Private versus public financing of education and endogenous growth

This paper examines interactions between education policy and growth. The analysis is carried out in an OLG model with two types of individuals: skilled and unskilled. An increase in public education reduces private costs of education, increases the proportion of skilled individuals, and tends to promote growth. On the other hand, education spending crowds out physical capital and reduces learning-by-doing. A marginal increase in the education subsidy can lower growth. It is yet shown that pure public education maximizes the long-run growth rate. Importantly, a partial subsidy to education can result in lower growth than pure private education. Received: 7 March 1999/Accepted: 25 November 1999     

Becoming working mothers: Reconciling work and family at three particular workplaces in Norway,the UK,and Portugal

This paper investigates how differences in national and organisational welfare policies and in cultural norms on national, organisational, and familial levels influence work–family reconciliation for mothers. Drawing on case study and interview data gathered through a large European study of parenthood and organisations, we compare experiences of transition to motherhood in three organisations in Norway, the UK, and Portugal. The specific question which is considered in this paper is how mothers manage the reconciliation of work and family in the period of time following parental leave. Our case analyses highlight the differences in organisational, national policy, and family support in the three contexts, and show that having a child is still conceptualised as a predominantly ‘private problem’ in the UK and Portugal, while it has come closer to having the status of a ‘public issue’ in Norway.     

Homelessness in Sweden–discussion,patterns, and causes

In a number of countries in Western Europe and in North America homelessness has come to the fore once again over the last 15-20 years, a fact to which many books and surveys bear witness. In a number of countries, organizations have been formed both for and by the homeless.¹Newspapers sold on the street to promote the cause of the homeless are becoming an increasingly common sight.²Despite this trend there is at present still no generally acknowledged explanation of the cause of homelessness and we do not know whether the causes are the same in the social democratic European welfare states, in the USA and Canada, or in countries with a poorly developed welfare system. Nor do we know whether homelessness for the individual is a short-term or permanent state. This article highlights Swedish homelessness. It is based on the results of a research project which I ran from 1993 to 1998.³The article has three objectives. First, I wish to provide a brief presentation of the issue of Swedish homelessness using, among other things, a study of how the media have dealt with the issue. Secondly, I wish to discuss the pattern of homelessness in Sweden and provide an explanation of why the length of homelessness varies. Thirdly, I wish to highlight the question of how we explain why people can be homeless in a country where social welfare and housing policies have, decade after decade, been directed at eradicating housing problems. The last two questions were highlighted in a case study conducted by me in Malmö, the country's third largest city.     

The EKC Hypothesis Does Not Hold for Direct Material Flows: Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis Tests for Direct Material Flows in Five Industrial Countries

This study analyses the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis (EKC) with direct material flow data from the USA, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and Finland in the years 1975 to 1994. Recently, there has been a discussion concerning the relevance of the EKC hypothesis suggesting that also the intensity of material use should decline with income growth. The EKC hypothesis has not been widely tested with direct material flow data, and this paper presents one of the first attempts to do such tests. The results of the empirical hypothesis tests indicate that the EKC hypothesis does not hold in the case of aggregated direct material flows among industrialised countries like Germany, Japan, the USA, the Netherlands and Finland.     

The Effects of Education, Social Class and Income on Non-alcohol- and Alcohol-Associated Suicide Mortality: A Register-based Study of Finnish Men Aged 25–64

This study aimed to analyse the effects of different socioeconomic indicators on non-alcohol-associated and alcohol-associated suicide in Finland. The data used comprised the 1990 census records for men who were 25–64-years old linked to the death register for 1991–2001. Poisson regression was used to calculate the adjusted relative mortality rates. There were 6,452 suicides among the study population, and in 42% of them alcohol intoxication was a contributory cause. Education, occupation-based social class and household income were inversely and strongly related to suicide regardless of the link with alcohol. For non-alcohol-associated suicide, the effect of education was largely mediated by social class and income, the effect of social class was partly explained by education and partly mediated by income, and the effect of income was rather small after adjustment for the other two indicators. When alcohol was involved, social class mediated a large part of educational effect, but a strong association also remained. Respectively, education explained a large proportion of the social class differences. Income had a minor effect. Adjustment for employment status explained some of the income differences, but living arrangements had little effect. The findings imply that low social class is associated with increased suicide risk regardless of employment status, and that the roots of socioeconomic differences in alcohol-associated suicide lie in early adulthood when education and health behavioural patterns are set. This casts some doubt on claims that current material factors are the main drivers of socioeconomic differences in suicide.     

The presence of the absent father: how lone mothers with sons construct and animate the absent father through narratives

This article builds upon results from an empirical study of nine cases where single mothers and their teenage sons have reflected on the relationship to the absent father and on his significance for the family. The results have led us to reflect further on how the construction of a father figure is shaped. The cases are selected from ongoing interventions from the social services. The child's age at the start of the father's absence varied from birth to seven years old or more. Through analysis of the different cases of mother–son dyad, their narratives and their joint construction of a father figure, the dyad transforms into a triad with the presence of the absent father. Also discussed is the question of which underlying conditions contribute to the need for a joint construction of the father. Further, doubt is cast on the one-sided gender perspective that presupposes young men's need for an adult man as a model of masculinity. The analysis is related to Swedish legislation, emphasising the importance of ascribed biological parenthood, meaning that fathers’ right to joint custody and to visit the child have been strengthened. Along with the biological relationship, the welfare state also regulates the content of fatherhood, i.e. a state-controlled fatherhood.     

Prenatal Health,Educational Attainment,and Intergenerational Inequality: The Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 Study

In this article, we study the effects of prenatal health on educational attainment and on the reproduction of family background inequalities in education. Using Finnish birth cohort data, we analyze several maternal and fetal health variables, many of which have not been featured in the literature on long-term socioeconomic effects of health despite the effects of these variables on birth and short-term health outcomes. We find strong negative effects of mother’s prenatal smoking on educational attainment, which are stronger if the mother smoked heavily but are not significant if she quit during the first trimester. Anemia during pregnancy is also associated with lower levels of attained education. Other indicators of prenatal health (pre-pregnancy obesity, mother’s antenatal depressed mood, hypertension and preeclampsia, early prenatal care visits, premature birth, and small size for gestational age) do not predict educational attainment. Our measures explain little of the educational inequalities by parents’ class or education. However, smoking explains 12%—and all health variables together, 19%—of the lower educational attainment of children born to unmarried mothers. Our findings point to the usefulness of proximate health measures in addition to general ones. They also point to the potentially important role played by early health in intergenerational processes.