According to our initial assumption, there would be two characteristic strategies for Romani catching up. One strategy is to lift the Romanies out of poverty and bring their living conditions closer to the average living conditions of the majority society. According to the other strategy, Romanies create a national minority in the majority…

Based on existing studies on welfare and education regimes, the paper aims at strengthening the conceptual foundations of comparative research in education and trust by identifying relevant system-level characteristics, deriving analytical dimensions as a framework for cross-national comparison, and exploring how these dimensions might be linked…

According to research data, in today's Russia 70 percent of children are born with various health risk factors, and this leads to a rapid deterioration of their health during their school years. The health of school students is getting worse as a consequence of the effect of a whole set of social and economic and psychological factors, and the…

Having accumulated, throughout the twentieth century, historical achievements in education and standards of living higher than in most Arab and "third world" countries, Iraqi women were hit hard by two wars, the US-imposed economic sanctions of the 1990s, and then set back by the 2003 Anglo-American imperial occupation. Physical survival…

The central aim of the present paper is to analyse the degree to which welfare problems accumulate over time and to what extent such an accumulation is related to class position and household formation. We utilize longitudinal data from the Swedish Survey of Living Conditions, following a panel that was first interviewed in 1979 and, thereafter,…

Sociologists have long recognized the relationships between family background and social class attainment. However, by neglecting the multiple ways in which families and parents provide advantages and the extent to which these advantages extend into adulthood, they may still be underestimating the role of families in the reproduction of class…

The purpose of this paper is to suggest an improved measure of financial poverty, based on household consumption and wealth as well as income. Data come from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) Survey, which appears to be the first national socio-economic panel survey to provide longitudinal data on all three measures of…

This document is an information paper prepared for the Senate Special Committee on Aging which analyzes 1980 census data on living conditions of older Americans. The analysis provides the following conclusions: (1) older women are more likely to be poor, widowed, and living alone than are older men; (3) labor force participation and median income…

Considers de Tocqueville's analysis of the American character as it applies today. The author concludes that the original American democratic impetus toward individual equality of condition has spread to other developing countries who now see the United States as an aristocrat among nations and subject to the same principles. (AM)

Describes current living conditions of children in the United States, and argues that few tax dollars are spent on children. Discusses current policy on assisting low-income families with children, and suggests the establishment of national minimums for children in the areas of income support, education, and health care. (MM)

The shift to service occupations and technological changes contributed to a dramatic decrease in earnings of male high school graduates. Because family income is a strong predictor of educational attainment, educational reforms and policy initiatives for disadvantaged children are extremely important to improve their earnings prospects. (SK)

The effects of three levels of living conditions for two age groups of individuals were examined relative to sub- and total-alienation scores as measured by the Dean Alienation Scale. Subjects were 38 older adults and 42 college students. The young adults felt more isolated than the elderly, and nursing home residents felt more powerless and…

A study was conducted to examine the following questions: (1) How does the United States compare with Japan, West Germany, and Sweden on the basis of indicators of quality of life?; (2) How does the United States compare on the basis of economic performance since l960?; and (3) What appears to be the relationship in the four countries between the…

This article reviews the literature on quality of life for people with mental retardation and proposes a model of quality of life that integrates objective and subjective indicators, a broad range of life domains, and individual values. The model includes five dimensions: physical well-being, material well-being, social well-being, emotional…

Presents a chart of socioeconomic data for 38 developing countries and the United States. Includes statistics on GNP per capita, percent of people living on less than one dollar a day, under-age-5 mortality rate, percent of population without access to safe water, and total adult-literacy rate. (DSK)