Is Football an Indicator of Development at the International Level?

The aim of this paper is to examine whether football can be considered an indicator of development at the international level. An empirical econometric model is designed in order to analyse development in terms of GDP per capita as well as in terms of the Human Development Index. Cross-sectional and time-series information are used. The results suggest that FIFA rankings of national teams can be used to complement our understanding of multidimensional development, in particular, in those countries where the availability of information is not as good as researchers would like.     

Living Arrangement and Life Satisfaction of the Elderly in South Korea

With a rapid aging population in South Korea, the elderly living alone has received particular attention from researchers and stakeholders. Although previous research has found that living alone negatively affects life satisfaction of the elderly, much remains unclear about how life satisfaction of the elderly changes over time as their living arrangement change. To advance knowledge on life satisfaction of the elderly, using the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging we tested the association between life satisfaction (overall life, health, and financial) of the elderly and their living arrangement. Our longitudinal research found that the elderly living with family had significantly higher life satisfaction compared to those living alone between 2006 and 2016. In addition, individuals who had a superior economic profile and maintained physical activity and social relations showed higher life satisfaction than their counterparts. Our findings suggest that to improve the life satisfaction of the elderly living alone, both material and psychological support programs are needed. Future research is needed to account for the multi-faceted nature of life satisfaction.

     

Women and Retirement Planning: Towards the “Feminization of Poverty” in an Aging Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Hong Kong's population is aging but retirement research is largely missing from the research agenda in Hong Kong. This study, based on a telephone survey of 1,078 respondents, examines middle-aged adult's retirement planning activities in Hong Kong. The findings show men are more likely to be involved in financial planning, while women are more likely to take part in some forms of health, living arrangement and psychological planning for retirement. Further, there are age, education and income differences in the various forms of retirement planning activities within genders. Women are living longer; because of their lack of financial retirement planning, they are prime candidates for poverty. The discussion concludes with policy implications related to assisting midlife individuals, in particular women, in planning for retirement.     

Tolerance Within Community: Does Social Capital Affect Tolerance?

Credit cooperatives are financial intermediaries that pay attention to social criteria. Thus, if such entities want to survive and thrive in the new international context, they cannot ignore their inefficiencies in both the financial and social dimensions of their activity. However, previous research on efficiency in credit cooperatives is very limited and only considers their financial activity. To date, no study has been published giving evidence through indicators on whether these banking institutions are socially efficient. This paper therefore constructs a social efficiency index of Spanish credit cooperatives during the period 2008–2014 and examines its main explanatory factors. After applying a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis approach, the results from the first stage indicate that, on average, the social efficiency of Spanish credit cooperatives reaches an acceptable level of 66.42 %. Second-stage truncated regression reveals that entities with a greater proportion of branches in urban areas are socially less efficient, whereas both their size and the number of service points have a positive effect. Interestingly, social efficiency also varies significantly depending on the regional location of credit cooperatives in Spain. As a result, our findings enable these Social Economy financial institutions to both know their performance relative to their social activity and use this information to improve their competitiveness in the future.     

Comparing Rail Passengers’ Travel Time Use in Great Britain Between 2004 and 2010

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a unique insight into aspects of stability and change regarding the travel time use of rail passengers in Great Britain between 2004 and 2010. Empirical evidence is presented on how rail passengers spend their time, how worthwhile they consider their time use to be, the extent of advance planning of their time use and how equipped for time use they are in terms of the items they have to hand when they travel. The results reveal a consistent dominance of reading for leisure, window gazing/people watching and working/studying as favoured travel time activities. Over the six-year period, the availability and use of mobile technologies has increased. Listening to music in particular has doubled in its incidence suggesting an increasing capacity for travellers to personalise the public space of the railway carriage. Most notably the analysis reveals a substantial increase in the proportion of travellers overall making very worthwhile use of their time.     

Developmental Trajectories and Predictors of Social Exclusion Among Older Koreans: Exploring the Multidimensional Nature of Social Exclusion

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the developmental patterns of social exclusion among older Koreans over time. In addition, we identified the significant determinants that may increase the risk of social exclusion among older Koreans. The analyses were based on the panel data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing and included older adults from 2008 to 2012 (N?=?24,074) for the final analysis. Social exclusion was categorized into four different sub-dimensions: financial, social relational, social cultural, and emotional. The analysis was based on a semi-parametric group-based approach followed by multinomial logistic regression. The results showed considerable variations and different developmental trajectories by the social exclusion sub-dimensions among older Koreans; in particular, the results showed that being older, male, and less educated were significant indicators of social exclusion. This study adds to the limited body of literature on longitudinal studies of social exclusion among older Koreans, and the results will help develop interventions for older Koreans who are socially isolated.

     

‘Walking out’: the mobilities of love

ABSTRACT

In this article, I propose that mobility performs a crucial role in the production and sustenance of intimate relationships and focus, in particular, on courtship practices and their modern-day equivalents. I pursue this discussion through close readings of literary and autobiographical texts from the nineteenth century through to the millennium, and by means of a framework that triangulates the work of Tim Ingold, David Seamon and Henri Bergson. My focus here is on how the mobilities we practice during the everyday routines of courtship – i.e. the paths we make, the routes we take, the roads we travel, the journeys we repeat, the transport we use – come to characterise the relationship concerned and impact upon its progress. Both Ingold’s work on ‘lines’ and Seamon’s on ‘place-ballet’ are conceptually suggestive in this regard and speak to recent work in mobilities/cultural geography on the significance of patterns of movement in the praxis of relationships.     

Older Women and Grief: A New Direction for Research

ABSTRACT

While the grief of older women is often assumed to result from recent losses associated with the aging process, the grief reaction of many older women may be influenced by much earlier losses which are unique to women. We propose the effect of these unique losses may complicate the grief process by intensifying both the emotional and physical reaction to recent losses. We encourage researchers to consider losses which are unique to women in the research on grieving in the later stages of life, so that we may understand the impact of such losses.     

A behavioral two‐sex marriage model

In this paper we propose a particular marriage model, i.e., a model for the number of marriages for each age combination as a function of the vectors of the number of single men and women in each age group. The model is based on Dagsvik (2000) where it is demonstrated that a general type of matching behavior imply, under specific assumptions about the distribution of the preferences of the women and men, a convenient expression for the corresponding marriage model.

Data from the Norwegian Population Register for nine years are applied to estimate the model. We subsequently test the hypothesis that, apart from a random “noise”; component, the age‐specific parameters of the model change over time according to a common trend. We find that the hypothesis is not rejected by our data.     

Queen of Fights: Lesbians in Tunisian Sports

ABSTRACT

Sport within the Muslim context, including in the location of this study, Tunisia, remains an institution designed for the promotion of a heterosexual form of masculinity and the degradation of both femininity and women’s athleticism. Unlike recent advancements in the West, homosexuality remains viewed almost entirely negatively by the political, religious, and social debates in Muslim cultures. This overt hostility has almost entirely erased any visible gay culture within Muslim sports. It is within this context that this study finds importance. It represents the first-ever examination into the lives of lesbian Muslim athletes, in either a Muslim majority or non-majority state. Conducted on three lesbian athletes living in the Islamic country of Tunisia, we show that each is out of the closet to varying degrees but that homophobia within their sports—even on majority lesbian teams—remains rife. We discuss the coping strategies these athletes invoke to negotiate their sexual orientation in this highly homophobic nation and homohysteric sporting culture.     

Space,Context, and Human Capital: A Micro–Macro Perspective on the Social Environment and Financial Literacy in Later Life

Despite a large body of literature documenting the association between individual characteristics and financial literacy, our understanding of the impact of macro-environmental conditions on individual financial literacy remains limited, particularly in later life. Drawing from a micro–macro perspective on the social environment and individual processes, we examined the extent to which three state-level contextual characteristics were associated with individual financial literacy: tertiary educational attainment, poverty prevalence, and Internet penetration. We utilized data from the Understanding America Study for adults aged 50 years or older to assess financial literacy and data from the American Community Survey to evaluate contextual conditions. Cross-sectional multilevel regression models were used to examine the hypothesized effects. We found that state-level poverty prevalence was negatively associated with individual financial literacy, while state-level Internet penetration was positively associated with individual financial literacy, over and above individual characteristics known to impact financial literacy. No association was found between state-level educational attainment and individual financial literacy after controlling for respondents’ own education. Findings suggest that the social environment may condition older adults’ financial literacy through exposure to opportunities that promote knowledge acquisition. Interventions to enhance older adults’ financial literacy may benefit from targeted approaches that take into account the environmental characteristics of their locations of residence.

     

Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) and the Role of its 5 Pillars

Computer crime is a matter of increasing concern, and worldwide action is required if the proper responses to it are to be found. One of the tools that can be deployed here is the Global cybersecurity index (GCI), a control and feedback mechanism based on a composite indicator. The GCI is based on a hierarchy of sub-indicators. The indicators used for the final aggregation of the CGI are called pillars. Five pillars are applied to rank the eleven countries that are top of the rankings in a worldwide study. In this paper, our ranking is based on these pillars, and their role is investigated using partial order methodology. It turns out that the pillars “Technical (aspects)”, “Capacity building”, and “Cooperation” are of particular importance. In conclusion, a strategy is suggested for an “individualized ranking” that may be helpful for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or other institutions. Here, we apply the procedure for the project “Awareness Laboratory SME (ALARM) information security” and put our ideas up for discussion. In particular, the mathematical method will be transferred to SMEs as a means to support the effectiveness of awareness-raising measures and to improve the security behaviour of company employees.

     

Endogenous population growth may imply chaos

We consider a discrete-time neoclassical growth model with an endogenous rate of population growth. The resulting one-dimensional map for the capital intensity has a tilted z-shape. Using the theory of nonlinear dynamical systems, we obtain numerical results on the qualitative behaviour of time paths for changing parameter values. Besides stable and periodic solutions, erratic time paths may result. In particular, myopic and far-sighted economies — assumed to be characterised by low and high savings rate respectively — are characterised by stable per capita capital stocks, while solutions with chaotic windows exist between these two extremes.This work was supported by a grant from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. G. Feichtinger acknowledges financial support from the Austrian Science Foundation under contract No. P 9608-SOZ. The helpful comments of C. H. Hommes, G. Lee and of an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged.     

Financial Well-Being Components

The reported study advances psychological theory of well-being by offering deeper insight into the factors underlying financial well-being (FWB) in particular. An empirical investigation conducted into the determinants of FWB for two population groups, young workers and families with young children in the UK. Their financial decisions have important consequences for their households. A substantial internet survey of 654 people was conducted, which identified the most significant drivers of FWB or satisfaction, which is analogous to the measurement of subjective well-being in the domain of healthcare. The most significant finding from the regression is the significance for both groups of having control over their finances; control is even more important than the amount of available money for this population. A conclusion of the research is that the FWB would be increased if individuals could experience a greater sense of overall control of their money. In particular, financial institutions could provide products and processes to improve the FWB of their customers. There are also potential policy implications from the benefits of lower unsecured debt and increased savings to mitigate unexpected life events.     

A New Generalized Variance Approach for Measuring Multidimensional Inequality and Poverty

The paper suggests a new generalized variance concept for measuring multidimensional inequality of a stratified society, based on multivariate statistical methods, where the members of society form a cloud in the oblique space of dimensions of inequality, such as income, expenditure and property. The cloud presents the multidimensional inequality capsulized in the cloud. The goal is to condense all the inequality information embodied by the cloud into a composite compact metric characterizing both the shape and the inner structure of the cloud. Contrary to the conventional literature that considers multidimensionality as a unidimensional weighted combination of the dimensions, our new composite index measures the inequality of the configuration of the points in the cloud. Our aim is twofold. First, we introduce the Inequality Covariance Matrix (ICM) assigned to the cloud, with elements measuring the correlations among dimensions. Having ICM, we propose the Generalized Variance (GV) of ICM to measure the composite Generalized Variance Inequality (GVI) level. Second, to evaluate the stratum-specific structure of the overall inequality, we suggest a new two-stage procedure. In the first stage, we divide the total GVI into between-groups and within-groups effects. Then, in the second stage the contributions of the strata to the within-groups inequality and, the contributions of the dimensions to the between-groups inequality are calculated. This GVI approach is sensitive to the correlation system, decomposable into stratum effects and, the number of dimensions is not limited. Moreover, including the log-dimensions in the analysis, GVI yields an Entropy Covariance Matrix giving a new Generalized Variance Entropy index. Finally, the GVI of censored poverty indicators means multidimensional poverty measurement. This special complex task is not yet solved in the traditional literature so far.

     

Exploring Differences in Financial Literacy Across Countries: The Role of Individual Characteristics and Institutions

We explore microdata from the OECD/INFE survey on financial literacy of adult individuals. We find considerable differences in financial literacy across countries and decompose them into a part explainable by varying individual characteristics and a remainder. We show that individual characteristics matter with regard to differences in average financial literacy, but do not fully explain the gaps. We decompose financial literacy across its distribution and directly relate it to different policies. We then correlate the unexplained differences to institutional macroeconomic variables. We find strong correlations between unexplained differences and life expectancy, social contributions rate, PISA math scores, and internet usage, suggesting room for harmonization of environments across countries to close the financial literacy gap.

     

State of Inertia: Psychological Preparation of Single Australian and UK Baby Boomer Women for Retirement Housing Change

The transition into retirement is an important life phase that presents significant challenges in respect to well-being, lifestyle, and consumption choices. This article examines the consumption context of housing after retirement, in particular for the low-resourced cohort of single baby boomer women. Utilizing an extended Theory of Planned Behavior model, we examine the relationship between intention and actual behavior, in this case financial advice seeking, as an important component of the psychological preparedness of single female baby boomer women. Our analysis showed both Australian and UK single baby boomer women display different behaviors in terms of seeking advice and their mental preparedness to adjust to a change in their living arrangements. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for policy and further research.     

Kübra Gümüşay,Muslim digital feminism and the politics of visuality in Germany

abstract

Muslim women’s digital activism exists in complexly racialized visual contexts. This is exemplified in the journalism and activism of Kübra Gümü?ay, who first gained public attention as the purportedly first “hijabi columnist” in Germany. This essay draws on her series “50 Thoughts” as an entry point into her digital activism. I suggest that Gümü?ay uses this series to reveal the larger visual dilemmas with which she engages. Her digital activism functions by taking the risk to both expose and reconfigure the very conditions under which she is visible and comprehensible to her publics. In particular, I consider her activism as using digital spaces for self-poiesis (an imaginative remaking of self) as well as teleopoiesis (an imaginative reaching out to the other). This latter move functions both to gesture to an anti-racist community as well as to alliances among multiple feminisms.     

What Does Really Drive Consumer Confidence?

We construct a novel index of households’ macroeconomic environment (HOME) based on the data from 22 high-income European countries between 2002 Q1 and 2018 Q4. The resulting index is in line with the broad features of the countries’ business and financial cycles and captures well households’ perception of their underlying economic situation. We discuss joint properties of the HOME index and the widely employed survey-based consumer confidence indicator. We show that households’ expectations are tightly linked to current macroeconomic conditions. This finding echoes the literature linking consumer attitudes and actual economic developments. The HOME index also reflects the importance of asset prices and lending conditions for households’ behavior. In a single-country case study, we provide empirical evidence that links the proposed index to new credit extended to households. The evidence suggests that households need a longer period of good macroeconomic conditions to decide to take on a mortgage than they do in the case of a consumer loan.

     

The Importance of Variables in Composite Indices: A Contribution to the Methodology and Application to Development Indices

The paper examines the issue of weights and importance in composite indices of development. Building a composite index involves several steps, one of them being the weighting of variables. The nominal weight assigned to a variable often differs from the degree to which the variable affects the scores of the overall index. The newly suggested notion of importance is based on the idea that an important indicator, if omitted from the index, causes large changes in countries’ results. We propose a method of measuring the importance and apply it to inequality variables in composite indices of development. The results show a low importance for most inequality variables, and for some of them, a large discrepancy between the nominal weights and the importance. We argue that the importance of variables should be considered in the process of index construction. This may imply a modification of the index when there is a large discrepancy between the nominal weights and importance and when the importance of some variables is extremely low. Whether any such modification is justified must be decided within the context of the particular index.