How broadband and cell phone access have impacted marriage and divorce in the US

Review of Economics of the Household - Internet use has lowered search costs in the marriage market, as participants (both single and married) can now search for and gather information more easily...     

Challenges Experienced at Age 100: Findings From the Fordham Centenarian Study

ABSTRACT

This article examines the challenges experienced by very old individuals and their consequences for well-being and mental health. In order to capture unique issues experienced in very old age, 75 participants of the population-based Fordham Centenarian Study answered open-ended questions on everyday challenges. Theme-based coding was then used to categorize and quantify responses. The challenges mentioned most often were challenges faced in the functional (e.g., physical health/activities of daily living restrictions, mobility, sensory impairment), psychological (e.g., loss of well-liked activity, dependency, negative emotions, death), and social (e.g., family loss) life domains. Functional challenges were negatively associated with aging satisfaction and positively associated with loneliness. Psychological challenges were positively linked to aging satisfaction. Social challenges were marginally related to loneliness. Notably, challenges were not related to depression. In conclusion, the challenges experienced in very old age are multidimensional and multifaceted, unique in nature, and have differential relations to mental health. Functional, psychological, and social challenges affect very old individuals’ lives and therefore need to be better understood and addressed. Given their consequences, it is imperative for policy makers to develop an awareness for the different types of challenges faced by centenarians, as there may be unique policy implications related to each.     

Inter-agency Information Sharing in Health and Social Care Services: The Role of Professional Culture

This article uses a literature review to examine the ways inwhich professional culture might shape inter-organizationalexchange of personal information in a health and social carecontext. The aim is to explore a simplified model of possibleinformation-sharing behaviours (‘ideal’, ‘over-open’,‘over-cautious’ and ‘chaotic’) and tosuggest that patterns of information sharing may be influencedby a number of factors. It is proposed that these factors includenot only inter-professional differences in the approach takento information sharing but also the ways in which the professionsinterrelate.     

Partnership Working in Public Policy Provision: A Framework for Evaluation

Partnership working has emerged as a key feature of New Labour's approach to social policy. However, although the theoretical benefits of partnership have been well rehearsed, agencies charged with fostering partnerships lack "evidence" about how best to proceed in bringing about organizational change. This paper describes the development and implementation of a practical approach to capturing the strategies that can be used to establish, strengthen and sustain local partnerships. To this end, it presents a conceptual framework for the evaluation of partnership working and demonstrates the application of the framework to an investigation of partnership working in Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, and Plymouth Health action zones.     

Inventing adulthoods: a biographical approach to understanding youth citizenship

Traditionally adulthood and citizenship have been synonymous. Yet adulthood is changing. In this paper we explore how young people's evolving understandings of adulthood may contribute towards an understanding of citizenship within the broader context of increasingly extended and fragmented transitions. The paper draws on a unique qualitative longitudinal data set in which 100 young people, from contrasting social backgrounds in the United Kingdom, have been followed over a five‐year period using repeat biographical interviews. We present first the themes that emerged from a cross‐cut analysis of the first of three rounds of interviews distinguishing between relational and individualised understandings of adulthood. We then present a model we developed to capture the ways that young people sought out opportunities for competence and recognition in different fields of their lives. Finally a case study that follows a young woman through her three interviews illustrates how these themes can appear in an individual trajectory. We offer the model and case study as a way of exploring a more subjective approach to citizenship in which participation is not deferred to some distant future in which economic independence is achieved, but is understood as constantly constructed in the present.     

On minimaxity of the normal precision matrix estimator of Krishnamoorthy and Gupta

We consider the orthogonally invariant estimation problem of the inverse of the scale matrix of Wishart distribution using Stein's loss (entropy loss). In this problem Krishnamoorthy and Gupta [2] Krishnamoorthy, K. and Gupta, A. K. (1989). Improved minimax estimation of a normal precision matrix. Canad. J. Statist., 17: 91–102. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] proposed an estimator and showed its good performance in a Monte Carlo simulation. They conjectured their estimator is minimax. Perron [3] Perron, F. (1997). On a conjecture of Krishnamoorthy and Gupta. J. Multivariate Anal., 62: 110–120.  [Google Scholar] proved its minimaxity for p?=?2. In this paper we prove it for p?=?3 by using a new method.     

Elder Abuse and Neglect in African American Families: Informing Practice Based on Ecological and Cultural Frameworks

Despite the rapid growth of the elderly African American population in the U.S., elder abuse and neglect in African American families continue to be underdeveloped areas of study. This article presents an ecological and culturally informed framework for the study of elder abuse in African American populations. The model was developed based on Bronfenbrenner's Human Ecological Theory. The model identifies risk factors associated with different systems that have an influence on the lives of African American families. Cultural protective factors also are identified in the model. The model is intended to provide an understanding of elder abuse and neglect in African American families by considering the influence of contextual factors such as the legacy of slavery, social exclusion, and structural segregation and racism. Specific suggestions for practice are proposed according to cultural strengths of African American communities as well as the ecological premises of the model.     

Using photography to understand change and continuity in the history of residential care for older people

The Last Refuge by Peter Townsend is a seminal study of residential care for older people. The fieldwork was carried out in the late 1950s and the data are now deposited in the National Social Policy and Social Change Archive at the University of Essex. We have undertaken research, funded by the ESRC, which has revisited Townsend's work and some of the homes he studied in order to conduct an overtime comparison. In this paper we focus on Townsend's use of photography and our subsequent use of photography in our revisiting study. We argue that although Townsend did not analyse his photographs, they were significant data for use in his arguments critiquing residential care. They were, however, the product of a different socio‐historical context to our own and as such posed considerable practical and ethical challenges for us when attempting to use this aspect of his methodology for an overtime comparison. We argue that despite the resulting constraints, photography was an important part of our methodology, enabling comparisons and illuminating historical patterns in residential care for older people.     

Rainfall Patterns and U.S. Migration from Rural Mexico

In many rural regions of developing countries, natural resource dependency means changes in climate patterns hold tremendous potential to impact livelihoods. When environmentally‐based livelihood options are constrained, migration can become an important adaptive strategy. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, we model U.S. emigration from rural communities as related to community, household and climate factors. The results suggest that households subjected to very recent drought conditions are less likely to send a U.S. migrant, but in communities with drought two years prior and with strong migration histories, emigration is much more likely. In regions lacking such social networks, rainfall deficits actually reduce migration propensities, perhaps reflecting constraints in the ability to engage in migration as a coping strategy. Policy implications emphasize diversification of rural Mexican livelihoods in the face of contemporary climate change.     

The truncation-by-death problem: what to do in an experimental evaluation when the outcome is not always defined

Although experiments are viewed as the gold standard for evaluation, some of their benefits may be lost when, as is common, outcomes are not defined for some sample members. In evaluations of marriage interventions, for example, a key outcome--relationship quality--is undefined when a couple splits up. This article shows how treatment-control differences in mean outcomes can be misleading when outcomes are not defined for everyone and discusses ways to identify the seriousness of the problem. Potential solutions to the problem are described, including approaches that rely on simple treatment-control differences-in-means as well as more complex modeling approaches.