scholarly journals The Role of Child Support Insurance in Antipoverty Policy

Author(s):  
IRWIN GARFINKEL

This article describes existing child support practice in the United States, giving attention to the establishment and enforcement of parental child support obligations as well as to publicly provided child support benefits. Effects of the current system on alleviating poverty are assessed. The article addresses several questions. Should low-income absent parents be excused from the obligation to support their children? Can child support provide more generous benefits to single-parent families while minimizing incentives for the formation of single-parent families? Should children in single-parent families be aided by a welfare program? What are the problems with the current child support system? Finally, a proposal for a new child support insurance system is described, along with estimates of the costs of the system and its effects on poverty and welfare dependence. The relationship of estimated benefits to costs is promising enough to warrant trying out the new system in selected jurisdictions.

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Monika Jean Ulrich Myers ◽  
Michael Wilson

Foucault’s theory of state social control contrasts societal responses to leprosy, where deviants are exiled from society but promised freedom from social demands, and the plague, where deviants are controlled and surveyed within society but receive some state assistance in exchange for their cooperation.In this paper, I analyze how low-income fathers in the United States simultaneously experience social control consistent with leprosy and social control consistent with the plague but do not receive the social benefits that Foucault associates with either status.Through interviews with 57 low-income fathers, I investigate the role of state surveillance in their family lives through child support enforcement, the criminal justice system, and child protective services.Because they did not receive any benefits from compliance with this surveillance, they resisted it, primarily by dropping “off the radar.”Men justified their resistance in four ways: they had their own material needs, they did not want the child, they did not want to separate from their child’s mother or compliance was unnecessary.This resistance is consistent with Foucault’s distinction between leprosy and the plague.They believed that they did not receive the social benefits accorded to plague victims, so they attempted to be treated like lepers, excluded from social benefits but with no social demands or surveillance.


Author(s):  
Don C. Postema

Understanding the role of ethics committees in providing ethics consultations, ethics education, and ethics-related policies is the context for exploring the relationship of ethics, psychiatry, and religious and spiritual beliefs. After a brief history of biomedical ethics in the United States since the mid-20th century, this chapter presents several case studies that exemplify frequently encountered tensions in these relationships. The central contention is that respecting these beliefs is not equivalent to acquiescing to ethical claims based on them. Rigorous critical reflection and psychiatric insight, coupled with the values embedded in the social practices of healthcare, provide the grounds for evaluating the weight and bearing of religious and spiritual beliefs in ethically complex cases. This is one contribution that ethics committees can make at the intersection of psychiatry and religion.


1980 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Rosenthal ◽  
Chao-Ying J. Peng ◽  
James M. McMillan

This study investigated the relationship of adolescent self-concept to perceptions of parents in single and two-parent families. The sample consisted of 558 children, 19% from single-parent homes. Examination of the data indicated that children from single parent families have lower self concepts. There was also a significant relationship between self concept and the adolescents' perceptions of their parents. In addition, perceived love was found to be the best predictor of self concept in adolescents.


Author(s):  
Sam Gill

The Proper Study of Religion charts an innovative course of development for the academic study of religion by engaging the legacy of Jonathan Z. Smith (1938–2017), perhaps the field’s most influential and important scholar in the last several decades. Smith was the author’s teacher and mentor for fifty years. Their careers coincided with the explosive expansion of the study of religion in secular universities in the United States beginning in the mid-1960s. Building on Smith’s foundational legacy through creative encounters, the book explores an extensive range of engaging topics, including comparison as essential to academic technique and to human knowledge itself; the important role of experience, richly understood, to both academic studies of religion and to religions as lived; play, philosophically understood, as a core dynamic of Smith’s entire program; the relationship of academic document-based studies to the sensory-rich real world of religions; and self-moving as providing a biological and philosophical foundation on which to develop a proper academic study of religion with expansive potential. The foregrounding of human self-movement, new to the study of religion, is informed by the author’s considerable experience as a dancer and student of dancing in cultures around the world. The Proper Study of Religion honors the remarkable and challenging work of an unforgettable giant of a man while also offering critical assessments and innovative ideas in the effort to advance the remarkable legacy of Jonathan Z. Smith.


Author(s):  
Bradley Curtis A

This chapter considers the status of treaties within the U.S. legal system. The focus is on international agreements concluded through the senatorial advice and consent process specified in Article II of the Constitution. The chapter describes that process, including the Senate’s ability to condition its consent through reservations and other qualifications. It also discusses the role of treaties as supreme law of the land, including the situations in which treaties will be considered “self-executing” and “non–self-executing,” as well as the later-in-time relationship of treaties to federal statutes. The chapter also discusses the relationship of treaties to constitutional limitations concerning the separation of powers and federalism, including the implications of the Supreme Court’s 1920 decision in Missouri v. Holland. The chapter concludes with a consideration of how the United States terminates treaties.


2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Menzies ◽  
Debra E. Lyon

Fibromyalgia (FMS) is a chronic widespread pain (CWP) and fatigue syndrome that affects three to six million adults in the United States. Core symptoms of FMS include pain, fatigue, and mood and sleep disturbances. To date, consensus has not been reached among researchers regarding the pathogenesis of FMS nor the specific role of cytokine activation on the neuroendocrine—immune response patterns in persons with FMS. The purpose of this article is to describe and synthesize the results of research studies focused on the relationship between cytokines and FMS and among cytokines and core symptoms of FMS. There is some support in the literature for relationships among FMS symptoms and cytokines; however, there are discrepant findings related to whether proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines are elevated or reduced in persons with FMS and whether their levels correlate with the core symptoms of this disorder. Although the use of cytokine biomarkers must be considered exploratory at this time due to the lack of consistent empirical findings, biobehavioral research focused on understanding the relationship of FMS with cytokines may lead to a better understanding of this complex syndrome. This knowledge may ultimately contribute to the development of interventions for symptom management that address not only the symptom manifestation but also a biological mediator of symptoms.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 936
Author(s):  
Flavio Santino Bizarrias ◽  
Suzanne Strehlau ◽  
Marcelo Moll Brandão

The value of luxury is a multidimensional construct that assesses how consumers consider the various dimensions of luxury in their consumption relations. The consumption of luxury is not a trivial activity for most people, but brings a certain fascination and is part of the imaginary of the lower classes in emerging markets. The social identity of these consumers is changing because they aspire a new social position. But luxury consumption hurts the standards of this consumer profile. At the same time the self esteem is observed as an important element of people self-confirmation. For consumers, specifically, self-esteem is an important antecedent of consumption decisions. A sample of low income students was analyzed in this study to describe their relationship with luxury, and its influence on self-esteem when moderated by brand expressiveness. Through structural equation modeling this study found that the expression of the brand moderates the relationship of the value of luxury with self-esteem, allowing consumers of lower classes to observe a significant role of luxury in their lives.


Author(s):  
Bradley Curtis A

This chapter considers the status of treaties within the U.S. legal system. The focus is on international agreements concluded through the senatorial advice-and-consent process specified in Article II of the Constitution. The chapter describes that process, including the Senate’s ability to condition its consent through reservations and other qualifications. It also discusses the role of treaties as supreme law of the land, including the situations in which treaties will be considered “self-executing” and “non–self-executing,” as well as the later-in-time relationship of treaties to federal statutes. The chapter also discusses the relationship of treaties to constitutional limitations concerning the separation of powers and federalism, including the implications of the Supreme Court’s 1920 decision in Missouri v. Holland. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the president’s constitutional authority to withdraw the United States from treaties.


1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 261-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inese Wheeler

The goal of this study was to explore the relationship of parental bereavement to meaning and purpose in life. Specifically, the study attempted to: 1) investigate the relationship of bereaved parents' perception of purpose in life, and specific parent, child, death, and grief characteristics; and 2) provide descriptive information on the role of meaning in parental bereavement. Two-hundred and three volunteers obtained through Compassionate Friends newsletters in seven cities in various parts of the United States completed a questionnaire consisting of the Purpose in Life Test, the Grief Experience Inventory and questions on meaning. Analysis of the results indicate that lower purpose in life for bereaved parents in this sample is related to less time since the death, loss by suicide, loss of an only child, and loss of more than one child. The descriptive data also indicates that a crisis of meaning may follow the death of a child. Implications for resolution are discussed.


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