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Most of the analyses on families with children are done in terms of economic resources, and their purpose is to identify solutions for their support. I consider it necessary to complete the analysis modalities of the families with children, in terms of: – parallel analysis between the children needs and between needs and aspirations their parents’, as well as of the patterns of relations between the parents roles –woman/ man roles – occupational/ professional roles and the other roles the parents have to play; – family functions and the causes that may affect these functions; three functions of the family are fundamental for the living conditions and for the life quality of the families with children: the economic function, the socialization function and the function of providing emotional security. These modalities of analysis, together with the problems regarding school education, complete the perspective of analysis concerning the economic resources of the families with children and the ways of supporting them.
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Les études récentes et celles réalisées au cours des années ’60–’70 montrent que, malgré la réduction de l’inégalité des revenues entre diverses categories de population, la generalisation de la scolarisation, l’acces a l’éducation, se caracterisent par une selection sociale et culturelle tres marquée. Parce que l’explication de l’inégalité d’accés par l’inégalités socioéconomiques n’est pas suffisante, une autre explication s’impose: l’attitude des parents vis-a-vis de l’école, leur perception sur l’enseignement, l’intéret porté par eux aux études des leurs enfants etc. Cet article analyse la perception de notre société sur l’accesibilité de l’enseignement. Nous avons utilisé des données présentées dans l’enquete Diagnose de la qualité de vie – mai 2006 (coord. prof. dr. Ioan Mărginean).
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The present paper describes the dynamics of Romanians’ quality of life by using longitudinal data, covering the period 1990–2006. The five dimensions of quality of life are: the living conditions, the social environment, the political sphere, the work life and the personal life. Research data describe the levels registered by indicators during time and allow characterising the life realms in their dynamics. This study contains primary research data which could be interesting to those interested in quality of life and related domains (social policy, economic policy, etc). It comprises evaluations of objective conditions as well as people’s satisfactions regarding those states. Results show that, overall, we can speak of a relatively low level of quality of life, with a positive trend of most indicators, starting in 2003 and continuing in 2006.
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Romania is currently confronted with an improper management of the wastes, particularly of the urban wastes, as shown, among other, by the unsatisfactory hygiene of most localities. Among them is Romania’s largest urban agglomeration – the Municipality of Bucharest, where pollution by wastes is especially visible by the garbage littered both in the streets and on the green areas or on the land not occupied by constructions. The paper presents the factors that influence the hygiene status of the city, how city cleaning is done, the perception of the population and the opinions of the different actors involved in the act of cleaning the city, the state of city cleanness. Also, the programs initiated by the environmental authorities, by the authorities of the local administration, by the service operators and by the nongovernmental organisations are presented, concerning, particularly, the education, stimulation, and making the population aware of the need to have a cleaner city.
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This essay is trying to briefly analyze the pension systems and their ways of organization, with the consequences for the achievement of their objective, namely providing reveniews for the population, after their withdrawall from the active life. We are also formulating proposals for further reforms concerning pensions, in Romania.
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The aim of this study is to analyse the relationship between parental socioeconomic status (SES) (both objective and subjective) and perceived health in two samples of Eastern European adolescents and to detect gender differences in the background variables. The data used in this study came from two cross-sectional surveys of high school students’ health in Southern Hungary (Szeged and its metropolitan area, N = 881, mean age = 16.6 years, S.D. = 1.3 years) and Middle Transylvania, Rumania (Sfântu Gheorghe/Sepsiszentgyörgy and its metropolitan area, N = 1,977, mean age = 16.8 years, S.D. = 1.0 years). Both objective and subjective social status measures were utilised. SES self-assessment is a strong, universal and gradient-like predictor of adolescents’ self-perceived health. Objective socioeconomic variables are weaker and appear to have a nongradient-like relationship with self-perceived health. The greatest sample difference was that parents’ unemployment status played a greater role in self-perceived health among Transylvanian youth. The role of socioeconomic factors appears to be more salient in girls. Social inequalities in self-perceived health may be detected among adolescents but in seemingly different ways than among adults.
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In 2009, az organisational research was led by the Social Work Department of the Veszprém College of Theology on how the child protection system actually operates. Mixed methodology was used. In-depth interviews were conducted (N = 58) among the different actors of the child protection system. The qualitative approach was complemented by social network analysis. Revealing the mechanism based on the actors' perception on how the child protection network operates, we identified and named the strengths and weaknesses of its structure. We also enumerated the interviewees' propositions that can be the pillars of a future co-operation. Our conclusion is slightly atypical in the sense that in our study we could report positive changes implemented since 2009. The aim of our study is to show how social network analysis can be a useful tool to help professionals' collaboration in the social field.
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The focus of this study is on the examination of a neglected area of child welfare. Sport is not among the preventive means of Hungarian social work, although we know that regular exercise prevents illness; physical activity diminishes aggression, facilitates the attainment of stress reduction, the development of a healthy personality, and the effectiveness of conflict resolution. Due to less physical activity, however, the youth’s life quality, stress tolerance and level of school achievement decline. All of these problems influence not only the present of individuals, but also the future of a whole society. The questionnaire survey asked young people participating in the Hungarian Midnight Table Tennis Sport Association (MÉSE) which organises nightly ping-pong championships for preventive purposes. MÉSE was founded on the example of the North American Midnight Basketball League providing the unmotivated, straggling children of poor, socially excluded families with socialisation and community and thus preventing them from street loafing and criminal activities. From the North American roots I expected similar results and participants in the Hungarian MÉSE. The research focused on the life qualities and the free-time use of the youth. Family background significantly determines the youth’s attitude towards sport, therefore, the parents’ educational level, socio-economic status and attitudes to physical exercise was also examined. The questionnaire data indicated an unexpected result. The parents of children participating in MÉSE programs are well-qualified, they like sport, nearly a third of them currently exercise regularly, and their socio-economic status can be considered rather good. Regarding the youth’s use of free-time, every fourth participant indicated so-called classic free-time activities, such as excursions or reading. Physical exercises and parties with friends are preferred by half of the respondents. In other words, MÉSE serves – although not unwillingly – an ‘unintended clientele’, while members of the original target group are still at risk.
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Modernisation of society has reflected itself in people's professional structure, in economic and professional profile diversification, in higher territorial mobility (migration), in birth rate decrease and in less numerous families, in religion pluralism, and in the educated ones'diversified structure. The Land of Năsăud (a region in Bistriţa-Năsăud County, in the north of Romania) offers an example of the regional impact of some factors such as unsuccessful Romanian social and economic practices or the promise of a better life and of a more grateful society to those who work, to be found only abroad. The changes characteristic of the people's demographic behaviour in the Land of Năsăud, far from being watched with calm or with bitterness, they surely point out a negative trend for the future of the region: the human resource diminishes and loses some of its attributes.
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This article tackles the issue of marital homogamy in the Czech Republic using paired-data gather in 2005 on a representative sample of people aged 20-40. The aim is to find an answer to the question whether homogamy or heterogamy has any practical meaning for people who live either in marriage or in cohabitation, to explore the differences in opinions with regard to marriage, childcare, gender roles and the reconciliation of family and paid work. We hypothesize that heterogamous couples will be more distant in their attitudes than homogamous couples. The results point out that the homogamy and partners’ closeness in answers are not related. Few explanations are offered in the end as a possible answer to why the working hypothesis was rejected.
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The paper is constructed around the experience of the first sexual intercourse , which designates of a person in the adult sexual life. The recent studies show that the entrance in the sexual life in Romania takes place earlier for the younger generations, as compared to the older ones, this reality being accompanied by the progressive separation, in the last seventeen years, of the sexual life from the context of marriage. This goes togeder with what happened earlier in other western European countries. To support this idea, the paper offers a short international outline about the entry into adult sexuality, from a comparative point of view. The paper aims at the analysis of the moment of sexual initiation for different age-group and to the comparision of the tendecies for ten cohorts of women aged between 18-84 who belong to a representative sample taken from the national research Demography and Lifestyle of Romanian Women, carried out in 2004. In addition, the paper lauches a short discussion about some socio-demographic factors that shape the initiations of the sexual life (place of residence, historical region, education and religion). The paper begins with a brief overview of the main aspects of the socio-economic context of sexuality in Romania, using data from the four successive reproductive health surveys carried out in Romania between 1993 and 2004, and from the survey on the student's sexuality carried out in 2002. An examination of the age of the first sexual intercourse on cohorts and of the relationship between the moment of the sexual life initiation and the socio-demographic characteristics of Romanian women follows up next. The last section of the paper examines the level of contraception used at the first sexual intercourse, taking into account the different conditions of life of women in Romania. Where necessary, the paper stresses on the differences between males and females referring to the experience of the sexual debut. The paper ends with some concluding remarks.
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This study tries to overview the onset of the Second Demographic Transition in Romania, using Council of Europe's undicators, i.e. Recent Demographic Developments in Europe, 2004. Comparision with two neighbour countries, Bulgaria and Hungary, have been made, yet we also make comparasion with the Netherlands as a benchmark country. We found that most of the "threshold levels" were surpassed in the period 1991-1996, especially those concerning fall and long-lasting fertility, postponement of chilbearing and marriage, and drop in marriage rates. However, a few other "threshold levels" have not yet been surrpased: marriage is still stable, cohabitation is still marginal, and ultimate celibacy is rare. The onset of the early stage of the Second Demographic Transition in Romania is confirmad. However, put in the European context, Romanian society continues to place a high value on marriage and chilbearing.
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The fall of the socialist regime brought a dramatic drop in fertility levels in our country: from a (period) total fertility rate of 2.2 children/woman in 1989 to that of 1.3 children/women in 2004. Fertility in Romania decreased not because a significant increase in the proportion of childless women, but because the massive drop in second and higher order births. More and more, the one child family model becomes popular in Romania, in especially in urban areas. We may wonder whether the one child family would become the norm in our country, or the two or more children family would survive, especially in rural areas. We take a first step in the attempt to study this issue and analyse fertility intentions of Romanian women, in urban and rural areas. We made our investigations by means of logistic regression of data from two national surveys, both conducted in 2004:Demography and Lifestyles of Romanian Women and Reproductive Health Survey.
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The paper examines the key patterns of temporary emigration from Romania after 2000 by reference to origin communities. Individual and regional criteria are used as to give the context of migration selectivity. The relation between community profiles and migration characteristics are different function of the regional context: Emigration patterns are context bounded (work emigration is favoured by rural residence in Moldova historical region but in Transylvania has a higher probability for city dwellers; life satisfaction plays differently for work vs. non-work intentions to emigrate etc.) A five-class typology of communities from the migration point of views allwed for capturing basic patterns of community selectivity (as opposed to individual selectivity) or temporary emigration. There are clear sign for the existence of different cultures of (e)migrations: Community structure of emigration seems to be better structured than the regional culture of phenomena; Moldova, by its more developed communes is one of the very few regions of the country with a well structured culture of migration; Transylvania is the favoured place for non-work migration and South regions are the locus for low temporary emigration. Policy implication are derived from analysis. They support the view that migration and development policies should rely not only on country and sectoral inputs but also on origin community characteristics. Poor communities of low temporary emigration deserve a special attention. Distinction between work vs. non-work emigration communities and those between low and high temporary emigration all could be relevant for designing migration and development policies. The paper relies on large census and survey data that support reciprocally in a multilevel approach.
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In this study we classified the 27 EU members and other countries, such as Croatia, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland ( the last three are EFTA – European Free Trade Association- members) using data from European Union Labour Force Survey ( EU- LFS), a demographic study made in 2005 by Eurostat. At that time Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania were official candidates at the EU. The variables taken to account refers to population classified by gender and age, active and inactive, rates and labour field, level of education and usual hours worked per week. Because the variables were too many, 86, we tried to minimize that number using principal component analysis (PCA). The classification of those states is based on the six factors resulted of PCA, which explains adequate the studied phenomenon. Using Cluster Analysis each country would be a member of the fifth groups and the states would be similar in each group taking in consideration all the factors, but the groups would differ significantly.
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Germany is a state that now belongs to the category of states with Lowest Fertility Rates from a comparative perspective. The conditions for this situation are to be found in the early '70 of the XX century. The interplay between fertility rates, mortality rates and migration can help us to understand and explain this demographic phenomenon. It is clear that the decline of population was counterbalanced by immigration. But it seems that this resource is not able any more to stop the numeric reduction of population and the process of over-aging of the age structure of the population from Germany. Effective social and pronatalistic policies are needed in the future.
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The paper examines the dual role of mathematics education in society, on the one hand as an instrument of technological and economic development, and on the other as a mechanism for status attainment. Therefore, the authors discuss the role of mathematics education in raising economic competitiveness and productivity, in the (re)production of social inequalities, and its relevance for active citizenship. Drawing on the concepts of human capital and high status knowledge, it is asserted that the economic and status attainment aspects of mathematics education cannot be separated, since the actual (over)accentuation of the economic aspect strengthens the tendency for educational reproduction of social inequalities, which in the end can be economically dysfunctional. The authors emphasise the need for retreat from educational policies focused primarily on individual economic effectiveness – conceptualised through abstract holders of human capital – towards policies that combine the issue of human resources development with the question of structural inequalities in (mathematics) education and the wider society.
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