Measuring the age distribution in Canadian social spending

Canadian governments do not report how their spending breaks down by age. To help fill this void, we document a method to measure total annual social spending per capita for older and younger parts of the population. We estimate that governments combined in 2012 to spend between $33,321 and $40,152 per person age 65+, $13,635 and $14,800 per person age 45 to 64, and $10,406 and $11,614 per person under 45. Measuring the annual age distribution in social spending is necessary for evaluating Canadian commitments to intergenerational equity, and making policy adaptations to socioeconomic and demographic trends facing older and younger citizens.     

Ethical treatment of youthful offenders: Issues for psychologists

The treatment of youthful offenders in correctional settings presents psychologists with a range of challenging ethical concerns. The inherent discord between psychologically based goals and correctional objectives yields a complicated ethical landscape for clinicians. These concerns can be partially addressed through the APA's revised Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (2010) and field-specific practice guidelines but also require extensive further guidance to ensure competent and ethical practice. This article analyzes current information about youthful offenders, outlines disparities in stakeholder goals, provides an overview of ethical considerations of treating youthful offenders in correctional settings, and offers recommendations for education and practice.     

The legitimacy of Dutch do-it-yourself initiatives in Kwale County,Kenya

Abstract

Established development organisations face a long-standing legitimacy crisis for not living up to the expectations once set. Meanwhile, thousands of small-scale, voluntary development organisations – referred to as Private Development Initiatives (PDIs) – have joined the field of international development. In this article, I examine the legitimacy of their acts from a local government perspective based on an analysis of four dimensions of legitimacy: regulatory, pragmatic, normative and cognitive legitimacy. The study took place in May 2017 in the Kenyan coastal county of Kwale. A range of government officials were interviewed on how they perceive the interventions of international development organisations in general, and Dutch PDIs in particular, and on their cooperation with these development actors. The study shows that, although many of these PDIs operate in areas that fall under the responsibility of the local government, most of them have a rather limited cooperation with the local government, putting their legitimacy in the eyes of local government officials at stake.     

Sporting Women and Machonas: negotiating gender through sports in Argentina, 1900–1946

This article shows how sports contributed to create new experiences and expressions of gender in Argentina in the first half of the twentieth century. The sportswoman embodied a new model of femininity, a novel type of modern, healthy and active womanhood that defied traditional constructions of gender. Sports affected women's experience of gender, providing a site for the development of an emotional and spiritual well-being by fostering personal and psychological qualities like self-esteem, self-satisfaction and self-determination. Participation in sports also helped to redefine how women related to their environment by widening their social circles and relationships. These changes triggered a number of fears and anxieties about sport's potential for gender dis-order. In particular, the figure of the machona, a masculinized, unattractive, and mannish woman, became a symbol of this dis-order. The use of humor, parody, and theatrical displays of gender became ways through which these fears were both expressed and negotiated.     

Gender Differences in Resistance to Schooling: The Role of Dynamic Peer-Influence and Selection Processes

Boys engage in notably higher levels of resistance to schooling than girls. While scholars argue that peer processes contribute to this gender gap, this claim has not been tested with longitudinal quantitative data. This study fills this lacuna by examining the role of dynamic peer-selection and influence processes in the gender gap in resistance to schooling (i.e., arguing with teachers, skipping class, not putting effort into school, receiving punishments at school, and coming late to class) with two-wave panel data. We expect that, compared to girls, boys are more exposed and more responsive to peers who exhibit resistant behavior. We estimate hybrid models on 5448 students from 251 school classes in Sweden (14–15 years, 49% boys), and stochastic actor-based models (SIENA) on a subsample of these data (2480 students in 98 classes; 49% boys). We find that boys are more exposed to resistant friends than girls, and that adolescents are influenced by the resistant behavior of friends. These peer processes do not contribute to a widening of the gender gap in resistance to schooling, yet they contribute somewhat to the persistence of the initial gender gap. Boys are not more responsive to the resistant behavior of friends than girls. Instead, girls are influenced more by the resistant behavior of lower status friends than boys. This explains to some extent why boys increase their resistance to schooling more over time. All in all, peer-influence and selection processes seem to play a minor role in gender differences in resistance to schooling. These findings nuance under investigated claims that have been made in the literature.