The extent of community and public support available to families caring for orphans in Malawi.

There are an estimated 15 million AIDS orphans worldwide. Families play an important role in safeguarding orphans, but they may be increasingly compromised by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The international aid community has recognized the need to help families continue caring for orphaned children by strengthening their safety nets. Before we build new structures, however, we need to know the extent to which community and public safety nets already provide support to families with orphans. To address this gap, we analyzed nationally representative data from 27,495 children in the 2004-2005 Malawi Integrated Household Survey. We found that communities commonly assisted orphan households through private transfers; organized responses to the orphan crisis were far less frequent. Friends and relatives provided assistance to over 75% of orphan households through private gifts, but the value of such support was relatively low. Over 40% of orphans lived in a community with support groups for the chronically ill and approximately a third of these communities provided services specifically for orphans and other vulnerable children. Public programs, which form a final safety net for vulnerable households, were more widespread. Free/subsidized agricultural inputs and food were the most commonly used public safety nets by children's households in the past year (44 and 13%, respectively), and households with orphans were more likely to be beneficiaries. Malawi is poised to drastically expand safety nets to orphans and their families, and these findings provide an important foundation for this process

The Work, Family, and Equity Index: How Does the United States Measure Up

As part of the Project on Global Working Families, with the support of the Ford Foundation, the Work, Family, and Equity Index has been developed to measure governmental performance around the world in meeting the needs of working families. The elements in the Index have been selected to comprise an evidence-based set of policies that are important to meeting the needs of working families in general and low- and middle-income working families in particular. Those policies that have achieved widespread recognition based on the weight of the research evidence or consensus in global policy and international agreements are included. To complete the index, data were gathered from 177 countries that represent a wide range of political, social and economic systems

A qualitative study of factors affecting mental health amongst low-income working mothers in Bangalore, India.

BackgroundLow-income urban working mothers face many challenges in their domestic, environmental, and working conditions that may affect their mental health. In India, a high prevalence of mental health disorders has been recorded in young women, but there has been little research to examine the factors that affect their mental health at home and work.MethodsThrough a primarily qualitative approach, we studied the relationship between work, caring for family, spousal support, stress relief strategies and mental health amongst forty eight low-income working mothers residing in urban slums across Bangalore, India. Participants were construction workers, domestic workers, factory workers and fruit and vegetable street vendors. Qualitative data analysis themes included state of mental health, factors that affected mental health positively or negatively, manifestations and consequences of stress and depression, and stress mitigators.ResultsEven in our small sample of women, we found evidence of extreme depression, including suicidal ideation and attempted suicide. Women who have an alcoholic and/or abusive husband, experience intimate partner violence, are raising children with special needs, and lack adequate support for child care appear to be more susceptible to severe and prolonged periods of depression and suicide attempts. Factors that pointed towards reduced anxiety and depression were social support from family, friends and colleagues and fulfilment from work.ConclusionThis qualitative study raises concerns that low-income working mothers in urban areas in India are at high risk for depression, and identifies common factors that create and mitigate stress in this population group. We discuss implications of the findings for supporting the mental health of urban working women in the Indian context. The development of the national mental health policy in India and its subsequent implementation should draw on existing research documenting factors associated with negative mental health amongst specific population groups in order to ensure greater impact

Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: Creating Value by Investing in Your Workforce

Summarizes a nine-country study of companies improving their profitability by supporting lower-level employees' health, providing training and career advancement, offering incentives, acting on their recommendations, and sharing profits with communities

Paid Sick Days Don't Cause Unemployment

Critics of legislation requiring employers to provide paid sick days frequently argue that these measures will lead to job loss and raise the national unemployment rate. However, this issue brief shows that the experience of 22 countries with the highest level of social and economic development (as measured by the Human Development Index) suggests that there is no statistically significant relationship between national unemployment rates and legally-mandated access to paid sick days and leave

Contagion Nation: A Comparison of Paid Sick Day Policies in 22 Countries

This report finds that the U.S. is the only country among 22 countries ranked highly in terms of economic and human development that does not guarantee that workers receive paid sick days or paid sick leave. Under current U.S. labor law, employers are not required to provide short-term paid sick days or longer-term paid sick leave. By relying solely on voluntary employer policies to provide paid sick days or leave to employees, tens of millions of U.S. workers are without paid sick days or leave. As a result, each year millions of American workers go to work sick, lowering productivity and potentially spreading illness to their coworkers and customers

Paid Sick Days Don’t Cause Unemployment

Critics of legislation requiring employers to provide paid sick days frequently argue that these measures will lead to job loss and raise the national unemployment rate. However, this issue brief shows that the experience of 22 countries with the highest level of social and economic development (as measured by the Human Development Index) suggests that there is no statistically significant relationship between national unemployment rates and legally-mandated access to paid sick days and leave.paid time off, paid sick leave, unemployment, unemployment rate

Advancing Equality

In a world where basic human rights are under attack and discrimination widespread, Advancing Equality reminds us of the critical role of constitutions in creating and protecting equal rights. Combining a comparative analysis of equal rights in the constitutions of all 193 countries with inspiring stories of activism and powerful court cases from around the globe, the book traces the trends in constitution drafting over the past half century, and examines how stronger protections against discrimination have transformed lives. Looking at equal rights across gender, race and ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, social class, and migration status, the authors uncover which groups are increasingly guaranteed equal rights in constitutions, whether these rights on paper have been translated into practice, and which nations and protections from discrimination lag behind. As the book reveals, beyond countering discrimination, advancing equality requires fulfilling everyone’s fundamental rights to health and education, essential social and economic rights. Serving as a comprehensive call to action for anyone who cares about their country’s future, Advancing Equality challenges us to remember how far we all still must go for equal rights for all