Famililism and welfare regimes: Poverty, employment, and family policies

While many nations lay a claim to supporting 'family values', these values may be interpreted in a variety of ways. How do nations support families, particularly families with children? What strategies do different nations take, and how do these strategies lead to different outcomes? In this paper, we show how different combinations of policies that support family caregiving and those that de-familialize caregiving lead to significantly different outcomes. We show that nations with stronger levels of both kinds of policies have lower poverty levels than those with weaker levels of these policies, but that strong levels of policies that support family caregiving and weak levels of de-familializing policies have more varied results, with higher levels of poverty, particularly for families headed by single mothers. In addition, this research illustrates significant variation among 'continental Conservative' countries, and suggests the importance of a less static approach to welfare state regimes, which also fully recognizes the centrality of gender relations to labor market and welfare state policies

Reconciliation policies and the effects of motherhood on employment, earnings, and poverty

In this paper, we examine the consequences of different welfare state strategies. We argue that four major strategies have appeared: 1) the primary caregiver/secondary earner strategy, focused on valuing the care in which women engage; 2) the primary earner/secondary caregiver strategy, focused on encouraging women's labor market participation; 3) the choice strategy, which provides support for women's employment, but also gives women the choice of emphasizing caretaking when children are very young; and 4) the earner-carer strategy, focused on helping men and women balance care and work through support for care both inside and outside of the home. We examine differences between women who are mothers of children and other women on three outcomes labor force participation rates, wage rates, and poverty rates, analyzing the effects of motherhood and marital status on labor force participation rates, annual earnings, and poverty rates. After analyzing these differences, our study suggests that the strategy taken by the earner-carer strategy is most effective at increasing equity for the widest array of women

Changing Patterns of Income Inequality in U.S. Counties, 1970–2000

The upswing in economic inequality that has affected a number of advanced industrial societies in the late 20th century has been particularly conspicuous in the United States. The authors explore its causes using data on the distribution of family income in 3,098 U.S. counties in 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. The authors build a model of within-county income inequality that assumes that distribution processes involving labor market and sociodemographic variables operate primarily at the county level and those involving the political and institutional context operate primarily at the state level. Multilevel methods are used to distinguish county cross-sectional, state cross-sectional, and longitudinal effects on inequality. The authors find that, when features of the state-level institutional and political context are associated with inequality, these effects are larger longitudinally than cross-sectionally. A range of other factors, including economic development, labor force changes, shifts in the racial/ethnic and gender composition of the labor force, educational expansion, and urbanization are found to have comparatively large effects, both longitudinally and cross-sectionally

The implications of cross-national policies for the relative incomes of families with children by family structure and parental education

Focusing on an array of European and North American welfare states between 1985 and 2005, we consider how welfare state policies are related to households' relative incomes, taking into account cross-national and temporal differences in income distributions. At the same time, we consider how two of the central factors that may be driving income inequality at the individual or household level - parental educational level and family structure - may be related to a household's relative income. This research fills a gap in the literature because there are surprisingly few studies that examine inequality by both family structure and education, and even fewer that examine relative income cross-nationally and longitudinally. Theoretically, our contributions are to structural vulnerability theory. Structural vulnerability theory aims to consider how the individual, or the household, is structurally located within a context. Our analysis provides a better test of structural vulnerability theory than previous studies because structural vulnerability is operationalized in both the independent (through cross-level interactions) and dependent variables. By creating a dependent variable that standardizes household income relative to both median income and societal-level income inequality, we are able to get at the very center of structural vulnerability

How (and Why) NCLB Failed to Close the Achievement Gap:Evidence from North Carolina, 1998-2004

Recent state and national policy changes for public education are premised upon the idea that high-stakes tests can improve student outcomes and close achievement gaps. Opponents maintain that such policies fail on both counts. Using a unique longitudinal dataset from North Carolina, we find that high-stakes tests have failed to close achievement gaps associated with social class and race, and that the persistence of these gaps is related, at least in part, to academic tracking. Such findings add to the questions being raised about such policies as No Child Left Behind

Distribution and Redistribution in Post-Industrial Democracies

This paper analyzes the processes of distribution and redistribution in post-industrial democracies. We combine a pooled time series data base on welfare state effort and its determinants assembled by Huber, Ragin, and Stephens (1997) with data on income distribution assembled in the Luxembourg Income Survey (LIS) archive. In the case of the LIS data, we re-calculate the micro-data in order to remove the distorting influence of pensioners on pre-tax, pre transfer income distribution. We examine the determinants of three dependent variables: pre-tax, pre-transfer income inequality, post- tax, post transfer income inequality and the proportional reduction in inequality from pre to post tax and transfer inequality. We hypothesized that pre-tax, pre-transfer income inequality would be determined by labor market institutions (union density, bargaining centralization), labor market conditions (unemployment), and economic structures (post-industrialism, third world imports). We hypothesized that the reduction in inequality would be determined by political configurations: directly by left government and indirectly via their effect on welfare state generosity by left government and Christian democratic government. Post tax and transfer income inequality was hypothesized to be a product of the combination of labor market variables and political variables. The results broadly confirms our hypotheses and the overall fit is very good

The State and Poverty Alleviation in Advanced Capitalist Democracies

We analyze the impact of the state on the incidence of poverty in the working-age population of 14 advanced capitalist democracies between 1970 and 1997 using an unbalanced panel design. We utilize poverty measures based on micro-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study in conjunction with pooled time series data from the Huber, Ragin and Stephens (1997) database. We argue that economic factors including de-industrialization and unemployment largely explain pre-tax, pre-transfer poverty rates of the working age population in advanced capitalist states. These rates, however, are theoretical as advanced democracies redistribute resources through taxes and transfers. We show that the extent of redistribution (measured as poverty reduction via taxes and transfers) is explained directly by welfare state generosity as well as constitutional structure (number of veto points) and the strength of the left, both in unions and in government

The Welfare State and Gender Equality

This paper examines the determinants of several indicators of economic well being of women. The feminist literature has suggested that women's well being is best measured through both the economic status of women and power relations vis-à-vis men. Barbara Hobson has proposed that the percentage of single mothers in poverty and married women's income as a proportion of both spouses' income effectively measure economic status and power relations. The dependent variables are calculated from micro data available in the Luxembourg Income Survey (LIS) archive, which now contains enough countries and time points to allow multivariate statistical analysis with a sufficiently large number of independent variables to test a broad range of hypotheses on the determinants of gender egalitarian outcomes while controlling for other possible determinants. In the case of poverty among single mothers, the LIS data also allow us to go beyond Hobson's single indicator to investigate the extent to which government action is responsible for poverty reduction. Hence, we analyze 4 dependent variables: 1) pre tax and transfer poverty rates among single mothers, 2) reductions in single mothers' poverty due to taxes and transfers, 3) post tax and transfer poverty rates among single mothers, and 4) women's wages relative to spouses' wages. In these analyses, we test feminist theories along with theories of economic structure, labor market institutions, state structure and political power

Sulfation degree of glycosaminoglycans triggers distinct cytoskeleton organisation in mesenchymal stem cells

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) comprise the closest cellular environment: they are building elements of the ECM and can be also found on cells surface. Their biological activity depends on several parameters among which the negative charge is of prime importance[1]. This charge is generally associated with the presence of sulfate groups (-OSO3H). Sulfation is a dynamic modification: it can occur at various positions within the glycan and different sulfation patterns have been identified for the same organs and cells during their development. However, the mechanisms of coding and transferring information by these functionalities are not yet complete understood, mainly because of (i)the complex physiological microenvironment in which GAGs interactions occur and (ii)the inability to access homogeneous GAGs[2]. In this work, we propose model surfaces bearing GAGs with different sulfation degree as platform to investigate the pathways by which mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) sense and respond to this peculiar functionality: the -OSO3H. We have selected two natural GAGs for this study: hyaluronic acid (HA) because it is the only non-sulfated glycan and heparin (HEP) as it is the GAG with the highest degree of sulfation. To obtain a larger range of sulfation degrees, we have also prepared a synthetic analogue of HA with a sulfation degree of 1.4 (sHA). All these GAGs were covalently bonded to aminothiols deposited on gold surfaces. MSCs, both from bone marrow and adipose tissue, adhered well to all surfaces. Formation of focal adhesions was observed after only 1h of culture for bone marrow derived MSCs regardless the used substrate. The presence of –OSO3H groups induced different morphology and cytoskeleton organisation: formation of longer filopodia and well pronounced actin fibers were visible for the MSCs from both sources. Moreover, cells were more spread after 24h in contact with – OSO3H containing surfaces. Cells behaved similarly on both sulfated surfaces (sHA and HEP) and differences in cell morphology were less obvious: higher sulfation degree induced less lamellipodia formation while filopodia number and length increased. In summary, the present study provides evidence that sulfation degree of GAGs triggers distinct cytoskeleton organisation in mesenchymal stem cells that may be related with the differentiation of those cells. However, further studies at the molecular level about the exact mechanism of these processes need to be carried out

Do working parents in the United States expect work location to impact job and family satisfaction in the post-pandemic period? Evidence from a survey experiment

The pandemic response allowed many parents in the United States and globally to work remotely for the first time ever which, for many, continued into the recovery. It is unclear whether, after a period when a large segment of the United States labor force worked remotely, remote work is viewed favorably or unfavorably among employed parents. We present results from a survey experiment assessing whether employed parents in the United States perceive that remote work will impact a hypothetical employed parents’ job and family satisfaction and, critically, whether perceptions of work–family conflict and anticipated job rewards mediate this relationship. We find that respondents who are also employed parents perceive that hypothetical employed parents who access remote work will report lower job satisfaction and higher family satisfaction. Perceptions of work–family conflict do not mediate this association. Rather, we find that job rewards (e.g., pay, promotion, etc.) fully mediate the relationship between remote work and perceived job satisfaction. Ultimately, this indicates that employed parents perceive that remote work will bring workers like them less pay and thus lower job satisfaction but greater family satisfaction. This extends arguments about remote work in the light of the conceptualization of a flexibility stigma and a flexibility paradox. Implications for practice and theory are discussed