Actions to prevent and mitigate child poverty at the local level

This review presents evidence to support local authorities and Community Planning Partnerships (CPP) to: 1. Identify factors that may mitigate the effects of child poverty. 2. Make suggestions on how the local authority can act to prevent child poverty occurring. 3. Identify early trigger signs that may suggest an increased risk of poverty. These three issues are explored for families through pregnancy, in the child’s early years and in the primary school years, under the themes: income maximisation, education and childcare. A fourth theme, lone parenthood, will be explored as a stand-alone cross-cutting theme

Mischief with Malice: A Review of Liability for Punitive Damages and the Insured\u27s Right to Indemnity against an Exemplary Award

This Article begins with an examination of the law of punitive damages, both in Maryland and in other jurisdictions. The author then discusses the question of whether an insured has a right to indemnity against a punitive award, focusing on the issues of insurance policy construction and public policy. A detailed analysis of a recent Maryland opinion on the subject is undertaken, and the author concludes with several recommendations for the Maryland judiciary and the legislature

A 'pockets' approach to addressing financial vulnerability

This briefing paper outlines recent evidence on financial vulnerability among families in Scotland, and draws on the Healthier, Wealthier Children case study as an example of action that could help families both at risk of, and experiencing, poverty

Do changes in objective and subjective family income predict change in children's diets over time? Unique insights using a longitudinal cohort study and fixed effects analysis

Background While an association has been established between low income and poor diet using cross-sectional data, such analysis cannot account for confounding by unobserved characteristics correlated with income and diet, and changes in income and diet cannot be tracked over time. This paper, using longitudinal panel data, explores whether falls in objective and subjective family income predict deterioration in children's diets over time.  Methods This paper uses panel data from the nationally representative birth cohort study Growing Up in Scotland. 3279 families have valid data on all dependent, independent and control variables for both time points. Dietary data were collected using maternal recall at sweeps 2 and 5 when the children were aged 22 and 58 months, respectively. Mothers reported on children's variety of consumption of vegetables, fruit and on the frequency of consumption of crisps, sweets and sugary drinks. The dietary variables were ordinal and were analysed using multivariate fixed effects ordinal logistic regression models.  Results Controlling for time-varying confounders (children's food fussiness, maternal social class, maternal education, family composition, maternal employment) and for family and child time-invariant characteristics, moving from the highest to the lowest income band was linked to a smaller chance of increased fruit variety from 22 to 58 months (OR=0.42, 95% CI 0.21 to 0.82). Mothers who transitioned from ‘living very comfortably’ to ‘finding it very difficult’ to cope on current income had children who consumed fewer fruit varieties over time (OR=0.40, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.85), and who increased their frequency of consumption of crisps (OR=2.03, 95% CI 1.05 to 3.94) and sweets (OR=2.23, 95% CI 1.18 to 4.20).  Conclusions The diets of young children in Scotland deteriorated between the ages of 2 and 5 years across the entire socioeconomic spectrum. Additionally, deterioration in subjective income predicted less healthy diets for children

Stabilization of Ultracold Molecules Using Optimal Control Theory

In recent experiments on ultracold matter, molecules have been produced from ultracold atoms by photoassociation, Feshbach resonances, and three-body recombination. The created molecules are translationally cold, but vibrationally highly excited. This will eventually lead them to be lost from the trap due to collisions. We propose shaped laser pulses to transfer these highly excited molecules to their ground vibrational level. Optimal control theory is employed to find the light field that will carry out this task with minimum intensity. We present results for the sodium dimer. The final target can be reached to within 99% if the initial guess field is physically motivated. We find that the optimal fields contain the transition frequencies required by a good Franck-Condon pumping scheme. The analysis is able to identify the ranges of intensity and pulse duration which are able to achieve this task before other competing process take place. Such a scheme could produce stable ultracold molecular samples or even stable molecular Bose-Einstein condensates