Joanna Sikora

Attitudes concerning Euthanasia: Australia at the Turn of the 21st Century

Abstract With rapid developments in life-prolonging technologies and increases in average life expectancy, euthanasia has become an increasingly topical issue. This paper contributes to the euthanasia debate an analysis of Australian attitudes to assisted suicide, active non-voluntary as well as passive non-voluntary euthanasia. Between 1993 and 2002, Australians supported access to voluntary euthanasia of the terminally ill, but had reservations when death was not imminent. The age of patients was relatively unimportant in these considerations. Non-voluntary euthanasia of babies and adults received widespread approval only when particular situations could be defined as ‘letting die’ rather than ‘killing’.

Public attitudes to economic policy in East and West: efficiency subsidies and public ownership

Abstract During the last two decades of the 20th century, the predominant opinion among elites in most Western nations has been that market economies, competition, free trade, and minimal government regulation are more efficient than government ownership of the economy. Throughout the West government policy has steadily shifted toward freeing market forces within nations and the globalization of trade between nations; changes in Eastern Europe have been even more dramatic. But it is by no means clear that the Western public accepts the elites views. It is even less clear what the general public in Eastern Europe – raised under Communism and exposed to widespread disruption and economic decline in the years following its collapse – thinks. I address these issues with extensive survey data from large, representative national samples in Australia, Finland, Poland, and Bulgaria. I find that by the mid-1990s the general public in both East and West were convinced that private enterprise is much more efficient than government-owned firms, although the East remained more sympathetic to government ownership. In all four nations, the educational elite were more persuaded of the virtues of the market than were their less-educated peers. In all four nations, support for government ownership depended on positive evaluations of the economic efficiency of government enterprises to roughly the same degree. It also depended on the desirability of consumer subsidies and the desirability of job protection. Here, the public in both East and West departed from the prevailing dogma of economic liberalism.

Scholarly culture: How books in adolescence enhance adult literacy, numeracy and technology skills in 31 societies

A growing body of evidence supports the contention of scholarly culture theory that immersing children in book-oriented environments benefits their later educational achievement, attainment and occupational standing. These findings have been interpreted as suggesting that book-oriented socialization, indicated by home library size, equips youth with life-long tastes, skills and knowledge. However, to date, this has not been directly assessed. Here, we document advantageous effects of scholarly culture for adult literacy, adult numeracy, and adult technological problem solving. Growing up with home libraries boosts adult skills in these areas beyond the benefits accrued from parental education or own educational or occupational attainment. The effects are loglinear, with greatest returns to the growth in smaller libraries. Our evidence comes from regressions with balanced repeated replicate weights estimated on data from 31 societies which participated in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) between 2011 and 2015.

Science career plans of adolescents: patterns, trends and gender divides

As STEM workers work in the technologically most advanced and potentially most productive sectors of the labour market, meeting the future demand for STEM skills is considered high priority in the European Union. Knowing that a strong pathway dependency exists between STEM education and employment, in this report we examine STEM-related occupational expectations of adolescents to understand their ability and willingness to undertake STEM training and work. We systematically explore a range of potential influences on young people’s career plans starting from the individual characteristics of adolescents and their families, accounting for various features of school environments as well as country characteristics and policy interventions at a national level. For the analyses, we use PISA data from 2006 and 2015 surveys for each of the European Member States which allow for identifying the changes as well as continuity in adolescent preferences during this 10-year period. The past ten years have not brought about major changes in European students’ career orientations towards the STEM. In 2015 on average 20 out of 100 of 15-years old students in Europe declared to pursuit a science-related career in STEM occupations. However considerable differences across countries exist. In Finland for instance, only 12 out of 100 students are interested in STEM careers while in Slovenia 27 out of 100 students expect such careers. Expectations of STEM career plan are strongly divided by gender. On average in Europe, only 10 out of 100 females are interested in STEM careers while the number of boys expecting a similar career is almost triple. Between-country differences are remarkable. In Finland only 4 out of 100 female students want to engage into STEM while in Latvia the number of females that see their future in a STEM occupation is 4 times higher. Students develop their career plans differently across the different educational systems in Europe. In most countries, students who are on a vocational track at the age of 15 are increasingly interested in choosing a STEM job. Our findings suggest also a positive association between compulsory national examination in math and students’ plans to enter a STEM occupation. In terms of policy measures designed to mitigate the gender gap in the supply of young people available to train for employment in the STEM sector, the patterns presented in this report indicate an urgent need to develop more effective methods to encourage girls to consider STEM employment as a viable option for their own future.

Book Review: Iris Bohnet, What Works: Gender Equality by DesignWhat Works: Gender Equality by DesignBohnetIrisCambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016

country’s position in the world and the ways that alternate measures of economic equality undervalue how well New Zealand performs. None of these criticisms detract, however, from the urgency of Hyman’s critique or the clarity of her analysis. It’s a timely and useful contribution to global debates about economic justice and fairness that reignited with the Occupy movement and have charged recent electoral politics and protests internationally.

Aimless or flexible? Does uncertainty in adolescent occupational expectations matter in young adulthood?:

While research on adolescent occupational expectations is voluminous, it either ignores students who do not report any career plans or imputes their answers. Consequently, little is known about the potential consequences that not having clear occupational expectations in adolescence might have for educational and occupational attainment in young adulthood. Therefore, this article presents evidence from the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth (LSAY), which followed students between 2006 and 2016, to consider whether occupational uncertainty in this cohort is better understood as strategic role exploration or structured aimlessness. Uncertainty persists over time as students who do not report career plans at age 16 tend to be occupationally uncertain also seven years later. However, it is occupational uncertainty in young adulthood, not in adolescence, that better predicts the lack of university degree and lower expected life-time earnings at age 26.