Family care before and after bereavement

Distress reverberates throughout the family during palliative care and bereavement, inviting consideration of a family-centered model of care. Targeting families thought to be "at risk" has merit. The Family Focused Grief Therapy model was tested in a randomized controlled trial of 81 families (353 individuals) and bereavement outcome is reported here for treatment completers compared to controls. There were no significant baseline differences between treatment completers and non-completers. Significant reduction in distress occurred at 13 months post death for the families completing treatment, with further improvements for the 10% of individuals most distressed at baseline. A preventive model of family-centered care applied to those at greatest risk is meritorious and in keeping with the aspirations of Cicely Saunders for improving the quality of hospice care.     

A hierarchical theory of occupational segregation and wage discrimination

Becker's model of discrimination is extended to the case where men exhibit distastes for working under female managers. The distribution of women in the resulting occupational hierarchy depends on the number of women in lower occupations, the wages of male workers in lower occupations, and male distastes for female management. Thus, there exists an occupational sorting function, related to wages, that determines the occupational distribution of women. We integrate this sorting function into a standard wage equation to derive a new decomposition of male-female wage differentials and apply it to a sample of insurance industry workers from the 1988 CPS.