Measuring the Success of Sustainable Development Indices in Terms of Reporting by the Global Press

A variety of indices have been applied to the performance of nation states, both for research and as aids to help guide policy and intervention. While the literature on indices is extensive, the focus to date has been almost entirely on technical issues of index creation. However the success of an index is arguably related at least in part to the use of that index by policy makers and managers. While cause-effect can be difficult to determine, one approach is to measure ‘success’ in terms of the reporting of indices by an intermediary group such as the media, and this paper assesses the reporting of 24 indices by newspapers worldwide until 2012. The results suggest that index success is influenced by a number of factors, including the time it has existed, its focus, extent and quality of publicity, adaptability in terms of the scope for others to change the content and methodology of the index and resonance in terms of the match with ideas/culture/behaviour of people. The paper makes a case for a new research field that seeks to investigate the meaning and factors involved in ‘success’ of indices and how these should help with index development.     

英国养老制度市场化改革对劳动力市场的影响--对中国的三点重要启示

英国自20世纪80年代以来进行了较为成功的经济体制改革,而社会养老制度改革是英国宏观经济改革的重要组成部分。文章就英国社会养老制度改革对英国劳动力市场的影响进行了理论和实证分析,考察了英国社会养老计划对劳动力供给的影响;指出英国的社会养老制度市场化改革特别是推出个人养老金计划增加了劳动力市场的流动性,增强了劳动力市场的弹性。劳动力市场弹性的提高,促进了产出的:噌长和企业竞争力的提高。     

Measuring Subjective Well-Being and its Potential Role in Policy: Perspectives from the UK Office for National Statistics

Measures of subjective well-being are one component of the measurement of the quality of life and progress of a nation. The Office for National Statistics approach, as part of the Measuring National Well-being programme, has been to include such measures alongside more objective measures in order to gain a full picture of “how things are going” and to better inform public policy. These estimates are considered experimental and further testing and development is underway. However, it is argued that subjective well-being measures have a potential role in the policy process and this article considers how they could be used in policy making within the UK.     

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.

     

Quality of Life Measurement and Application to Policy: Experiences from the UK Office for National Statistics

This paper outlines the Office for National Statistics’ approach to measuring quality of life and its application to UK policy. It focuses on the value of stakeholder engagement and presentation for embedding concepts and fostering legitimacy for outputs and provides examples of how quality of life is starting to be used within UK policy.     

The Measurement of Non-economic Inequality in Well-Being Indices

This paper is a critical review of composite well-being indices that account for inequality. Many well-being indices build upon the idea that while income and wealth are important, they do not constitute a person’s actual quality of life. However, first of all, the analysis finds that while well-being indices aim to go “beyond GDP” and other primarily economic indicators, many of them, unfortunately, do not focus on inequality at all. Secondly, most indices which include inequality in their measurement, only account for economic inequality. Thirdly, the article finds that the most comprehensive wellbeing index in terms of inequality is the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index which adjusts for economic, health and education inequality. This article finds that well-being indices should make further strides to ensure the capture of non-economic inequality in terms of education and health.     

Book Reviews National Research Council. The New Americans: Economic,Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration. Washington,D.C: National Academy Press, 1997. Pages 434. Free on request

Population and Environment -     

The Discursive Construction of Women Politicians in the European Press

The appointment of the first majority female government in Spain generated a significant amount of coverage in newspapers across Europe, synthesising the multi-faceted debate about the relationship between gender and political leadership. Through the combination of qualitative thematic and quantitative content analysis, this article examines the construction of women politicians across different European nations. By analysing the coverage of the issue in the main newspapers of four European countries (France, Italy, Spain and the UK) in the two weeks after the new Spanish cabinet was appointed, this article explores the values and ideal roles the media assign to female politicians. The article is based on the premise that mediated representations of female politicians can tell us important things about the relations between gender, power and politics. Such representations embody a set of assumptions about how successful women should look, behave and speak, and thus implicitly express judgments on models of femininity. Ultimately, such representations construct heroines and villains that inform our conceptions of women's political participation, thereby encouraging some forms of gendered political discourse and discouraging others. Our research found that while certain discourses celebrate women ministers for their (symbolic) emancipatory value, others judge them by their physical appearance or their performance as wives, mothers, and mothers-to-be.     

民族人口研究的进展

本文对十一五期间民族人口研究的论文进行了梳理与归纳。认为目前中国民族人口的研究现状是:对各民族的人口状况基本清楚,研究能紧密联系实际,研究队伍较强和研究内容广泛,学科不断进步,同时也存在基础研究薄弱,高质量的成果较少的问题。     

The impact of specific occupation on mortality in the U.S. National Longitudinal Mortality Study

We compare mortality differences for specific and general categories of occupations using a national cohort of approximately 380,000 persons aged 25-64 from the U.S. National Longitudinal Mortality Study. Based on comparisons of relative risk obtained from Cox proportional-hazards model analyses, higher risk is observed in moving across the occupational spectrum from the technical, highly skilled occupations to less-skilled and generally more labor-intensive occupations. Mortality differences obtained for social status groups of specific occupations are almost completely accounted for by adjustments for income and education. Important differences are shown to exist for selected specific occupations beyond those accounted for by social status, income, and education. High-risk specific occupations include taxi drivers, cooks, longshoremen, and transportation operatives. Low-risk specific occupations include lawyers, natural scientists, teachers, farmers, and a variety of engineers.     

The effects of defamilization and familization measures on the accumulation of retirement income for women in the UK

This article is concerned with the link between the effects of pro-market pension reforms on women and familization/defamilization measures. It aims to contribute to the study of this link in three ways. Firstly, it identifies defamilization/familization measures that have the potential to reduce negative effects of pro-market pension measures on women. Secondly, based on the examples from the United Kingdom, it shows that the government’s willingness to provide sufficient defamilization/familization measures to assist women to deal with the negative effects of the pro-market pension measures should not be taken for granted. Thirdly, it suggests ways for tackling this problem.     

The spanner trials and the changing law on sadomasochism in the UK

In the United Kingdom in 1989 a group of gay men who had been engaging in consensual SM activities were put on trial and found guilty of assault. The dominants/tops were charged with assault, and the men who participated in the activities as "bottoms" or submissives were convicted of aiding and abetting assaults upon themselves. This article discusses these Spanner trials--as they came to be called--and the issues of consent and privacy on which they were argued. UK and potentially European law are being subjected to pressure for redefinition as a result of the Spanner case, as SM practitioners are beginning to experience the implications and fallout from the prosecutions. While there have been proposals to reform the laws about what has been deemed self-destructive and socially dangerous behavior, little has changed to date. The story of the prosecutions and appeals, and the pressures for a new legislative approach to decriminalize consensual SM, will be situated in the context of public interest claims to control the private actions of individuals in the interest of public health. Differences in interpretation that occur when gay men are involved as compared to heterosexual couples will also be discussed.     

Media,The Public,and Freedom of the Press

Social Indicators Research - This article examines the diversification of the news media in Korea since the 1990s as a result of deregulation and democratization. It also examines the impact of...     

Review of Concepts,Tools and Indices for the Assessment of Urban Quality of Life

Social Indicators Research - The rapid urban growth poses a huge challenge in sustaining the quality of local environment and life characteristics in contemporary cities. There is a growing body of...     

Book Review: The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Bjorn Lomborg. Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press

Population and Environment -     

三峡工程农村移民安置的途径与政策建议

三峡库区 4 0多万农村移民的安置是整个三峡工程移民的重点和难点。三峡工程移民安置规划由于过分乐观地估计了三峡库区土地安置容量和二、三产业吸纳农村移民的能力 ,致使库区移民安置密度过大 ,移民问题逐渐显露和严重 ,成为库区社会稳定的重要隐患。三峡库区经济落后 ,交通不便 ,二、三产业欠发达以及移民素质偏低的现实迫使农村移民转向大农业安置。然而 ,三峡库区人多地少、生态环境脆弱 ,开发土地资源必然会加剧水土流失和生态环境的恶化。基于上述因素 ,本文提出了三峡工程农村移民实行以土为本和外迁安置相结合的原则及相应的政策建议