Family Aspirations Research Articles

Adapting by Altering: Spatial modifications of terraced houses in the Klang Valley area

This paper presents the initial findings of a study on the spatial modifications of fifty houses by homeowners in the Klang Valley area. Using a standardised format, various attributes consisting of altered spaces and features were compiled and examined. It appears that certain features of the houses including the kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms were desperately altered. People have used their creativity in altering the spaces beyond the original intentions of the architect. To some extent, the findings indicate that the current model for providing houses has shortcomings in addressing the need to satisfy the aspirations of the individual family to live.

Stagnant or Successful, Carefree or Anxious? Australian University Students' Goals and Beliefs About Adulthood and Their Current Well‐being

ObjectiveThis article questions an assumption that modern young adults are unwilling to grow up, do not wish to take on traditional adult roles, and experience their current lives as carefree. Goals and beliefs for adulthood, and current mental health, were assessed.MethodsA total of 518 Australian university students aged 18–25 (73% female, mean age 19 years, 72% Australian born) completed surveys of their goals for age 40, the goals they believed significant others held for them, and their views of life now and in the future, as well as standard assessments of mental health and well‐being (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale 10; Goldberg anxiety subscale, Life Orientation Test—Revised, Perceived Stress Scale, and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support).ResultsStudents overwhelmingly aspired to “traditional” adult roles: over 90% wanted to be married, with children, and to be in paid employment. Their highest priorities were finishing education, finding a life partner, and finding satisfying work. They generally selected positive adjectives to describe their futures, but selected negative adjectives to describe their current lives, and reported high levels of depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress.ConclusionsFindings suggest that these modern young adults are not leading carefree lives, nor are they reluctant to “grow up.” Aspirations for family and employment, coupled with positive views of the future, are encouraging, while high levels of depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress are cause for concern. Clinical responses to young people need to acknowledge instability that can result from spending extended periods of time “in‐between.”

Combining Gender, Work, and Family Identities: The Cross-Over and Spill-Over of Gender Norms into Young Adults' Work and Family Aspirations.

The current study investigates how descriptive and prescriptive gender norms that communicate work and family identities to be (in)compatible with gender identities limit or enhance young men and women’s family and career aspirations. Results show that young adults (N = 445) perceived gender norms to assign greater compatibility between female and family identities and male and work identities than vice versa, and that young men and women mirror their aspirations to this traditional division of tasks. Spill-over effects of norms across life domains and cross-over effects of norms across gender-groups indicated that young women, more than young men, aimed to ‘have it all’: mirroring their career ambitions to a male career model, while keeping their family aspirations high. Moreover, young women opposed traditional role divisions in the family domain by decreasing their family aspirations in face of norms of lower family involvement or higher career involvement of men. Conversely, in line with traditional gender roles, young men showed lower family aspirations in the face of strong male career norms; and showed increases in their career aspirations when perceiving women to take up more family roles. Young men’s family aspirations were, however, more influenced by new norms prescribing men to invest more in their family, suggesting opportunities for change. Together, these findings show that through social norms, young adults’ gender identity affects aspirations for how to manage the co-presence of their work and family identities. Altering these norms may provide leverage for change to allow both men and women to combine their multiple identities in an enriching way.

Universal higher education and positional advantage: Soviet legacies and neoliberal transformations in Russia

The great expansion of participation in higher education in Russia in the post-Soviet period was the layered and contradictory result of both conditions established in the Soviet period, and the structuring of reforms after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992. The Soviet government was strongly committed to the expansion of education across the country, and gender equality was achieved at that time. In the 1990s and 2000s enrolments more than doubled, though the growth of numbers has been reversed since 2008 because of demographic decline of the relevant age cohorts. Employing Trow’s analysis of the growth of higher education systems and Hirsch’s concept of positional goods, among other conceptual approaches, as well as statistical, national, and comparative survey data, this paper analyses social dynamics of the process of increasing participation and equalization of opportunity in Russia. The dramatic higher education expansion in Russia was largely associated with the positional value of higher education credentials, in a society in which the Soviet system of social status had been discontinued, and a new system of status was being built on the basis of post-Soviet rules (which are still evolving). Driven by family aspirations and resources, massification has largely rested on the part-privatisation of the costs of higher education, part of a neoliberal reform package common to the post-Soviet countries. However, higher education expansion has not brought about greater social equity. Expansion, fee-based financing and policy measures such as university excellence initiatives have tended to strengthen the institutional and social stratification of the higher education system, weakening social mobility and social equality.

"Live It to Understand It": The Experiences of Mothers of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Mothers of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) variably experience challenges in their caregiving role. This ethnographic study examined the caregiving experiences of mothers of a young person with ASD (aged ≤25 years). Semistructured interviews were conducted with 85 mothers across three Canadian regions. A follow-up subsample of 10 mothers took part in participant observation sessions in the home and/or other environments within the community. Analysis yielded themes that depicted the following: redefining child and family aspirations, forging a shifted identity, and the need to "live it" to understand mothering a young person with ASD. Supports and services were perceived to be required but often insufficient to meet the needs. Findings identify a range of challenges, lessons learned, and a reconfigured sense of mothering. An emerging model of mothering a child with ASD is presented. Implications for practice, policy, and research are offered.

‘I Don't Just Want to Do It for Myself’: Diverse Pespectives on Being Successful at University by Social Work Students Who Speak English as an Additional Language

This article gives attention to furthering understandings about what being successful at university means to social work students, focusing on the perspectives of students who speak English as an additional language (EAL). It departs from approaches in the literature that focus on problematic aspects of teaching and learning. The article is informed by data from a small-scale focus group study of nine students from an undergraduate and a postgraduate social work programme in a South Australian university. Drawing on a methodological approach known as ‘Appreciative Inquiry’, students were asked how they conceptualise, experience and imagine success at university. The study found that students’ understandings of success are inextricably intertwined with their individual, family and community aspirations. These findings are discussed in the light of current dominant assumptions about the notion of success and possible directions for future research and implications for social work education.

In Process Citation

The increase in available student placements at colleges and universities, the implementation of provincial and federal postsecondary education policies, and the rise of the educational aspirations of families and individuals have all led to the massification of Canadian higher education. Based on Merle's typology of the forms of democratization, this article attempts to revisit the theory of equality of opportunities by critically analyzing the link between massification of higher education and social equity. The results of an analysis of longitudinal data from the (YIT) Youth in Transition Survey show that at the age of 24 in 2008, approximately 77% of young Canadians have pursued studies in a college or university. If access to postsecondary education is now higher, to what extent has it improved social equity? The article shows, in light of the Merle's typology, that mass university education is achieved in part under the seal of a segregative democratization, while college education tends to be egalitarian.

Encounters between security guards and young people: the extent and biases of formal social control

There is a distinct lack of knowledge about how the rise of private security relates to young people in adversarial encounters. Prior studies suggest that the policing of young people by police is a common occurrence and social biases exist. However, policing of young people by private security guards has gained much less attention. Drawing on a large-scale youth survey (N = 5826), this article examines the extent and social biases of adversarial contacts between private security guards and youths. The findings showed that 29% of 15- to 16-year-old Finnish youths reported adversarial security guard contact in a year. The open-ended responses indicated that young people were typically suspected of shoplifting, being a nuisance or drinking alcohol. Social biases were examined using the differential selection hypothesis, which suggests that some groups are disproportionately targeted. Multivariate analysis showed that, as expected, delinquency and alcohol use were associated with adversarial contacts. However, when these were controlled, living in a city, living in a non-nuclear family and low educational aspirations increased the likelihood of security guard interventions. The article compares the findings with prior studies of police control of youth. Similar results are that the probability for an individual to be selected is partly defined through his/her social status. However, results diverge concerning the gender effect. Our findings indicated that both boys and girls were equally likely to be targeted. The article places the findings with reference to the persistence of the labelling theoretical effects and discusses the transformations of policing connected to young people.

Isolation in the construction of natural experiments

A natural experiment is a type of observational study in which treatment assignment, though not randomized by the investigator, is plausibly close to random. A process that assigns treatments in a highly nonrandom, inequitable manner may, in rare and brief moments, assign aspects of treatments at random or nearly so. Isolating those moments and aspects may extract a natural experiment from a setting in which treatment assignment is otherwise quite biased, far from random. Isolation is a tool that focuses on those rare, brief instances, extracting a small natural experiment from otherwise useless data. We discuss the theory behind isolation and illustrate its use in a reanalysis of a well-known study of the effects of fertility on workforce participation. Whether a woman becomes pregnant at a certain moment in her life and whether she brings that pregnancy to term may reflect her aspirations for family, education and career, the degree of control she exerts over her fertility, and the quality of her relationship with the father; moreover, these aspirations and relationships are unlikely to be recorded with precision in surveys and censuses, and they may confound studies of workforce participation. However, given that a women is pregnant and will bring the pregnancy to term, whether she will have twins or a single child is, to a large extent, simply luck. Given that a woman is pregnant at a certain moment, the differential comparison of two types of pregnancies on workforce participation, twins or a single child, may be close to randomized, not biased by unmeasured aspirations. In this comparison, we find in our case study that mothers of twins had more children but only slightly reduced workforce participation, approximately 5% less time at work for an additional child.

Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660–1950 by Fabian Drixler (review)

Reviewed by: Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660–1950 by Fabian Drixler Osamu Saito Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660–1950 by Fabian Drixler. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Pp. xx + 417. $75.00. In the late 1960s, Akira Hayami, the pioneer of historical demography in Japan, found that marital fertility in Yokouchi, a village in Suwa County in the province of Shinano, central Japan, declined substantially between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His observation was based on a comparison of age-specific fertility rates for married women who were born before and after 1700. The decline was particularly marked for those between the ages of twenty-one and thirty. He reasoned that since the fertility levels between the two [End Page 385] cohorts were not significantly different for those who married after the age of twenty-one, “On admet, pour expliquer le contraste frappant qui distingue la première centaine d’années de la seconde, qu’il y a certainement eu une limitation volontaire de la population.”1 In his Japanese-language monograph on Suwa County was less euphemistic: there he suggests that direct measures were taken by village couples to reduce their marital fertility.2 Many scholars took his suggestion as evidence for the practice of mabiki 間引, the topic of Drixler’s book. After the publication of Hayami’s work, Drixler notes, scholars addressed the issue of mabiki by exploiting various time-series data from village household registration records, from which they concluded that some kind of mabiki was practiced. However, their observations were confined to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and they were unable to replicate a fertility pattern similar to what Hayami had found for Yokouchi, mainly because the population registers these scholars utilized usually did not cover a long enough period before 1700. Now, thanks to Drixler’s ambitious venture in estimating total fertility rates (TFRs) from 1660 to 1870 for a sample of 3,300 village population registers from ten provinces in the eastern half of Japan, we are provided with data that exhibit a sudden decline from a TFR level of over 5 in the third quarter of the seventeenth century to a TFR level of about 3.5 in the eighteenth century. Although Yokouchi is not included in this “eastern provinces” sample, Drixler’s findings confirm Hayami’s hypothesis about the decline of marital fertility between the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries. For his study, Drixler adopted a technique called “own-child method” (OCM). This method, unlike longitudinal analyses employed in previous [End Page 386] studies in historical demography, requires only cross-sectional data, or a set of “snapshots” of each population (pp. 7, 245). It enables Drixler to assemble material from as many as 3,300 village population registers with multiple sequences of different lengths for a number of villages, thus covering a wide enough area as well as a long enough time period so as to link this 220-year series to the post-1886 series of TFRs and other demographic measures. Moreover, Drixler goes on to estimate how many pregnancies ended with the destruction of the fetus or the newborn during the 220 years in villages of the eastern provinces; to accomplish this, he uses a Monte Carlo simulation model with various sets of parameters borrowed from various disciplines and various places of research. His calculations show that in the 1660s, the estimated TFRs were high and close to the observed fertility rates, whereas from roughly 1700 to 1800, the gap between the estimated TFRs and the observed fertility rates becomes as wide as 40 percent. From these calculations (pp. 123–25), he concludes that there must have been some ten million infanticides (or abortions) between 1660 and 1870! Having established these extraordinary outcomes from the demographic calculations, Drixler sets off to weave together information from a wealth of mabiki scrolls and votive tablets (ema 絵馬), contemporary discourses, and domainal records concerning childrearing subsidies and pregnancy surveillance in the latter half of the Tokugawa period. His discussions and interpretations of this material occupy the central place in this book. He begins with the culture of reproduction, family aspirations, and...

Career and family aspirations of female athletic trainers employed in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I setting.

Female athletic trainers (ATs) tend to depart the profession of athletic training after the age of 30. Factors influencing departure are theoretical. Professional demands, particularly at the collegiate level, have also been at the forefront of anecdotal discussion on departure factors. To understand the career and family intentions of female ATs employed in the collegiate setting. Qualitative study. National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I. Twenty-seven female ATs (single = 14, married with no children = 6, married with children = 7) employed in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I setting. All female ATs responded to a series of open-ended questions via reflective journaling. Data were analyzed via a general inductive approach. Trustworthiness was established by peer review, member interpretive review, and multiple-analyst triangulation. Our participants indicated a strong desire to focus on family or to start a family as part of their personal aspirations. Professionally, many female ATs were unsure of their longevity within the Division I collegiate setting or even the profession itself, with 2 main themes emerging as factors influencing decisions to depart: family planning persistence and family planning departure. Six female ATs planned to depart the profession entirely because of conflicts with motherhood and the role of the AT. Only 3 female ATs indicated a professional goal of persisting at the Division I setting regardless of their family or marital status, citing their ability to maintain work-life balance because of support networks. The remaining 17 female ATs planned to make a setting change to balance the roles of motherhood and AT because the Division I setting was not conducive to parenting. Our results substantiate those of previous researchers, which indicate the Division I setting can be problematic for female ATs and stimulate departure from the setting and even the profession.

Raised parental expectations towards higher education and the double bind

This paper is concerned with the participation of students from low socio-economic status (SES) families and communities in Australian higher education. One means of achieving this, as purported by the Australian Government and various universities, is through the raising of family aspirations or expectations. In this paper, I explore the localised effects of raised family aspirations as they are understood within the lived experiences of some students from a low SES context. Based on the interactions in four focus groups of eight participants and five follow-up individual interviews run in a low SES school in Western Sydney, I draw broadly on the method advanced by Giorgi [1985. Phenomenology and psychological research. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press] to attend to how certain forms of high expectations communicated by parents may have a deleterious effect on student aspiration and attainment insofar as it positions the latter in a ‘double bind’. Such a situation can be inferred to significantly reduce the incentives for higher education participation.

Aspirations and occupational achievements of Dutch fathers and mothers

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate how work and family aspirations relate to occupational achievements and gender differences herein.Design/methodology/approach– Using data from 2009 the authors examined the relationship between career and childrearing aspirations and occupational achievements of Dutch parents. Using path modeling in Mplus, the authors investigated both direct and indirect pathways where aspirations were related to occupational achievements via time allocations.Findings– The authors found that ranking being promoted instead of a non-career aspiration as the most important job aspiration was positively related to occupational achievements. Surprisingly, the authors also found that ranking childrearing as the most important life role aspiration was positively related to earnings among fathers.Research limitations/implications– Investigating aspirations in multiple domains simultaneously can provide new information on working parents’ occupational achievements.Practical implications– The results imply that parents who want to achieve an authority position or high earnings may need to prioritize their promotion aspiration among their job aspirations in order to increase the likelihood of achieving such a position. Moreover, this is likely to require sacrifices outside the work domain, since spending more time on paid work is an important way to achieve this aspiration.Originality/value– This paper adds to previous research by explicitly taking life role aspirations into account instead of focussing solely on job aspirations. Moreover, this study extends previous research by investigating indirect pathways from aspirations to occupational achievements via family work in addition to the previously found pathway via paid work.

Family Ownership and R&D Intensity in Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Firms

Research was largely consistent in predicting a negative relationship between family ownership and research and development (R&D) intensity until Chrisman and Patel, using a behavioral agency model (BAM), called this general assumption into question. They argued that publicly owned family firms typically invest less in R&D than nonfamily‐owned firms. This behavior may however be reversed if economic performance levels are below family aspirations or if family long‐term goals, such as pursuing strong transgenerational family control, are highly valued. While most researchers, like Chrisman and Patel, primarily focused on large listed firms, more research on the relationship between family ownership and R&D intensity in privately held small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) is required. This is because firm size can play an important role in understanding the innovation management behavior of firms. Building on the BAM perspective, in the present paper it is argued that Chrisman and Patel's results can be extended to the context of SMEs, albeit with one important specification: the relationship between family ownership and R&D intensity is likely to be contingent on the way the family has invested its wealth. Specifically, it is contended that in the context of SMEs, where goals are more fluid and mixed, when there is a high overlap between family wealth and firm equity (i.e., most of the family's wealth is invested in the firm) the relationship between family ownership and R&D intensity is negative because of the family owners' greater desire to protect their socioemotional wealth (SEW). However, if the overlap between the family's total wealth and single firm equity is low (i.e., firm equity is just a small part of the total family wealth), the relationship between family ownership and R&D intensity is positive as the low overlap between family wealth and firm equity reduces the family's loss aversion propensity. In such a situation, family ownership is likely to foster R&D intensity because of the long‐term orientation of family owners that increases the family firm's propensity to bear the risk of investing in R&D activities. The hypothesis is tested and confirmed in a study of 240 small‐ and medium‐sized firms based in Italy. The paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, adding to the literature on innovation management and R&D intensity, it increases the understanding of what drives or inhibits R&D investments in SMEs when a family is involved in the ownership of the firm. This is particularly important because research on innovation management, as well as research on R&D intensity in family firms, is primarily focused on large firms and much less on SMEs. Second, the study complements arguments from prior research on the correlates of R&D intensity in large listed firms, showing that the BAM and SEW perspective offer a theoretical framework that is also able to illustrate the complex nature of innovation management in the context of SMEs. Third, the study contributes to research on the effects of family ownership on the general functioning of a firm. In particular, it provides new insights into how family ownership may affect R&D intensity.

Le rôle des familles au sein du système de santé mentale au Québec

Purpose. This paper aims to summarize the current situation regarding the role of families of persons with mental disorders within the mental health system in Quebec.Methods. We made a research in the most recent and pertinent papers or books regarding: 1) the history of the family involvement in the mental health system in Quebec; 2) the present situation of these families and the models that we can see and 3) identify in recent governmental or research documents recommendations regarding a greater empowerment of the families in the mental health system.Results. The research provides a historical perspective to the roles occupied by families. First the family was described as a causal agent; the work of the psychoanalyst Freud described the family unit as a source of conflicts in the areas of affect and sexual dynamics, and which results in the appearance of psychiatric symptoms. Later, this view of a causal agent came both from the point of view of genetic and from expressed emotions. In the 70's new perspectives such as general systems theory (von Bertalanffy, 1968), described the family as responsive to mental disorder of one of its members rather than a responsible agent. With the deinstitutionalization movement, the family was perceived as a source of solutions for persons with mental illness, but also as persons who can live some burden. This subject became well described and a several studies reported about adverse effects of caring for a person with mental disorder on the health, well-being and feeling of caregiver burden. In the 90's, some government action plans called for the relationship between the family and the health system as a partnership. Also, families want to be involved in decisions about care and to be informed about the diagnosis and treatment options. ( Lefley et Wasow, 1993)A new model developed by FFAPAMM that identifies three main roles enables to contextualize the current role in the current system. This model, called CAP lists and describes three roles of families that, if they are dependent on the past, continue to mingle in our time. These roles are:Accompanist: the role imposed by being near a person with mental illness (Fradet, 2012). As an accompanist, the family needs to establish relationships with health professionals. Accompanists want to be considered by stakeholders and be respected in their desire to share information and participate in decisions.Client: this is the role that derives from the accompanist when the caregiver receives care services for its psychological or physical problems related to the fact support a sick person.Partner: it is relative to the involvement (or not) the role of family members in the organization of care. It is a role of participation and decision-making. In this context, we also speak of participation in the consultation mechanisms.Recommendations from a Quebec research project and a report of the Commission on Mental Health of Canada will consider a future where the needs and aspirations of families will be taken into account in mental health general services, short term health care, community mental health services. There are also some guidelines regarding education for professionals about the needs of families and about changing politics.Conclusion. There exists in all associations of families of person with mental disorders, training on topics such as how to behave towards different mental disorders or aggressiveness near reached. A project of the Douglas Institute has hired a family member to the emergency room to help families better manage this often difficult time and to facilitate communication with stakeholders. Another project called "Learning to come closer without aggression" has helped more than 200 family members undergo training inspired by the Omega approach, which helps them better manage their own behavior in situations of aggression with their loved one.

Dreaming Ourselves and Aspirations Into Places of Higher Education

Dreams and aspirations are at the core of what higher education is about. Students and scholars alike, the world over, are engaged in the realization of dreams that bring forth new opportunities, new ways of seeing and being and of changing the world. Many Maori students dream of making a difference and see the pursuit of higher education as a way to bring their dreams into reality. Often their dreams reflect family and community aspirations bringing with it a significant burden of responsibility and obligation. And for Maori academics and researchers like me, my dreams are not too different to those of my own students except that where students pursue a pathway towards becoming relevant, academics are challenged to remain so. In this chapter, I will share some of my/our hopes and experiences and how Maori went about dreaming ourselves into the staff make up, curriculum and research activities in the School of Psychology at the University of Waikato.

Lifestyle Preference Theory: No match for young Australian women

Women’s work and family choices are affected by social pressures and external constraints. Understanding young women’s aspirations for future work and family is important for understanding their future needs and for developing supportive work–family practices and policies. Despite criticism, Lifestyle Preference Theory has been argued to explain women’s life choices, and historically has been used to inform Australian policy. We address three issues: whether Lifestyle Preference Groups are consistent with young Australian women’s stated preferences; whether aspirations are consistent over time; and whether women’s later lives are consistent with their earlier stated preferences. Using four waves of data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH), young women’s work and family aspirations were investigated cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Most aspired to both paid work and family; most changed their preferences over time; and the fit between preferences in 2000 and lifestyle in 2009 was modest. Lifestyle Preference Theory was not an adequate fit to the data.

Local text cohesion, reading ability and individual science aspirations: key factors influencing comprehension in science classes

In response to the concern of the need to improve the scientific skills of school children, this study investigated the influence of text design (in terms of text cohesion) and individual differences, with the aim of identifying pathways to improving science education in early secondary school (Key Stage 3). One hundred and four secondary school children (56 females, 48 males), aged 12–13 years took part in the study. To assess the influence of local cohesion (lexical and grammatical links between adjacent sentences) in science texts, we measured students' comprehension (through multiple choice questions) of science text that was high and low in local cohesion. To explore the role of individual differences, students completed tests to measure general reading ability, general intelligence, facets of conscientiousness, science self‐concept and individual, friends and family aspirations in science. Students were more accurate in answering comprehension questions after reading text that was high in cohesion than low in cohesion, suggesting that high local text cohesion improved students' comprehension of science text. Reading ability predicted increased comprehension for both text designs. Individual aspirations in science accounted for unique variance for comprehension for high cohesion text. Implications for the teaching of secondary school science are discussed.

Why Immigrant Background Matters for University Participation: A Comparison of Switzerland and Canada

This article extends our understanding of the difference in university participation between students with and without immigrant backgrounds by contrasting outcomes in Switzerland and Canada and by the use of new longitudinal data that are comparable between the countries. The research includes family socio-demographic characteristics, family aspirations regarding university education, and the student's secondary school performance as explanatory variables of university attendance patterns. In Switzerland, compared with students with Swiss-born parents, those with immigrant backgrounds are disadvantaged regarding university participation, primarily due to poor academic performance in secondary school. In comparison, students with immigrant backgrounds in Canada display a significant advantage regarding university attendance, even among some who performed poorly in secondary school. The included explanatory variables can only partly account for this advantage, but family aspirations regarding university attendance play a significant role, while traditional variables such as parental educational attainment are less important. In both countries, source region background is important. Possible reasons for the cross-country differences are discussed.

Rural House-Building and Land Resource Use Control

The unprecedented loss of arable land has long been a matter of urgent concern to the Chinese government. Rural house-building craze in some underdeveloped area in China is one of the main factors which caused the destruction of farmland . Why do villagers use scarce farmland to construct house? And why has the Chinese government been unable to control housing construction in the countryside? Previous studies of the factors motivating the rural housing boom tend to explain this either as an economic rational actors or a social mobility tactic.This paper presents interview in a village in Jiangxi province, and shows that land management out of order, the social aspirations of families and the habitus of land use rules are major stimuli of the rural house-building craze.