Parental and public investment in children and adolescents

Undernutrition is a major health burden among children and adult in India. The risk on childhood undernutrition is perpetuated through the operation of an array of risk factors including nutritional, socioeconomic and environmental characteristics. A few studies have attempted to establish causal linkages between childhood undernutrition and maternal child marriages. However, there is no clear understanding regarding the plausible association between parental child marriage and childhood undernutrition in India.
This study examine the influence of parental child marriages (marriage below legal ages) on childhood nutritional status in India.
Methods: The study population was a nationally representative cross-section sample of singleton children (n=16756) who were aged 0 to 59 months from the 2005-2006 Indian National Family Health Survey. Modified logistic regression models that account for multistage survey design and sampling weights were applied to estimate the association between parental child marriages and childhood undernutrition. The outcome measures were child underweight and stunting; parental child marriages (<18 yrs among mothers & <21 yrs among fathers) was the primary exposure variable.
In the mutually adjusted regression models, we do not find any significant association between pare

Using the data from the Time Use Survey conducted on Iranian urban households during 2008-2009, this paper examines the effect of family type (single-parent or two-parent) on the amount of time spent, by children, on activities related to human capital. Target population includes unmarried children, aged 15-19 years, living in Iranian urban households. Relevant literature shows that children in single-parent families (either by divorce or the death of a parent) experience more difficulties and barriers towards human capital achievement. Findings show that children in single-parent families have higher levels of dropout and their level of human capital attainment is significantly lower than that of their counterparts in two-parent families. By controlling independent variables especially parental care and supervising activities at home, the negative effect of the family type disappears. Therefore, such family will exert its effect on children's achievement mainly through decreasing parent-child relationship, reducing opportunities for parents to engage in home affairs, and losing parents' supervision over their children's activities. Such negative effect can have important consequences and implications for educational attainment of children in Iran as the country is experiencing a high level of divorce now.

The study explored the challenges of rehabilitating juvenile delinquents in Uganda.
In Uganda, juvenile delinquency has become a threat to the urban centers and families; with major characteristics of theft, arson, drug trafficking, addiction to commit crimes which altogether have constituted a threat to the general public.
By 1960s, the Government of Uganda had realized a threat emanating from the juvenile delinquents and thus came up with the construction of rehabilitation centers among which were Naguru Remand Home and Kampiringisa National Rehabilitation Centers where the study was carried out. Nevertheless, the challenges pertaining to juvenile delinquency continue to be felt.
Qualitative and quantitative research techniques were employed. Data was collected through interviews, Focused Group Discussions and observation. Descriptive statistics were presented in percentages and graphs after the use of Statistical Program for Social Scientific (SPSS) and Microsoft excel.
The findings collected reveal that the challenges of the juvenile delinquents emanate largely from the home environment albeit other factors are held vital.
Some characters have remained untamed due to the long stay on streets and loss of hope in life especially after the death of their parents particularly due to AIDS.

Research has demonstrated the positive impact of fathers' involvement on children’s well-being, however, little is known about the influences on fathering for minority ethnic fathers.

This qualitative study focussed on four British South Asian religio-ethnic 'groups': Bangladeshi Muslims; Pakistani Muslims; Gujarati Hindus; and Punjabi Sikhs from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds in two distinct cities. with over 170 respondents recruited through community networks and snowballing.

The majority of these fathers contributed to cognitive, physical, emotional social and spiritual dimensions of health on a regular basis. They adopted a variety of strategies including contributing directly and indirectly via role modelling and delegating. However, there were a range of influences on fathering which constrained or facilitated fathers' contribution to their children's health. These included factors relating to the father, mother, co-parenting, the influence of children, grand parents and extended family, the wider religio-ethnic community and the wider society.

There were similarities between ethnic groups and differences within them, in particular related to mother's employment status and the quality of the mother-father relationship. Nonetheless, ethnicity often marked a difference in the form of fathering.

Father effects on child development in developed countries are still unclear, with inconsistent results often reported. Furthermore, whether these father effects vary depending on context is rarely explored. Previous studies have found that fathers tend to invest more if they are of higher socio-economic position, if the investment is in sons, and if mothers are also investing highly. If these investment patterns are derived from differences in the returns to their investment, we would expect that paternal investment may have greater benefits under these individual circumstances. Using the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, we investigate the effect of direct paternal investment on children’s height, educational attainment and behavioural difficulty whilst controlling for direct maternal investment levels. Furthermore, we test whether the effect of direct paternal investment differs depending on the father’s education, sex of child and level of maternal investment. We find that direct paternal investment has a beneficial effect on all three outcomes, though the benefit only exists for girls in height, and the benefit is larger for boys than girls in academic achievement. In contrast, direct maternal investment is only beneficial against children’s behavioural difficulty, and no context dependence was found.

Child poverty can have numerous deleterious effects on children’s health and development, which can have enduring implications on well-being throughout the life course. In the United States, there are several public investment programs that target the low-income children to ameliorate the negative effects of poverty. For example, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the focus of this study, specifically targets low-income prenatal women, infants, and children under the age of 5 who are at risk of inadequate nutrition. While many studies have examined the effects of WIC of child well-being, most studies fail to account for selection into WIC participation, which in turn may overestimate or underestimate the true treatment effects of the program. Selection bias is an inherent feature of most, if not all, government program evaluation studies. In this study, I will further investigate whether there are spillover effects of WIC benefits where there is an eligible child and an ineligible child in the same household. I will use propensity scores to adjust for selection bias, thereby demonstrating a more robust method that can be employed in evaluating the effectiveness of public investment programs, not only in the United States, but internationally.

In this paper I study the effect of women’s bargaining power within family on nutritional outcome of children in India. Malnutrition has important bearing on human development and consequently economic development of a country and it is a serious concern for India. Several studies find little or limited impact of economic growth at the state level or the share of public expenditure on nutrition and health on child malnutrition in India. On the other hand, there is now growing empirical evidence from other developing countries on the positive effect of women’s bargaining power within family, on child malnutrition. Using data from the Demographic and Health Survey I examine whether women’s bargaining power at the household level has an additional explanatory power over state level per capita income and public intervention and how the bargaining power interacts with these factors. I expect to find that once we control for family level bargaining, we will see significant effect of both economic growth and public intervention on child nutritional outcome.

Parental investment into children has increased substantially in the past decades. Not only do today’s parents devote more time to their children than in the past, but there is evidence that they also spend more money on their children. And while economists have explained this change as a quantity-quality tradeoff, sociologists have explained it as being part of a new parenting ideology aimed at securing the future of their children in the context of an increasingly uncertain economy.

In this paper, we use qualitative and quantitative data collected as part of the Families in the Middle project to examine the parental investment of middle-income parents in Canada and the USA. Our inquiry is two-fold: we first analyze the various ways in which parents invest in their children, the reasons that appear to motivate parents to invest in their children as well as their related constraints. Second, we examine the role of national context by comparing and contrasting the patterns of parental investment of Canadian and American families. Considering the large differences between these two countries in their public investment in children, we ask whether these contextual differences are associated with different levels and styles of private investment into children.

The human capital is defined as knowledge, skills, and other abilities which will lead to improvement in the quality and level of production. The capital achieved at younger ages would have stronger effects on the progress at later ages. Family has shown to have crucial influence on the achievement. Iranian families are now experiencing a low level fertility, highly educated parents, and a relatively high level of family dissolution. Using data drawn from the Time Use Survey (conducted during 2008-2009), this paper aims to examine the effects of the number of children on the achievement of human capital by young children in urban areas of Iran. Target population includes 2183 never-married children aged 15-19 years. Findings show a negative relationship between the number of children and the achievement of human capital. A sharper difference exists between families with one or two children and families with 3 and more children. Multivariate analyses show the significant effects of the sex and age of children, and the mother's level of education. The presence of such control variables, however, does not change the effect of number of children. The results can show the sustainability of low family size (two-child family) in future.

As school social work booming in China, group counseling is also recommended by the community in order to improve students’ well-being. As a key factor to achieve the initial group goal, professional relationship in group counseling should be discussed by the academics and practitioners in China. Aiming to improve well-being of participants in a group counseling in a Beijing high school, 11 school social workers served as the tutors in the group as well as the research objects in this study.
The data consisted of transcripts and field notes from in-depth, repeated qualitative interviews with the 11 school social workers, the author connoted how emotion and instrumental counseling influence the constructive professional relationship in practice. Constructive professional relationship, a dynamic, reciprocal, autonomic and multidirectional mixed-relation, tended to create a truly full of "love" scenario where students' authentic needs and the inherent potential of well-being can be released.