Anticipating modernity: the Jewish ‘welfare state’ in biblical and medieval times

The impact of religion on social policies and its role in the development, structuring and functioning of welfare states has only recently attracted significant attention. Studies of the relationship between religion and the welfare state have given little consideration to whether the religious precepts and values of the major religions, and the ways of life which they have shaped, are consistent with the idea of the welfare state. This paper shows that the elements of the definition of the modern welfare state were reflected in Jewish communal life as either prescribed by Jewish law (halakha) or lived during both ancient and medieval times, and that communal life was ‘welfare‐state‐like‘. In doing so this paper demonstrates that the idea of the welfare state is consistent with Judaism.     

赋权与增能：农民工弱势地位改变的根本途径

农民工①作为一个特殊的群体，为国家和社会的经济发展做出了巨大的贡献，可是他们处于社会的弱势和边缘状态，无法分享经济和社会发展的成果。对此，文章分析了农民工弱势地位的基本表现，农民工弱势地位的产生原因，提出改变农民工弱势地位的途径：赋权和增能。     

Child poverty and family policies across eighteen wealthy Western democracies

While a good deal has been written about the potential value of family policies in reducing child poverty in Western countries, few cross-national quantitative studies have been carried out on this topic. This article uses ordinary least squares regression analysis on panel data from 18 Western democracies from 1987 to 2007 to test the significance of family policies and other welfare policies on child poverty rates. It extends existing research on the relationship between family policies and child poverty by utilizing a broader data-set in terms of time, countries, and child poverty measures. The main finding is that all three of the main family policies studied – child cash and tax benefits, paid parenting leaves, and public support for childcare – correlate significantly with lower child poverty rates. Somewhat surprisingly, disability and sickness insurance also correlates significantly with lower child poverty in nearly every model and test. These findings provide valuable insight for future research and policy-making in the area of child poverty.     

Financial policy innovation for social change: a case study of China's green credit policy

Financial policy impacts on a range of social issues such as poverty alleviation, education, pollution control, etc. Making good use of financial policy and applying innovation to existing financial systems can generate positive outcomes for society. This article is to discuss the case of green credit policy in China. This policy was jointly announced in 2007 by financial and environmental regulators. According to this policy, banks were encouraged to give more loans to environmental friendly companies than to others. Such policy has made great progress, and it became a more formal document entitled ‘Green Credit Guideline’ in 2012. This guideline included a comprehensive definition on green credit and specified several requirements at practical levels. Despite the great success, challenges of implementing such policy still remain. First, information about corporate environmental performance is insufficient; second, market incentives for green credit policy are not high enough; third, most banking staff lack knowledge and capacity to handle environmental affairs. Nevertheless, this case still sheds light on how financial policy innovation drives social changes. The key is to identify the connection between social issues and financial issues, and then to make a business case that creates pressures or incentives for financial institutions. This requires a market where social and environmental cost is appropriately priced and internalized to those who generate it. Ideally, financial policies should help shape such a market so that society can share values created by financial institutions.     

＂贫困＂的多模态表征

本文以中介话语分析、多模态社会符号学为理论框架从语言、图像两方面探讨"贫困"现象的话语表征方式。基于BNC语料库揭示"贫困"的词汇语法模式,在语篇层面以媒体对贫困弱势群体表征为例分析其语篇语法,并探讨新闻报道中与"贫困"相关的视觉语法。"贫困"不仅仅表征为穷者匮乏的物质存在,更表征所映现的符号状态和人类精神。     

Repelling the “Rutter”: Social Differentiation Among Rural Teenagers

This paper examines low‐income white rural teenagers' management of race and class‐based inequality. It analyzes how these teenagers constructed boundaries to distinguish themselves from outsiders, but also to distinguish themselves from the local abject category of “rutter.” The findings reveal hidden interconnections between race and class in interactional practice, and highlight local processes of differentiation through which actors attempt to deflect stigma and attain credibility. The paper discusses how interactional mechanisms such as “internal othering” and “stigma‐theory” bolster race and class credibility, but reproduce inequality.     

Bootstrap methods for bias correction and confidence interval estimation for nonlinear quantile regression of longitudinal data

This paper examines the use of bootstrapping for bias correction and calculation of confidence intervals (CIs) for a weighted nonlinear quantile regression estimator adjusted to the case of longitudinal data. Different weights and types of CIs are used and compared by computer simulation using a logistic growth function and error terms following an AR(1) model. The results indicate that bias correction reduces the bias of a point estimator but fails for CI calculations. A bootstrap percentile method and a normal approximation method perform well for two weights when used without bias correction. Taking both coverage and lengths of CIs into consideration, a non-bias-corrected percentile method with an unweighted estimator performs best.     

Inheritance,poverty, and disability

Inheritance is a significant means of transferring wealth from one generation to the next, and therefore increasingly attracts attention from researchers and policy-makers working on intergenerational and multidimensional poverty. However, until now disabled persons have been overlooked in these discussions. This oversight is particularly unfortunate because, as a group, the estimated one billion people with disabilities (some 15% of the world’s population) are among the poorest and most marginalized of the global population. Over the past decade, a small but growing literature has examined the recursive connections between poverty and disability throughout the developing world. In this paper, we argue that disabled individuals are routinely denied inheritance rights in many low-income and middle-income countries, and that this is a significant and largely unrecognized contributor to their indigence. The denial of inheritance is both a social justice issue and a practice that can no longer be overlooked if disabled persons are to be brought into the development mainstream.     

上海生活垃圾减量化机制问题研究

开展生活垃圾减量化机制研究,使更多的垃圾作为"二次资源"进入新的产品生产循环,从而减少最终排放到环境中的垃圾数量,确保上海的可持续发展。     

新农合对四川藏区的减贫效应分析

The New Rural Cooperative Medi-cal System ( hereafter NRCMS) in Tibetan areas of Sichuan was started in Wenchuan in 2005 , and by 2008 covered all of the province’s Tibetan areas. This paper studies the effects of the NRCMS on im-proving the health of and alleviating poverty for farmers and herdsmen in Tibetan area of Sichuan. Most parts of the Tibetan areas of Sichuan are located in high altitude districts. Thirty two coun-ties of these areas are classified as “National Pov-erty Counties”. Poverty and disease go hand in hand in these regions. Kashin-Beck disease and hydatid disease are the major endemics in the pas-toral and agro-pastoral areas of Sichuan. Endemic, infectious and chronic diseases are widespread in Sichuan’s Tibetan areas. More than 70% of pa-tients are workers from 20 to 60 years old. Disea-ses are more prevalent in women than in men. Kashin-Beck disease and hydatid disease are cur-rently incurable. Patients suffer from health prob-lems, which leads to a decrease in their income and the heavy burden of medical expenses. The new rural cooperative medical system alleviates the negative effects of farmers’ falling into, or back in-to poverty due to disease. However, the existing medical compensation mechanism is not sufficient to solve the problem. The greatest impact of NRCMS on the farmers and herdsmen in Sichuan’s Tibetan areas is that the system has gradually changed local people’s medi-cal behavior, as well as their underlying ideas a-bout medicine: they begin to believe in hospitals. In particular, more pregnant women are choosing to give birth in hospitals, which reduces the rate of infant mortality and postpartum diseases, and im-proves the health of women. Since the full coverage of the NRCMS in 2008 , the number of people participating in the system has reached the overall average level of Si-chuan province. By analyzing the data before and after the implementation of this system, and meas-uring the impact of the system on people’s health, it can be found that the NRCMS’s role in serving the vulnerable population, such as the elderly and infant children, is more marked. Since the implementation of the NRCMS, all administrative villages in Sichuan Tibetan areas have established village clinics, which solved the problem of a shortage of medicines and doctors in those areas. Farmers and herdsmen have conven-ient access to medical treatment, enhancing the ac-cessibility of medical service. After the implemen-tation of the NRCMS, the health of the elderly population in rural areas has improved. Infant mor-tality rates have dramatically fallen. The implementation of the NRCMS improved the medical service capacity of township hospitals and village clinics. And the NRCMS has brought the township hospitals and village clinics into its scope of compensation, which greatly promotes the utilization of primary medical services in Tibetan areas. The poverty reduction effect of the NRCMS can be analyzed from two aspects:Firstly, the im-
provement in health leads to increased income, be-cause good health can promote labor productivity. Meanwhile, the increase in income will in turn im-prove the overall level of health. Secondly, the in-patient and outpatient compensation rate is raised year by year, which reduces the medical fees of farmers, and prevents them from falling back into poverty.