No abstract

Street-level bureaucrats have been given an increasing role in the implementation of policies aimed at the poor. The article analyses: (1) how social workers in the Nordic countries explain the causes of poverty and whether there are variations between countries in social workers’ perceptions; and (2) the nature of the impact, if any, of various individual- and municipal-level factors on social workers’ perceptions of the causes of poverty. Survey data gathered from social workers in four countries are analysed and combined with data from the municipalities in which the respondents work. The results illustrate that social workers display a surprisingly large variation in perceptions: there are differences between countries and also differences related to individual-level factors, while municipality-level factors do not appear to influence the perceptions of social workers in an obvious way.

No abstract

Attempts to explain the persistent importance of family background for children's educational attainment typically highlight the ways in which parents pass down educational, economic and social resources to their children. However, parental resources may also play a crucial role for preventing family crises from spiraling into cumulative disadvantage. To study such compensation processes, we examine the consequences of a father's death on children's educational trajectories, using a Finnish register-based sample of children born between 1982 and 1987. The results based on multilevel linear probability models both support and contradict our compensation hypothesis. Children who lost their father were not more likely to drop out of upper secondary school, as long as their surviving mother had high levels of socioeconomic resources. Similar compensation processes were visible in the case of entering polytechnic higher education. However, with regard to university attendance, bereavement noticeably reduced the traditional advantage of children with high-resource parents.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte.