SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: American Economic Association , Papers and Proceedings of the One Hundred Eleventh Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, New York, January 3–5 1999 Katherine Betts , The Great Divide: Immigration Politics in Australia C. Y. Cyrus Chu , Population Dynamics: A New Economic Approach Timothy J. Hatton and Jeffrey G. Williamson , The Age of Mass Migration: Causes and Economic Impact International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies , World Disasters Report 1998 Augustine J. Kposowa , The Impact of Immigration on the United States Economy B. Lindsay Lowell (ed.) , Foreign Temporary Workers in America: Policies That Benefit the U.S. Economy Christopher J. L. Murray and Alan D. Lopez (eds.) , Health Dimensions of Sex and Reproduction: The Global Burden of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, HIV, Maternal Conditions, Perinatal Disorders, and Congenital Abnormalities Jack Parsons , Human Population Competition: A Study of the Pursuit of Power Through Julian L. Simon , Economics Against the Grain World Bank , Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1998     

SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Kamran Asdar Ali, Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel (EDS.), Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses Peter Lloyd‐Sherlock (ED.), Healthcare Reform and Poverty in Latin America Ishwar Modi (ED.), Ageing and Human Development: Global Perspectives United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Arab States, Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations United Nations Population Division, World Population Ageing 1950–2050 Jacques Vallin, France Meslé, and Tapani Valkonen (EDS.), Trends in Mortality and Differential Mortality Myron Weiner and Michael S. Teitelbaum, Political Demography, Demographic Engineering Zhang Weiguo, Economic Reforms and Fertility Behavior: A Study of a North Chinese Village     

Long-Term Unemployment: New Initiatives

Responding to Professor Leaper's basic article in the Spring 1985 issue, the Director of the Manpower Services Commission accepts that long-term unemployment will continue at a high level. He analyses the big changes in the kind of jobs available, particularly over the last twenty years in manufacturing industry. Long-term unemployed people need special programmes as well as being helped to adapt to new types of employment like other workers. The Community Programme of the MSC has been successful in meeting special needs, and is this year substantially increased in scope. It should be further improved by: having higher national standards, by getting employers to sponsor more projects, by using the Enterprise Allowance Scheme to help CP workers to go on to self-employment. These improvements will encourage people generally to feed in new ideas for responding to the challenge of long-term unemployment.     

Assessing the adequacy of Weibull survival models: a simulated envelope approach

The Weibull proportional hazards model is commonly used for analysing survival data. However, formal tests of model adequacy are still lacking. It is well known that residual-based goodness-of-fit measures are inappropriate for censored data. In this paper, a graphical diagnostic plot of Cox–Snell residuals with a simulated envelope added is proposed to assess the adequacy of Weibull survival models. Both single component and two-component mixture models with random effects are considered for recurrent failure time data. The effectiveness of the diagnostic method is illustrated using simulated data sets and data on recurrent urinary tract infections of elderly women.     

The Father-in-law’s Relationship with His Son-in-law: A Preliminary Understanding

ABSTRACT

Little information is available about fathers-in-law and their relationship with their sons-in-law. The authors draw from a mixed-methods study of 35 fathers-in-law to describe how three fathers-in-law with highly positive son-in-law relationships and three fathers-in-law with difficult son-in-law relationships talk about those relationships. All three fathers-in-law with positive relationships are married, had good relationships with their parents-in-law, treat their sons-in-law like family members, have good relationships with their daughters, and believe their daughter and son-in-law are a good team. Some of these fathers-in-law worked through issues with their sons-in-law to a positive resolution. The three fathers-in-law with difficult relationships had varied relations with their parents-in-laws, are close with their own children but keep their sons-in-law at an emotional distance and often communicate with them through their children (the son-in-law’s spouse). One father-in-law believes his daughter and son-in-law are a good team. These fathers-in-law believe their sons-in-law show unsettling traits and have, as a result, grown more distant from them with time. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are included.     

Utilities for distributive justice

This paper falls within the field of Distributive Justice and (as the title indicates) addresses itself specifically to the meshing problem. Briefly stated, the meshing problem is the difficulty encountered when one tries to aggregate the two parameters of beneficence and equity in a way that results in determining which of two or more alternative utility distributions is most just. A solution to this problem, in the form of a formal welfare measure, is presented in the paper. This formula incorporates the notions of equity and beneficence (which are defined earlier by the author) and weighs them against each other to compute a numerical value which represents the degree of justice a given distribution possesses. This value can in turn be used comparatively to select which utility scheme, of those being considered, is best.Three fundamental adequacy requirements, which any acceptable welfare measuring method must satisfy, are presented and subsequently demonstrated to be formally deducible as theorems of the author's system. A practical application of the method is then considered as well as a comparison of it with Nicholas Rescher's method (found in his book, Distributive Justice). The conclusion reached is that Rescher's system is unacceptable, since it computes counter-intuitive results. Objections to the author's welfare measure are considered and answered. Finally, a suggestion for expanding the system to cover cases it was not originally designed to handle (i.e. situations where two alternative utility distributions vary with regard to the number of individuals they contain) is made. The conclusion reached at the close of the paper is that an acceptable solution to the meshing problem has been established.I would like to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Michael Tooley whose positive suggestions and critical comments were invaluable in the writting of this paper.     

After the Interview

This article is concerned with after the interview, a strip of time (Goffman 1974, p. 10) between the end of the formal interview and the culmination of leave-taking rituals. Although there is a considerable and growing literature on qualitative interviewing (Arksey and Knight 1999; Kvale 1996; Rubin and Rubin 1995; Weiss 1994), and some corridor talk about the meaning of off the record post-interview comments, this topic has received little attention in the published literature (but see DeSantis 1980 and Wenger 2001). And we think it is an important one, since it illuminates the interviewee's interpretation of the interviewer and interview process, and highlights aspects of the meaning of the topic, and of the interviewer, to the respondent (which is, after all, the endpoint of the qualitative interviewing method). Further, the question of what constitutes after the interview throws into relief the question of what is an interview.