RURAL AND URBAN POVERTY: AN INCOME/NET WORTH APPROACH

This paper examines rural and urban changes in the distribution of poverty that would result from modifying the conventional poverty measure to include the annuity value of household net worth.
Use of this new income/wealth measure caused numerous shifts in the location and demography of the poverty population. Among those more often found to be in poverty under the new measure were young, renter, and large central city resident households. Age, homeownership, farm employment, education, retirement status, public assistance participation, and residence in the West were important factors in explaining the divergence of the WH and INC measures. The age and retirement impacts were significantly different in rural and urban areas. Rural residence itself was not an important factor in explaining WH and INC differences.     

Self-image in adolescents with delayed puberty and growth retardation

Fifty-six adolescents with varying combinations of pubertal delay and growth retardation were given the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire. Delay in sexual maturation by itself had no significant deleterious effect on self-image; however, growth retardation did. These results have important implications in determining indications for the endocrinological treatment of pubertal disorders.Received highest degree from University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Presently Child Psychiatrist, Geha Psychiatric Hospital. Main interest is adolescent psychiatry.Received highest degree from Bar Ilan University. Current research interest is psychology of the adolescent: hormones and behavior.Received highest degree from Bar Ilan University. Current research interest is psychological disturbances in short stature.Received highest degree from Sackler School of Medicine. Current research interest is growth and diabetes.     

Constructing Counseling Through Narrating Adolescence

In this paper we analyze personal narratives of school counseling students so as to better understand how they perceive the influence of their own adolescence on their present views regarding adolescence and counseling. Through the textual analysis of the narratives, we map their perceptions of adolescence and counseling. We consider if and how traditional adolescence views are replicate in the students’ narratives, and reflect on the students’ characterizations of the school counselor’s roles and tasks. The sample includes 34 female respondents aged between 25 and 47 years old. We show that many of the issues raised in the narratives seem to point to a perception of the participants of a need to radically change the school (institutional) culture. We conclude by pointing at the potential confluence between the narratives’ discourse and traditional conceptualizations in sociology and anthropology regarding the organization and practices of informal social spheres.Dr. Zvi Bekerman, teaches anthropology of education at the School of Education and The Melton Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main interests are in the study of cultural, ethnic and national identity, including identity processes and negotiation during intercultural encounters and in informal learning contexts. He has also recently become involved in the study of identity construction and development in educational computer-mediated environments. He is one of the editors of the soon to be published “Learning in Places: The informal education reader” (Peter Lang).Dr. Moshe Tatar, Senior Lecturer with Associate Professor and Head of the Division of Counseling, School of Education, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Received Ph.D. in Psychology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His major research interests are adolescent help-seeking behaviors and attitudes, counseling adolescent immigrant populations, and parental perceptions of schools     

Cognitive and interpersonal factors in woman abuse

As part of a larger ecological analysis of woman battering in Israel, this study examined the combined ability of selected cognitive and interpersonal measures to differentiate among couples in which women were battered and those in which they were not. The ability of these variables to predict men's physical violence and verbal abuse and women's verbal abuse was also executed. Results indicate that a combination of low marital adjustment, high levels of conflict over children, and more perceived self-control over one's life characterized violent men; low marital adjustment and high conflict over child rearing characterized battered women. Both men's and women's verbal abuse was moderately predicted by lower marital adjustment while men's physical violence was predicted by increased levels of conflicts with his partner over child rearing. These findings suggest the importance of marital relationship factors in domestic violence and highlight the need for further study of the interaction between perceived control and marital relationship problems in relationships where men physically abuse women.     

Land consolidation as a factor for rural development in Moldova

This article draws on data from several recent surveys in Moldova to examine the question of land consolidation within the process of agrarian reform. It suggests that larger individually owned farms produce higher family incomes than smaller ones and thus farm augmentation makes a positive contribution to the well being of the rural population. Also, for farms of a given size, productivity increases as the number of parcels decreases. The article then proceeds to discuss the actual use of various market mechanisms for land consolidation, including leasing as well as buying and selling of land. According to various surveys, farms with leased land are in fact larger than farms that rely on owned land only. The article argues that land consolidation leads to better economic performance, while land leasing is actually used as a market mechanism for consolidation, which benefits both lessees, through increased farm incomes, and lessors, through income from lease payments for their land.