Managing time: integration of care and paid work amongst low income families and the role of the United Kingdom’s tax credit system

Under the New Labour Governments in the UK, successive reforms of the tax and benefit system sought to improve the financial benefits of paid work. Drawing on two waves of qualitative interviews with low-income working families this article examines the role of the UK tax credit system in shaping decisions about employment and unpaid care work. The article suggests that the financial support provided for lone parent participants by the tax credit system enhanced their temporal autonomy, permitting participation in paid work to align more closely with temporally situated notions of parental responsibility for caring. For couple families however, parental perceptions of responsibility for pre-school children, along with childcare constraints and the structure of the tax credit system served to constrain the autonomy of the main carer and implicitly encourage a gendered specialisation in caring or employment.

Families and Poverty: Everyday life on a low income

The recent radical cutbacks of the welfare state in the UK have meant that poverty and income management continue to be of great importance for intellectual, public and policy discourse. Written by leading authors in the field, the central interest of this innovative book is the role and significance of family in a context of poverty and low-income. Based on a micro-level study carried out in 2011 and 2012 with 51 families in Northern Ireland, it offers new empirical evidence and a theorisation of the relationship between family life and poverty. Different chapters explore parenting, the management of money, family support and local engagement. By revealing the ordinary and extraordinary practices involved in constructing and managing family and relationships in circumstances of low incomes, the book will appeal to a wide readership, including policy makers.

Sexual abuse of children in low-income settings:time for action

In this article, child sexual abuse in low-income settings is reviewed, including the extent of the problem, the way children present, and how they should be managed. Liaising with other agencies, training in all aspects of sexual abuse and creating an environment that is conducive to good care by all groups involved is essential. Technical details of medical examination are not covered as appropriate guidelines are accessible.

Financial literacy and over-indebtedness in low-income households

Financial literacy can explain a significant proportion of wealth inequality. Among the key components of financial literacy are numeracy and money management skills. Our study examines the relative importance of these components in the determination of consumer debt and household net worth among credit union members in socially disadvantaged areas. The main finding from our analysis is that money management skills are important determinants of financial outcomes but that numeracy has almost no role to play. This result adds to a recent US-based behavioural finance literature on the role of attention and planning in consumer finance. Findings are found to be robust when the sample is reduced to only those who have a clear role in household financial decision-making and also when controlling for potential endogeneity. Our findings have policy implications in the UK and elsewhere as credit unions across the world are important players in national financial literacy strategies.

The Housing Triangulation: A discourse on Quality, Affordability and Lifestyles in India

Since 1991 with the advent of globalization and economic liberalisation, basic conceptual and discursive changes are taking place in housing sector in India. The new changes suggest how housing affordability, quality and lifestyles reality is shifting for various segments of the population. Such shift not only reflects structural patterns but also stimulates an ongoing transition process. The paper highlights a twin impetus that continue to shape the ongoing transition: expanding middle class and their wealth - a category with distinctive lifestyles, desires and habits and corresponding ‘market defining’ of affordable housing standards - to articulate function of housing as a conceptualization of social reality in modern India. The paper highlights the contradictions and paradoxes, and the manner in which the concept of affordability, quality and lifestyles are embedded in both discourse and practice in India. The housing ‘dream’ currently being packaged and fed through to the middle class population has an upper middle class bias and is set to alienate those at the lower end of the middle-and low-income population. In the context of growing agreement and inevitability of market provision of ‘affordable housing’, the unbridled ‘market-defining’ of housing quality and lifestyles must be checked.

Clinical Outcomes in 3343 Children and Adults with Rheumatic Heart Disease from 14 Low and Middle Income Countries: 2-Year Follow-up of the Global Rheumatic Heart Disease Registry (the REMEDY study)

BACKGROUND: -There are few contemporary data on the mortality and morbidity associated with rheumatic heart disease (RHD) or information on their predictors. We report the two year follow-up of individuals with RHD from 14 low and middle income countries in Africa and Asia.

METHODS: -Between January 2010 and November 2012, we enrolled 3343 patients from 25 centers in 14 countries and followed them for two years to assess mortality, congestive heart failure (CHF), stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA), recurrent acute rheumatic fever (ARF), and infective endocarditis (IE).

RESULTS: -Vital status at 24 months was known for 2960 (88.5%) patients. Two thirds were female. Although patients were young (median age 28 years, interquartile range 18 to 40), the two year case fatality rate was high (500 deaths, 16.9%). Mortality rate was 116.3/1000 patient-years in the first year and 65.4/1000 patient-years in the second year. Median age at death was 28.7 years. Independent predictors of death were severe valve disease (hazard ratio (HR) 2.36, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.80-3.11), CHF (HR 2.16, 95% CI 1.70-2.72), New York Heart Association functional class III/IV (HR 1.67, 95% CI 1.32-2.10), atrial fibrillation (AF) (HR 1.40, 95% CI 1.10-1.78) and older age (HR 1.02, 95% CI 1.01-1.02 per year increase) at enrolment. Post-primary education (HR 0.67, 95% CI 0.54-0.85) and female sex (HR 0.65, 95%CI 0.52-0.80) were associated with lower risk of death. 204 (6.9%) had new CHF (incidence, 38.42/1000 patient-years), 46 (1.6%) had a stroke or TIA (8.45/1000 patient-years), 19 (0.6%) had ARF (3.49/1000 patient-years), and 20 (0.7%) had IE (3.65/1000 patient-years). Previous stroke and older age were independent predictors of stroke/TIA or systemic embolism. Patients from low and lower-middle income countries had significantly higher age- and sex-adjusted mortality compared to patients from upper-middle income countries. Valve surgery was significantly more common in upper-middle income than in lower-middle- or low-income countries.

CONCLUSIONS: -Patients with clinical RHD have high mortality and morbidity despite being young; those from low and lower-middle income countries had a poorer prognosis associated with advanced disease and low education. Programs focused on early detection and treatment of clinical RHD are required to improve outcomes.

Child Poverty in Northern Ireland: Results from the Poverty and Social Exclusion Study

- There is general agreement that the measurement of child poverty is based on both low income and deprivation.

- Adjusting incomes for different household types, measuring before or after housing costs, and the selection of deprivation items all have an impact on poverty rates.

- The consensual poverty method, which takes account of what the population considers to be basic necessities, is described. The study found a high level of agreement on the basic necessities for children.

- The study found that only a few children lacked very basic necessities such as three meals a day and adequate clothing, but a third of all children (150,000) were deprived of an annual holiday and 75,000 children are growing up in cold and damp homes.

- Overall, the study found that 24% or 106,000 children are living in low income households and are deprived of four or more items.

- The study found those who had a ‘high experience’ of the conflict were significantly more deprived than those with no conflict experience and that a fifth of all children are living with an adult/s who have ‘high experience’.