Suchergebnisse

America's Children offers a valuable overview of the dramatic transformations in American childhood over the past fifty years, a period of historic shifts that reduced the human and material resources available to our children. Alarmingly, one fifth of all U.S. children now grow up in poverty, many are without health insurance, and about 30 percent never graduate from high school. Despite such conditions, economic, family, and educational programs for children have earned low national priority and have been dependent on inconsistent state and local management. Drawing upon census and survey data from 1940 to 1990, Donald J. Hernandez provides a vivid portrait of children in America and puts forth a forceful case for overhauling our national child welfare policies. Hernandez shows how important revolutions in household composition and income, parental education and employment, child care, and levels of poverty have affected children's well-being. As working wives and single mothers increasingly replace the traditional homemaker, children spend greater portions of time in educational and daycare facilities outside the home, and those with single mothers stand the greatest chance of being welfare dependent. Wider changes in society have created even greater stress for children in certain groups as they age: out-of-wedlock births are on the rise for white teenagers, half of all Hispanic youths never graduate high school, and violence accounts for nearly 90 percent of all black teenage deaths. America's Children explores the interaction of many trends in children's lives and the fundamental social, demographic, and economic processes that lie at their core. The book concludes with a thoughtful analysis of the ability of families and government to provide for a new age of children, with emphasis on reducing racial inequities and providing greater public support for families, comparable to the family policies of other developed countries. As the traditional "Ozzie and Harriet" family recedes into collective memory, the importance of creating strong national policies for children is amplified, particularly in the areas of financial assistance, health insurance, education, and daycare. America's Children provides a compelling guide for reassessing the forces that shape our children and the resources available to safeguard their future

AbstractThese notes report progress in structuring a research project into New Zealand apple production. The broad objective of the research is to measure the energy inputs into New Zealand apple production. A subsidiary objective is to develop a robust methodology for measuring energy usage and carbon emissions at the farm level, and develop a strategy for reducing them. The production system under study is recognized as a complex system, and systems thinking models are appropriate for studying it. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

According to the authors, the construction of "Greater China" is fundamentally a Chinese undertaking. Neither the USA in particular, nor the outside world in general, will have much influence over the development of Greater China. They examine the Greater China project and its implications from an American standpoint. The authors believe that the construction of a Greater China will have political, cultural, and international impacts of the most far-reaching kind. (DÜI-Sen)