Can Policy to Address Some Disability Rights Mitigate Weak Approaches to Others?

Governments prioritize some rights over others because of policy constraints. We ask whether differential disability policy priorities can readdress other unrealized rights when applied to services for people with disabilities in boarding houses in Australia. The housing is inappropriate to their support needs and breaches their immediate right to unsegregated housing. Findings about the government-funded support showed that their well-being improved, but the housing increased their support needs and reduced their eligibility for suitable housing, implying that support policies that prioritize progressive realization rights are not successful where immediate realization rights to housing remain unaddressed. These findings about the negative social outcomes from ignoring human rights hierarchies have implications for policy priorities.     

Suggestibility and children with mild learning disabilities: The use of the cognitive interview

Abstract

The aims of this paper were firstly to identify any differences in the level of suggestibility between 20 7–9-year-old children with mild learning disabilities and 20 children with average academic ability using the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale 2 (GSS2) and, secondly, to note the impact of the cognitive interview on the response patterns of children with mild learning disabilities.

On the GSS2, average academic ability children recalled significantly more correct details than children with mild learning disabilities. There was no significant difference between the two groups of children on distortions, fabrications, total confabulations or on any of the four measures of suggestibility.

In the second part of the study, 38 children with mild learning disabilities watched a filmed event and then were interviewed using either a standard or a modified version of the cognitive interview. Following this, all participants were asked specific questions, some of which incorporated misleading information. One week later each participant was re-questioned. This time critical questions were included about the truth of the presuppositions introduced in the initial interview session. It was found that the cognitive interview elicited significantly more correct and incorrect details than a standard interview with no significant difference in fabrications. Use of the cognitive interview did not significantly affect susceptibility to subsequent misleading suggestions.     

What makes community reinvestment act agreements work? A study of lender responses

Abstract

One response to the incentives provided by the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) has been for lenders and community groups to enter into CRA agreements, which involve pledges to provide prescribed levels of service to targeted neighborhoods. This article examines whether lenders actually change their behavior after entering into these agreements.

Using data on CRA agreements and on mortgage lending, we find that institutions increase their lending activity with each year an agreement is in force and that increased lending persists after an agreement expires. Additional analysis shows that agreements that include provisions for mortgage counseling and technical assistance are associated with increased targeted lending. By contrast, agreements with provisions requiring small business counseling and technical assistance and periodic meetings by review committees are associated with somewhat depressed lending levels. Further research is needed to draw definitive implications from this second set of results.     

The Spatial Routines of Daily Life in Low-income Neighbourhoods: Escaping the ‘Local Trap’

Abstract. In recent years, research and policy have become increasingly interested in the relationship between poverty and place. While research has explored the possibility that living in poor places might make people poorer, policy has been drawn to the idea that poverty and social exclusion have their origins in segregated spaces of the poor and excluded. This paper argues that both perspectives fall into the ‘local trap’ of presuming that people living in areas characterised by economic hardship live spatially bounded, neighbourhood-based lives. Drawing on evidence from interviews with 180 people living in six low-income neighbourhoods across the UK, spatial routines of daily life are revealed to extend regularly beyond the residential neighbourhood through processes of engagement, interaction and exchange. This simple but important finding undermines some key presumptions of contemporary policy and points to the need for improvements in the theoretical models underlying analysis of the relationships between poverty and place.     

Wage Subsidy and Labour Market Flexibility in South Africa

Abstract

We use a general equilibrium model to analyse the employment effects and fiscal cost of a wage subsidy in South Africa. We capture the structural characteristics of the labour market with several labour categories and substitution possibilities, linking the economy-wide results to a micro-simulation model with occupational choice probabilities to investigate the poverty and distributional consequences. The employment impact depends greatly on the elasticities of substitution of factors of production, being very minimal if unskilled and skilled labour are complements in production. The impact is improved by supporting policies, but the gains remain modest if the labour market is rigid.     

Breaking New Ground in Pagan” and “Muslim” West Africa

Nehemia Levtzion had a long and distinguished career as an interpreter of Islam in West Africa, and some of his earliest contributions have the greatest value. This article explores first, the continuing significance of Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa (1968), an analysis of communities and states set in the “pagan” Middle Belt of Ghana, and second, a forgery of Arabic documents with important political implications for the jihad and state of Hamdullahi created in the Middle Delta of Mali, in “A Seventeenth Century Chronicle of Ibn al-Mukhtar” (1971).     

Income distribution and socioeconomic mobility: A framework for analysis and planning

This paper analyses income distribution and socioeconomic mobility within a framework that: (1) incorporates a dynamic as well as a static view of equity, (2) includes the distribution of income by households or individuals and also by socioeconomic classes, and (3) explicitly includes the translation from the distribution by socioeconomic groups into the overall size distribution. The dynamic analysis makes use of a mobility matrix which is similar to the transition matrix in dynamic Markov analysis. A representative mobility matrix is presented which includes ten socioeconomic groups. Four categories of mobility are identified: (1) rural‐urban migration, (2) movements within the urban labour market, (3) movement through the educational system, and (4) capital formation and asset redistribution. Some numerical examples are given analysing development strategies combining high or low socioeconomic mobility with equalising or unequalising growth.     

Integrated DNA and Fingerprint Analyses in the Identification of 60‐Year‐Old Mummified Human Remains Discovered in an Alaskan Glacier

Abstract: This report describes the identification of a merchant mariner who perished in 1948 when Northwest Airlines Flight 4422, a DC‐4 carrying 24 seamen and six crew members crashed into Mount Sanford, Alaska. Fifty‐one years later, a human forearm and hand were found close by the wreckage of the plane, prompting identification efforts using DNA and fingerprints. There were significant challenges to both the fingerprint and DNA analyses. The hand was badly desiccated, making fingerprint friction‐ridge detail almost invisible and the remains had been embalmed upon discovery, making DNA amplification difficult. We present the results of an interdisciplinary approach that successfully addressed these challenges and ultimately led to the identification of the remains. These efforts relied on efficient fingerprint rejuvenation and imaging techniques that improved print resolution, as well as new DNA extraction techniques optimized for aggressively embalmed remains.