Labor Market Assimilation of Recent Immigrants in Spain

Revised: 2006-11.-- Published as an article in: British Journal of Industrial Relations, June 2007, vol. 45, issue 2, pp. 257-284.

Improved fisheries technologies and approaches for their dissemination: a case study of Niger State

Technology generation and dissemination are important components of rural transformation programmes. Nigerian fisheries sub-sector is still hampered by low productivity (especially in aquaculture) and low output (capture fisheries and post-harvest technologies). Research institutions and the Universities have made efforts in developing improved technologies to find solution to these problems, yet the level of adoption of the technologies remain low. This is due to a combination of various factors among which are faulty agricultural policies; institutional framework and unfavourable socio-economic environment. Niger State plays an important role in production in Nigeria and host the only research institute with the mandate in inland fisheries. It is important therefore to know the effectiveness of various extension approaches used in disseminating the technologies developed and their impact on adopters. Forty fishers were randomly selected in Shiroro L.G.A. of the Niger State and interviewed. The study probed into their socio-economic characteristics, traditional practices, extent of awareness and adoption for fisheries technologies and the effectiveness and impact of various approaches used by the extension organizations to disseminate the technologies. The results show that the economically active age group of the fishers was in the range of 20-50 years (87.5%). Males (95%) dominate the fisher population. 47.5% of the respondents have average household size of 6-10 and 57.5% were below primary school in educational attainment. Only 57.5% belonged to cooperative societies, while 90.0% of the fishers have no access to credit other than personal finance. Majority of fish-farmers (60%) operate at homestead level with pond size less than 50 square meter, stock under polyculture fishing methods are at subsistence level, while 67.5% of processors use mud-oven to cure, by smoking, freshly caught fish. Disseminated aquaculture technologies have low level of awareness (5-20%) and adoption (2.5-22.5%). For capture fisheries and post-harvest technologies awareness levels of 47.5-72.5% and adoption levels of 27.5-50.0% were recorded. Method demonstration (87.5%), result demonstration (75.0%) and field days (47.5%) are the major approaches used by the ADP. Respondents were of the opinion that method demonstration (65%), result demonstration (57.5%) and field day (30.0%) are effective. 62.5% of respondents had enhanced income due impact of extension activities

Awakening a sleeping giant: The riddle of Latino political participation

For some time now, the Latino voice has been gradually gaining strength in American politics, particularly in such states as California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas, where large numbers of Latino immigrants have settled and large numbers of electoral votes are at stake. Yet the issues public officials in these states espouse and the laws they enact often do not coincide with the interests and preferences of Latinos. The fact that Latinos in California and elsewhere have not been able to influence the political agenda in a way that is commensurate with their numbers may reflect their failure to participate fully in the political process by first registering to vote and then consistently turning out on election day to cast their ballots.

To understand Latino voting behavior, I first examine Latino political participation in California during the ten general elections of the 1980s and 1990s, seeking to understand what percentage of the eligible Latino population registers to vote, with what political party they register, how many registered Latinos to go the polls on election day, and what factors might increase their participation in politics. To ensure that my findings are not unique to California, I also consider Latino voter registration and turnout in Texas for the five general elections of the 1990s and compare these results with my California findings.

I offer a new approach to studying Latino political participation in which I rely on county-level aggregate data, rather than on individual survey data, and employ the ecological inference method of generalized bounds. I calculate and compare Latino and white voting-age populations, registration rates, turnout rates, and party affiliation rates for California's fifty-eight counties. Then, in a secondary grouped logit analysis, I consider the factors that influence these Latino and white registration, turnout, and party affiliation rates.

I find that California Latinos register and turn out at substantially lower rates than do whites and that these rates are more volatile than those of whites. I find that Latino registration is motivated predominantly by age and education, with older and more educated Latinos being more likely to register. Motor voter legislation, which was passed to ease and simplify the registration process, has not encouraged Latino registration . I find that turnout among California's Latino voters is influenced primarily by issues, income, educational attainment, and the size of the Spanish-speaking communities in which they reside. Although language skills may be an obstacle to political participation for an individual, the number of Spanish-speaking households in a community does not encourage or discourage registration but may encourage turnout, suggesting that cultural and linguistic assimilation may not be the entire answer.

With regard to party identification, I find that Democrats can expect a steady Latino political identification rate between 50 and 60 percent, while Republicans attract 20 to 30 percent of Latino registrants. I find that education and income are the dominant factors in determining Latino political party identification, which appears to be no more volatile than that of the larger electorate.

Next, when I consider registration and turnout in Texas, I find that Latino registration rates are nearly equal to those of whites but that Texas Latino turnout rates are volatile and substantially lower than those of whites.

Low turnout rates among Latinos and the volatility of these rates may explain why Latinos in California and Texas have had little influence on the political agenda even though their numbers are large and increasing. Simply put, the voices of Latinos are little heard in the halls of government because they do not turn out consistently to cast their votes on election day.

While these findings suggest that there may not be any short-term or quick fixes to Latino participation, they also suggest that Latinos should be encouraged to participate more fully in the political process and that additional education may be one means of achieving this goal. Candidates should speak more directly to the issues that concern Latinos. Political parties should view Latinos as crossover voters rather than as potential converts. In other words, if Latinos were "a sleeping giant," they may now be a still-drowsy leviathan waiting to be wooed by either party's persuasive political messages and relevant issues.

Qualidade de vida e correlatos sociodemográficos e clínicos

Dissertação apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Psicologia, ramo de Psicologia Clínica e da Saúde

An exploratory study on the impact of an early years' preschool intervention programme in the Republic of Ireland

Early years’ education has increasingly been identified as a mechanism to alleviate educational disadvantage in areas of social exclusion. Early years’ intervention programmes are now a common government social policy for addressing social problems (Reynolds, Mann, Miedel, and Smokowski, 1997). In particular, state provided early years’ programmes such as Head Start in the United States and Early Start in Ireland have been established to combat educational disadvantage for children experiencing poverty and socio-economic inequality. The focus of this research is on the long-term outcomes of an early years’ intervention programme in Ireland. It aims to assess whether participation in the programme enhances the life course of children at-risk of educational disadvantage. It involves an in-depth analysis of one Early Start project which was included in the original eight projects established by the Department of Education and Science in 1994. The study utilises a multi-group design to provide a detailed analysis of both the academic and social progress of programme participants. It examines programme outcomes from a number of perspectives by collecting the views of the three main stakeholders involved in the education process; students who participated in Early Start in 1994/5, their parents and their teachers. To contribute to understanding the impact of the programme from a community perspective interviews were also conducted with local community educators and other local early years’ services. In general, Early Start was perceived by all participants in this study as making a positive contribution to parent involvement in education and to strengthening educational capital in the local area. The study found that parents and primary school teachers identified aspects of school readiness as the main benefit of participation in Early Start and parents and teachers were very positive about the role of Early Start in preparing children for the transition to formal school. In addition to this, participation in Early Start appears to have made a positive contribution to academic attainment in Maths and Science at Junior Certificate level. Students who had participated in Early Start were also rated more highly by their second level teachers in terms of goal-setting and future orientation which are important factors in educational attainment. Early Start then can be viewed as providing a positive contribution to the long-term social and academic outcomes for its participants.

Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence

Current U.S. policy initiatives to improve the U.S. education system, including No Child Left Behind, test-based evaluation of teachers, and the promotion of competition are misguided because they either deny or set to the side a basic body of evidence documenting that students from disadvantaged households on average perform less well in school than those from more advantaged families. Because these policy initiatives do not directly address the educational challenges experienced by disadvantaged students, they have contributed little-and are not likely to contribute much in the future-to raising overall student achievement or to reducing achievement and educational attainment gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Moreover, such policies have the potential to do serious harm. Addressing the educational challenges faced by children from disadvantaged families will require a broader and bolder approach to education policy than the recent efforts to reform schools. © 2012 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Age Effects in Cultural Life Scripts.

Life scripts are culturally shared expectations about the timing of life events in an idealized life course. Because they are cultural semantic knowledge, they should be known by all adult age groups including those who have not lived through all events in the life script, but this has not been tested previously. Young, middle-aged and older adults from the Netherlands were therefore asked in this online study to imagine an ordinary Dutch infant and to name the seven most important events that were likely to take place in the life of this prototypical child. Participants subsequently answered questions about at what ages these events were expected to occur and about their prevalence, importance and valence. We found that the cultural life script was similar for young, middle-aged and older adults and for adults with different educational attainment.

A systematic review of the effect of dietary exposure that could be achieved through normal dietary intake on learning and performance of school-aged children of relevance to UK schools

The aim of the present review was to perform a systematic in-depth review of the best evidence from controlled trial studies that have investigated the effects of nutrition, diet and dietary change on learning, education and performance in school-aged children (4-18 years) from the UK and other developed countries. The twenty-nine studies identified for the review examined the effects of breakfast consumption, sugar intake, fish oil and vitamin supplementation and 'good diets'. In summary, the studies included in the present review suggest there is insufficient evidence to identify any effect of nutrition, diet and dietary change on learning, education or performance of school-aged children from the developed world. However, there is emerging evidence for the effects of certain fatty acids which appear to be a function of dose and time. Further research is required in settings of relevance to the UK and must be of high quality, representative of all populations, undertaken for longer durations and use universal validated measures of educational attainment. However, challenges in terms of interpreting the results of such studies within the context of factors such as family and community context, poverty, disease and the rate of individual maturation and neurodevelopment will remain. Whilst the importance of diet in educational attainment remains under investigation, the evidence for promotion of lower-fat, -salt and -sugar diets, high in fruits, vegetables and complex carbohydrates, as well as promotion of physical activity remains unequivocal in terms of health outcomes for all schoolchildren.

Ambitious mothers – successful daughters: Mothers’ early expectations for children’s education and children’s earnings and sense of control in adult life

Background. Mothers' expectations for their children's educational attainment are related to children's educational and occupational attainment. Studies have yet to establish, however, the long-term links between maternal expectations and offspring earnings, which are not always related to occupational attainment especially in women, or between maternal expectations and offspring sense of control and self-efficacy, which are pivotal factors in career choice and development. Aims. To explore the role of mothers' expectations for their children's educational attainment in children's earnings attainment and sense of control later in life. Method. Data from sweeps of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) were used. The study sample was those cohort members with complete information on all the variables of interest. The study sample (N = 3,285) was more educated and less disadvantaged than the whole sample. If cohort members of this type are more likely to have a mother who has high expectations, then our results are biased downwards, which suggests that we underestimate the effect of expectations on our two outcome variables. Results. Mothers' expectations at the age of 10 were positively related to daughters' sense of control at the age of 30 even after controlling for ethnicity, educational attainment, and concurrent partner, parent, and labour market participation status, as well as the following confounding variables (measured at the ages of 0–10): general ability and general ability squared, locus of control, emotional and behavioural problems and emotional and behavioural problems squared, socio-economic disadvantage, parental social class, parental family structure, and mothers' education, child-rearing attitudes, and mental health. Mothers' expectations had no effect on sons' adult outcomes. Conclusions. Given that women are particularly at risk for poor psychological and economic outcomes in adulthood, and that this study likely underestimated the effect of expectations on these two outcomes, this is an important conclusion.

Sewerage works: public investment in sewers saves lives

Without sewers, more children die, and those who survive suffer in terms of physical growth and educational attainment. Donor policies and advice on sewers are wrong in three key respects. Sewers in cities are not optional extras but essential. Sewers need to be financed by taxation not user charges. And sewers in cities are affordable for most countries, many of whom are already investing in sewers in their cities. The aid needed is concentrated in a few countries, and this is affordable for rich countries.

Keeping a sense of proportion but losing all perspective: a critique of Gorard's notion of the 'Politician's Error'

In 1999 Stephen Gorard published an article in this journal in which he provided a trenchant critique of what he termed the `politician's error' in analysing differences in educational attainment. The main consequence of this error, he argued, has been the production of misleading findings in relation to trends in educational performance over time that have, in turn, led to misguided and potentially damaging policy interventions. By using gender differences in educational attainment as a case study, this article begins by showing how Gorard's notion of the politician's error has been largely embraced and adopted uncritically by those within the field. However, the article goes on to demonstrate how Gorard's own preferred way of analysing such differences – by calculating and comparing proportionate changes in performance between groups – is also inherently problematic and can lead to the production of equally misleading findings. The article will argue that there is a need to develop a more reliable and valid way of measuring trends in educational performance over time and will show that one of the simplest ways of doing this is to make use of existing, and widely accepted, measures of effect size.

Breast is Best? Reasons Why Mothers Decide to Breastfeed or Bottlefeed their Babies and Factors Influencing the Duration of Breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding is known to confer benefits, both in the short term and long term, to the child and also to the mother. Various health-promotion initiatives have aimed to increase breastfeeding rates and duration in the United Kingdom over the past decade. In order to assist in these endeavours, it is essential to understand the reasons why women decide whether to breastfeed and the factors that influence the duration of breastfeeding. This study reports breastfeeding initiation and duration rates of mothers participating in the Growth, Learning and Development study undertaken by the Child Health & Welfare Recognised Research Group. Although this study cannot provide prevalence data for all mothers in Greater Belfast, it can provide useful information on trends within particular groups of the population. In addition, it examines maternally reported reasons for choosing to breastfeed and for breastfeeding cessation. The likelihood of mothers initiating breastfeeding is influenced by factors such as increased age, higher educational attainment and higher socio-economic grouping. The most common reason cited for breastfeeding is that it is “best for baby”. Returning to work is the most important factor in influencing whether mothers continued to breastfeed. Women report different reasons for cessation depending on the age of their child when they stopped breastfeeding. This information should inform health-promotion initiatives and interventions.

Escalators, Elevators and Travelators: The Occupational Mobility of Migrants to South-East England

In a meritocratic society it is assumed that the chance of achieving occupational mobility (OM) is not strongly influenced by one's starting position in terms of class or ethnicity. This paper seeks to explain the drivers of the high levels of OM achieved by one ethnically defined group: the Scots. Educational attainment is shown to be particularly important. A second level of interest is the changing role of internal migrants to a global city in the face of increased international skilled immigration. We investigate whether there is any evidence that the OM of internal migrants is being hindered as a result. The evidence points instead to immobile local labour being more disadvantaged occupationally than mobile labour from peripheral regions of the state.

Understanding and Supporting Young Children’s Transitions into State Care: Schlossberg’s Transition Framework and Child-Centred Practice

There is a growing body of research regarding children and young people in state care that is organised around the concept of transition. Focusing mainly on young people leaving care, the research highlights their experiences of multiple transitions that can contribute to poor long-term outcomes in terms of emotional and psychological well-being, educational attainment and employment prospects. The smaller body of research that focuses on young children shows that their journeys before and when in state care are also marked by multiple and fragmented transitions. Despite the growing knowledge base, there are two areas that remain under-developed—research that draws attention to the lived experiences of young children regarding their transitions into state care; and the development of conceptual frameworks that centralise young children's perspectives to support the development of practice. This article begins to address these gaps by applying Schlossberg's transition framework to a case study of a young child regarding their transition into state care. The article highlights, through the child's perspectives, the multiple impacts of the transition and considers the implications for the development of better child-centred practice.

Second-to-Fourth Digit Ratio and Impulsivity: A Comparison between Offenders and Nonoffenders

Personality characteristics, particularly impulsive tendencies, have long been conceived as the primary culprit in delinquent behavior. One crucial question to emerge from this line of work is whether impulsivity has a biological basis. To test this possibility, 44 male offenders and 46 nonoffenders completed the Eysenck Impulsivity Questionnaire, and had their 2D:4D ratio measured. Offenders exhibited smaller right hand digit ratio measurements compared to non-offenders, but higher impulsivity scores. Both impulsivity and 2D:4D ratio measurements significantly predicted criminality (offenders vs. nonoffenders). Controlling for education level, the 2D:4D ratio measurements had remained a significant predictor of criminality, while impulsivity scores no longer predicted criminality significantly. Our data, thus, indicates that impulsivity but not 2D:4D ratio measurements relate to educational attainment. As offenders varied in their number of previous convictions and the nature of their individual crimes, we also tested for differences in 2D:4D ratio and impulsivity among offenders. Number of previous convictions did not correlate significantly with the 2D:4D ratio measurements or impulsivity scores. Our study established a link between a biological marker and impulsivity among offenders (and lack thereof among non-offenders), which emphasise the importance of studying the relationship between biological markers, impulsivity and criminal behavior.