Skewed Sex Ratios at Birth in Italian Migrant Populations: Evidence from a Longitudinal Register 1999–2017

European Journal of Population - Many studies in different settings have suggested that migrants from countries with skewed sex ratios at birth tend to adjust the sex of their offspring to ensure...     

A Cross‐Linguistic Study of Word‐Mapping in 18‐ to 20‐Month‐Old Infants

This study was designed to examine whether infants acquiring languages that place a differential emphasis on nouns and verbs, focus their attention on motions or objects in the presence of a novel word. An infant‐controlled habituation paradigm was used to teach 18‐ to 20‐month‐old English‐, French‐, and Japanese‐speaking infants’ novel words for events. Infants were habituated to two word‐event pairings and then presented with new combinations that involved a familiar word with a new object or motion, or both. Children could map the novel word to both the object and the motion, despite the differential salience of object and motion words in their native language. A control experiment with no label confirmed that both object and motion changes were detectable.     

Fiscal Rules and Discretion Under Persistent Shocks

This paper studies the optimal level of discretion in policymaking. We consider a fiscal policy model where the government has time‐inconsistent preferences with a present bias toward public spending. The government chooses a fiscal rule to trade off its desire to commit to not overspend against its desire to have flexibility to react to privately observed shocks to the value of spending. We analyze the optimal fiscal rule when the shocks are persistent. Unlike under independent and identically distributed shocks, we show that the ex ante optimal rule is not sequentially optimal, as it provides dynamic incentives. The ex ante optimal rule exhibits history dependence, with high shocks leading to an erosion of future fiscal discipline compared to low shocks, which lead to the reinstatement of discipline. The implied policy distortions oscillate over time given a sequence of high shocks, and can force the government to accumulate maximal debt and become immiserated in the long run.     

Contextualizing Performance of Coordinated Care Network of Veteran Services in Virginia

Abstract

Coordinated care network is an approach to human service delivery that is recognized to improve client outcomes at a reduced cost. However, general mixed findings on the effectiveness of coordinated care networks warrant research contextualization. This article seeks to discover factors influencing the performance of a coordinated care network delivering social services to veterans and their families. The study provides a contextual analysis of a coordinated care network launched in 2016 in southeastern Virginia for two samples of 1,512 and 375 veterans and their families. Results of the regression analyses indicate that initial progress has been made both in efficiency measured as the amount of days a client’s case is open and effectiveness measured as the recorded outcome of a client’s case. However, performance was affected by both client’s characteristics and types of services requested. Therefore, performance was not uniform across the network of providers. Further, indicators could be enhanced to better capture areas of the network needing improvement. Future research may consider adding performance measures and track it over time and across contextual attributes to confirm the effectiveness and efficiency performance of a coordinated care network.     

SWOT Analysis of Serbia and Montenegro’s Accession to the EU

The first generation of reforms in Serbia, especially in 2001–2002, was carried out “by the book” but the initial successful results blurred and concealed numerous problems that, especially in 2003, were becoming more evident and, finally, caused a delay in, and the blockade of, the further reform processes. It turned out that the political élite failed to reach a consensus on the second generation of reforms which, above all, refers to the rounding-off and functioning of the institutions of a market economy and the rule of law in full. After the October 2000 changes, relations between the FRY/SM and the European Union have altered dramatically. Joining the EU became strategic priority of our foreign policy, as well as reintegration of the SM in the international community. Nevertheless, these processes have their strengths and weaknesses, potential opportunities and threats, which are summarized in this paper.     

Between a rock and a hard place: the role of relatives in protecting children from the effects of parental drug problems

Using qualitative data gathered from 62 problem drug using parents in Glasgow, Scotland, this paper explores the role played by the extended family in protecting children from some of the negative effects of parental drug use. However, the data also indicated that the intervention of the extended family, whilst often critical, was not without its tensions and difficulties for parents, for the extended family and for the children too. What seemed to obtain in most cases was a complex and volatile mix of practical and emotional concerns over children's appropriate care and issues of responsibility and obligation to the child. These in turn were overlaid by expressions of anxiety, worry, anger and disappointment over both the parent's drug problem and its profound effect on the family. Strained family dynamics and a lack of a supportive welfare infrastructure can all compromise the ability of kin to provide a stable, nurturing environment for children over time. In a worst case scenario it can lead to a breakdown of these care arrangements, leaving these already vulnerable children exposed to further rupture, emotional damage and instability. If we are to avoid such outcomes it is crucial that we first identify and then work to rectify those factors that compromise the abilities of extended family carers to look after these children both in the short and the longer term.     

Peer Support Groups for Child Welfare–Involved Families

Studies on risk factors and circumstances related to child maltreatment have continuously emphasized the important role of social support. As a result, peer support groups have been gaining attention and recognition in recent years in the field of child maltreatment prevention. However, little is known about the benefits that child welfare–involved parents receive in peer support groups, as well as the distinctive service elements that make these groups successful. By examining child welfare–involved parents’ experiences participating in peer support groups, this study provided a better understanding of the perceived beneficial aspects of peer support groups, specific types of supports offered to and by peers, and unique characteristics of these groups.     

MARRYING A ‘FOE’: JOINT SCRIPTS AND REWRITTEN HISTORIES OF GREEK-TURKISH COUPLES

Addressing the notion of “mixture” in marriages between individuals with diverse ethnic and religious identity as well as ambiguous historical relations, this article investigates the conjugal life and relations of Greek-Turkish couples living in Athens. It explores the meanings such unions take on in modern Greek society where nationalist discourse underlines issues of cultural and biological “purity” and shows how alternative versions of history intersect with gender and ethnicity in “mixed” family settings. Although crossing ethnic and historical boundaries does not transform dominant ideas, these mixed marriages allow their participants to maintain flexible lines of distinction and construct meaningful commonalities between themselves and their nations. What is more, by rephrasing stereotypical imageries and orienting themselves toward modern, Westernised ideas, Greek-Turkish couples have built up an ideological platform embracing diversity and historical ambivalence in new, enriched ways.     

Representations of Jewish Childhood From 1950s Communist Romania in Memoirs by Women Émigré Authors to the United States

ABSTRACT

This article examines the memoirs of three Jewish women – Marianne Hirsch, Anca Vlasopolos, and Haya Leah Molnar – to understand how they remembered childhood in 1950s communist Bucharest. I first show how Marianne Hirsch’s part-memoir, part-critical book, Family Frames, uses her personal experiences to theorize tropes of transcultural dislocation as specific features of post-World War II Jewish children’s identities in 1950s Romania. I analyze how these tropes equally permeate the memoirs by two of her generation’s peers, Anca Vlasopolos and Haya Leah Molnar, highlighting how the two authors deploy them in their narratives. Overall, I show that writings of one’s 1950s childhood experiences in Bucharest by Jewish emigrées to the US offer new alternative discourses about facing the past and the present in Eastern Europe and the US by the tropes of initial transcultural, dislocating experiences at the start of their lives.