New insights into the fertility patterns of recent Polish migrants in the United Kingdom

There have been important changes in the United Kingdom’s (UK) fertility and immigration in the past decade, with a large share contributed by migrants from Poland. A detailed understanding of Polish migrant fertility is lacking, however, because the relevant data are not routinely collected. This paper provides new insights into the fertility patterns of Polish migrants in the UK, and compares these patterns with those of other large immigrant groups, the UK-born population and with patterns in Poland. We use the UK Labour Force Survey with the Own Child(ren) Method, illustrating the potential of survey data for estimating immigrant fertility in settings where other data are unavailable. We first compare the fertility patterns of recent Polish migrants with those of other key recent immigrant groups and the UK-born population; estimating: 1) Age-Specific Fertility Rates (ASFRs), and Total Fertility Rates (TFRs), by country of birth for the 2004-2012 period, 2) The proportions in each immigrant group that arrive without children, and, 3) Of those childless at arrival the proportions of women who go on to have births within a short period of arrival. Next, we compare the ASFRs and TFR for Polish migrant women with those observed in Poland. Our results show that the fertility of Polish migrants is amongst the lowest for all population subgroups in the UK, and that Polish migrants are less likely to have children soon after arrival than other immigrant groups. The findings are consistent with migration not being so closely linked to family formation for Polish migrants as it is for immigrants in the comparison groups. We also find that the fertility patterns of Polish migrants are different to those observed in Poland with a later childbearing profile and a slightly higher TFR

A Case Study Of The Integration Of Information And Communication Technology In A Northern Ontario First Nation Community High School: Challenges And Benefits

A case study approach was used in examining Information and Communication Technology (ICT) use within a small First Nation high school in Northern Ontario. Quantitative and qualitative data was gathered from students, teacher, and the administrator, who participated in an online survey, followed by interviews on their use of ICT in education. How ICT was used in the classroom was examined as well as identifying the challenges and benefits. The students’ benefits included easier access to research through the Internet, facilitated organization through the use of Google drive, and the use of social media. Challenges were similar to those found in in mainstream schools with concerns of technical problems, off task behavior, and improper referencing. The teacher and administrator identified barriers preventing the increased use of ICT, including the lack of professional development, resources, and Indigenous language software. The administrator recognized there was a wide skill set range among teachers in the adoption of ICT integration into their teaching. Recommendations include more professional development in ICT for teachers, additional resources for ICT, and more development of Aboriginal language software

Twelve (not so) angry men: jurors work better in small groups. Lorraine Hope and Bridget Waller propose a simple modification to jury deliberations

Twelve-person juries are often regarded as one of the cornerstones of democracy. In the UK, the right to a trial by jury is considered an important feature of the criminal justice system. Indeed, it has been rated as more important than a number of other rights, including the right to protest against the government, the right not to be detained for an extended period without charge and the right to free speech in public (Roberts and Hough, 2009). The public also trusts juries comprising randomly selected ordinary people and relies on the contribution of 12 individuals to eliminate bias and prejudice from the decision making process

The mobility problem in Britain: new findings from the analysis of birth cohort data

Social mobility is now a matter of greater political concern in Britain than at any time previously. However, the data available for the determination of mobility trends are less adequate today than two or three decades ago. It is widely believed in political and in media circles that social mobility is in decline. But the evidence so far available from sociological research, focused on intergenerational class mobility, is not supportive of this view. We present results based on a newly-constructed dataset covering four birth cohorts that provides improved data for the study of trends in class mobility and that also allows analyses to move from the twentieth into the twenty-first century. These results confirm that there has been no decline in mobility, whether considered in absolute or relative terms. In the case of women, there is in fact evidence of mobility increasing. However, the better quality and extended range of our data enable us to identify other ‘mobility problems’ than the supposed decline. Among the members of successive cohorts, the experience of absolute upward mobility is becoming less common and that of absolute downward mobility more common; and class-linked inequalities in relative chances of mobility and immobility appear wider than previously thought

Incorporating anthropogenic influences into fire probability models : effects of human activity and climate change on fire activity in California

The costly interactions between humans and wildfires throughout California demonstrate the need to understand the relationships between them, especially in the face of a changing climate and expanding human communities. Although a number of statistical and process-based wildfire models exist for California, there is enormous uncertainty about the location and number of future fires, with previously published estimates of increases ranging from nine to fifty-three percent by the end of the century. Our goal is to assess the role of climate and anthropogenic influences on the state's fire regimes from 1975 to 2050. We develop an empirical model that integrates estimates of biophysical indicators relevant to plant communities and anthropogenic influences at each forecast time step. Historically, we find that anthropogenic influences account for up to fifty percent of explanatory power in the model. We also find that the total area burned is likely to increase, with burned area expected to increase by 2.2 and 5.0 percent by 2050 under climatic bookends (PCM and GFDL climate models, respectively). Our two climate models show considerable agreement, but due to potential shifts in rainfall patterns, substantial uncertainty remains for the semiarid inland deserts and coastal areas of the south. Given the strength of human-related variables in some regions, however, it is clear that comprehensive projections of future fire activity should include both anthropogenic and biophysical influences. Previous findings of substantially increased numbers of fires and burned area for California may be tied to omitted variable bias from the exclusion of human influences. The omission of anthropogenic variables in our model would overstate the importance of climatic ones by at least 24%. As such, the failure to include anthropogenic effects in many models likely overstates the response of wildfire to climatic change

Understanding recent migrant fertility in the United Kingdom

There have been important changes in the United Kingdom’s (UK) fertility and immigration in the past decade, with rising period fertility and increasing shares of UK live births to foreign-born mothers. Understanding of the rates underlying these figures, however, is currently limited because the relevant data are not collected directly. In this paper, we estimate UK fertility rates by key countries of birth, for the 1997-2010 period. For recent migrants to the UK, we present analyses disentangling the timing of migration and fertility, and address short-term hypotheses of migrationfertility patterns. Own Child fertility estimates confirm that the fertility of the Polish group is relatively low, characteristic of that at origin. For young South Asian migrants, evidence is found for family formation related migration, with high proportions arriving to the UK childless and having births soon after arrival. For Polish women, this phenomenon exists at younger ages but is less common, and those in their early thirties more commonly bring their children to the UK with them