESTIONS?

An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of using "markall that apply" question instructions on survey reporting aspart of the field test for the Second Follow-up of the NationalEducation Longitudinal Study of 1988 Eighth Graders (NELS:88).Mark-all-that-apply instructions were compared with instructionsasking respondents to indicate "yes" or "no" to each responseoption on responses to three items dispersed throughout thequestionnaire and consisting of different topics and numbersof response options. For the three items, significantly fewerresponse options were selected with the mark-all-that-applyinstructions than with the yes/no instructions, but becauseexternal validity criteria were not available, overreportingto the yes/no instructions cannot be ruled out. Instructiondependentprimacy effects, predicted under the hypothesis that respondentswould engage in more superficial processing when given the mark-all-that-applyinstructions, were not found.     

The impact of migration on gender roles: findings of field research in Turkey

Findings are based on a sample of four types of Turkish women affected by migration: 1) pioneer women who emigrated on their own (33 persons); 2) followers with wage work experience, who joined or left with husbands (44 persons); 3) followers without wage work experience (39 persons); and 4) women left behind when husbands migrated (45 persons). These women are compared to a non-migrant control group (54 persons). Sample surveys were conducted in three sites, which varied in levels of industrial development, economic diversification, and urbanization (Ankara, Kisehir, and eight rural villages in the province of Kisehir). The sample includes returnees registered with the Social Insurance Institute and persons located by the chain inquiry method. Prior research supports the importance of including typologies based on family types, marriage types, levels of education, and experience with wage work. This study confirms that pioneer women were more likely to have romantic marriages, to have nuclear families, to have higher educational levels, and to have prior wage work. Analysis of the 116 women with migration experience shows that 75% migrated during 1968-74. 22% migrated after 1980. 51% were returnees during 1983-85, and many received retirement benefits. Almost 65% spent 10 or more years abroad. 56% were aged under 24 years. 85% were married at the time of emigration. 61% viewed their migration experiences as improving their maturity and ability to handle affairs compared to nonmigrant women. 88% became housewives after returning. 27% of return migrants and 82% of nonmigrants had never had their own bank accounts. 69% of return migrants and only 22% of nonmigrants reported movement outside the home without permission. 63% of migrants and 39% of nonmigrants would cast political votes independently of their husbands. Migrating women exercised more independent behavior but retained traditional responsibility for housework. The greatest differences were between women with wage work and women without or with migrating husbands. Followers without wage work were the most disadvantaged. Migration is viewed as a significant factor in determining gender roles among Turkish women.