Does Misery Index Matter for the Persistence of Health Spending? Evidence from OECD Countries

Social Indicators Research - This paper employs the panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model to investigate the role of Okun’s misery index in the persistence of health spending in 19...     

Horizontal and Vertical Equity Objectives of Child Benefit Systems: An Empirical Assessment for European Countries

The present study investigates the determinants of life expectancy in the presence of economic misery using Pakistan’s time series data over the period of 1972–2012. The stationary properties of the variables are examined by applying unit root test accommodating structural breaks. The ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration is applied to examine the long run relationship between the variables. Our findings show that cointegration between the variables is confirmed. Moreover, health spending improves life expectancy. Food supply contributes to life expectancy. A rise in economic misery deteriorates life expectancy. Urbanization enhances life expectancy while illiteracy declines it. The causality analysis reveals that life expectancy is Granger cause of health spending, food supply, economic misery, urbanization and illiteracy. This paper opens up new insights for policy making authorities to consider the role of economic misery while formulating comprehensive economic policy to improve life expectancy in Pakistan.     

Effective International Tourism Management: A Strategic Approach

The objective of the study was to explore the relationship between international tourism indicators, crime rate, and vulnerability in a panel of 16 tourist-oriented countries over the period of 1990–2014. The study constructed a vulnerability index by using three socioeconomic factors, (1) poverty, (2) income inequality, and (3) unemployment rate. The results show that crime rate and vulnerability both decreases international tourism demand, which were mediated through inadequate education and health resources. Trade openness moderately supported the international tourism demand under the crime rate and vulnerability index. The results confirmed the crime Kuznets curve that turned into inverted U-shaped relationship between crime rate and per capita income, while this relationship was not confirmed for vulnerability index. The panel causality relationships confirmed the unidirectional causality between crime-vulnerability and international tourism. Growth-fueled tourism demand was analyzed under a crime and vulnerability index. The study concludes that international tourism is an implied solution to reduce human costs by involving tourists to in pleasure activities to at tourists’ destinations.     

Ethnic Diversity,Social Exclusion and Economic Determinants of Crimes: A Case Study of Pakistan

The eventual objective of social disciplines is to ensure the existence of peaceful and prosperous societies through the provision and protection of property rights for all segments of society. The deprived and socially excluded persons attempt to violate the formal rules and informal norms of the society. Developing countries have been facing rapidly increased number of violators of rules and norms, causing to higher crime rate which confronts multifarious ethnic problems, religion, multi-lingual problems. The case of Pakistan dose not varies when our study consider socioeconomic causes of crimes i.e. ethnic diversity and social exclusion. Present study is a contribution in this blistering issue, particularly in case of Pakistan. Therefore, our study explores the socioeconomic determinants of crime rate in Pakistan, by using bound testing and auto regressive distributive lag technique for the data period of 1970–2015. The estimated results reveal that ethnic diversity, social exclusion and deterrence have positive and significant impact on property, violence crime rates, and on overall crimes in Pakistan. While per capita income and population density, both have negative and significant impact on property and violence crimes.     

Surviving the Transition: Trends and Perceptions of Crime in South Africa

Crime and violence have dominated South Africa's transformation over the past two decades. High crime rates cause widespread feelings of insecurity and fear which undermine popular confidence in the democratisation process. Considering both trends and public perceptions, this paper explores changing crime levels over the past decade, elaborating on the problems associated with crime statistics in South Africa, and the salience of the transition for current crime levels. Data is drawn from official police statistics and from victimisation and other surveys. Crime has been increasing gradually in South Africa since 1980. It is, however, since 1990 and not more recently as is popularly believed, that levels have risen sharply. An examination of the statistics shows that despite general increases, not all crimes have been committed with equal frequency and not all areas of the country are similarly affected. These trends are a product of the political transition and are associated with the effects of apartheid and political violence, the breakdown in the criminal justice system and more recently, the growth in organised crime. High crime levels are taking their toll on South Africans. Surveys show that crime rather than socio-economic issues now dominates people's concerns, and that fear of crime is increasing. Currently, fewer people feel safe and believe the government has the situation under control than in previous years. Faced with widespread unemployment on the one hand, and the prospects of development on the other, levels of property crimes will probably continue to increase. While violent crime levels should decline over the medium term, improved relations with the police and a culture of reporting crimes like rape and assault may result in more crime being recorded.     

Crimes and socio-economic environments

The purpose of this note is to study the relationship between crimes and the socio-economic environment in the metropolitan areas of the United States. In this study we define total crime rate per 100,000 population as a linear function of (i) per capita personal income, (ii) the unemployment rate (iii) the migration rate, (iv) racial imbalance, (v) climate, and (vi) males as a percentage of total population. Our statistical results confirm the hypothesis that social and economic conditions cause crime.     

Criminal Victimization and Crime Risk Perception: A Multilevel Longitudinal Study

In a national sample of the Italian population, surveyed four times between October 2002 and January 2007 (N = 2,008), we performed a multilevel longitudinal study aimed at predicting the increase in crime risk perception as a function of three families of independent variables, respectively lying at the within individual level (direct victimization and indirect victimization), at the between-individuals level (being a woman, being an older person, being a poorly educated person and size of area of residence) and at the ecological level (county’s crime rate, unemployment rate and immigration rate). Direct and indirect victimization, being a woman, being an older person, living in a large town and in a context characterized by high crime and unemployment rates positively influenced the change in crime risk perception, while the other individual and ecological predictors we used in our predictive model did not. Strengths, limitations, implications and future developments of this research are discussed.     

Does Municipal Socioeconomic Development Affect Public Perceptions of Crime? A Multilevel Logistic Regression Analysis

Chile is considered as one of the safest countries in Latin America, with a below-the-average world crime rate. However, during the last few decades, the country has experienced a deterioration in public perceptions of safety. This paper investigates public perceptions of crime in the 52 municipalities of the metropolitan area of Santiago, by employing an index of socioeconomic development for each municipality. Multilevel logistic regression analysis is used in order to assess the impact of individual and municipal-level variables on perceptions of crime in these municipalities. The results show that women exhibit higher perceptions of crime, while people living in rural areas, inactive people, and people with higher education and income have generally lower perceptions. Multidimensional poverty is positively associated with high perceptions of crime, while municipal spending on health and/or education does not show a relationship with perceptions of crime. Regarding socioeconomic development level of municipalities, the results show that people living in municipalities of high development show the lowest perceptions of crime, despite the fact that these municipalities do actually exhibit the highest crime rates, a fact confirming the ‘perception gap’ and the ‘neighbourhood favouritism’ theories. The results and conclusions of this study can be used not only by local policy-makers but also by officials in other cities that—like Santiago—are characterised by high urban segregation.     

An exploratory analysis of select predictors of concern for law and order

Within the last decade concern for law and order has become a major domestic issue. Presidential candidates have campaigned on the issue. Opinion polls have charted the growing public concern. Crime statistics have reported startling growth in the number of serious crimes committed in the United States. This paper attempts to assess the ability of different variables to predict and explain this high concern. Two aspects of concern will be discussed: (1) awareness of and (2) willingness to do something about crime. Theoretically little is known about how awareness for a social problem can be translated into forms of action to deal with the perceived problem. Methodologically, a technique is needed for assessing the relative importance of different variables related to the problem area. Path analysis is discussed as a possible technique. The data was collected through a random sample of heads-of-households in the State of Washington during the summer of 1970 (N=3101; response rate=75%). Some of the major findings include: (1) people in larger cities are more aware of a crime problem than people in smaller cities and towns, but people in larger cities are less willing to allocate tax dollars to combat crime; (2) the size of city, and implicitly the crime rate, is the most important variable for understanding the public awareness of crime; (3) the elderly and those of conservative orientation are more willing to allocate funds to combat crime than the young and liberal, although there exists no difference in their awarencess of the problem; and (4) relative exposure to mass media, socio-economic status, or identification with one's community make little contribution to the understanding of either awareness of crime or willingness to allocate tax dollars to combat crime.     

Resilient or Resigned? Criminal Victimisation and Quality of Life in South Africa

A victimisation study conducted among 3300 householders in South Africa’s Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality (NMMM) in the Eastern Cape Province aimed to inform a crime prevention strategy for the metropolitan area. The study found that the variables ‘fear of crime’ – measured in terms of perceived likelihood of victimisation – and concern about ‘personal safety’ had greater negative influence on life satisfaction than actual victimisation. Individual crimes against the person had greater negative influence on subjective wellbeing and feelings of personal safety than property and other household crimes. Individuals who perceived themselves to be at risk of becoming a victim of crime also perceived greater risk of other misfortunes. However, materially better-off victims reported higher levels of life satisfaction than non-victims in spite of their crime experience. South Africa has high crime rates by international standards and fighting crime presents the country with one of its major challenges in the second decade of democracy. Nevertheless, findings suggest that the negative impact of crime issues on achieving the good life are overshadowed by issues of racial inequalities and poverty. The conclusion is drawn that residents of Nelson Mandela Metropole are hardy when it comes to living with crime but nonetheless suffer stress in doing so. From a methodological perspective, the discussion considers whether subjective crime issues such as fear of crime and personal safety should be regarded as personal or neighbourhood quality-of-life issues. Based on survey findings, the conclusion is drawn that concern for personal safety is both. However, a crime-as-neighbourhood-issue is more likely to attract remedial action on the part␣of␣local authorities to better protect citizens and allay their fears of crime.     

Evaluations of Antigay Hate Crimes and Hate Crime Legislation: Independent and Differentially Predicted

Minimal studies have investigated individuals’ evaluations of antigay hate crimes and hate crime legislation simultaneously, with most research focusing on one or the other. In a sample of 246 heterosexual undergraduates, the present study found that evaluations of antigay hate crimes and hate crime legislation were unrelated. Higher social dominance orientation (SDO) and crime control orientation scores were associated with more positive evaluations of antigay hate crimes. Positive evaluations of hate crime legislation were associated with more positive attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. We also found that the relationship between SDO and evaluations were mediated by crime control beliefs (for hate crimes evaluations) and antigay attitudes (for hate crime legislation evaluations). The present findings have possible implications for the manner in which organizations advocate for the extension of hate crime legislation to include sexual orientation.     

Effekte der sozialen Position auf Vertrauen in Politik und Demokratie in ?sterreich

In the context of declining satisfaction with democracy in Austria, the article examines the importance of trust in state and politics for attitudes towards democracy. We assume that the social position influences attitudes towards democracy both, directly and indirectly via trust in politics. Data from the European Values Studies 1999 and 2008 are analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. The results confirm that socioeconomic status affects attitudes towards democracy via trust (e.g. the lower people??s status, the less trust they express, and, thus, the less satisfied with the democratic system they are). In addition, findings support the proposition that personal experience is relevant to the constitution of trust, and indicate that trust in European Union becomes more important for attitudes towards democracy with time.     

Assessing the Assessors: Correlating Democracy Methodologies

This paper considers the question of how to “measure” democracy i.e. attach an objective, or at least standardized, quantitative value to a nation or polity’s level of democracy. A number of instruments have been independently developed with this aim in mind. To what extent do they measure the same phenomenon, and how closely are their findings correlated? This study finds a significant variance between recent data from three democracy assessment instruments analyzed. This is an important question not only for academic research, but also for policy-makers, as increasingly important decisions such as the allocation of foreign aid are predicted upon assessments of a country’s level of adherence to democratic practices.     

城市房价与失业率的关联性研究

房价与失业率是社会与经济波动的主要振荡源,已引起政府部门的高度关注。而目前国内外对房价与失业率关联性的研究几乎是一片空白。基于此,本文从中国的实际情况出发,以国内房价与失业率的数据为研究依据,通过协整分析和格兰杰因果检验,对房价与失业率的关联性进行了实证分析。结果显示:房价与失业率存在关联,房价的变动对失业率会产生显著影响,且房价对失业率的短期效用为负,长期效应为正;而失业率对房价的影响微弱。为维持房价稳定和保证充分就业,政府应采取相应的政策措施。     

What will 1984 be like? Socioeconomic implications of recent twists in age structure

Since 1940, under conditions of restricted immigration and high and sustained growth in aggregate demand, shifts in the relative number of younger versus older adults have had a pervasive impact on American life. Before 1960, younger males were in increasingly short supply and their relative economic position substantially improved; after 1960, the opposite was true. Since the early sixties, as the relative condition of young adults has deteriorated, marriage has been increasingly deferred and fertility reduced. The labor force participation of young women has risen at above average rates, and that of older women has risen at below average rates. Changes in the age structure of the working age population have also contributed to a combination of rising unemployment and accelerating inflation. Cohort divorce rates, suicide among young males, crime rates, and political alienation have worsened. The rise in college enrollment rates has been interrupted, and SAT scores have declined. In contrast, in the period 1940–1960, changes in these various magnitudes were typically of a more favorable sort. The United States is now at the start of a new period of growing scarcity of young adults as a result of the birth rate decline that set in after 1960. This implies that the 1980s will see a turnaround or amelioration in a wide variety of these social, political, and economic conditions, some of which have been taken as symptomatic of a hardening social malaise.     

A New Perspective on Violent Crime Burden Index: Evidence from Indian Districts

Given limited resource availability in a developing nation like India, faced with high incidences of crime, it is important to optimize on the resources spent in combating crime by channelling them to proper direction. This requires an understanding of the actual and overall level of crime across India. Our paper provides a complete understanding of the various indicators of violent crime and the determinants of these crimes in India using district level data for three census years, namely, 1981, 1991 and 2001. We construct three alternative crime-burden indices. Including a variable like voter turnout in state election at the district level, we document significant impact of public awareness to reduce and combat crime. The constructed crime burden index shows that states located in northern parts of India have more incidences of crime compared to states in the south. We also find that our estimated crime-burden indices tend to report in general a higher level of crime-burden than the average based index. This suggests controlling for the factors beyond population while constructing the aggregate crime-burden index for any country is essential. Our work although is limited to the Indian data, we however, believe that this can be easily applied to various other countries.     

Unemployment and the homicide rate: A paradox resolved?

The heretofore perplexing relationship between the unemployment and homicide rates is reevaluated through a dynamic, macro social indicator model of the postwar United States. Whereas prior research has failed to demonstrate consistently an empirical connection between economic conditions and crime rates, it is shown here that when attention is given to both the level of unemployment and recent changes in unemployment, the relationship between the unemployment rate and the homicide rate becomes more intelligible. The level of unemployment is negatively related to the homicide rate while annual changes in unemployment are positively related to the homicide rate. These paradoxical effects of unemployment remain even after controlling for other theoretically-relevant variables. Interpretation of the results revolves around the dichotomy of motivation and opportunity as components of human behavior.     

Does Unemployment Matter for Lottery Sales and their Persistence? A New Estimation Approach

This paper employs the panel smooth transition autoregressive model to evaluate the threshold effect of unemployment rate on lottery sales and their persistence. To perform the empirical estimation, we use the panel data of lottery sales in 42 US states during the period of January 2003–December 2011. Thus, we have 4536 observations. The empirical results find that the effect of unemployment on lottery sales is nonlinear, heterogeneous, and time-varying, depending on the unemployment rates in different regimes. A rise (decrease) in unemployment will lead to a higher (lower) persistence effect of lottery sales. However, reducing unemployment rate is not a practical instrument for state governments to stabilize lottery markets. For the sellers of lottery tickets, designing new lottery products is a more efficient method for stimulating current lottery sales than anticipating the improvement in the unemployment rate.     

The Meaning of Democracy to Citizens Across European Countries and the Factors Involved

What do citizens think democracy is and what factors contribute to its meaning? Previous works on the public understanding of democracy have shown that, overall, citizens see democracy in “minimal” terms. However, advanced democracies are complex and encompass several elements other than elections and freedoms. This article uses the European Social Survey module “Europeans’ understandings and evaluations of democracy” and multilevel item response theory models to build a measure of the meaning of democracy in terms of multiple attributes and to account for individual- and country-level variation. The findings show that the meaning of democracy can be seen as a continuum, and that middle-aged educated men who are interested in politics, have extreme ideological positions, and are engaged in civic organizations include more elements in their idea of democracy, and that the cross-country variation in the meaning of democracy mostly depends on democratic performance.     

Prince George is Not (and never was) Canada’s Most Dangerous City: Using Police-Recorded Data for Comparison of Volume and Seriousness of Crimes

This article is based on the idea that crime should be analyzed in terms of both volume and seriousness. Crime rates are the most usual measure of the volume of criminality at a given time or a given place. Statistics Canada recently developed a Crime Severity Index to account for variations in the seriousness of police-recorded criminal infractions. A close look at its construction reveals that the Index is a weighted rate influenced by both the volume and the seriousness of recorded infractions. This article introduces a new indicator designed to measure the seriousness of recorded infractions. The measure is based on simple calculations and easy to interpret. It suggests that serious crime has decreased since the 1980s. It also suggests that city and province rankings based solely on crime rates are misleading because high levels of crime do not necessarily indicate high levels of the more serious crimes.