Household Maintenance Research Articles

The Right to a Job, the Right Types of Projects: Employment Guarantee Policies from a Gender Perspective

There is now widespread recognition that in most countries, private-sector investment has not been able to absorb surplus labor. This is all the more the case for poor unskilled people. Public works programs and employment guarantee schemes in South Africa, India, and other countries provide jobs while creating public assets. In addition to physical infrastructure, an area that has immense potential to create much-needed jobs is that of social service delivery and social infrastructure. While unemployment and enforced idleness persist, existing time-use survey data reveal that people around the world - especially women and children - spend long hours performing unpaid work. This work includes not only household maintenance and care provisioning for family members and communities, but also time spent that helps fill public infrastructural gaps - for example, in the energy, health, and education sectors. This paper suggests that, by bringing together public job creation, on the one hand, and unpaid work, on the other, well-designed employment guarantee policies can promote job creation, gender equality, and pro-poor development.

Senior Women and Rural Living

This study examined perceptions of what is important to maintaining health and well-being for senior women, 65 years or older, living independently in a rural community. One-on-one interviews were conducted with 22 senior women and 10 informal and formal support providers identified by the women participants. Participants discussed physical and psychosocial health care needs, available resources, and accessibility to health-related services. The senior women also expressed their desire to remain in their own home and community despite the challenges of household maintenance, distant family members, loneliness, chronic transportation difficulties, and limited access to social resources. Burdens placed on the voluntary efforts of informal care providers were also identified. Study findings suggest that women’s needs exceeded the resources available, and that accessible health and social support services must be organized, funded and factored into future health services and community development planning to meet the needs of senior women in an aging society.

What really matters to patients living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease? An exploratory study

There is limited published research into what really matters to people living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Most previous research in this area focuses on the impact of the symptoms of COPD, rather than on the issues defined as important by patients themselves. This paper describes an exploratory study investigating what is most important to people living with COPD. A qualitative approach employing in-depth interviews with COPD patients was chosen. Thematic analysis was used to code and categorize data. Six patients with 'moderate' to 'very severe' COPD were recruited. They considered engagement in specific activities to be very important (walking, household maintenance and driving), even though these activities were mainly centred around the home environment, or within confined spaces, due to their physical limitations. This restriction led to feelings of social isolation that these patients tried to overcome through social participation (holidays, social interaction). People with COPD often experience physical restrictions, which can lead to reduced community mobility and social isolation. In this study, despite their physical limitations, these patients had a strong desire to participate and be engaged in various activities. The importance of enabling patients to 'participate' rather than just 'do' should be considered when planning and delivering patient-centred interventions across the whole spectrum of severity of COPD.

Parentification and Maternal HIV Infection: Beneficial Role or Pathological Burden?

Parentification, along with parenting and child adjustment, were examined in 23 9-through 16-year-old youth from families affected by maternal HIV infection and 20 same-age peers whose mothers were not infected. Children whose mothers were HIV-positive reported to more often engage in parental role behaviors, relative to children of HIV-negative mothers. This difference remained even after controlling for the effects of current drug use, number of adults per child in the household, and marital status. Findings revealed a beneficial relationship between parentification and both child adjustment and parenting, particularly among families affected by maternal HIV infection. When relationships were examined separately by HIV status, the pattern of results suggested that parentification, which involves increased emotional closeness, rather than role-related tasks, which may involve increased responsibility of household maintenance, seems to foster an association with concurrent positive parenting and child adjustment among families coping with HIV/AIDS. Directions for future research, including the need for methodological advances in the field are discussed.

Special Section on CATIE Baseline Data: Components and Correlates of Family Burden in Schizophrenia

Components and correlates of caregiver burden in schizophrenia were studied.The family caregivers of 623 (43 percent) of 1,460 patients with schizophrenia enrolled in the Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE) were interviewed about resources they provided and experiences with patient behavior over the previous month. Patients were independently evaluated on symptoms, quality of life, neurocognition, medication side effects, and service use. Factor analysis reduced the caregiver data into four orthogonal factors assessing perceptions of patient problem behavior, patient impairment in activities of daily living, patient helpfulness, and resource demands and disruptions in the caregiver's personal routine.Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated differential correlates of burden for each factor, explaining 34 percent of variance each for problem behavior and resource demands and disruption, 21 percent for impairment in activities of daily living, and 38 percent for patient helpfulness. Demographic characteristics and patient symptoms explained the greatest proportion of variance, whereas quality of life and service use explained modest variance and patient neurocognition and medication side effects were not significantly associated with burden.Results underscore the need for continued intervention with family members after the acute inpatient phase of treatment to address the impacts of symptoms as well as incorporation of skills training into consumer treatment programs to improve consumer contributions to household maintenance.

Variation in Sources of Clinician-Rated and Self-Rated Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Disability

It is unclear how well self-reports and clinician ratings of performance in the instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs; household maintenance tasks) correspond and why they may differ. We assessed clinician-rated IADL performance using an occupational therapy protocol, the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS). AMPS and self-rated IADL disability were compared in two groups of nondemented elderly persons without ADL limitation: a group with functional limitation only (self-reported difficulty in some area of upper or lower body function, n = 139) and a group that reported functional limitation plus IADL disability (difficulty in at least one IADL task, n = 49). Occupational therapists were blind to self-reports, and all assessments were conducted in respondent homes. Self-rated IADL disability was significantly associated with the AMPS motor skill score (r = -.34, p <.001), but the motor skill score was only moderately sensitive (61%) and specific (67%) in identifying self-rated disability. In adjusted logistic regression models, clinician-rated performance and self-rated IADL disability shared some physical predictors, but only clinician-rated performance was related to cognitive status. AMPS process skill scores did not relate to self-rated IADL disability or physical or cognitive status. In this sample of older adults without dementia or ADL disability, clinician ratings of IADL motor skill and self-rated IADL disability were correlated. Physical deficits appear to be more salient in self-ratings than is cognitive ability, because cognitive ability (in particular, verbal fluency) was associated only with clinician-rated IADL performance.

Activities of daily living and social activities in people with multiple sclerosis in Stockholm County

Objective: To describe independence in personal and instrumental activities of daily living (ADL), and frequency of social/lifestyle activities in a population-based sample of people with multiple sclerosis in Stockholm. Design: Population-based survey. Setting: Data collection in home environment. Subjects: One hundred and sixty-six people with multiple sclerosis. Interventions: Data were collected using measurements and structured interviews. Main measures: Independence in ADL was assessed by the Barthel Index; independence in personal and instrumental ADL by the Katz Extended ADL Index; and frequency of social/lifestyle activities by the Frenchay Activities Index. Results: The mean age was 519 ± 12 years in the included 166 people with multiple sclerosis, of whom 71% (n = 118) were women. Fifty-two per cent (n = 85) were independent in personal ADL, 30% (n = 50) in instrumental ADL, and 35% (n = 57) had normal frequency of social/lifestyle activities. Most frequently affected ADL items were cleaning indoors and outdoors transportation (62%, n = 102) and the social/lifestyle items of household maintenance (59%, n = 97), walking outside (59%, n = 97), heavy housework (61%, n = 100), and gardening (68%, n = 112). Conclusions: ADL and social/lifestyle activities were affected in two-thirds of people with multiple sclerosis in Stockholm. The most affected items were items that could be classified as mobility-related and physically demanding, underlining the importance of developing and using evidence-based exercise treatments and rehabilitation to increase independence in people with multiple sclerosis in Stockholm.

Invoking Household Cooperation in the Commons Dilemma of CO2 Emission Reduction

In the modern community, global effort is required to reduce the CO2 emissions resulting from human actions to acceptable levels. However, global objectives may contradict individual benefits; attempts to reduce CO2 emissions can result in the commons dilemma. This paper explores how the cooperation of individual households can be invoked to achieve a global target of reducing CO2 emissions from households (HACO2) in cities. A commons payoff function linked household benefits to the number of cooperators in a city: a CO2 emission trading scheme (CETS) for households was introduced into the payoff function as a way to support cooperators. A multi-agent simulator was applied to a search for relationships among parameters in the payoff function and social cooperation from households (R). Results indicate that levying only household maintenance charges is an ineffective way to gain the cooperation of more than half of the households in a city, and extremely high maintenance also discouraged cooperative behavior; the use of CETS could increase cooperation, and R > 0.6 when emission trading prices were five times higher than unit reduction costs, and when unit maintenance charges were almost the same as reduction costs; and it was impossible to gain cooperation from all households until opinions about resource use and reducing emissions were changed.

Modeling household interactions in daily in-home and out-of-home maintenance activity participation

The activity travel patterns of individuals in a household are inter-related, and the realistic modeling of activity-travel behavior requires that these interdependencies be explicitly accommodated. This paper examines household interactions impacting weekday in-home and out-of-home maintenance activity generation in active, nuclear family, households. The in-home maintenance activity generation is modeled by examining the duration invested by the male and female household heads in household chores using a seemingly unrelated regression modeling system. The out-of-home maintenance activity generation is modeled in terms of the decision of the household to undertake shopping, allocation of the task to one or both household heads, and the duration of shopping for the person(s) allocated the responsibility. A joint mixed-logit hazard-duration model structure is developed and applied to the modeling of out-of-home maintenance activity generation. The results indicate that traditional gender roles continue to exist and, in particular, non-working women are more likely to share a large burden of the household maintenance tasks. The model for out-of-home maintenance activity generation indicates that joint activity participation in the case of shopping is motivated by resource (automobiles) constraints. Finally, women who have a higher propensity to shop are also found to be inherently more efficient shoppers.

Change among the Gatekeepers: Men, Masculinities, and Gender Equality in the Global Arena

Change among the Gatekeepers: Men, Masculinities, and Gender Equality in the Global Arena

Why Remittances Shouldn’t Be Blamed for Rural Underdevelopment in Mexico

Leigh Binford, borrowing from Jones (1995a), suggests two major thematic positions in Mexican–US migration and development research: first, neoMarxist critiques and structural inquiries of the 1970s and 1980s; and second, ‘apologetic’ functional models of the 1980s and 1990s, which come to positive rather than negative conclusions concerning remittance outcomes. Neo-Marxists and structural models are represented in Binford’s article by Mines (1981), Reichert (1981) and Wiest (1984). These researchers approached migration and the conspicuous consumption of remittance investments as distorting forces that perpetuate dependency, intensify social inequalities, and trap rural sending households in cycles of migration. Functionalists (including work by the authors, among others, e.g. Cohen, 2001, 2002; Conway, 2000; Conway and Cohen, 1998, 2002; Durand et al., 1996a; Jones, 1992, 1995a, 1995b, 1998; Massey and Parrado, 1998; Massey et al., 1994) are portrayed as ‘reductionists’ because we focus on the role remittance outcomes can play in the maintenance of migrant households. We are also faulted as apologetic, because we argue that remittances sometimes become the basis for micro-economic investment and small business incubation. Binford argues that migration between Mexico and the US and remittance outcomes will contribute to rural economic development when, and if, it leads to a future marked by local/regional growth of the sort that will Comment

Life-style activities in older people without intellectual impairment: a population-based study

Activities of daily living are important indicators of the functional status and wellbeing of older persons. Data derived from life-style activities of the community at large are important for such diverse purposes as characterising the individual's ability for independent living, studying normal ageing, or investigating social factors in rehabilitation. Our objective was to determine patterns in the life-style activities of people aged 65 years and older who had no intellectual impairment. The article is a cross-sectional study of a population-based sample. Eligible people were non-institutionalised and aged 65 years or older, resident in the province of Guadalajara, Spain, and without intellectual impairment as assessed by the 10-item Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire. Questionnaires were administered by trained interviewers and included questions about the daily activities of the Adelaide Activities Profile (AAP), distributed among the four categories of domestic chores, household maintenance, service to others, and social activities. Each item was rated 0 = absent or 1 = present, and total scores ranged from 0 to 19. The sample included 192 men and 196 women from rural areas and 172 men and 220 women from urban areas. In the category of domestic chores, mean ratings for women (4.56, 95% CI 4.30 to 4.84) were significantly higher (p <0.05) than for men (1.36, 95% CI 1.11 to 1.62) both in urban and rural areas, except in the oldest age group (> or =85 years). In the subscale of household maintenance, also except for group of > or =85 years, men rated significantly higher (3.31, 95% CI 3.11 to 3.53) than women (2.34, 95% CI 2.21 to 2.47), independent of the place of residence. Women scored significantly higher than men in activities associated with service to others. Men younger than 80 years from rural areas were significantly more involved in social activities than women. In urban areas both sexes scored similarly in social activities The differences found among the AAP scales in relation to gender was a clear indication of the well established roles for men and women in our sociocultural context. The 19-item version of the AAP scale is a valuable survey instrument as an objective guide for studying activities related to life-style in community settings.

Goal Priorities Identified through Client-Centred Measurement in Individuals with Chronic Stroke

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify goal priorities in a sample of individuals with chronic stroke. METHOD: In this descriptive study involving 19 community-dwelling individuals with stroke, participants were interviewed on the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) to ascertain problem areas experienced after hospital discharge. Once problems were identified, they were classified under the three dimensions of the COPM: self-care, productivity, and leisure. RESULTS: The mean time since stroke was 6.8 (±2.9) years. Eighty-four problems were identified within the three dimensions of the COPM. The most frequently cited problems in each dimension were bathing (self-care) by 42% of participants, household maintenance (productivity) by 32% of participants, and walking outdoors (leisure) by 32% of participants. Overall, participants rated their performance of identified problems and satisfaction with their abilities as low and rated each dimension as equally important for problem priority. CONCLUSION: Long after hospital discharge, individuals with chronic stroke were able to identify issues of concern that could benefit from involvement of rehabilitation professionals. Clinicians should be aware that issues of bathing, walking, household maintenance, and recreational activities are of particular importance to people with chronic stroke living in the community. A client-centred approach to problem generation (ie, use of the COPM) may assist in enhancing client involvement and motivation towards rehabilitation.

Model for Allocation of Maintenance Activities to Household Members

Household maintenance activities and associated tours, even if individually implemented, should be thought of as satisfying the needs of the entire household rather than simply the needs of the person who implements the activity. These activities are characterized by a high degree of substitution between household members who could implement them. This characteristic suggests a modeling structure in which maintenance activities are generated by the entire household and then allocated to the household members for implementation. In this approach, the modeling of allocated activities is executed by a sequence of two linked discrete choice models. The first model relates to the entire household and returns total daily frequency of individual maintenance tours by purpose. The second model relates to the tour level and returns the allocation of each generated tour to a particular household member. Within the general framework of a regional demand modeling system, these models are applied after, and are conditional on, the mandatory and joint tour generation stage. The statistical analysis and model estimation for this implementation of allocated household maintenance activities allow for important insights into the intrahousehold decision-making mechanism and improved travel demand forecasts. Models of this type have been implemented as components of the regional travel demand modeling system recently developed for the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.

Discretionary time among older adults: how do physical activity promotion interventions affect sedentary and active behaviors?

Investigation goals were to document discretionary time activities among older adults, determine whether time spent in discretionary activities varied by gender, and investigate whether participation in a prescribed physical activity (P) intervention increased the time that older adults spend in discretionary time physical activities that were not specifically prescribed by interventions. Longitudinal data were drawn from 2 published studies of older adults. Study 1 compared 2 PA interventions in healthy older men and women (N = 103, M =70.2 years), and Study 2 compared a PA intervention with a nutrition intervention in healthy older women (N =93, M =63.1 years). Participants in both studies completed similar assessments of their discretionary time activities using the Community Healthy Activities Model Program for Seniors questionnaire. Across both studies, at baseline, over 95% of participants reported talking on the telephone and reading as frequent sedentary discretionary time activities; over 80% reported visiting with friends and watching television or listening to the radio. Women engaged in significantly greater hours of social activities and household maintenance activities than did men (p <.05). From baseline to 12-month posttest, social, recreational, and household activities remained stable by gender and across time after participating in a PA intervention. Despite previously documented 2- to 3-hr increases in physical activities occurring in response to the study interventions, increases did not generalize for most participants to activities not prescribed by the intervention. Older adults are participating in numerous sedentary social and recreational activities that appear to remain stable across time and in the face of PA intervention prescriptions.

How do female and male cardiac patients and their spouses share responsibilities after discharge from the hospital?

This study explored sex differences in household and employment responsibilities among cardiac patients (N = 63; 46 men) and spouses during the 5 months following discharge from the hospital. Results showed that both patients and partners maintained traditional sex-typed activities. As patients or spouses, women tended to assume greater responsibility for domestic tasks such as laundry, cleaning, and cooking than their husbands. Men as patients or spouses tended to assume greater responsibility for household repair and maintenance tasks. Husbands also worked more for pay outside the home than did wives, except in couples where the male patient was high risk. Correlations for male patients indicated that reports of more cardiac symptoms were associated with assuming fewer responsibilities. In contrast, among women, the correlations between symptoms and activities were more complex and suggested that female patients might not be heeding signs of overexertion.

Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca (review)

Zapotec Science is an absorbing anthropological study of a contemporary farming community in the village of Talea de Castro, in the Rincón region of the Northern Sierra Oaxaca in Mexico. Roberto González studies agricultural work and how the people of this Zapotec community integrate their subsistence-oriented agricultural practices and beliefs with a self-consciously constrained relationship with wider markets. He explores Taleans' subsistence practices, especially the cultivation of maize and smallholder production of sugar cane and coffee, which are grown for local use and sale. The conceptual theme that unites all production and consumption of food in the village is mantenimiento, or household maintenance.

The Impact of Chronic Pain on Life in the Household

To study what happens in a family where one member suffers from chronic pain, we quantitatively assessed the effect of chronic pain resulting from complex regional pain syndrome type 1 (CRPS) on 1) employment status, 2) time allocation, 3) additional domestic help, and 4) out-of-pocket expenses of Dutch patients (n = 50) and their spouses (n = 43). This study is the first to measure the effect of chronic pain on time allocation by means of a diary assessment technique. The results were compared with normative values for the Dutch population overall. In households containing a male patient, the total employment full time equivalent (FTE) decreased by 47% (P = 0.05), with the result that the mean household income decreased by $4,000 (P = 0.01). In those with a female patient, there was a reduction in FTE of 29% (P < 0.05), causing a decrease of the mean household income by $2,000 (p < 0.001). As compared with controls, patients were found to spend less time on paid employment, and to invest more time in household maintenance and housekeeping. Of 50 patients, 35 received a mean of 4.5 hours per week of domestic help. The mean out-of-pocket expenses related to CRPS amounted $1,350 per patient per year. Spouses were forced to invest more time on housekeeping and household maintenance, which resulted in less time for personal needs and leisure activities. There were only small differences in time allocation between cases where the sufferer was male or female and, similarly, only minor variation between hand-affected or foot-affected patients. Households with either male or hand-affected patients did prove to have higher out-of-pocket expenses as compared with households containing female or foot-affected patients. Those containing female or hand-affected patients required more domestic help than households either with male or foot-affected patients. The present study demonstrates that chronic pain due to CRPS has a profound impact on many aspects of the lives of both patients and their spouses.

Housing Return And Construction Cycles

This paper presents a model of a mature city that depends upon the rehabilitation of old home sites for new housing. Within the model housing returns, housing construction, mortgage loan terms, and household maintenance behavior are all endogenous. The model?s premise is that the value of a home, unlike the value of many other financial assets, depends upon the care its owner exerts on upkeep. Banks respond to this moral hazard problem by restricting the size of the loans they are willing to issue. As a result people bid what the can for housing, rather than what they may wish to. This in turn ties housing prices to changes in the endowment process which are both predictable and time varying. When endowments are growing quickly (a city with a rapidly growing economy) housing prices exhibit above market expected returns. Because banks within the model act rationally, they set mortgage terms based upon their beliefs regarding future housing prices. This leads to the empirically verified prediction that current mortgage loan to value ratios can be used to forecast future housing returns. Developers are also fully cognizant of how housing prices are set and react accordingly. When housing prices are expected to increase faster than the rate of interest developers acquire land for construction. Then once the developers believe housing returns will stop increasing they develop and sell their holdings leading to a construction boom. Thus, the model predicts that developer holdings can be used to forecast housing returns.

Exposure of garbage truck drivers and maintenance personnel at a waste handling centre to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons derived from diesel exhaust.

Exposure to diesel exhaust was evaluated in summer and winter by measuring vapour and particle phase polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Fifteen PAHs were simultaneously determined from the air samples obtained from truck drivers collecting household waste and maintenance personnel at a waste handling centre. The major compounds analysed from the personal air samples of exposed workers were naphthalene, phenanthrene and fluorene. The total PAH exposure (sum of 15 PAHs) of garbage truck drivers ranged from 71 to 2,660 ng m(-3) and from 68 to 900 ng m-3 in the maintenance work. The exposure of garbage truck drivers to benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P) ranged from the mean of 0.03 to 0.3 ng m(-3) whereas no B[a]P in control samples or in those collected from maintenance workers was detected. A statistically significant difference in diesel-derived PAH exposure between the garbage truck drivers and the control group in both seasons (in summer p = 0.0022, degrees of freedom (df) 70.5; and in winter p < 0.0001, df = 80.4) was observed. Also, a significant difference in PAH exposure between the garbage truck drivers and the maintenance workers (in summer p < 0.0001, df = 50.1; and in winter p < 0.0001, df = 44.2) was obtained.