The gender gap in pensions in Latin America

Lower female lifetime labour market participation rates, greater interruptions during their working lives, and wage gaps contribute to create gender gaps in pensions at the time of retirement. The design of social security systems may reinforce or attenuate these gaps. This article provides new evidence on gender gaps in access to pensions and in pension income in four Southern Cone countries in Latin America and analyses their evolution between 2000 and 2013, showing significant improvements in both gaps, with differential patterns by countries. The decrease in the gender gap in pension income has been particularly significant in Argentina and Brazil. In both cases, the largest increases in pension values during the period correspond to the lowest income percentiles, where women are overrepresented. The application of redistributive policies in these countries, aimed at reducing poverty and inequality but not necessarily focused on gender equity, has had positive and probably unintended consequences in terms of reduction in gender gaps in pensions.     

Pension policy in China, Singapore, and South Korea: An assessment of the potential value of the notional defined contribution model

The rate of population aging is increasing in the developing world and the trend is particularly dramatic in East Asia. One consequence is sharp increases in old-age dependency ratios which have major implications for the sustainability of current public pension schemes. These trends are pushing pension policy experts in many of these countries to search for new pension models that are more suited to the increased demographic pressures they will be facing in the decades ahead. In this article we discuss five alternative public pension models with a focus on the newest of these models, the notional defined contribution (NDC) approach. We consider three countries with very different pension systems in place, two from East Asia (China and South Korea) and one from South East Asia (Singapore). The central question we address is which (if any) of the limitations in these existing models might more adequately be addressed using a variant of the NDC model. We conclude that the NDC model has the most to offer China and the least to offer Singapore.     

创新“城中村”社区治理的对策思考——以泉州市城东片区四社区为研究对象

创新"城中村"社区治理工作,是有效推进社会管理的重要内容。近年来泉州市在"城中村"社区治理方面进行了积极探索,并取得明显成效。要实现以"城中村"社区治理工作的创新推动城市管理创新,泉州应该在社区治理主体多元化、社区工作方式民主化、居民保障水平提高、社区管理者素质提升、社区文化建设加强等五个方面继续推进各种有益探索。     

地铁对城市现代化的影响

地铁是城市发展现代化的一个重要标志。本文分析了国内外城市地铁的构建、运营以及地铁在城市化进程中的作用，进而系统阐释了地铁对广州城市发展、社会生活及生态环境的影响和意义。     

浅析廊坊市加快科学发展的思路及措施

主要从思想建设、产业结构调整、城乡一体化方面探讨廊坊市抓住发展机遇,加快科学发展的思路。     

Extending social security coverage to the rural sector in China

In late 2009 China launched an innovative, voluntary programme that by 2011 had extended pension coverage to 326.4 million people in the rural sector, including contributors and beneficiaries. It requires one contribution per year and provides a flat‐rate benefit and a contributions‐related benefit through a contributory individual account, with a government guarantee that the benefit will continue for life. The programme encourages participation of persons who do not pay income taxes, and thus have no tax incentive to participate, by providing substantial government subsidies. As a further incentive, old‐age benefits are provided to older parents when all their adult children participate in the contributory programme.     

Monstrosities and moral publics

Interdisciplinary scholarship on neoliberal urban governmentality has been attentive to the knowledges and techniques of government currently emerging at the interface of local state politics and invested claims of voluntary private actors such as corporate partners and philanthropic agencies. This article draws attention to the workings of the aesthetic as an epistemological grounding for the rationalization of urban rule. Specifically, I explore a Toronto, Canada-based philanthropic agency’s reliance on a mise-en-scene of urban terror to animate its own self-validated knowledges about targeted inner-suburban subjects and spaces. In their circulation and demand for public address, the agency’s graphic public service announcements, launched in 2007, herald what I argue is a moralized set of knowledges about municipal renewal that has its own normative orientations grounded in a neoliberal political rationality, and tangentially, in racialized security imperatives. I detail various dimensions of the social life of a video associated with this public service campaign targeting ‘youth at risk’, considering the ethical, political and economic valences it was expected to convey; its semiotic exchange with other images and representations of disenfranchised spaces, subjects and communities; and the publics it attempted to interpellate. Importantly, given the agency’s current standing as a prominent player in Canadian urban policy arenas, I pay analytical attention to the visual campaign as a site for the production of knowledges about proper urban citizenship and social governance, and as such, a strategic-orienting device for urban policy interventions and directives.     

新型城镇化中的老城形象优化策略

城镇更新是城镇发展中"修复振兴、激发活力"的动力机制。而在拓展城镇规模,建设形成新城镇形象的过程中,保护老城风貌并采取各种优化、更新要素的方法传承形象特色,是不同历史阶段化解形象危机和传承文化特色的有效途径。尤其是在当前城乡一体、资源统筹的新型城镇化语境下,探索优化老城形象的策略,对未来城、镇、村的层级、梯度发展、增强城镇活力具有重要意义。本文从滁州老城物质风貌的显性与隐性形象要素入手,对形象要素"分裂、重构、整合"出的"生态、建筑、文化"等形态风貌关系进行分类分析,提出优化策略,为保护老城形象、传承文脉、转型发展注入新的活力。     

城市文化软实力构建的“网都”范式

当前全球数字网络化的发展浪潮和历史背景下,"网都"型文化中心城市建设成为转变城市文化发展方式、提升城市文化软实力的新的战略路径和城市设计愿景。城市发展的"网都"形态具有多元文化范式,要根据不同城市的特点和文化基础,推进网络媒介城市(media city)、网络文化产业高地、网络文化名城、互联网总部基地、文化科技融合的创新引领中心、网络文化宜居之都、互联网枢纽城市等不同类型的"网都"建设。不同的网都范型(paradigm)关切到城市文化软实力的不同层面,存在着从硬文化实力向软文化实力的渐变和过渡谱系;既可以单独构建特色网络文化城市的核心性格与差异化竞争力,也可以综合构建城市文化软实力的体系化架构。     

城市边缘地带地质灾害风险的形成与分配——以L市H社区的地质灾害为例

在风险社会中,既存在着普遍性风险,也存在着特殊性风险,考察特殊性风险的形成与分配应从微观层面入手。文章从风险社会学的角度研究L市边缘地带H社区的地质灾害风险。在梳理技术资料获取地质灾害风险形成的自然致灾因素之后,运用口头访谈方式直接从被访问者处获得一手资料,了解其个人生活史、进入社区的不同原因与方式、居住条件、生计方式等内容,探求直接或间接的影响该区域地质灾害风险形成的社会因素,最终得出该风险的分配原则:社会地位直接决定其风险地位。