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This paper uses the microdata of the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) Survey to assess the contribution of occupational concentration to wage inequality between establishments and its growth over time. We show that occupational concentration plays an important role in wage determination for workers, in a wide variety of occupations, and can explain some establishment-level wage variation. Occupational concentration is increasing during the 2000–2011 time period, although much of this change is explained by other observable establishment characteristics. Overall, occupational concentration can help explain a small amount of wage inequality growth between establishments during this time period.

This article assesses pronatalism in the non-industrialized Caribbean in light of contributions that children make to household production. The place that the economic utility of children has in determining pronatal attitudes and behavior has been increasingly neglected by social scientists. This trend is especially unwarranted in regard to the traditional Caribbean. As an example, it is shown that the primary reason farmers in Jean Rabel, Haiti, are in favor of high birth rates and reject contraceptives is because the farmers conceptualize children as necessary to their economic survival.

This chapter examines the seeming paradox that although children may be a net cost to parents, they may nonetheless play a key role in underwriting the cost of large families. Maya time allocation and reproductive history data are used to approach children’s economic value from two methodological perspectives: wealth flows and the timing of children’s economic contributions. While Maya children are expensive to raise, when viewed in light of the timing of their labor supply across the demographic life cycle of the family, children’s economic contributions enable Maya parents to continue childbearing and raise more children than they might otherwise be able.

It has long been realized that market-based development tends to impact Third World rural communities by increasing stratification between those who are able to take advantage of increasing opportunities and those who are less fortunate (for instance, Kottak, 1999). An extreme example of this was the early impact of the Green Revolution during the 1960s and 1970s. It more than tripled the productivity of rice in parts of Asia, but on the village level it often had a less benign effect on the wealth gap and the retention of assets by the very poor.¹ Less extreme cases are represented in this volume by Eric Jones and Ueli Hostettler. Both describe instances in which increasing contact with the outside was the main element impacting on rural communities rather than technological innovations in agriculture. They differ, however, in that Jones approaches the subject synchronically by using central place theory and network analysis, while Hostettler’s contribution is decidedly historical in character.

Collection of data about disability in a census or survey context is influenced by the cultural context, particularly the beliefs and practices within the communities where the data are collected. Attitudes toward individuals with disability will influence what questions are asked, how such questions are framed, and how individuals in the community will respond to these questions. This article examines how culturally defined concepts of disability influence the development of questions on the topic, as well as helps determine who asks the questions and who answers the questions. These issues in turn influence how much data are collected and how accurate the data are. It also examines how ethnic diversity and poverty contribute to these questions. Recommendations for attention to these issues are made by census and survey.

Social science and media depictions of youth living on our city streets typically focus on their “risk behaviours,” especially illicit drug use and unprotected sex, the social environmental challenges they face, in particular higher likelihood of sexual and physical assault and homicide (Tyler, Hoyt, & Whitbeck, 2000; Auerswald & Eyre, 2002; Pedersen & Hegna, 2003; Brooks, Milburn, Rotheram, & Witkin, 2004; Ensign & Bell, 2004; Raleigh-DuRoff, 2004; Hyde, 2005; Witkin et al., 2005) and their delinquent/criminal behaviour (Hartnagel, 1998). This focus on the multiple “risks” that street youth face has been accompanied by the search for determinants of the risk factors for street involvement, such as parental substance abuse and child neglect. Female street youth have been depicted as particularly vulnerable, partly because once on the street, they come under the control of male recruiters who make the girls drug-dependent and force them into trading sexual favours for money or in-kind goods. According to Bagley and Young (1987, p. 23), “the girl who finally tries prostitution is one who is already degraded and demoralized, in a state of psychological bondage, with grossly diminished self-confidence.” Adults who exploit these female street youth are believed to take advantage of their feelings of disconnectedness and low self-esteem and isolation (Silbert & Pines, 1981, 1982a, 1982b) and addiction to substances (Green & Goldberg, 1993). Yet, many females who were victims of childhood physical and sexual abuse do not end up on the street, nor do all those who were abused and end up on the street (male as well as female) become involved in prostitution, and, finally, many males and females who become involved in prostitution have no history of early abuse (Hagan & McCarthy, 1997).

This chapter attempts to offer a clearer look at the historical roots of the founding of mutualist finance. Without denying that the various forms of financial mutualism may have legal and organizational roots in ancient times, the author considers what, for contemporary mutualist banks, may constitute the soul.

In its first part, the document presents the individual constructions that existed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in a context in which economic development and the industrial revolution banished the rules and standards of the former society. It refers to Utopian socialisms as opposed to the scientific solutions proposed for a new social organization and to the new solidarism according to Léon Bourgeois. Christian sources are also called to mind with social Christianity (Protestant) and social Catholicism until the birth of the social doctrine of the Church.

This frenzy of ideas as well as the confrontation with reality led to the birth, in Germany, of the first experiments with alternative finance. This is the subject of the second part of this chapter, which then develops the bank mutualism created by the founding fathers, F.W. Raiffeisen and H. Schulze-Delitzsch.

The historical description of the creation of mutualist banks brings up two major problems when talking about the “other finance”: the interest and activity of the bank. Is an ethical finance capable of proposing a credible alternative? This is a question that needs to be answered in the light of history.

This chapter attempts, more than 150 years after the fact, to demonstrate the ponderous presence of the question and the permanence of the founding ideas in order to comprehend the facts and propose ideas for analysis and construction of an “other finance.”