Vocational Status,Hukou and Housing Migrants in the New Century: Evidence from a Multi-city Study of Housing Inequality

In the 1960s and 1970s, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union experienced an unanticipated stagnation in the process of mortality reduction that was accelerating in the west. This was followed by even starker fluctuations and overall declines in life expectancy during the 1980s and 1990s. We identify statistically the extent to which, since the 1990s, the countries of the post-communist region have converged as a group towards other regional or cross-regional geopolitical blocks, or whether there are now multiple steady-states (‘convergence clubs’) emerging among these countries. We apply a complex convergence club methodology, including a recursive analysis, to data on 30 OECD countries (including 11 post-communist countries) drawn from the Human Mortality Database and spanning the period 1959–2010. We find that, rather than converging uniformly on western life expectancy levels, the post-communist countries have diverged into multiple clubs, with the lowest seemingly stuck in low-level equilibria, while the best performers (e.g. Czech Republic) show signs of catching-up with the leading OECD countries. As the post-communist period has progressed, the group of transition countries themselves has become more heterogeneous and it is noticeable that distinctive gender and age patterns have emerged. We are the first to employ an empirical convergence club methodology to help understand the complex long-run patterns of life expectancy within the post-communist region, one of very few papers to situate such an analysis in the context of the OECD countries, and one of relatively few to interpret the dynamics over the long-term.     

基本养老服务制度建设的理论阐释和政策框架

随着人口老龄化程度的加深,养老服务已经成为政府和全社会关注的重大民生工程。其中,基本养老服务制度建设成为一个关键议题。文章认为,如果这一关键议题不搞清楚,势必会影响养老服务的路径选择,甚至影响所选择的养老服务的发展路线和发展道路是否顺畅。为此,文章结合已经出台的养老服务政策,首先,从社会政策理论的角度阐明在什么情况下要建立基本养老制度,以及社会福利体制与基本养老服务制度建设的关系;其次,对养老服务制度建设的意识形态理据和中国养老服务模型的选择进行阐述,据此提出混合经济的养老服务模型,认为必须建立基本养老制度,厘清政府与市场之间的关系和界限;再次,提出基本养老服务制度的政策框架。     

雷锋生命价值的三重维度及当代意蕴

雷锋的生命价值从历史、空间、境界三重维度上表现为延伸性、普遍性和超越性。雷锋的生命价值符合人与社会全面发展进步的需要,即符合人的超越性的要求、符合群体共同发展的要求、符合中华民族道德实践的要求、符合中国共产党的宗旨要求,是对生命为什么有价值、生命价值是什么、怎样实现生命价值问题的直接解答。     

Pathways from workplace flexibility to turnover intention: Role of work–family conflict,family–work conflict,and job satisfaction

This study examined the prevalence of workplace flexibility and the mechanisms that allow workplace flexibility to influence turnover intentions through work–family and family–work conflicts and job satisfaction among low‐wage workers in South Korea. Participants included 250 low‐wage workers whose monthly salary was less than 2 million Korean won (approx. $1,900). The study results indicate that low‐wage workers have limited access to workplace flexibility and that workplace flexibility plays a significant protective role in reducing their turnover intention, indirectly by decreasing work–family conflicts and enhancing job satisfaction. This article also discusses the implications of these findings for labor policy and social work practice.     

Integrating Operational and Organizational Aspects in Interdependent Infrastructure Network Recovery

Managing risk in infrastructure systems implies dealing with interdependent physical networks and their relationships with the natural and societal contexts. Computational tools are often used to support operational decisions aimed at improving resilience, whereas economics‐related tools tend to be used to address broader societal and policy issues in infrastructure management. We propose an optimization‐based framework for infrastructure resilience analysis that incorporates organizational and socioeconomic aspects into operational problems, allowing to understand relationships between decisions at the policy level (e.g., regulation) and the technical level (e.g., optimal infrastructure restoration). We focus on three issues that arise when integrating such levels. First, optimal restoration strategies driven by financial and operational factors evolve differently compared to those driven by socioeconomic and humanitarian factors. Second, regulatory aspects have a significant impact on recovery dynamics (e.g., effective recovery is most challenging in societies with weak institutions and regulation, where individual interests may compromise societal well‐being). And third, the decision space (i.e., available actions) in postdisaster phases is strongly determined by predisaster decisions (e.g., resource allocation). The proposed optimization framework addresses these issues by using: (1) parametric analyses to test the influence of operational and socioeconomic factors on optimization outcomes, (2) regulatory constraints to model and assess the cost and benefit (for a variety of actors) of enforcing specific policy‐related conditions for the recovery process, and (3) sensitivity analyses to capture the effect of predisaster decisions on recovery. We illustrate our methodology with an example regarding the recovery of interdependent water, power, and gas networks in Shelby County, TN (USA), with exposure to natural hazards.     

Cross‐Sectional Psychological and Demographic Associations of Zika Knowledge and Conspiracy Beliefs Before and After Local Zika Transmission

Perceptions of infectious diseases are important predictors of whether people engage in disease‐specific preventive behaviors. Having accurate beliefs about a given infectious disease has been found to be a necessary condition for engaging in appropriate preventive behaviors during an infectious disease outbreak, while endorsing conspiracy beliefs can inhibit preventive behaviors. Despite their seemingly opposing natures, knowledge and conspiracy beliefs may share some of the same psychological motivations, including a relationship with perceived risk and self‐efficacy (i.e., control). The 2015–2016 Zika epidemic provided an opportunity to explore this. The current research provides some exploratory tests of this topic derived from two studies with similar measures, but different primary outcomes: one study that included knowledge of Zika as a key outcome and one that included conspiracy beliefs about Zika as a key outcome. Both studies involved cross‐sectional data collections that occurred during the same two periods of the Zika outbreak: one data collection prior to the first cases of local Zika transmission in the United States (March–May 2016) and one just after the first cases of local transmission (July–August). Using ordinal logistic and linear regression analyses of data from two time points in both studies, the authors show an increase in relationship strength between greater perceived risk and self‐efficacy with both increased knowledge and increased conspiracy beliefs after local Zika transmission in the United States. Although these results highlight that similar psychological motivations may lead to Zika knowledge and conspiracy beliefs, there was a divergence in demographic association.     

Towards Uniformly Efficient Trend Estimation Under Weak/Strong Correlation and Non‐stationary Volatility

In this paper, we consider the deterministic trend model where the error process is allowed to be weakly or strongly correlated and subject to non‐stationary volatility. Extant estimators of the trend coefficient are analysed. We find that under heteroskedasticity, the Cochrane–Orcutt‐type estimator (with some initial condition) could be less efficient than Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) when the process is highly persistent, whereas it is asymptotically equivalent to OLS when the process is less persistent. An efficient non‐parametrically weighted Cochrane–Orcutt‐type estimator is then proposed. The efficiency is uniform over weak or strong serial correlation and non‐stationary volatility of unknown form. The feasible estimator relies on non‐parametric estimation of the volatility function, and the asymptotic theory is provided. We use the data‐dependent smoothing bandwidth that can automatically adjust for the strength of non‐stationarity in volatilities. The implementation does not require pretesting persistence of the process or specification of non‐stationary volatility. Finite‐sample evaluation via simulations and an empirical application demonstrates the good performance of proposed estimators.     

Interval estimation for conformance proportions of multiple quality characteristics

A conformance proportion is an important and useful index to assess industrial quality improvement. Statistical confidence limits for a conformance proportion are usually required not only to perform statistical significance tests, but also to provide useful information for determining practical significance. In this article, we propose approaches for constructing statistical confidence limits for a conformance proportion of multiple quality characteristics. Under the assumption that the variables of interest are distributed with a multivariate normal distribution, we develop an approach based on the concept of a fiducial generalized pivotal quantity (FGPQ). Without any distribution assumption on the variables, we apply some confidence interval construction methods for the conformance proportion by treating it as the probability of a success in a binomial distribution. The performance of the proposed methods is evaluated through detailed simulation studies. The results reveal that the simulated coverage probability (cp) for the FGPQ-based method is generally larger than the claimed value. On the other hand, one of the binomial distribution-based methods, that is, the standard method suggested in classical textbooks, appears to have smaller simulated cps than the nominal level. Two alternatives to the standard method are found to maintain their simulated cps sufficiently close to the claimed level, and hence their performances are judged to be satisfactory. In addition, three examples are given to illustrate the application of the proposed methods.     

四川盆地中三叠世盐盆分布与演化特征研究

四川盆地卤水分布广泛，资源丰富, 早为世人所瞩目，中三叠统雷口坡组是四川盆地最早开采天然气和盐卤的层系之一。根据盆地雷口坡组大量钻井资料研究表明，盆地雷口坡组主要成盐期分别为雷三2 期和雷四2 期，在盆地东部和南部由于受到古隆起的影响，盐岩地层已被剥蚀难以保存，现今盐岩主要分布在开江古隆起和泸州古隆起的西部以及天井山古隆起的南部（华蓥山以西—龙门山以东的川西—川中地区）。印支运动对盆地雷口坡组盐岩在平面的迁移起着十分重要的作用，根据不同时期盐岩统计数据看，两期盐盆在平面上具有向西迁移、叠加的特征，其中川中的GS1 井就钻遇了这两期的盐岩。