Parenthood and social policy preferences: A gender and time sensitive examination

Attitudes towards social spending and the welfare state have been characterised by one of the longest standing and widest gender gaps. Past research suggests that parenthood deepens this divide further. Yet, the exact relationship between parenthood and support for social policies – and the gendered nature of this process – has been difficult to establish because it can vary across welfare policy areas and the age of the children, which past studies, relying on cross-sectional data, has found difficult to unravel. Using panel data from the Swiss Household Panel, we examine individual level changes in fathers’ and mothers’ views towards specific welfare state policies. We find that individuals’ support for social spending fluctuates at different stages of parenthood, and that mothers’ demands differ from fathers’ in relation to care related but not in terms of educational spending. This implies that parents are not a homogeneous group that parties could target with uniform electoral pledges. As a result, building widespread electoral support for expanding a broad range of social investment policies is likely to be challenging in a context where, first and foremost, self-interest appears to drive (or depress) individuals’ support for specific welfare state policies.     

Developmental Trajectories and Intentional Actions

The article turns a critical eye on problems arising from use of largesamples and complicated statistics to handle multilevel designs. I arguethat although these have a legitimate role to play in discovering causalrelations, valuable information can be lost or distorted in the processof their use. Exploratory classification and tree diagrams show howtransitional analyses can unpack effects of community, family, priormisbehavior, juvenile delinquency, and incarceration on adult criminalbehavior. The analyses showed that in the worst neighborhoods, disruptivebehavior had little discriminating power with regard to juveniledelinquency or adult crime. They showed also that good family interactionsserve as protection against crime in all types of neighborhoods. ConstructTheory, I suggest, is a way to understand the influences that seem toproduce criminal behavior.     

Subsidized Housing and Residential Trajectories: An Application of Matched Sequence Analysis

Scholars have long debated the relative merits of site-based, subsidized housing owned and operated by a public entity or by the private sector. This is the first study to classify long-term residential trajectories of nationally representative low-income households in the United States by their initial assisted housing status. We employ a matched sequence analysis of neighborhood poverty and racial trajectories of low-income households in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics who formed during 1988–1992. Among households carefully matched by their demographic and economic attributes, we find that those first forming households in public housing spend much longer durations over the subsequent 20 years in poorer, minority dominant neighborhoods than similar households first forming in market-rate housing do. In contrast, forming a household in private site-based subsidized housing is associated with superior neighborhood socioeconomic (but not desegregated racial composition) trajectories compared with starting in market-rate housing. Implications for housing policy are discussed.     

Reality Shock and Public Service Motivation: A Longitudinal,Qualitative Study Among Dutch Veterinary Inspectors

To this day little is known about the mechanisms that help explain the mixed findings of longitudinal public service motivation (PSM) research. This study aims to deepen our understanding of post-entry PSM dynamics by focusing on the role of the often cited “reality shock” as a potential explanation for the decrease in PSM also found here. The results of this longitudinal, small-scale qualitative study of a specific cohort of newcomers who just started work as veterinary inspectors at the Dutch food safety authority suggest that a loss of PSM is not due to a generic shock effect, but is linked to having unclear job expectations and individual differences in coping behaviour.     

Stages of PPP and Principal–Agent Conflicts: The Swedish Water and Sewerage Sector

The focus of this article is on public–private partnerships (PPPs). The aim is to both theoretically and empirically illustrate PPP agency problems in four PPP stages, as well as to identify potentially relevant solutions to the agency problems. The study employed a longitudinal case study of one PPP in a municipality in southern Sweden. Through an analysis based on interviews, observations, and documents, the study illustrates a number of agency problems faced by PPPs and highlights the importance of resource allocation, stakeholder management, and the creation of a common identity in reducing these problems.     

The Role of DNA‐Stained Currency in Gang Robberies within the United Kingdom

Cash‐and‐valuables‐in‐transit (CViT) robberies have become a substantial problem—especially in the current global economy. Over £19.4 million were stolen in 2008 and £17.1 million in 2009 in the United Kingdom alone. The transportation of cash and valuable items between financial institutions has long been a target of robberies in the U.K. After a robbery has occurred, police collect evidence in the form of ink‐stained currency. These stained notes are submitted for analysis. Samples are subjected to polymerase chain reaction in order to amplify any possible botanically derived DNA markers present on the notes. After amplification, capillary electrophoresis allows for the deciphering of the “DNA profile.” The DNA profile is then linked to a particular cash box, and this information is compared with records of whether or not that box had been stolen. The cases below are three such instances where botanically marked currency was used to help solve robberies.     

人体生物性物质来源鉴定及法医学应用研究进展

犯罪现场中人体生物性物质来源鉴定在重现犯罪过程方面发挥了重要作用,寻找特异性遗传标记鉴定人体不同生物性物质来源是近年来法医学工作者研究的重点和难点。本文就目前研究较多的用于人体生物性物质来源鉴定的遗传标记进行综述,包括DNA甲基化、mRNA、microRNA、微生物菌群、蛋白质等。通过比较不同种类遗传标记鉴定人体生物性物质来源的原理和方法,发现人体不同生物性物质来源的鉴定都有其最适合的遗传标记种类,并且可以采用单一遗传标记或联合多种遗传标记进行检验。尽管目前各法医学实验室无统一的标准和方法鉴定人体生物性物质来源,但研究开发一系列成熟可靠的方法区分人体不同生物性物质,进而发挥其法庭证据作用,将是未来的发展方向。     

Tracking individuals and households: longitudinal features of Danseong household register data

Household registers, which were compiled every three years and contained a variety of demographic information, are invaluable sources with which to investigate family and demographic behaviors of historical populations in Korea, especially during the period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Linking three sets of household registers that covered the area of Danseong from 1780 to 1786, in this study we examine longitudinal features of Korean household registers. We assess the degree of attrition over six years at both individual and household level, and identify social and demographic characteristics associated with attrition. Our investigation shows a considerable degree of attrition of individuals and households over six years which is significantly associated with the social status of individuals and the household heads. We supplement the analysis of exits with the analysis of new entrances, which shows that in each year of register a substantial number of individuals, comparable to the size of individuals and households lost, were newly added. Those who newly entered the registers are very similar in their characteristics to those who exited the registers. We discuss the implications of our findings for studies that rely on Korean household registers to examine family and demographic behaviors of historical populations in Korea and East Asia.     

Estimates of Repeat Victimization Using the National Crime Victimization Survey

Many crime victims experience multiple victimizations over time. Estimating the rate of repeat victimization from a longitudinal survey, however, is difficult because individuals often have missing data for some of the interviews. We use data from the 1996–98 U.S. National Crime Victimization Survey to explore potential effects of missing data on estimated rates of repeat violent victimizations in individuals. We introduce two algorithms for estimating repeat victimization rates, using logistic models to impute values for individuals who have partial data. These models are applied to estimate rates of repeat victimization for all violent crimes, and separately for crimes of domestic violence. Estimates show substantial sensitivity to the form of the model used.