Another Child? Fertility Ideals,Resources and Opportunities

Low fertility in most developed countries has prompted policy concern in relation to labour market supply, pensions, and expenditure on health and welfare services as well as policy debate about both the cost of children and the opportunity costs of parenthood. The extent to which family policy interventions can be effective in slowing or reversing fertility decline is much debated. This paper, based on a fertility module of the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2005, examines the current fertility, and ideal and expected fertility of a nationally representative sample of 455 parents of reproductive age and focuses on whether they plan to have another child. It compares the characteristics of those who intend to have another child with those who do not, and how parents with one child differ from those with more children. It addresses three questions about family size: (1) fertility ideals, (2) resources and the economic implications of childbearing, and (3) opportunities for childbearing and the effects of a late start on fertility expectations. It concludes that, despite a sustained period of low fertility in Scotland, childbearing ideals are robust and explanations of low fertility must derive from difficulties in realising those ideals. Difficulties in realising fertility aspirations are associated less with resources than with opportunities for childbearing, especially the timing of first birth. Those who delay their first birth are less likely to realise their ideal family size, and their lower fertility is associated with the opportunity costs of childbearing in terms of foregone qualifications, careers and earnings.     

A new class of multivariate skew distributions with applications to Bayesian regression models

The original article to which this Erratum refers was published in The Canadian Journal of Statistics, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2003, pp. 129–150.     

Improved estimation of variance components in mixed models

Taking Albert's (1976) formulation of a mixed model ANOVA, we consider improved estimation of the variance components for balanced designs under squared error loss. Two approaches are presented. One extends the ideas of Stein (1964), The other is developed from the fact that variance components can be expressed as linear combinations of chi-square scale parameters. Encouraging simulation results are presented.     

A new threshold regression model for survival data with a cure fraction

Due to the fact that certain fraction of the population suffering a particular type of disease get cured because of advanced medical treatment and health care system, we develop a general class of models to incorporate a cure fraction by introducing the latent number N of metastatic-competent tumor cells or infected cells caused by bacteria or viral infection and the latent antibody level R of immune system. Various properties of the proposed models are carefully examined and a Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling algorithm is developed for carrying out Bayesian computation for model fitting and comparison. A real data set from a prostate cancer clinical trial is analyzed in detail to demonstrate the proposed methodology.     

COVID-19: Impact on children living in out-of-home care and their carers

Children enter out-of-home care (OOHC) having experienced significant childhood adversities and trauma. Little is known about the short-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on this vulnerable group. To gain some insights, we analysed the early impacts on the well-being and experiences of children in OOHC and their carers using the Pathways of Care Longitudinal Study data prior to and post the first lockdown restrictions. A total of 862 children, young people and their carers were interviewed either pre-COVID-19 restrictions (n = 567) (April 2019–March 2020) or post-COVID-19 restrictions (n = 295) (June–December 2020). While the two groups showed no significant differences in socio-emotional well-being, both the pre- and the post-COVID-19 restriction groups of children in OOHC had slight reductions in socio-emotional well-being. The interviews with the post-COVID-19 group showed that the pandemic restrictions affected children's well-being and behaviour, education, social and physical activities, as well as time spent with their birth family. Likewise, interviews with carers post-COVID-19 found a negative effect on carers' well-being, their ability to manage financially and their capacity to care and access services and support. The article contributes new evidence to inform OOHC policy and practice to support service systems facing unique challenges arising from a pandemic.