Who Gets What From Government? Distributional Consequences of Child‐Care Assistance Policies

Given the fragmented structure of child‐care assistance in the United States, it has been difficult to obtain accurate estimates of which families are assisted, through which mechanisms, and at what level. Making use of survey data from New York City, we analyze the distribution of several forms of public child‐care assistance. Results suggest that about 40% of all families with young children receive some form of child‐care assistance. Considering all forms of assistance, the distribution of child‐care help is targeted in both expected and some unexpected ways. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of U.S. child‐care policies governing access and benefit levels.     

Informal Caregiving at Working Age: Effects of Job Characteristics and Family Configuration

This article addresses the relationship between employment and providing informal care for sick, disabled, or elderly people in Great Britain. Hazard rate models for taking up caring and leaving work when caring are estimated using retrospective family, employment, and caring data from the British Family and Working Lives Survey 1994 – 1995 for 9,139 British men and women. Family roles but not employment characteristics were relevant for men and women taking up caring. Being in a lower social class was, however, an important predictor of female carers leaving the labor market. Starting caring and quitting the labor market were not affected by women working part time, nor by most aspects of job flexibility that were considered.     

论刑罚个别化原则的根基和属性——一种多视角的分析与考察

近年我国刑法学界,刑罚个别化原则正日益引起学者的广泛关注和深入研究.刑罚个别化原则有其内在的合理根基它在方法论基础上得益于近代犯罪学对刑法学的推动;在伦理内涵方面体现了人性关怀;在价值追求中实现了公正圆满.刑罚个别化原则不仅仅是一个量刑原则或刑法原则,而且是一个重要的刑事政策原则.     

Professional Perspectives on Decision Making about the Long-term Care of Older People

With the increasing pressure on social and health care resources,professionals have to be more explicit in their decision makingregarding the long-term care of older people. This groundedtheory study used 19 focus groups and nine semi-structured interviews(99 staff in total) to explore professional perspectives onthis decision making. Focus group participants and intervieweescomprised care managers, social workers, consultant geriatricians,general medical practitioners, community nurses, home care managers,occupational therapists and hospital discharge support staff.The emerging themes spanned context, clients, families and services.Decisions were often prompted by a crisis, hindering professionalsseeking to make a measured assessment. Fear of burglary andassault, and the willingness and availability of family to helpwere major factors in decisions about living at home. Serviceavailability in terms of public funding for community care,the availability of home care workers and workload pressureson primary care services influenced decision ‘thresholds’regarding admission to institutional care. Assessment toolsdesigned to assist decision making about the long-term careof older people need to take into account the critical aspectsof individual fears and motivation, family support and the availabilityof publicly funded services as well as functional and medicalneeds.     

我国婴幼儿托育服务标准规范体系的现状及其优化研究

近年来,我国婴幼儿托育服务标准规范建设进程较快,当前体系框架已初步建立。但由于长期以来标准规范建设比较缓 慢、推进机制不健全等客观因素制约,当前婴幼儿托育服务在通用基础标准规范方面整体滞后,婴幼儿安全照护和权益保障标准 规范方面仍存短板,监管和人员标准规范方面较弱等问题。根据托育标准规范体系现状,结合托育服务发展需求,当前亟需建立 托育服务标准规范体系的协同推进工作机制,加快通用基础标准规范研制,促进服务提供标准规范的健全,补足支持保障标准规 范的短板,进而完善标准规范框架体系,推动各类标准规范的兼容,进而为婴幼儿托育服务高质量发展提供支持和保障。     

Institutional Ethnography and Experience as Data

Experience, as concept, is contested among feminists as to its epistemological status, thus its usefulness in knowledge claims. Institutional ethnography (Smith 1987) is a feminist methodology that nonetheless relies fundamentally on people's experience. Not as Truth, nor the object of inquiry, but as thepoint d'appui for sociological inquiry. This article offers a demonstration of institutional enthnography using observational and interview data that show experience as methodologically central to a trustworthy analysis. A moment in the work lives of nursing assistants in a long-term care setting is captured by a participant observer. The analysis produces two lines of argument. One is methodological; it is argued that nursing assistants' experiences are an entry into the social relations of the setting that, when mapped and disclosed, make those experiences understandable in terms of the ruling arrangements permeating both the organization and their own experiences. The other argument is substantive; the inquiry uncovers how a quality improvement' strategy in a long term care hospital in Canada is reorganizing caregivers' values and practices toward a market orientation in which care appears to be compromised. Use of experience as data in this approach holds the analysis accountable to everyday/everynight actualities in a lived world.     

Homework and domestic work

This study assesses two competing theories about the extent to which homework—paid work in the home—helps integrate work and domestic roles for men and women. Contrasting male and female homeworkers with their counterparts working outside the home, it supports some aspects of both the resource and role overload theories, but predominantly the role overload perspective. Homeworkers, especially in the working class, experience less interference between job and family life, but perform more housework and child care. They have no more leisure time nor greater marital satisfaction than those working outside the home, but receive more family assistance with their paid jobs, suggesting that they combine tasks from their first and second shifts. Working at home does not break down gender roles in domestic life. Despite time saved from commuting, male homeworkers perform no more housework than comparable men working outside the home. Thus, the gender division of unpaid household labor is not simply a matter of resources or spatial logistics.An earlier version was presented at the meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society, Providence, Rhode Island, April 1991.     

精准扶贫与老年贫困消减

精准扶贫是针对以往粗放型扶贫方式提出的扶贫方略。 提高扶贫效率,实现社会公平是精准扶贫的核心要件。 老年贫困人口是贫困群体的主体,要低成本、高效率地消减老年贫困问题,要更多地依靠社会保障制度建设,即更多地依靠制度性力量,更多地依赖市场力量。 只有建立和完善与我国社会发展阶段相契合的“ 普惠+特惠冶 的基本社会保障制度,才能真正实现老年人口精准扶贫的政策初衷,从而提升社会的效率与公平。     

农村老年人日常生活家庭照料与社会照料关系研究——基于多层回归模型的分析

文章利用中国健康与养老追踪调查 2011—2012 年的基线调查数据,运用多层回归模型,通过分析社会照料对农村老年人家庭照料获得的影响,探讨家庭照料与社会照料的关系。 回归估计结果显示,个人层次上的年龄、居住状况、失能情况和社区层次上的老龄补贴、经济状况对农村老年人获得家庭照料有不同程度的影响,而代表社会照料的变量在统计上均不显著。 回归估计结果说明,社会照料并不能对缺位的家庭照料起到补充作用,更不会起到替代作用,两者呈现一种非此即彼的“无关系”。 文章的政策启示是,打破家庭照料与社会照料的壁垒,构建一个“流动”的老年照料体系。     

Nonstandard parental employment schedules and father involvement

This study assesses the impact of nonstandard employment schedules (shift work) on parenting among US fathers of young children in dual-earner couples. The outcomes examined include total caregiving, caregiving without the mother present, and the elements of father involvement proposed by Pleck: positive engagement, warmth, and control. Models with latent variables and with lagged dependent variables are estimated using three waves of nationally representative data from the Early Child Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort. The results indicate that employment scheduling mainly shapes the context in which involvement takes place. Compared to dual-earner couples who are each employed during the day, fathers in couples in which at least one parent has a nonstandard schedule tend to care for their children more in the mother's absence. To a more limited extent, they also do more caregiving overall. These effects are most conclusively found when the father works during the day and the mother works during the evening, when the mother works during the day but the father works a night, split, rotating, or other shift, and when both parents have nonstandard schedules. Parental work schedules, however, have little impact on father involvement aside from care.