The relationship between income and material hardship

This paper examines the relationship between income and the extent of material hardship and explores other factors that might affect hardship. Using panel data from the Women's Employment Study, we examine the incidence of material hardship from 1997 to 2003 among current and former welfare recipients. We then consider the extent to which income is associated with hardship. We show that hardship decreases monotonically across quintiles of the income distribution for several income measures. When we measure income as the average across the 6‐year study period, a 10 percent increase in average income is associated with a 1.1 percentage point decrease in the likelihood of experiencing a hardship, a drop of about 3.4 percent. We also find that the relationship between transitory changes in income and hardship is weak. These results are consistent with findings based on a nationally representative sample of disadvantaged households from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Our results indicate that observable factors, such as measures of mental health, are more strongly related to hardship than current income. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The Physiological Expression of Living in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods for Youth

Evidence suggests that the consequences of chronic exposure to stressors extend beyond psychological effects, and that adolescents living in socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods may experience an accumulation of exposure to stressors that wears down the physical systems in the body, resulting in hyper-activation of the stress response. This research examines the relationship between exposure to neighborhood stressors and salivary cortisol reactivity in a sample of 163 at-risk African American adolescents (average age 21; 50 % female) living in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. More specifically, the relationship between neighborhood stressors and physiological stress, measured by baseline cortisol and cortisol reactivity is assessed. This research also examines several moderating pathways between exposure to neighborhood disadvantage and cortisol reactivity including substance use, high effort coping, psychological stress and social support. Results indicate that both individual and neighborhood-level factors influence adolescent cortisol. High effort coping and psychological stress were associated with cortisol in the sample, and exposure to neighborhood socio-economic disadvantage resulted in an atypical cortisol response. In addition, neighborhood disadvantage interacted with intra- and interpersonal factors to affect cortisol indirectly. Thus, living in disadvantaged neighborhoods may take a psychological and physiological toll on adolescents, and it also may exert synergistic effects through individual coping and vulnerabilities.     

Talking With Teen Parents,Hearing Young Families: (In)forming Welfare Reform Through Local Relations

This article explores an engagement process undertaken by Australian government social workers in one disadvantaged locality prior to the introduction of federal “teenage parent” welfare reforms. The focus of engagement was to learn about young parents’ experiences and aspirations, and to draw on this to inform policy implementation. Findings from engagement, and how engagement between social workers and young parents impacted local policy implementation are discussed, including the subsequent development of family friendly school options. The authors suggest that problematizing early parenting may itself be “risky,” and may obscure opportunities for building on the parental role as a source of inspiration.     

Developmental and offence-related characteristics of different types of adolescent sex offender: A community sample

Abstract

Offence-related and developmental characteristics were compared in subgroups of a sample (n=184) of male sex offenders aged between 10 and 21 [mean=16.07; standard deviation (SD)=2.09] referred to a specialist community facility. Important differences were observed on key developmental and offence-related variables between adolescents who targeted peers/adults and those who targeted children. These differences support the validity of the distinction between these two groups. Much smaller subgroups with mixed (i.e. peer and child) victims, internet child pornography and indecent exposure offences are also described. The sample was followed-up for a mean period of 4 years 6 months (SD=30.5 months), during which a small number re-offended sexually (n=13) and many more re-offended non-sexually (n=90). Relationships between engagement with treatment and some background and offence-related variables were identified and these are discussed.     

Proto-norms and global media ethics

Abstract

Normativity is a problem of modernity. Relativism has emerged with the negation of moral universals. Clifford Christians consistently argues for the concept of proto-norms as a workable basis for normative ethics applied to media practices that operate on a global scale. Christians declares philosopher Charles Taylor to lie in the background of his theorising, but seldom gives a hint as to how Taylor’s thought influences his own. There appears to be sufficient congruence between Christians’ thinking about proto-norms and the articulation of hypergoods, strong evaluation and persons in Taylor’s philosophical anthropology to consider this to be the influence, among other sources Christians draws on. Of particular interest is Taylor’s insistence that persons always exist in normative moral space as an inescapable horizon of existence. The article explores some aspects of Taylor’s thought that may shed light on what proto-norms are and how they may be applied in the quest for a viable global media ethics in an age when moral relativism seems to be the media's only ethical principle.     

Building bridges? South African foreign policy and trilateral development cooperation

As questions concerning international development climb the international agenda, so countries find themselves drawn into a burgeoning number of negotiations on issues ranging from the future shape and direction of the post-2015 development agenda to ‘aid effectiveness’ and international development cooperation. Moving from the position of a ‘beneficiary’ state in the traditional donor–recipient aid hierarchy, South Africa is looking to define its own niche within the wider development diplomacy context as a development partner. This paper provides an assessment of South Africa's evolving approach towards international development cooperation, with a particular focus on trilateral development cooperation, and what this means for Pretoria's foreign policy in bridging the divide between developed and developing country positions within the international development regime.     

Rights and Quarantine During the SARS Global Health Crisis: Differentiated Legal Consciousness in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Toronto

Interventions in public health crises inevitably give rise to concerns about how the balance between rights concerns and community health security might be handled. During the SARS global health crisis, different jurisdictions struggled simultaneously with similar public health challenges posed by the previously unknown and deadly disease. Yet instead of a convergence of strategies, different jurisdictions responded with measures, especially with regard to the use of quarantine, that revealed a pattern of divergence about how to strike the balance between rights concerns and health security. The origins of this article stem from the realization that Toronto's use of quarantine was far more extensive than that of either Hong Kong or Shanghai, two jurisdictions with historically weak records regarding respect for fundamental rights and civil liberties. Perspectives on the balancing of individual rights and community health security are treated here as expressions of legal consciousness. Instead of assuming a uniform legal consciousness in Toronto, Shanghai, or Hong Kong, this article presents legal consciousness as varied among groups of individuals differently situated in the crisis. The promise of this differentiated approach to legal consciousness is that it facilitates both drawing contrasts between perspectives of differently situated groups within the same city and noting commonalities between similarly situated groups in other cities. Through an examination of three distinct perspectives on rights and quarantine in each city—those of senior public health officials, frontline hospital workers, and contacts of SARS patients—the competing legal meanings and understandings about the tensions between community health security and individual rights during the SARS crisis are identified in a way that enables us to better understand the pattern of different uses of quarantine.