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This study investigated cumulative vulnerability/protection models of individual‐level factors (child's attachment relationship and sense of coherence –SOC) and family‐level factors (mothers' emotional resources), as explaining differences in socio‐emotional and behavioral adjustment among children with learning disabilities (LD) or typical development, age 8–12. Participants included 205 mother‐child dyads (107 LD, 98 typical). Preliminary analyses indicated significant group differences on all but one child measure. SEM analysis revealed high fit between the theoretical model and empirical findings. Model components interrelated differently for the two populations. Outcomes accentuated the potentially meaningful role of mothers' affect and attachment for children's adjustment and children's mediating variables. Findings also highlighted children's attachment and SOC as mediating associations between maternal emotional resources and children's well‐adjusted functioning.

This essay provides a historical analysis of Iranian experiences with disability. I will begin by reviewing the literary application of the term in various contexts. Next, I will examine the social milieux in which local observers, medical professionals, and policy makers talked about and treated disability. As state-run institutions emerged to address disability needs, health professionals often drew a distinction between physical disability and intellectual or psychological disability, raising ethical and legal questions about the status of the disabled in modern Iranian society. Finally, an attempt will be made to situate disability politics in contemporary Iran, where the disabled population has increased significantly as a consequence of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88). Although this paper concentrates on Iranian experiences with disability, comparisons can be drawn with other Islamic societies.

Objectives: This article describes the process of developing a culturally based family intervention for Spanish-speaking Latino families with a relative diagnosed with schizophrenia. Method: Our iterative intervention development process was guided by a cultural exchange framework and based on findings from an ethnographic study. We piloted this multifamily group 16-session intervention with 59 Latino families in a randomized control trial. Data were collected on family- and client-level outcomes, and poststudy focus groups were conducted with intervention participants. Results: Preliminary evidence indicates that the intervention is effective by increasing illness knowledge and reducing family burden. Conclusions: This work can provide a model for how to integrate cultural factors into psychosocial services and enhance interventions in real-world settings for culturally diverse populations.

Les zones humides côtières d'Afrique de l'Est sont menacées de disparition par de grands projets d'aménagements pilotés par des investisseurs extérieurs, sans reconnaissance des droits fonciers et des intérêts des populations locales. Dans un contexte où les agences publiques d'aménagement ne jouent pas leur rôle d'arbitre entre les intérêts des différents usagers et où les études d'impact environnemental sont truquées, l'opacité des modalités de prise de décision permet de nombreuses dérives. Derrière ces grands projets, prévalent ainsi des logiques de spéculation foncière et d'enrichissement personnel. En Tanzanie comme au Kenya, le combat des communautés rurales contre la réalisation de ces projets se situe sur le terrain juridique et passe par des recours devant les hautes cours de justice des deux pays, démarche dans laquelle elles s'engagent avec l'appui d'ONG et d'experts.

In this paper we analyze the relationship between ethnic polarization and the duration of civil wars. Several recent papers have argued that the uncertainty about the relative power of the contenders in a war will tend to increase its duration. In these models, uncertainty is directly related to the relative size of the contenders. We argue that the duration of civil wars increases the more polarized a society is. Uncertainty is not necessarily linked to the structure of the population but it could be traced back to the measurement of the size of the different groups in the society. Given a specific level of measurement error or uncertainty, more polarization implies lengthier wars. Our empirical results show that ethnically polarized countries have to endure longer civil wars than ethnically less polarized societies.

La Caisse nationale d'assurance vieillesse (CNAV) chargée du versement des pensions des retraités du régime général met également en oeuvre une politique d'action sociale visant à aider au maintien de l'autonomie des retraités qui n'ont pas basculé dans la dépendance et ne sont alors pas tributaires d'une prise en charge par les conseils généraux. À défaut d'avoir les moyens d'une action de prévention généralisée à tous ses assujettis, la CNAV a mis en oeuvre depuis 2003 une politique visant à aider les plus « fragiles » d'entre eux. S'appuyant sur les résultats d'une recherche conduite pendant trois ans auprès de cette population, l'article, après avoir retracé la genèse de cette politique, s'attache à l'analyse de la notion de fragilité et aux difficultés de son opérationnalisation par la CNAV.

We study to what extent adjustments in labor market participation, defined as employment entry and exit, and as increases and reductions of weekly working hours, depend on resources of the partner. Moreover, we investigate whether the influence of the partner depends on historical period, human capital, and children. We are especially interested in the economic-based hypothesis that people are more likely to reduce working hours when their partners have more resources. We use retrospective information on labor market careers of 5,685 respondents and their (ex-)partners (Family Surveys of the Dutch Population 1998-2003). Our results provide little support for the economic hypothesis, and we suggest that family formation and cultural factors are more important predictors for male and female labor market participation adjustments in the Netherlands.

A framework based on five major theories of health behavior was used to identify the correlates of adolescent cigarette smoking. The framework emphasizes intentions to smoke cigarettes, factors that influence these intentions, and factors that moderate the intention—behavior relationship. Five hundred sixteen randomly selected Latino middle school youth in New York completed self-administered questionnaires. Adolescents reported their intentions to smoke, smoking-related expectancies, normative pressures to smoke, image implications of smoking, emotional reactions to smoking, and self-efficacy with respect to smoking. The framework yielded high levels of association with intentions to smoke. Specific smoking-related emotions, norms, and expectancies were associated with the likelihood of smoking. The framework can help guide the development of effective interventions tailored to specific populations.

ABSTRACTUsing a simple overlapping generations model of neoclassical growth, we analyse the effects of both child allowances and the system of public education on the rate of fertility, the per capita income and the individual lifetime welfare. The essential message of the present paper is that developed countries plagued by below‐replacement fertility and income stagnation may raise per capita income and the rate of fertility at the same time by increasing the public education expenditure rather than by resorting to child allowances. The latter, in fact, are found to be harmful for long‐run neoclassical economic growth and, in contrast with the common belief, for the rate of population growth as well. Moreover, welfare analysis has shown the existence of a Pareto‐efficient welfare‐maximizing educational contribution rate.

Mosquitoes are insects that have a particular importance in public health as they are vectors of major viral diseases like Dengue, Chikungunya and West Nile fever and can constitute a nuisance to the population. Dengue and Chikungunya viruses are endemic in tropical countries and are transmitted by infected Aedes mosquitoes. During recent years, the incidence of both Dengue and Chikungunya fever has risen worldwide. There is no vaccine available for either of them and prevention relies entirely on mosquito control and personal protection. besides the international concern over the rising wordwide incidence, there is a specific concern regarding the spread of both diseases within the European Union due to the presence in some of the Member States of the competent vector, Aedes albopictus ; peer-reviewed

This paper reviews government responses intended to assist the street homeless in South Africa. The paper demonstrates that in South Africa the legislation and policy responses to the problem of street homelessness have been to a great extent shaped by the broader circumstances of a larger population living in informal housing, with whom the street homeless share intimate ties through social instability and economic poverty. This context has resulted in an intersectoral legislative and policy framework shaped mainly by two sectors – Social Welfare and Housing – that has prioritised various preventive measures to reduce the structural, social and economic risks and vulnerability of becoming homeless on the street. Given its nature, this framework has been and continues to be highly dependent on effective collaboration and coordination between government departments.

The paper studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of politicians, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a version of the career concerns model of political agency with endogenous entry of political candidates. The evidence refers to municipalities in Brazil, where federal transfers to municipal governments change exogenously according to given population thresholds. We exploit a regression discontinuity design to test the implications of the theory and identify the causal effect of larger federal transfers on political corruption and the observed features of political candidates at the municipal level. In accordance with the predictions of the theory, we find that larger transfers increase political corruption and reduce the quality of candidates for mayor.

Why did employment growth - high in the last decade - take place at the expense of young workers in the countries of Central and Southern Europe? This is the question addressed in this paper. Youth unemployment has approached or exceeded 20% despite a variety of factors, common to most EU countries. According to neo-classical economics all would be expected to exert a positive impact on its evolution: population ageing and the demographic decline, low labor cost of young workers, flexibility of working arrangements, higher educational attainment, low unionization of young workers, early retirement practices of workers 50+. But neither seems to provide a convincing explanation. Historically based institutions and political tradition, cultural values, social capital - factors that go beyond the standard explanation of economic theory - provide a more satisfying interpretation.

This paper proposes a novel instrumental variable method for program evaluation that only requires a single cross-section of data on the spatial intensity of programs and outcomes. The instruments are derived from a simple theoretical model of government decision-making in which governments are responsive to the attributes of places and their populations, rather than to the attributes of individuals, in making allocation decisions across space, and have a social welfare function that is spatially weakly separable, that is, that the budgeting process is multi-stage with respect to administrative districts and sub-districts. The spatial instrumental variables model is then estimated and tested by GMM with a single cross-section of Indonesian census data. The results offer support to the identification strategy proposed.

We analyse the adjustment of public education spending in response to rapidly decreasing student cohorts in East Germany where birth rates collapsed after German reunification. Previous results from the literature based on data from more stable demographic periods suggest that public resources are incompletely adjusted, and that large reductions in the student population would thus translate into major increases in spending per student. Our empirical analysis suggests, however, that resource adjustments in East Germany have been considerable, especially in the years when student cohorts actually decreased. Adjustments were less tight when student numbers began to stagnate. Although our results are restricted to public education, they may be interpreted as early evidence on fiscal adjustments during strong demographic change, which will play a growing role in the years to come.