Intergenerational effects of further vocational training in Germany

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the influence of unemployed parents’ further vocational training on their children’s future apprenticeship and employment opportunities. We focus on households receiving means-tested benefits in Germany and investigate whether parents’ further vocational training helps avoid an intergenerational transmission of unemployment. Parents’ further vocational training can affect children’s future apprenticeship and employment opportunities directly, for instance by raising the value attributed to education and training within the family. Indirect effects via parents’ improved employment opportunities are possible as well. The sample consists of adolescents who were 14–17 years old when their parents participated in a further vocational training programme. We evaluate apprenticeship and employment outcomes for the young adults at ages 17–23 using entropy balancing methods on the basis of rich large-scale register data. Our findings indicate significantly positive effects of parents’ further vocational training on children’s apprenticeship enrolment but non-significant or negative effects on children’s regular employment at young ages. Moreover, mediation analysis gives evidence that these effects are partly mediated via an increase in parents’ own employment opportunities. Overall, our analyses indicate that parents’ further vocational training improves the qualifications of the next generation as well.     

关于我国的结构性失业分析与治理

本文分析了结构性失业的原因 ,论证了在摩擦失业、结构失业和总量失业中 ,结构失业是我国当前的主要矛盾 ,并提出了相应的治理对策     

Capital limits: social class,motivations for term-time job searching and the consequences of joblessness among UK university students

Youth unemployment figures include large numbers of full-time students, yet student joblessness receives very little academic attention, especially at a qualitative level. Despite being relatively less deleterious than youth unemployment more broadly, we show that student unemployment remains an important site for the practice and reinforcement of social inequality. Using a Bourdieusian framework to analyse interviews with 27 undergraduate students who have been unsuccessful in term-time job searching, we expose some of the limits to the extent that social and cultural capital can be converted into positive employment outcomes. Importantly, the data reveal that it is (lack of) access to material and economic resources that is most significant in ensuring that both the experience of unemployment and, concomitantly, the experience of university, in yet another way, remain highly structured by social class. These divisions shape the imperative and timing of the need to work, and also underpin nuances in respect of desires and needs in how students talk about their motivations for part-time work. These should be important considerations if policy-makers want to create a genuinely meritocratic system or deliver equitable psychological and material well-being.     

What works best when? The role of active labour market policy programmes in different business cycles

Nordlund M. What works best when? The role of active labour market policy programmes in different business cycles Int J Soc Welfare 2011: 20: 43–54 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. At what point in a business cycle do long‐term unemployed persons gain most from participation in active labour market policy programmes (ALMP) as compared with openly unemployed persons? This article studies this question from the perspective of individual human capital with the hazard of labour market exit and chances of future labour market stability and equal post‐unemployment income as output variables. All the long‐term unemployed in Sweden were followed on a four‐year basis, with 1993 (recession) and 1999 (boom) as starting years. The study shows mainly positive effects among participants regardless of the state of the market. However, ALMP training has a ‘bridging’ effect over different labour market conditions, and a quick return to the regular labour market is, therefore, not as important for the success of participation as it is among ALMP employment participants.     

适度失业率水平之我见

过高的失业率是有害的 ,因为它会给经济发展和社会稳定带来负面影响 ,适度的失业率水平则不但不会对社会有危害 ,还对经济增长和体制改革有正面效应。我国的适度失业率 ,可以大致参考发达市场经济国家提出的标准。为了达到“保持适度失业率”的目标 ,缓解我国目前沉重的失业压力 ,应当采取一些必要措施     

网络时代的工业设计走向

网络本身是中性的,它提供的仅仅是一个信息承载空间。网络对于工业设计的意义在于:一方面,网络的出现带来新的设计现象;另一方面,导致在设计领域及设计工具、方法上的延伸与拓展。     

Fate and Agency in Job Loss Narratives

While sociologists have emphasized the social sources of autobiographical narratives, there has been relatively little sociological reflection on the way that autobiographers themselves make selective use of accounts of social forces and pressures to explain their actions. This paper examines the way individuals' use of social pressures as explanations of their behavior are related to the structure of autobiographical narratives as a whole. The paper draws on empirical examples from interviews with people who are unemployed. Focusing on heroic and tragic narrative structures, I argue that the overall narrative structure is shaped by a number of factors, including the events of historical experience, the rhetorical intention of the autobiographer, and the structuring effects of social location.     

论大型国有企业失业人员的转型适应与社会认同——于辽宁省的个案调查,

大型国有企业下岗失业人员再就业出现困难的一个重要因素是其转型适应发生了障碍,其根源在于单位习性的惯性作用和社会认同的自弃制约。单位习性源自国有企业长期的计划经济体制施行的影响;社会认同的自弃行为则是计划经济体制与市场经济体制运行脱节的现实表现。转型适应有同化、整合、分化和边缘化四种表现形式。同化、整合是转型适应的良性状态;而分化和边缘化则是其恶性状态。分化和边缘化的产生是由于体制内社会国家责任过重、社会保障项目过于全面等因素的影响。就社会政策的导向效用而言,社会保障必须把握一定的度,否则就会导致保护懒惰的消极后果。     

我国失业问题的理性思考

随着政府机构改革和国有企业改革的不断深化,失业问题日益成为大家关注的热点问题,也成为影响我国改革、发展和稳定的重要因素.为解决失业问题,国家应加快劳动力市场建设,加强职业技术教育,尽快建立和完善失业保险制度;失业人员也应转变旧的择业观念,积极创业.     

Sense of coherence during unemployment

The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between different forms of hardship during unemployment and the sense of coherence (SOC). These hardships were considered in the framework of the finances–shame model, which has been developed to help provide a greater understanding of why unemployment is so painful to some whilst others are hardly affected by it. The hypothesis in this study was that the greater the financial hardships during unemployment and the more a person has been subjected to shaming by others because they are unemployed, the lower his or her SOC will be, and vice versa. The empirical data were collected by means of a cross-sectional survey of 1,249 unemployed people in a region in southern Sweden who at the time of the survey were engaged in some form of labour-market training or workfare programme. The dropout rate was 23%. The results from the study lent strong support to the finances–shame model. Among those who were exposed to a greater degree of financial hardship and also had more shaming experiences, the mean SOC score was 42.14 for women and 42.41 for men. The corresponding figures for those facing a lesser degree of financial hardship and with fewer shaming experiences were 67.10 and 66.66 respectively, i.e. figures which are on a par with or somewhat higher than for population studies covering the whole population.