Placement characteristics and stability: a longitudinal analysis of Norwegian children in foster homes

This paper investigates how enhanced support for foster parents, such as covering fees and providing consultants and relief, may reduce the number of replacements experienced by children in foster care. It also investigates the extent to which replacements are associated with family (kin) vs. non‐family foster parents, or with legal characteristics of the placement (i.e. forced administrative decisions vs. relief measures agreed upon by the parents). Statistical analyses of administrative data from Norway investigated the longitudinal relationships between these characteristics and the number of replacements at two levels – children (N = 16 109) and municipalities (N = 418) – over 5 years (2007–2011). The results reveal modest associations between enhanced support and fewer replacements; for example, replacement rates are lower for children placed in homes of kin than in non‐family homes. Replacements also tend to be fewer when the placement is forced rather than consensual.     

New evidence about effects of reproductive variables on child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa

There is still considerable uncertainty about how reproductive factors affect child mortality. This study, based on Demographic and Health Survey data from 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, shows that mortality is highest for firstborn children with very young mothers. Other children with young mothers, or of high birth order, also experience high mortality. Net of maternal age and birth order, a short preceding birth interval is associated with above average mortality. These patterns change, however, if time-invariant unobserved mother-level characteristics of importance for both mortality and fertility are controlled for in a multilevel–multiprocess model. Most importantly, there are smaller advantages associated with longer birth intervals and being older at first birth. The implications of alternative reproductive ‘strategies’ are discussed, taking into account that if the mother is older at birth, the child will also be born in a later calendar year, when mortality may be lower.     

How to Be a Good Alcoholic

Alcoholism is not one singular thing. It takes many forms, some more dignified and less destructive than others. This article explores how people drinking in the early hours of the day in bars present themselves and their relationship with alcohol and alcoholism. By means of ethnographic data, I analyze their strategies in dealing with the deviant use of alcohol. I find that the early morning drinkers use distinctions along three dimensions: managing drunkenness, taking breaks from drinking, and claiming certain motives for drinking. These distinctions are used in order to position oneself on a normative scale of different types of alcoholics.     

The impact of learning opportunities and decision authority on occupational health

In an investigation of 418 employees in the Norwegian Postal Service, employees with high learning opportunities and high decision authority were found to be better off on psychological functioning, health and organizational outcome variables than employees with low scores on these variables. Decision authority and learning opportunities had specific and independent impact on subjective health, psychological functioning, coping style and organizational outcome variables. There were, however, also interaction effects between demands, learning opportunities, and decision authority on subjective health. Learning opportunities and decision authority were operationalized with a questionnaire, supplemented with questions on the opportunities to learn skills beyond the present job situation. It is suggested that this is a particularly important dimension for coping with the present day rapid changes in working life, where the objective for many workers will be to broaden their repertoire and competence to increase their flexibility in the labour market.     

The impact of learning opportunities and decision authority on occupational health

In an investigation of 418 employees in the Norwegian Postal Service, employees with high learning opportunities and high decision authority were found to be better off on psychological functioning, health and organizational outcome variables than employees with low scores on these variables. Decision authority and learning opportunities had specific and independent impact on subjective health, psychological functioning, coping style and organizational outcome variables. There were, however, also interaction effects between demands, learning opportunities, and decision authority on subjective health. Learning opportunities and decision authority were operationalized with a questionnaire, supplemented with questions on the opportunities to learn skills beyond the present job situation. It is suggested that this is a particularly important dimension for coping with the present day rapid changes in working life, where the objective for many workers will be to broaden their repertoire and competence to increase their flexibility in the labour market.     

The impact of first-birth timing on divorce: New evidence from a longitudinal analysis based on the central population register of Norway

The association between divorce risks in first marriage and the timing of the first birth is inspected in a life-table analysis of registered birth and marriage histories from Norway. One of the main conclusions is that the high propensity to divorce among women who have had a premarital birth is not confined to those who marry someone other than the father of their child. Also, women who have had a premarital child with their husband, run a much higher risk of marital breakup than do those who had their first baby in wedlock. The relative difference between these two groups, which appears to be particularly large at the beginning of marriage, has decreased during the last two decades. It is argued that couples who postpone childbearing beyond two years of marriage may have particularly low divorce rates.     

Individual and community effects of women's education and autonomy on contraceptive use in India

This study makes use of the National Family Health Survey of 1998‐99 to investigate whether differences in women's autonomy can explain much of the relationship between education and contraceptive use among married Indian women with at least one child. The analyses show that a woman's education does not influence her contraceptive use through a strengthening of her position in relation to that of men, but that the inclusion of a simple indicator of her general knowledge reduces education effects appreciably. Further, the average educational level of other women in the census‐enumeration area has an effect on a woman's contraceptive use above and beyond that of her own education. This effect cannot be explained by the specific indicators of autonomy, but can to some extent be explained by the son preference of the community. The latter is a more general autonomy indicator that may also pick up other contextual factors.     

Social security reforms and early retirement

Many reform proposals of the social security systems in various OECD economies suggest to scale down the non-actuarial parts of the pension systems. These reforms have a flavor of increased efficiency at the costs of welfare losses for low-income individuals. Assessing the economic effects, we investigate five different reform proposals by means of a numerical overlapping generations model for the Norwegian economy. The model features an endogenous retirement age and heterogeneous individuals within generations. It turns out that the various reforms, which scale down the public non-actuarial pension system, lead to increases in the retirement age and steady-state welfare gains for all income classes. Received: 7 December 2000/Accepted: 29 January 2002 All correspondence to ?ystein Th?gersen. Financial support from the Research Council of Norway (The Economic Research Program on Taxation) is gratefully acknowledged. We are indebted to Lans Bovenberg, John Ermisch, Erling Steigum and two referees for valuable comments and useful discussion. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

Education and fertility in sub-Saharan africa: Individual and community effects

Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys for 22 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, I show that the average educational level in a village or a community of a similar size has a significant depressing effect on a woman's birth rates, net of urbanization and her own education. According to simulations, average fertility for these countries would be 1.00 lower if education were expanded from the current level in the region to the relatively high level in Kenya. The exclusion of aggregate education from the model leaves a response of only 0.52. A considerable aggregate contribution is estimated even when several potential determinants of education are included. This finding illustrates the need to consider aggregate education in future assessments of the total impact of education.