Children and youth

This study examines the reasons for the gap in educational attainment between children from intact and non-intact families. Though parental involvement and socioeconomic resources are well-established reasons, these factors do not explain the entire relationship between family structure and educational trajectories. This study considers whether school engagement is another major explanation for the comparatively lower educational attainment of adolescents from non-intact families. The analysis follows a cohort (born 1984) from age 15 to 26 and compares their chances of university enrolment and completion. The regression analysis demonstrates that school engagement is indeed an important reason for the lower educational attainment of adolescents from non-intact families. Moreover, the decomposition analysis demonstrates that school engagement is the primary explanation for the gap in educational attainment between adolescents from different family types. School engagement explains a greater proportion of this gap than the combined influence of parental involvement, parental education, and household income.

Objective
1. To examine the association of parental characteristics and young people education attainment in selected states.
2. To examine the association of parental characteristics and young people occupational status in selected status.
3. To examine the relationship of parental education, household wealth and siblings on schooling of young people.
Data source and Methodology.
This study used the data of Youth in India: Situations and Needs study conducted in 2006-2007 in six states of India, namely Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu. Bivariate analysis ,Mean, correlation between parents characteristics with child characteristics and OLS regression used.
Results: Bivariate analysis shows significant relationship between father’s occupations with children occupation.
Conclusion:
This study explore the relationship between parental characteristics with children education and occupation. Find suggest that those father socio-economic condition is high among their children education and occupation status also high. Spatial differences found in context of education and occupation in Tamil Nadu mean years of schooling high comparison to others states. Bihar and Jharkhand is back ward to the provided occupation and employment among youth compared to other states.

Chinese urban youth cannot naturally comply with social rules and norms and are prone to conduct problem behaviors within the context of accelerating urbanization of youth population. Based on 1st China Youth Reproductive Health Survey data, using Binary Logit Model, this paper analyses the factors influencing urban youth’s occurrence of premarital sex, smoking addiction and pornography addicts and the differences among the three types of problem behaviors. The results show that three types of problem behaviors occurred more among boys than girls and especially smoking addiction is a prominent problem behavior in boys. Parents with higher education level, living with two biological parents, being a student, having siblings, and living in a developed eastern city are protective factors for problem behaviors among urban youth. While youth from high income families are more likely to conduct problem behaviors compared with their counterparts from low income families. Our study point out that behavioral intervention for reducing problem behavior in urban youth can be more effective when taking a comprehensive “government-school-family” perspective.

Research emphasizing effects of migration on sub-Saharan African families has focused on implications of absent fathers, particularly in areas with historic male migration. Yet, the number of women migrating throughout Africa is likely to have more profound effects on family stability and child well-being. When women move, they face difficult decisions of migrating with children, potentially exposing them to risky environments, or leaving them with others. Little is known about how women make these choices or of implications for children’s well-being whether they co-migrate or are ‘mothered from a distance.’ This research will shed light on decision-making processes of migrant mothers, and the implications of mother’s migration on children’s residence using in-depth interviews with migrants in Nairobi’s informal settlements. As African women continue to migrate to cities, this research points to important implications with regard to how women manage family life when migrating to impoverished urban communities.

Despite the wide provision of maternity leave, research on the direct impacts of maternity leave legislation on children’s early and long term outcomes has been relatively scarce. While the small but recently growing literature on this mostly studies Canada and Scandinavian countries, this paper is among the first to analyze the effects of maternity leave expansions on early childhood and later outcomes in China.
Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey and the Chinese Censuses, the paper evaluates the effects on children's education and health outcomes of a policy reform in China that increased maternity leave from 56 to 90 days in September 1988 (in addition to the national expansion, provinces offered extra leave to women having a late birth or with one child only). The empirical analysis employs both a difference-in-differences design, which exploits the variation in leave expansions across provinces and different groups of women, and a regression discontinuity design, which compares children born around the cutoff point when the policy took effect. Positive effects of the leave expansion on childhood and adolescent development are expected to be found. The findings offer new insight into the impacts of maternity leave from a country with different maternity leave and child care institutions.

Data on children in the MENA region is limited and aggregated at the country level and what is available at the lower levels is mostly fragmented, defective and incomplete. This hinders creation of databases and identification of the appropriate indicators. The situation becomes worse when talking about data on urban children.

This paper will identify the data gaps and propose the minimum required sets of indicators, particularly those relating to public and basic services, including education, health, nutrition, social phenomena such as child-labor, street children, and Juvenile delinquencies. The paper will develop an analytical framework to illustrate the types of data required from household surveys & censuses at the local authorities level to provide health & socio-economic indicators for children. The framework will consider the geographical context in which the household and the local communities are located.
The paper will propose other suitable methods to collect basic data or to supplement with more detailed data; these methods could be resorted to, in order to minimize time and cost, keeping precision and accuracy,
The paper will identify the responsible partners and will conclude with recommendations for interventions to strengthen the knowledge base capabilities regarding children in local authorities.

The living arrangements in early life are important estimators for the personal development in (young) adulthood. The more stability and the more resources parents can offer the better children will be able to unfold their own resources. Instability, due to divorce or death of a parent, or the loss of resources, due to the loss of a job or income, probably has a negative impact on the welfare of children. Repartnering of parents may have a positive impact (more stability, income) or a negative impact (ambivalence regarding family roles, step ties etc). We still do not know exactly 1) how the living arrangements (parental and economic structure) of contemporary children evolve on a day-to-day basis, nor do we really know 2) much about causality and the size of the effect of instability (changes in parental and economic structure) on the lives of children.
First aim is to describe the dynamics in the living arrangements of all children born in the Netherlands between birth and the age of 11.
Second aim is to use causal modelling to investigate the effect of instability on the lives of children.
The data for this study are derived from the Social Statistical Database (SSD) of Statistics Netherlands. We use the SSD Millennium Birth Cohort, which contains all children born in the Netherlands in the year 2000.

Providing family life education (FLE) to unmarried adolescent women is a taboo in India. The DLHS-3 collected information on FLE and menstrual practices from urban unmarried women aged 15-24 years. Around half women had high school and above education, two third was Hindus and one-fifth Muslims. Three fourth were aware of FLE four fifth perceived FLE important, half received FLE while three-fifth perceived right ages for FLE as 15-17 years. Eighty percent women think right place for FLE as school/college when they are studying. One-fourth opined that they could get pregnant during very first sexual intercourse. One-fifth had menstruation related problems. They used cloth/locally made sanitary napkins during menstruation. Educated women practised more menstrual hygiene. Three fourth adolescent unmarried women had awareness about FLE, eighty percent thought FLE as important, half had received FLE and three-fifth women opined proper time for FLE as 15-17 years, eighty percent want FLE to be given by school/college when they were still studying.Logistic regression indicated that older, higher educated, other castes and richest women were more of aware of FLE, perceived FLE important and received FLE than their counter parts. The study suggests for a need to create awareness among the adolescent women.

Using data from the 2010 Chinese Family Panel Survey (CFPS), we study the effects of internal migration in China on the emotional well-being of children age 10-15. The CFPS, a national probability sample survey of the Chinese population, includes 3,464 children within this age range. We compare four groups: rural children with local registration living with both parents; urban children with local registration living with both parents; children left behind by migrant parents; and children accompanying their migrant parents. We expect the latter two groups to be at risk of increased emotional difficulties compared to children living with both parents. We test these expectations using both OLS models and community fixed effects models. In estimating community fixed effects models, we contrast children left behind with children in the same communities living with both parents, and we contrast migrant children with children in the same communities living with both parents.

Background: The lifestyle of children is susceptible to rapid changes and these my affect the nutritional status of children.
Objectives: To provide information on Body mass index, nutritional status , dietary and physical activity pattern of 11- 14 years old, preparatory school age children in 4 selected UNISCO affiliated schools in the urban areas of Cairo and Giza Govern orates.
Materials & Methods:This study was a part of Nutrition Education for school age adolescents in associated school UNISCOʼs project network. It was carried out by team of the National Nutrition Institute in the year 2008. Cross-sectional descriptive study, where purposive non–probability sample was selected from four ASPNET Urban schools from four Educational directorates. Total sample was 330 students equally distributed between selected schools, they were 148 male and 183 female and covered the age from 11-14 years. Pre designed questionnaire was used to collect information on gender, date of birth, dietary pattern and physical activity levels. The studied students were subjected to anthropometric and dietary assessments.
Results:Overweight and obese males accounted for 21.0% of the total sample while the percentage is mostly doubled among females to reach 40%.About half of the