Voluntarism, self-help and rural community development: Some current approaches

Within the last decade or so, there has developed an increased concern for the welfare of rural communities and for individuals within such communities. At the same time there has emerged a parallel concern for environmental matters, concerned with conservation of species and habitat and the protection of cherished landscapes and amenities. Both sectors of rural concern have been characterised by debate about the means of delivery of policies and programmes in their respective areas and, in particular, about the balance between state action and the activities of the private sector. A common thread running through such debates has been the role of what is loosely called the ‘voluntary sector’, that is the complicated mix of individuals and organisations, local and national, which involve themselves in effort, not for direct payment nor as a routine of work, but because of feelings of commitment, belief and ideology.This paper is concerned with just one aspect of this sector — that which involves social and community aspects of the lives of rural dwellers in the English countryside. Despite this restricted field, there is an attempt to see things within a broader socio-political context, such that rural voluntarism and rural self-help can be assessed not only against a wider picture of volunteering generally but also placed within a political framework, both national and local. Voluntarism and self-help cannot exist independently of the world around them, yet the very process of facing up to the wider political realities creates problems of accountability and control to the extent that some would dismiss the voluntary sector as ineffective at best or the tool of vested interests at worst.     

Family support: A review of the literature on families of adolescents with disabilities

ABSTRACT

For all youth, adolescence is a time of great change, marked by multiple transitions. For those with disabilities, these transitions can be especially challenging for the youth and their families. Although families of adolescents with disabilities often require support, it is unclear what types of assistance are most helpful. To understand the responsibilities of and, correspondingly, supports needed for parents and siblings, the authors conducted a comprehensive literature review. Specifically, the authors examined the literature to identify the supports that families provide to their adolescent relatives with disabilities, the impacts of caring for an adolescent relative with a disability, and the assistance that families receive. The authors conclude by discussing implications for future research about family support.     

Open Road or Blind Alley? Welfare Reform, Mothers, and Children with Disabilities

Welfare reform was examined for 39 Michigan families whose children have significant health or intellectual and behavioral disabilities. As a group, these families received little specialized assistance or services to address their unique needs. Family-cited barriers to self-sufficiency included poorly trained welfare caseworkers, limited public transportation, and inadequate child care. Having an older child was the only discriminating variable between working and non-working mothers. However, working mothers only had temporary positions with no benefits and low pay. All families, whether employed or not, lived below the poverty line.     

Calibration estimation in dual-frame surveys

Survey statisticians make use of auxiliary information to improve estimates. One important example is calibration estimation, which constructs new weights that match benchmark constraints on auxiliary variables while remaining “close” to the design weights. Multiple-frame surveys are increasingly used by statistical agencies and private organizations to reduce sampling costs and/or avoid frame undercoverage errors. Several ways of combining estimates derived from such frames have been proposed elsewhere; in this paper, we extend the calibration paradigm, previously used for single-frame surveys, to calculate the total value of a variable of interest in a dual-frame survey. Calibration is a general tool that allows to include auxiliary information from two frames. It also incorporates, as a special case, certain dual-frame estimators that have been proposed previously. The theoretical properties of our class of estimators are derived and discussed, and simulation studies conducted to compare the efficiency of the procedure, using different sets of auxiliary variables. Finally, the proposed methodology is applied to real data obtained from the Barometer of Culture of Andalusia survey.     

Gender Differences in Union Formation in Mexico: Evidence From Marital Search Models

Although increasingly appreciated for their explanatory power in developed societies, marital search models have yet to be widely applied to developing nations. This article evaluates the applicability of marital search models to marriage timing in Mexico. The analysis compares separate models of union formation for men and women that include individual and marriage market predictors. Results show that union formation is closely linked to the uncertainties surrounding the transition to adulthood and the availability of marriageable partners. Improvements in women's economic position do not diminish the attractiveness of marriage, as female independence arguments would suggest. Instead, they are a central force behind the stability of marriage behavior in Mexico. A central transformation identified in the analysis is the reduction in sex differences in age at marriage as women expand their education and labor force participation.     

Bicol hospital reaches out to rural folk

The Ago General Hospital in Legaspi City of the Philippines was opened in 1965, antedating the national family planning movement by 5 years. The 180 bed hospital integrates family planning into the overall hospital service; sterilization is the main method used. Of the 3600 patients per year, 15% are family planning acceptors. The hospital employs 3 family planning strategies: inhospital, out patient and supportive. Inhospital strategies center on sterilization counseling and motivation. The counseling sessions include patient education. Primary targets include high risk pregnancies and young couples with a lot of children. Outpatient strategies include a referral system involving hospitals and agencies with family planning programs, lectures for community organizations and personal visits to other clinics and rural health units. The hospital's mobile clinic, staffed mainly by students, provides information, deworming, and pediatric services to the community. Supportive program strategies consist of mass communication, and an acceptor's club for previous acceptors of sterilization. These clubs meet regularly to share and discuss experiences.     

A Need-Based Measure of Consumer Well Being (CWB) in Relation to Personal Transportation: Nomological Validation

This paper reports the results of three studies designed to test the nomological validity of a consumer well-being (CWB) measure in relation to personal transportation. The CWB measure was developed guided by the theoretical notion that the CWB in relation to personal transportation vehicles is significantly enhanced when the consumption of the vehicle meets the full spectrum of human developmental needs (i.e., safety, economic, family, social, esteem, actualization, knowledge, and aesthetics needs). The nomological validity of the CWB measure was tested by exploring the various antecedents and consequences of the construct. This was done in three separate studies in which the results of one study prompted further conceptual development and additional testing. The overall findings of the three studies provided support for the nomological validity of the CWB measure.     

Quality of Life in South Africa: Post-Apartheid Trends

During the apartheid era black South Africans indicated markedly lower levels of happiness and satisfaction in all spheres of life than their white counterparts. The gap between black and white subjective well-being closed temporarily after the first universal franchise elections held on April 27, 1994 only to widen again eighteen months later. The paper presents data on subjective well-being collected during the 1980s and 1990s in four nationwide cross-sectional attitude surveys and a multipurpose household survey. Possible explanations for the shifting levels of happiness are explored. These include levels of living, income inequality, rising expectations and new anxieties experienced in the post-apartheid era.     

A new monotonicity condition for tournament solutions

We identify a new monotonicity condition (called cover monotonicity) for tournament solutions which allows a discrimination among main tournament solutions: The top-cycle, the iterated uncovered set, the minimal covering set, and the bipartisan set are cover monotonic while the uncovered set, Banks set, the Copeland rule, and the Slater rule fail to be so. As cover monotonic tournament solutions induce social choice rules which are Nash implementable in certain non-standard frameworks (such as those set by Bochet and Maniquet (CORE Discussion Paper No. 2006/84, 2006) or Özkal-Sanver and Sanver (Social Choice and Welfare, 26(3), 607–623, 2006), the discrimination generated by cover monotonicity becomes particularly notable when implementability is a concern.