An Assessment of Change in Risk Perception and Optimistic Bias for Hurricanes Among Gulf Coast Residents

This study focuses on levels of concern for hurricanes among individuals living along the Gulf Coast during the quiescent two‐year period following the exceptionally destructive 2005 hurricane season. A small study of risk perception and optimistic bias was conducted immediately following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Two years later, a follow‐up was done in which respondents were recontacted. This provided an opportunity to examine changes, and potential causal ordering, in risk perception and optimistic bias. The analysis uses 201 panel respondents who were matched across the two mail surveys. Measures included hurricane risk perception, optimistic bias for hurricane evacuation, past hurricane experience, and a small set of demographic variables (age, sex, income, and education). Paired t‐tests were used to compare scores across time. Hurricane risk perception declined and optimistic bias increased. Cross‐lagged correlations were used to test the potential causal ordering between risk perception and optimistic bias, with a weak effect suggesting the former affects the latter. Additional cross‐lagged analysis using structural equation modeling was used to look more closely at the components of optimistic bias (risk to self vs. risk to others). A significant and stronger potentially causal effect from risk perception to optimistic bias was found. Analysis of the experience and demographic variables’ effects on risk perception and optimistic bias, and their change, provided mixed results. The lessening of risk perception and increase in optimistic bias over the period of quiescence suggest that risk communicators and emergency managers should direct attention toward reversing these trends to increase disaster preparedness.     

Child care and parent labor force participation: a review of the research literature

Early care and education (ECE) enables parental employment and provides a context for child development. Theory suggests that lower child care costs, through subsidized care or the provision of free or low-cost arrangements, would increase the use of ECE and parents’ employment and work hours. This paper reviews the research literature examining the effects of child care costs and availability on parental employment. In general, research suggests that reduced out-of-pocket costs for ECE and increased availability of public ECE increases ECE attendance among young children, and has positive impacts on mothers’ labor force participation and work hours. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in findings. Among U.S. studies that report the elasticity of employment to ECE price, estimates range from ?0.025 to ?1.1, with estimates clustering near 0.05–0.25. This indicates that a 10 % reduction in the price of child care would lead to a 0.25–11 % increase in maternal employment, likely near 0.5–2.5 %. In general, studies using more recent data or data from non-U.S. countries find smaller elasticities than those using U.S. data from the 1990s. These differences may be due to historical and cross-national differences in ECE attendance, labor force attachment, and educational attainment among mothers with young children, as well as heterogeneity in the methodological approaches and data used across studies. More research in the U.S. using contemporary data is needed, particularly given recent changes in U.S. ECE policy.     

A global optimisation approach to range-restricted survey calibration

Survey calibration methods modify minimally sample weights to satisfy domain-level benchmark constraints (BC), e.g. census totals. This allows exploitation of auxiliary information to improve the representativeness of sample data (addressing coverage limitations, non-response) and the quality of sample-based estimates of population parameters. Calibration methods may fail with samples presenting small/zero counts for some benchmark groups or when range restrictions (RR), such as positivity, are imposed to avoid unrealistic or extreme weights. User-defined modifications of BC/RR performed after encountering non-convergence allow little control on the solution, and penalisation approaches modelling infeasibility may not guarantee convergence. Paradoxically, this has led to underuse in calibration of highly disaggregated information, when available. We present an always-convergent flexible two-step global optimisation (GO) survey calibration approach. The feasibility of the calibration problem is assessed, and automatically controlled minimum errors in BC or changes in RR are allowed to guarantee convergence in advance, while preserving the good properties of calibration estimators. Modelling alternatives under different scenarios using various error/change and distance measures are formulated and discussed. The GO approach is validated by calibrating the weights of the 2012 Health Survey for England to a fine age–gender–region cross-tabulation (378 counts) from the 2011 Census in England and Wales.     

Sex after divorce: older adult women’s reflections

People who divorce experience a number of negative impacts, and yet divorce also offers opportunities for growth and transformation. This qualitative study of older adult women offers the possibility that divorce may be sexually empowering, especially for women, based on in-depth interviewing of women who had gone through one or more divorces. Detailed examples of the experiences of fourteen women with divorce and sexual expression are offered, focusing on in which situations divorce might be empowering and how it could contribute to sexual exploration and satisfaction. Overall, for the fourteen women in the study who had experienced divorce, the quality of sex in the marriage impacted the quality of sexual expression after the divorce. Also, these findings supported the idea of transformational learning through divorce, and expand divorce-stress-adjustment and transformational learning perspectives to apply more specifically to sexual expression. Understanding possible impacts of divorce over the lifespan, including strengths-based aspects, is important for social workers as the population they serve ages.     

Distribution and Poverty Impacts of Tax Structure Reform in Developing Countries: How Little We Know

The past two decades have witnessed widespread reforms of tax structures in developing countries. This article reviews available evidence on the effects of various taxes, and hence of tax structure reform, on distribution and the poor. Taxes on exports and goods consumed especially by the poor (e.g. kerosene) are the most consistently found to be regressive, whereas taxes on ‘luxury’ items such as cars, beverages and alcohol are the most likely to be progressive. Sales taxes are slightly more progressive, or less regressive, than taxes on imports. The reforms implemented are therefore unlikely to have worsened the effects of the tax structure on the poor.     

Pathways to pleasure: Older adult women’s reflections on being sexual beings

Older adult women make up a growing part of the population, and yet literature on the sexual activity over their life spans is lacking. This qualitative interview study explored the experience of 16 women aged 57–91 to better understand sexual pleasure over a lifetime. The participants described having to challenge cultural rules to create a supportive environment for sexual expression. Having access to Novel contexts in which to learn, cultivating Intimacy with partners and with oneself, being Creative with sexual activities, and Extending one’s sense of sexual possibility into advanced age (NICE) supported sexual pleasure as women aged.     

Employer‐Supported Child Care: Who Participates?

Child‐care vouchers are becoming more common and can provide child‐care assistance to a wide spectrum of the population. There is little empirical research, however, on which workers participate in their employer's child‐care programs. In this exploratory study, employees with children at 1 large university completed questionnaires to gather information on their child‐care arrangements and their experience with the employer's child‐care voucher program (N = 949). Results indicate that the employees who were most in need of child‐care assistance in terms of family structure, job type, and child‐care expenses were more likely to receive vouchers. Federal policy limiting the structure of employer‐sponsored voucher programs appeared to present barriers to participation for certain groups of employees.