Employment-based health benefits: analysis of the April 1993 Current Population Survey

The April 1993 CPS differs from the March 1993 CPS in a number of respects. The April 1993 CPS supplement surveys only workers, whereas the March CPS examines the noncash benefits received by all Americans. The April CPS asks workers about health coverage in the week in which the questions were fielded, whereas the March CPS asks about coverage in the preceding year. In April 1993, there were 112.5 million civilian American workers between the ages of 18 and 64 with jobs. Eighty-two million (73 percent) of them worked for an employer that sponsored a health insurance plan, and 65 million (58 percent of all workers) participated in their employer's health plan. About one-third of workers at firms with fewer than 10 employees had employers who offer health benefits; about one-quarter of all of the workers in these firms participated in their employer's plan. Conversely, 94 percent of workers at firms with more than 1,000 employees had an employer who sponsored health benefits, and over 77 percent of these workers participated in their employer's plan. There are 16.5 million American workers whose employers sponsored health benefits but who did not participate in these benefits. Over one-half of these workers (8.5 million) chose not to be covered. Another 36 percent of these workers (5.9 million) did not participate because they were ineligible or denied coverage. Over 66 percent of the ineligible workers did not participate because they were part-time, contract, or temporary workers. Another 26 percent had not yet completed a probationary period. Among the reasons that those who chose not to participate in their employer's coverage, the vast majority (75 percent) stated they were covered by another health care plan. Twenty-nine percent stated that they chose not to purchase coverage because it was too costly or that they did not need or want the coverage. In 1993, there were 16.7 million workers with no health insurance coverage. The vast majority of these workers (95 percent) were employed by private employers. Sixty-six percent of the workers with no health insurance coverage were self-employed or worked for firms with fewer than 100 employees.     

Macro-Economic Factors in Credit Risk Calculations: Including Time-Varying Covariates in Mixture Cure Models

The prediction of the time of default in a credit risk setting via survival analysis needs to take a high censoring rate into account. This rate is because default does not occur for the majority of debtors. Mixture cure models allow the part of the loan population that is unsusceptible to default to be modeled, distinct from time of default for the susceptible population. In this article, we extend the mixture cure model to include time-varying covariates. We illustrate the method via simulations and by incorporating macro-economic factors as predictors for an actual bank dataset.     

Apathy and Antipathy: Media Coverage of Restrictive Immigration Legislation and the Maintenance of Symbolic Boundaries

Although the government no longer explicitly establishes boundaries of whiteness, it continues to play a central role in shaping symbolic boundaries between immigrants and nonimmigrants through immigration lawmaking. However, the salience of these boundaries may depend on how the media disseminate them to the public. In this study, we investigate media framing of immigration lawmaking using an original data set of news coverage of six of the most widely recognized exclusionary immigration bills and laws at different levels of government. Two patterns emerged from an iterative frame analysis. First, in their coverage of frames critical of these bills and laws, outlets devoted more attention to the effects of exclusionary legislation for nonimmigrants. Second, in their coverage of frames supportive of the restrictive legislation, outlets provided more space to those who openly associated immigrants with criminality and terrorism. Regardless of outlets’ seemingly neutral stance toward restrictive legislation, their disparate coverage of exclusionary lawmaking demonstrates apathy and antipathy toward immigrants, which has repercussions for the maintenance of inequality.     

Going to work without educational qualifications: school-to-work transitions of early school leavers in Belgium

ABSTRACT

Risks of exclusion can occur in multiple forms and start early in life. Early school leavers are especially at risk of social exclusion as this is strongly related to turbulent school-to-work-transitions. These young people often find themselves in low-qualified work or unemployment. In this article, we explore the labour market experiences of early school leavers in Flanders, Belgium. In total, 15 in-depth interviews were conducted with nine early school leavers and analysed following a grounded theory approach. Our results demonstrate the difficulties early school leavers encounter in their transitions from school to work and their precarious situation in the labour market. Of particular relevance are the insights gained in revealing the perspectives of young people on the importance of educational qualifications, work experience and participation in the labour market, as well as the strategies they develop to enter the labour market without educational qualifications.     

Measuring Family Caregiver Perceptions of Support in Caring for Children and Youth With Mental Health Concerns

ABSTRACT

This correlational study assessed how families of children with mental illness perceived the levels of support they received from informal and formal resource providers and the associations between perceived support and child outcomes. Adult caregivers (N = 904) of youth receiving public mental health care services were administered the Family Caregiver Perceptions of Support Scale developed by the authors to assess family caregiver perceptions of support prior to and at termination of services. Factor analysis identified three types of caregiver anticipated supports: informal support resources, support for treatment plan influence, and health care resources. The domains were significantly and positively associated with one another but did not uniformly correlate with youth mental health outcomes. The study provides preliminary evidence that treatment gains in youth mental health outcomes are observed when caregivers perceive support in treatment processes. Suggestions for future research are made, stressing the importance of caregivers and providers working together and describing needs related to future scale improvements.     

Talking across Borders: Successful Re‐entry in Different Strands of Re‐entry Literature

The processes of re‐entering a society after an international move have been studied in several fields. In this article, we argue that the existing differences in conceptualizations of a “successful re‐entry” for different returning groups are created by particular social, political or theoretical ideas about mobility, which lead to biases in the understanding of re‐entry processes and influence support practices for returning groups. A critical analysis of the conceptualization of successful re‐entry of two extreme cases of returning people who both play to the interests of institutions that seek successful re‐entry, namely returned refugees and asylum seekers on the one hand and repatriates on the other, enables us to bring these assumptions to the fore. Our analysis reveals how the permeation of economic and spatial understanding and the absence of temporal and relational understanding distorts insights into re‐entry processes and creates blind spots in support practices for returning populations.     

A comparison using perceptual indicators: Job satisfaction

Results of an Austrian-German comparison pertaining to different aspects of job satisfaction are presented. It is argued that even at this early stage in their development, perceptual indicators can be used to reveal overall trends and to point up trouble spots where socio-economic action on the part of the authorities is called for.     

Impairment as a Human Constant: Cross-Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Variation

The social science literature on physical disabilities suffers a curious omission in the relative lack of attention paid to a cross-cultural or historical perspective. We argue that disability is a human constant—that is, all human societies have and have always had disabled members. While the presence of such individuals is a constant, culturally shared responses to them vary greatly across time and social context.     

From Consultation to Participation

Empirical research in the literature on accountability of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) toward their beneficiaries is scarce, and the available studies have a number of limitations. Our study attempts to overcome some of them and focuses on one specific component of accountability toward beneficiaries: beneficiary impact on organizational decision making and output. Data were collected by surveying general managers of 790 Belgian NPOs in fourteen industries. Results show that most NPOs implement some mechanisms to involve beneficiaries and their representatives in organizational policy making, mechanisms that vary between and within industries. Despite the existence of such mechanisms, their perceived association with impact on policy making and associated potential organizational effects is weak, though positive.     

Establishing turf grass increases soil greenhouse gas emissions in peri-urban environments

Urbanization is becoming increasingly important in terms of climate change and ecosystem functionality worldwide. We are only beginning to understand how the processes of urbanization influence ecosystem dynamics and how peri-urban environments contribute to climate change. Brisbane in South East Queensland (SEQ) currently has the most extensive urban sprawl of all Australian cities. This leads to substantial land use changes in urban and peri-urban environments and the subsequent gaseous emissions from soils are to date neglected for IPCC climate change estimations. This research examines how land use change effects methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) fluxes from peri-urban soils and consequently influences the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of rural ecosystems in agricultural use undergoing urbanization. Therefore, manual and fully automated static chamber measurements determined soil gas fluxes over a full year and an intensive sampling campaign of 80 days after land use change. Turf grass, as the major peri-urban land cover, increased the GWP by 415 kg CO₂-e ha^?1 over the first 80 days after conversion from a well-established pasture. This results principally from increased daily average N₂O emissions of 0.5 g N₂O ha^?1 d^?1 from the pasture to 18.3 g N₂O ha^?1 d^?1 from the turf grass due to fertilizer application during conversion. Compared to the native dry sclerophyll eucalypt forest, turf grass establishment increases the GWP by another 30 kg CO₂-e ha^?1. The results presented in this study clearly indicate the substantial impact of urbanization on soil-atmosphere gas exchange in form of non-CO₂ greenhouse gas emissions particularly after turf grass establishment.