Children & youth

The Economist Magazine calls out BC

Dec 1, 2010
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Well, I never thought I’d see this rebuke of Canada and BC in The Economist Magazine of all places. But the current issue of the conservative magazine singles out BC for its high rate of child poverty. You can find it here. The piece highlights cuts to welfare, and notes, “One of the keenest slashers… View Article

Poverty reduction update

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Lots of developments on the Poverty Reduction front over the last two weeks. Here are a few updates: First, last week brought news that Danny Williams is stepping down as premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. Personally, I’m sad to see him go. Rarely mentioned in the news reports last week about his record of accomplishments… View Article

A Paradigm Shift is Happening

Nov 21, 2010
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A “paradigm shift” was the theme of Dr. Marti Glenn, one of the keynote speakers at the 2010 International Congress of The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology & Health, which took place from November 11-14 at Asilomar, California. Dr. Glenn, who is the Dean of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, began by saying that,… View Article

Why incentive pay won’t fix education or health care

Oct 14, 2010
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It turns out — surprise! — that it’s really hard to measure quality in complex social systems and that employing simplistic quantitative measures can backfire. That’s the take-home message from a recent talk by UC Berkley economist and public policy professor Jesse Rothstein who came to SFU to present his latest research on using standardized… View Article

What do we value more? Good taste or saving young lives?

Oct 9, 2010
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Last May there was uproar in the media about an advertising campaign planned by the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC).  The Insurance Corporation was targeting young drivers with a racy campaign to persuade them not to drink and drive.   The then Solicitor General Kash Heed put the kibosh on the campaign that had cost… View Article

New voices in support of a BC poverty reduction plan

Sep 30, 2010
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Two important new voices joined the call for a BC poverty reduction plan in the last couple days. First, on Tuesday, BC Provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall released a special report entitled Investing in Prevention. The report received quite a lot of media attention. However, most of the coverage dealt with the common-space issues of… View Article

What will it take to bring smarter family policy to BC?

Sep 27, 2010
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Did you know that the BC government has set a goal to reduce early childhood vulnerability to 15% by fiscal year 2015? You can hardly tell by their actions. BC did introduce full-day kindergarten in some communities this fall, but other than that the family policy front has been rather quiet lately. The latest childhood… View Article

Your Brain on Capitalism

Sep 7, 2010
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At least as far back as Sokrates, people have speculated on the relationship between psychology and politics. In the 20th century, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and members of the Frankfurt School (such as Herbert Marcuse) pioneered discussion about how individual dispositions affect one’s social and political ideologies. On the other hand, social psychologists like Stanley… View Article

The impact of the recession on young people

Aug 13, 2010
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The International Labour Organization published a report this week on world youth unemployment that seems to have some relevance here in British Columbia. The study, Global Employment Trends for Youth, outlines the devastating impact the recession has had on young people worldwide.  More than 80 million people aged 15 to 24 were unemployed at the… View Article