Troubling Discourses of Poverty in Early Childhood in the UK

Poverty in early childhood is pervasive, affecting every aspect of children’s lives. Under current government policies child poverty in the UK is predicted to rise to 40 per cent by 2022. Dominant discourses of poverty have historically focussed on an over‐arching discourse of moral responsibility, essentially relating to notions of deserving and underserving poor. This paper examines how government policy continues to significantly impact on young children and families on low incomes in early childhood and how stigmatised discourses about welfare, work are pervasive. It is argued that discourses of redistribution and children’s rights deserve greater recognition if poverty is to be addressed.     

Advertising ‘Happy’ Children: The Settler Family,Happiness and the Indigenous Child Removal System

We analyse 4300 advertisements of children featured in the Today's Child column, a daily written by Helen Allen in The Toronto Telegram and The Toronto Star from 1964 to 1982, to understand how the Canadian public became accepting of the adoption of Indigenous children. While children of all ethnic backgrounds were featured, the Indigenous children who were displayed were part of a larger system of child removal, known as the ‘Sixties Scoop’. We demonstrate the ways Indigenous children are described with a specific form of happiness that is conjoined with colonial conceptions of the family and nation.     

Parents’ perspectives of social support and social cohesion in urban contexts of diversity

Although provisions for young children are increasingly considered as ideal places to foster an inclusive and socially just society by embracing issues of social support and social cohesion, there is no in-depth understanding of the role these provisions can play in enabling supportive and cohesive encounters in contexts of diversity. Even more striking is the absence of parents’ voices in this discussion. Based on an analysis of qualitative interviews with 18 parents who use childcare services in urban contexts of diversity, our findings show the relevance of ephemeral contacts with diverse people that could offer bridging opportunities in terms of social connectedness to familiarise within diversity while decoding the other in urban contexts of diversity. However, neither bonding nor bridging contacts appear as self-evident. Our research shows that the role of childcare services might be vital in creating light and temporal communities as the prerequisite for social cohesion to flourish, in both individual as well as collective dimensions.     

Identifying Systemically Important Banks: A temporal approach for macroprudential policies

Contrary to the general belief, systemic risk does not only regard the risk posed by balance sheet relationships and interdependencies among institutions. It also features a temporal dimension related to the inappropriate responses of financial market participants to changes in risk over time. This paper proposes a method to simultaneously address the cross-sectional and the time dimension in which systemic risk materializes. The method is based on the TOPHITS algorithm. It provides three scores, namely borrowing, lending and time scores: the first two represent the systemic importance of the borrowing and the lending activity associated with each financial institution,while the third represents an empirical Early Warning Signal of the financial crisis. Our findings reveal that the identification of the time score as an indicator for an incoming market distress could be relevant to design macro prudential policies.     

明末清初江南农业生产与灾害防治——以张履祥的视野为中心

张履祥是明末清初优秀的农学家之一。从他的视野看来,江南部分农民在农具置备、水利建设、林果生产、桑蚕经营等方面积累了比较丰富的灾害防治经验。他们以此提高农业劳动生产力,为乡土经济和社会文明的发展提供了不可忽视的基础条件。     

辛亥革命与民初社会变迁

辛亥革命作为20世纪中国三次历史性巨变的第一次,推翻了君主专制制度,建立了民主共和国,推行一系列有利于资本主义经济发展的政策法令,推动了中国社会的变革,使民国初年在社会结构、社会观念和社会生活等领域都发生了巨大变化,辛亥革命开启了中国社会进步的闸门。     

Maternal Employment,Community Contexts,and the Child‐Care Arrangements of Diverse Groups

Integrating family and child data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort with contextual data from the census, this study examined associations among maternal employment, aspects of communities related to child‐care supply and demand, and the early care and education arrangements of 4 year olds in Mexican‐origin, Black, and White families. Children with employed mothers were more likely to be in informal care arrangements than in early childhood education, regardless of racial/ethnic background. For children in Mexican‐origin families, selection into informal care over early childhood education was more likely in zip codes with greater demand for care as measured by higher female employment. Utilization of parent care versus early childhood education was also more likely for children in Mexican‐origin and Black families in zip codes with higher female employment. Constraints associated with maternal employment thus hindered children from enrolling in early childhood education, and community contexts posed challenges for some groups.     

关于江南奏销案的再思考

对于清初江南奏销案,一般论者大多从清廷对士绅的政策层面着眼。文章则将此案置于清代财政制度建构的过程之中加以考察,认为江南奏销案并不是一个孤立的事件,清廷之所以在全国范围内发动奏销案是因为清初财政肩负双重使命,这种双重使命导致国家异常重视财政制度的完善和执行。江南奏销案对绅士的打击比较广泛是江南特殊的情形使然。     

Which Spouse Initiates Marital Separation When There Are Children Involved?

This report examines whether the presence of children in marriage differentially influences the risk of wives or husbands initiating separation. The analytic sample consists of 9,118 first marriages from the Households, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (2001). Using event history and competing risks analysis, I find weak evidence that wives are less likely than husbands to initiate when they have infants, and husbands are less likely than wives to initiate when children are school age or older. Overall, the results show that children deter marital separation for both wives and husbands, indicating that gender differences in the decision to separate are likely attributable to other factors such as a willingness to remain in an unhappy marriage.