High Fertility as Risk-Insurance

Recently ‘insurance against risk’ has been proposed as a major addition to the list of economic supports for a high perceived value of children in poor South Asian countries. That is, that children provide a vital insurance policy for poor couples against the many hazards and risks to which they are subject. This argument is plausible and has proved appealing. If correct, it implies that demand for children will remain high (and contraceptive practice low) until the climate of risk has been substantially altered through public policy. This article examines this proposition critically with respect to the underlying logic and also subjects the proposition to historical and cross-sectional empirical test. We conclude that there are serious conceptual and theoretical weaknesses in the basic argument which cast serious doubt on its validity. Also the empirical tests undertaken lead us to reject the hypothesis. We conclude that the ‘risk’ notion adds nothing to fertility theory and that it remains to be established that comprehensive social security schemes are a necessary condition for fertility decline.     

Fractional integration versus level shifts: the case of realized asset correlations

Long memory has been widely documented for realized financial market volatility. As a novelty, we consider daily realized asset correlations and we investigate whether the observed persistence is (i) due to true long memory (i.e. fractional integration) or (ii) artificially generated by some structural break processes. These two phenomena are difficult to be distinguished in practice. Our empirical results strongly indicate that the hyperbolic decay of the autocorrelation functions of pair-wise realized correlation series is indeed not driven by a truly fractionally integrated process. This finding is robust against user specific parameter choices in the applied test statistic and holds for all 15 considered time series. As a next step, we apply simple models with deterministic level shifts. When selecting the number of breaks, estimating the breakpoints and the corresponding structural break models we find a substantial degree of co-movement between the realized correlation series hinting at co-breaking. The estimated structural break models are interpreted in the light of the historic economic and financial development.     

Preparing Community Health Workers for Their Role as Agents of Social Change: Experience of the Community Capacitation Center

Current efforts to better integrate Community Health Workers (CHWs) into the health and social service systems are promising, but may be less effective if they fail to support the role of CHWs as social change agents. The way CHWs are trained influences the roles they play. In this article, we review the literature on CHW training and summarize lessons learned to date. We describe how the Community Capacitation Center in Oregon uses a combination of content, methodology, and values to prepare CHWs to make an optimal contribution to health. Recommendations for CHW training programs and policy makers are provided.     

A synergy of contemporary activism to address police maltreatment of Black males: An intersectional analysis

ABSTRACT

A panoramic overview of contemporary and historical activism to address the perennial tension between police and young Black males in the United States of America is extensively articulated. Furthermore, an intersectional analysis framework is utilized to provide, and explain the unintentional synergy of activism among different groups in the Black community such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the inveterate political class, and the venerable Black church to mitigate police maltreatment of Black males during the era of the nation’s first Black president. Moreover, we discuss the various aggressive policing tactics used in maltreating Black males, some criminal justice reforms achieved in the last eight years, and more importantly we offer suggestions to improve the relationship between police and the Black community.     

Response to McMichael,Block, and Goldfrank

Theory and Society -     

Short breaks for families caring for a disabled child with complex health needs

Data from two research studies concerned with disabled children who have complex health needs were analysed in relation to families' experiences of accessing short breaks (respite) services. Many families experience serious problems finding suitable services which can cater for both their child's complex health needs and their own need for significant levels of support. This paper highlights which services families were using and the difficulties of obtaining a coherent and consistent package of support. Regulatory concerns relating to the piece-meal provision of services and use of children's hospices are raised along with recommendations for improving policy and practice.     

Racial identity attitudes and self-esteem of black adolescents in residential care: an exploratory study

Summary The study examined and compared the racial identity attitudesand self-esteem of 40 African Caribbean adolescents in residentialcare in a city in the West Midlands and a comparison group of40 African Caribbean adolescents attending a multiracial comprehensiveschool in the city. The respondents were administered the Rosenberg(Rosenberg, 1965) Self-Esteem Scale, the Racial Identity AttitudeScale (Parham and Helms, 1981) and a Demographic Questionnaire.Multiple regression analysis and analysis of variance were usedto analyse the data. Both respondents in residential care andthe comparison group primarily endorsed positive racial attitudes.Self-esteem and racial identity attitudes were positively related.The study assessed the implications of the findings for socialworkers working with black children and adolescents.     

What growth rate can you achieve?

This paper investigates the relationships between the profitability, rate of investment and growth rate of a business, and the cash surplus thereby produced. These relationships can be applied to a company as a whole, or to the individual businesses within that company.The basic relationships derived are financial and do not take explicit cognizance of the physical volume sold. They thus enable a business to be considered as a money-making machine, regardless of the product involved. They also do not require definition of inflation per se, although this factor will obviously have an impact on certain of the others.A company as a whole can be considered as a portfolio of separate businesses, each having a different profitability and growth rate, and each contributing a surplus or deficit to the overall cash flow. Understanding the underlying relationships for each business will facilitate portfolio planning, where the cash demands of some businesses have to be met by the surpluses provided by others.