What influences the size of child maintenance payments? A register‐based study of maintenance payments in Finland

The aim of this study was to explore how particular economic and demographic factors contribute to the level of the child maintenance payment (CMP) paid by the non‐resident parent. For this study, we used 5‐year longitudinal panel data from years 2009 to 2013 consisting of over 80,000 non‐resident parents from the Finnish Tax Administration and The Finnish Population Register Centre. Results from regression models indicate that the single biggest factor affecting the size of CMPs is the number of dependent children. We found that the non‐resident parent's higher income is associated with higher CMPs and that non‐resident fathers pay on average larger CMPs than non‐resident mothers, even after accounting for differences in income. Unexpectedly, we found that the age of the dependent child did not predict changes in CMPs. This suggests that once formal CMP‐contracts are determined between the parents, they are seldom changed. Our results suggest that some degree of mandatory periodic review for maintenance contracts is worth considering.     

Children’s educational attainment,occupation, and income and their parents’ mortality

Using data from Finland, this paper contributes to a small but growing body of research regarding adult children's education, occupation, and income and their parents' mortality at ages 50+ in 1970–2007. Higher levels of children's education are associated with 30–36 per cent lower parental mortality at ages 50–75, controlling for parents' education, occupation, and income. This association is fully mediated by children's occupation and income, except for cancer mortality. Having at least one child educated in healthcare is associated with 11–16 per cent lower all-cause mortality at ages 50–75, an association that is largely driven by mortality from cardiovascular diseases. Children's higher white-collar occupation and higher income is associated with 39–46 per cent lower mortality in the fully adjusted models. At ages 75+, these associations are much smaller overall and children's schooling remains more strongly associated with mortality than children's occupation or income.     

Debt problems and life transitions: a register-based panel study of Finnish young people

This register-based panel study analyzed the impacts of key life events on debt problems among emerging adults using a within-individual design. In this study, 8093 Finnish young people (born 1988–1990) were monitored for 9 years (2005–2013). The data comprised information from administrative registers, including information about debt enforcement, which was used as an indicator of debt problems. Key life events included leaving home, obtaining the first full-time job, and becoming a parent. Debt problems were highly common. They increased after leaving home, especially among those leaving home at a young age. Obtaining the first full-time job was not regarded as a major event in the context of debt problems, although having a job was associated with a lower level of debt problems. Such problems increased after becoming a parent. The results imply that life-changing events can have an impact on economic problems.     

Client-oriented Quality Assessment within Municipal Social Services

The hypothesis of this article is that quality assessment, despite the fact that it has now become a part of social services, has largely occurred without taking clients into consideration. There are supposed to be at least three possible explanations for this: organizational structures and professionalism, the difficulty in defining client needs, and the opinion that a client is not an equal companion in social service organizations. The research method entailed a questionnaire which was sent to 60 managers working within municipal social administration during the periods of construction (1950–1965), supplementation (1966–1983) and reform and redistribution (1984 onwards) of the Finnish welfare state and a questionnaire for 146 public social welfare organizations in Finland. Fewer than 30% of the social managers of the construction (1950–1965) and supplementation (1966–1983) periods and fewer than 50% of the managers of the last period (1984 onwards) said that clients really had assessed quality. The needs of clients and client feedback were said to be important during all three periods but the managers did not include them in the most important tasks. The managers of the period of supplementation did this the least. The managers from the period of reform and redistribution (1984 onwards) were more likely to trust the ability of clients to assess quality of social services and they also gave more opportunities to do so. The most important reasons for neglecting client needs and feedback in quality assessment were organizational structures and difficulties in defining client needs. There also seem to have been some methodological difficulties in assessing social services. Statistics are still largely in use and concrete criteria related to quality are missing. More specific questionnaires, cross-experimental designs and interviews, more possibilities for clients to describe needs in their own words, and the specification of general concepts in more concrete terms of quality are needed in order to avoid abstract and general assessments.     

Asymptotic Normality of Kernel-Type Deconvolution Estimators

Abstract.  We derive asymptotic normality of kernel-type deconvolution estimators of the density, the distribution function at a fixed point, and of the probability of an interval. We consider so-called super smooth deconvolution problems where the characteristic function of the known distribution decreases exponentially, but faster than that of the Cauchy distribution. It turns out that the limit behaviour of the pointwise estimators of the density and distribution function is relatively straightforward, while the asymptotic behaviour of the estimator of the probability of an interval depends in a complicated way on the sequence of bandwidths.     

Mothers' abusive childhood predicts child abuse

To examine the intergenerational transmission of abuse, the study compared 25 mothers whose child had been under the supervision of the child protection services (CPS) with 25 mothers who had had no contact with the CPS. The groups were compared with respect to their own self‐reported childhood abuse, their abuse of their own child and punitiveness. The data were gathered using interviews and files. There were no significant differences between the groups in self‐reported childhood physical abuse, but the CPS mothers had experienced more childhood psychological abuse, especially rejection, accusations, terrorizing and corrupting. The groups did not differ in the self‐reported physical or psychological abuse inflicted upon one's own child. In the total sample of 50 mothers, hierarchical regression analyses showed, however, that the mothers' childhood abuse experiences predicted their abuse of their own child. Punitiveness was best predicted by maternal childhood psychological abuse. The results thus provide evidence for the cycle of abuse model. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A rolling test of granger causality between the Finnish and Japanese security markets

In the paper we test the impact of the Japanese stock market on two financial asset groups, free and restricted shares, on the Finnish market in the early 90s. The causality is tested in the Granger sense. The research issue is particularly interesting, since the restrictions on foreign ownership were abolished by the end of 1992. The linkage between the Japanese and Finnish financial economies is seen to be stronger for free shares than for restricted. In particular, significant Granger causality between Japanese and Finnish free shares is observed at relatively long consecutive time intervals, whereas the Japanese impact on the restricted shares is only occasional. Thus, the decision to abolish the restrictions not only leads to increased international dependence in the future, but will also change the risk profile of the restricted shares.