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SUMMARYOne of two American children will spend part of childhood in a family headed by a single mother. In the absence of government assistance, most mother-only families would be poor and economically insecure. Poverty and insecurity, in turn, are known to be harmful to children's future well-being. Government can reduce economic insecurity, but doing so will increase dependence on government. It also will increase the prevalence of mother-only families by lowering the costs of family dissolution. This creates a major dilemma for policy makers: whether to give priority to reducing economic insecurity or whether to give priority to reducing dependence and prevalence. In this paper we address key questions relevant to the dilemma: the extent of insecurity, dependence, and prevalence; the role of government in producing and maintaining all three; and the experience of single mothers and their children in the United States as compared to those in other advanced industrial nations. We next examine recent American trends in income transfer policies and document their achievements and shortcomings. Evidence from both international comparisons and American experience during the past 20 years indicates that a further reduction in welfare benefits will increase poverty and insecurity. Furthermore, the beneficial effects on dependence and prevalence are not likely to be great. Resolving the current dilemma will require a much greater investment of public funds and a redirection of funds toward all children, not just poor children in single-parent families.

SUMMARYIn most studies on the relationships between women's status and rural urban migration, African women are depicted as the passive agents or the victims of decisions made by their fathers and husbands. But times are changing. Rural urban migration can be a component of women's status. Women are now better educated, even in rural Africa, and better integrated into the modern way of life, and it is likely that they will be more and more engaged in rural Io urban migration in the next future. But in order to be integrated in the urban way of life and improve their living conditions, they need to be better skilled and/or have financial capital. Therefore, instead of implementing policies to avoid migration, policy makers must develop comprehensive strategies taking this migration dimension into account, in order to improve women's status.

The Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe, but few studies have focused on delinquency and victimization among them. This article presents the results of exploratory research on the victimization and delinquency of young Romanian Roma in two cities in the French-speaking region of Switzerland. The study follows a mixed approach that combined 130 hours of participant observation with a self-reported delinquency and victimization survey (N=27). The findings show that the most common instances of victimization involve domestic violence, thefts, and verbal assaults related to begging, while the most common offences committed are brawls and domestic violence, which is frequently bidirectional. There is a correlation between crime and victimization, although the range of victimization suffered is larger than that of offences committed. Victims rarely report incidences of victimization to the authorities, even though their perception of the Swiss police is relatively positive. Despite the small sample and the biases related to this kind of research, this work calls attention to several new elements, such as the role of social media in delinquency, the bidirectionality of intimate partner violence, and the low rate at which victimization is reported to the police. It also suggests relevant subjects for future research.

Keywords: Roms, victimisation, délinquance, prévalence vie, reportabilité, Suisse, Roma, victimization, delinquency, life prevalence, reportability, Switzerland, Gitanos rumanos, victimización, delincuencia, prevalencia vida, reportabilidad, Suiza

The role of religiosity and gender in shaping fertility decisions has been the subject of many studies in recent years. This literature has highlighted an interesting conundrum, however. While religiosity has a positive effect on fertility, partly through the promotion of traditional gender roles, gender equality has been found to have a positive – rather than negative – impact on fertility. We address this ambiguity in the effect of religiosity and gender roles by examining their specific effects on fertility intention and realization. We do so by using data from the first and second wave of the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) and construct separate logistic regression models for five European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, France, Georgia and Russia). We construct models on the influence of religiosity, gender attitudes and the gender distribution of household tasks on the intention to have a(nother) child as well as the realization of positive (plan to have a child) and negative fertility (plan to not have a child) intentions. Our findings suggest that, regardless of the country context, religiosity and gender roles appear to have an independent impact on fertility intentions and their realization.

Keywords: Attitudes de genre, division du travail, religiosité, intentions de fécondité, maternité, Gender attitudes, Division of labor, Religiosity, Fertility intentions, Childbearing, Actitudes de género, División del trabajo, Religiosidad, Intenciones de fecundidad, Maternidad

This article aims to problematize the issues linked to the increasingly central role played by science and technology in the economy. Developing our reflection from the works of Marx, we first seek to account for the concepts of formal and real subsumption developed in his day. Keeping in mind the transition of industrial capitalism to its advanced form, we then propose the concept of the virtual subsumption of social practice to capital in order to problematize the issues tied to a new monopolistic strategy put in place by large corporations in the middle of the 20th century bringing together marketing and R&D: the production and commercialization of patented inventions. The result is control over the determination of objects of future use that will take place in our societies, which precisely refers to the concept of virtual subsumption of social practice to capital.

AbstractCan the practice of child fostering help to level out educational inequalities in Africa? The authors of this study hypothesize that this levelling effect is dependent on three parameters of child fostering, that is, its prevalence, distribution, and beneficial effect on the education of fostered children. The researchers use family histories to evaluate these three parameters in Cameroon. They find that, although fostering is still common, it has only a limited effect in reducing educational inequalities because, in terms of access to the fostering network and its educational impact, it does not primarily help the most disadvantaged. These findings suggest that policies to reduce educational inequalities in Africa cannot solely count on the informal networks of solidarity set up through fostering.

The purpose of this article is to indicate how the decisions of the Trail Smelter Arbitral Tribunal, rendered in 1938 and 1941, have made a contribution to the development of international law, including, in particular, the emerging international legal rules relating to transboundary air pollution. Of particular importance was the Tribunal's enunciation of the principle of the international liability of a pollution-source state. The influence of the Trail Smelter case is examined in the light of the Corfu ChannelCase, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963), the Helsinki Rules (1966), the Stockholm Principles (1972), the Nuclear Test Cases (1973-74), the OECD Principles concerning Transfrontier Pollution (1974 and 1976), and the Joint Statement on Transboundary Air Quality by Canada and the United States (1979).Two of the most difficult problems for solution in the case of transboundary pollution are: (1) equal access and non-discrimination with respect to remedies, and (2) liability and compensation. Canadian law has certain gaps in this regard. These and other problems of transboundary pollution pose a challenge for the 1980s and the TrailSmelter principle could make a contribution to their solution.