Understanding the Downshifting Phenomenon: A Case of South East Queensland,Australia

A quality of life survey of a sample of households across the Brisbane‐South East Queensland region has identified about 28 percent of people as ‘downshifters.‘ They are defined as people who voluntarily make a long‐term change in their lifestyle – other than planned retirement – which reduces income and adjusts their lifestyle conditions. A typology of downshifters is developed on the basis of their motives for downshifting and their socio‐economic and demographic characteristics using a Two Step Cluster Analysis. Results indicate that the social and economic circumstances and the reasons and methods of downshifting tend to vary substantially across the clusters.     

Parenting stress and behavior among single mothers of preschoolers: The mediating role of self‐efficacy

Abstract

This study examines the role of perceived self‐efficacy in mediating relations between mothers’ parenting behavior and variables such as maternal employment status, depressive symptoms, parenting stress, and child behavior problems. Subjects were 93 employed and 95 nonemployed, single, black mothers of a 3–5‐year‐old child who were current and former welfare recipients. Using linear structural relations modeling (LISREL), the findings support a model whereby (a) the more behavior problems the child is perceived to have, the more depressive symptoms the mother feels; (b) the more depressive symptoms the mother feels, the more likely she is to rate herself high in parenting stress; (c) the more depressive symptoms and parenting stress the mother experiences, the lower is the mother's estimate of her self‐efficacy; and (d) the lower the mother's self‐efficacy, the less competent is her parenting. The findings for employment status are similar; i.e., maternal employment predicted a trajectory leading to somewhat better parenting. In addition, child behavior problems were associated with less competent parenting both directly and indirectly through their effect on parenting stress and self‐efficacy. These results suggest that self‐efficacy has import as a mediator of the relations between maternal parenting and other psychosocial variables. There is no evidence, based on these findings, that employment in the low‐wage market is harmful either for single black mothers or their preschool children. However, job availability and an increase in the minimum wage are important policy considerations.     

Current Situation and Prospects for the Urbanization of Chinese Migrant Workers

本论文运用年龄结构—生命周期方法分析农民工就业状况对他们城镇化的影响。基于中国企业用工年轻化、农民工失业中年化的现状，论文首先运用年龄结构—生命周期模型进行了估算，指出为了全家城镇化，农民工夫妻婚后一般需要连续工作30年。在此基础上，论文构建了农民工工作寿命表，用以估算中国具备城镇化最低限度经济能力的农民工总量。考虑到未来企业用工年龄结构的变化，预计2006年时年龄在30岁以下的6900多万农民工及其家属都已具备在城镇定居的最起码的经济条件。

关键词: 农民工城镇化?农民工就业?年龄结构—生命周期模型?工作年限?中年失业

This article uses the age‐structure/life‐cycle method to analyze the impact of migrant workers’ employment on their urbanization. Since enterprises tend to employ younger workers and unemployed migrant workers tend to be middle‐aged, we first apply the age structure/life cycle model to carry out our estimations, pointing out that in order to complete the urbanization of their families, migrant worker couples usually have to work for thirty years consecutively after marriage. On this basis, the article constructs a working life table for migrant workers and uses it to estimate the total quantity of Chinese migrant workers who have the minimum economic capacity required for urbanization. Taking into consideration future changes in the age structure of enterprise employment, we estimate that over the sixty‐ nine million migrant workers who were under thirty years old in 2006, together with their families, would already be in possession of the minimum economic conditions for settling in urban areas.     

The Interaction between Negative Emotionality and Effortful Control in Early Social‐emotional Development

Interactions between reactive and regulatory dimensions of temperament may be particularly relevant to children's adjustment but are examined infrequently. This study investigated these interactions by examining effortful control as a moderator of the relations of fear and frustration reactivity to children's social competence, internalizing, and externalizing problems. Participants included 306 three‐year‐old children and their mothers. Children's effortful control was measured using observational measures, and reactivity was assessed with both observational and mother‐reported measures. Mothers reported on children's adjustment. Significant interactions indicated that children with higher mother‐reported fear or higher observed frustration and lower executive control showed higher externalizing problems whereas children with higher observed fear and higher delay ability demonstrated lower externalizing problems. These results highlight effortful control as a moderator of the relation between reactivity and adjustment, and may inform the development of interventions geared toward the management of specific negative affects.     

The moral economy of contemporary working‐class adolescence: managing symbolic capital in a French public ‘Adolescent Centre’

Working‐class adolescents of French urban peripheries are key figures in a new social debate that reactivates the nineteenth century spectre of ‘dangerous’ classes to be controlled. Since the 1990s, French social counselling has privileged two modalities of response: taking account of suffering and government by listening and speech. We hypothesize that the contemporary moral economy allows for social interactions that go beyond social control and institutional domination. This is partly because professionals engaged in this moral undertaking may keep a critical distance, and partly because the concerned populations aren't necessarily devoid of resources to advance their interests or incapable of resistance. The concept of moral economy, coupled with the ethnographic method, is heuristic for fully comprehending the complexity of these issues and their stakes. Our fieldwork was centred on a French Adolescent Centre in an impoverished commune in Paris's periphery, from January 2010 through March 2011. These institutions were established in the early 2000s to respond to adolescent ‘suffering’ by crossing social work and psychiatry. Adolescents, parents, and other institutions (especially schools) solicit the professionally diverse staff for assistance, which in turn may take on cases and/or make referrals to other support institutions. By paying attention to all the scenes upon which the story of a counselled adolescent evolves, and bearing more general social evolutions in mind by applying the concept of moral economy, we can consider the multiplicity of seemingly contradictory processes as a whole. We see the destabilization of parents and their loss of symbolic capital, partly due to the norms of contemporary parenthood and partly due to the stigmatization of working‐class adolescence. But we also discern possibilities for expressing sentiments of injustice and humiliation, for increasing symbolic capital, and in some cases a reappropriation of the system, particularly in trajectories marked by a will for social ascension.     

Consumption of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) Contaminated Beef and the Risk of Variant Creutzfeldt‐Jakob Disease

To date, the variant Creutzfeldt‐Jakob disease (vCJD) risk assessments that have been performed have primarily focused on predicting future vCJD cases in the United Kingdom, which underwent a bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) epidemic between 1980 and 1996. Surveillance of potential BSE cases was also used to assess vCJD risk, especially in other BSE‐prevalent EU countries. However, little is known about the vCJD risk for uninfected individuals who accidentally consume BSE‐contaminated meat products in or imported from a country with prevalent BSE. In this article, taking into account the biological mechanism of abnormal prion PrP^res aggregation in the brain, the probability of exposure, and the expected amount of ingested infectivity, we establish a stochastic mean exponential growth model of lifetime exposure through dietary intake. Given the findings that BSE agents behave similarly in humans and macaques, we obtained parameter estimates from experimental macaque data. We then estimated the accumulation of abnormal prions to assess lifetime risk of developing clinical signs of vCJD. Based on the observed number of vCJD cases and the estimated number of exposed individuals during the BSE epidemic period from 1980 to 1996 in the United Kingdom, an exposure threshold hypothesis is proposed. Given the age‐specific risk of infection, the hypothesis explains the observations very well from an extreme‐value distribution fitting of the estimated BSE infectivity exposure. The current BSE statistics in the United Kingdom are provided as an example.     

Effective relationship-based practice: A theoretical exploration

This paper looks at the importance of a relationship-based approach within social work. It explores past writings on the social worker-client relationship, why the relationship was seen to be central to effectiveness and good practice, and why this perspective fell out of favour. It revisits the importance of a relationship-based approach, within a psychosocial perspective, in relation to eight areas of practice. These include the assessment task and process; relationship difficulties; people who are vulnerable or reliant on others for their well-being; situations that require practitioners to be able to hold and contain anxiety; the relationship as a foundation for capacity building, empowerment and developing people's potential; and in relation to disadvantaged and marginalised sectors of the population, how social workers can use the 'front-line' knowledge they have gained through the relationships they have created in political ways--to bear witness and report on 'social ills' as they impact on the lives of service users. A final section looks briefly at how the service user-social worker relationship is perceived and described in the Benchmarking Statement, National Occupational Standards and the General Social Care Council's Rules and Requirements and their implications in terms of the new social work degree.     

Why Risk Analysis is Difficult,and Some Thoughts on How to Proceed

Risk analysis is challenged in three ways by uncertainty. Our understanding of the world and its uncertainties is evolving; indeterminism is an inherent part of the open universe in which we live; and learning from experience involves untestable assumptions. We discuss several concepts of robustness as tools for responding to these epistemological challenges. The use of models is justified, even though they are known to err. A concept of robustness is illustrated in choosing between a conventional technology and an innovative, promising, but more uncertain technology. We explain that nonprobabilistic robust decisions are sometimes good probabilistic bets. Info‐gap and worst‐case concepts of robustness are compared. Finally, we examine the exploitation of favorable but uncertain opportunities and its relation to robust decision making.     

Frame Correction Modelling with Applications to the German Register‐Assisted Census 2011

Frame corrections have been studied in census applications for a long time. One very promising method is dual system estimation, which is based on capture–recapture models. These methods have been applied recently in the USA, England, Israel and Switzerland. In order to gain information on subgroups of the population, structure preserving estimators can be applied [i.e. structure preserving estimation (SPREE) and generalized SPREE]. The present paper extends the SPREE approach with an alternative distance function, the chi‐square. The new method has shown improved estimates in our application with very small domains. A comparative study based on a large‐scale Monte Carlo simulation elaborates on advantages and disadvantages of the estimators in the context of the German register‐assisted Census 2011.     

The effects of children’s proximity‐seeking to maternal attachment figures during mild stress exposure on mood and physiological responses: An experimental study

In this study we investigated the effects of seeking versus avoiding proximity to mother on children’s emotional recovery from a stressor. Sixty children 9–12 years underwent a moodinduction procedure and were randomly assigned to seek proximity from or avoid an image of their mothers. The effect of this manipulation on children’s self‐reported negative emotions, skin conductance and heart rate variability (respiratory sinus arhythmia) was assessed. Higher levels of attachment anxiety were linked to more self‐reported sadness when children had to avoid mother, but no evidence for such an effect was found on a physiological level. For avoidant attachment, a similar pattern of results emerged, but both for self‐reported sadness and skin conductance.