‘Freedom From’ and ‘Freedom To’ Across Countries

It has been over 70 years since Erich Fromm wrote “Escape From Freedom.” He defined two types of freedom: freedom from (negative) and freedom to (positive). Fromm’s masterpiece, however, does not measure the two types of freedom, and this is not surprising—there were no freedom data at the time. Now, there are plenty of data, and Fromm’s concepts of freedom can be operationalized across countries. The two types of freedom, positive and negative, correlate at below 0.5, and such low correlation is surprising—I discuss outliers and point out that freedom is an end in itself, as recognized, for instance, by Amartya Sen. Furthermore, while we acknowledge the importance of freedom from, we forget that freedom from is not fully realized without freedom to: it’s great to be free; but it’s even better to feel free as well.     

The ‘What’, ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of Employee Well-Being: A New Model

This paper examines the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of employee well-being. Beginning with the ‘what’ of well-being, the construct of mental health was explored with the aim of building a model of employee well-being. It was proposed that employee well-being consists of three core components: (1) subjective well-being; (2) workplace well-being and (3) psychological well-being. Following this, the ‘why’ of employee well-being was investigated; that is, why employee well-being should be an important matter for organisations. It was argued that employee well-being is an important precursor to organisational well-being, as indicated by its links to employee turnover and performance. The next section was concerned with the ‘how’ of employee well-being; that is, how well-being can be reliably enhanced. Drawing on two models of strengths and a practice model of psychological assessment, it was asserted that strength-based development can reliably enhance employee well-being. A solid framework for understanding and measuring employee well-being is offered in the hope that it will foster a more integrated approach to assessing and optimising employee well-being.

On ‘Consistent’ Poverty

The measurement of poverty as ‘consistent’ poverty offers a solution to one of the primary problems of poverty measurement within Social Policy of the last three decades. Often treated as if they were synonymous, ‘indirect’ measures of poverty, such as low income measures, and ‘direct’ measures, such as indices of material deprivation, identify surprisingly different people as being poor. In response to this mismatch, a team of Irish researchers put forward a measure which identified respondents in as being in poverty when they experienced both a low standard of living, as measured by deprivation indicators, and a lack of resources, as measured by a low income line. Importantly, they argued that the two measures required an equal weight. In this paper, I present a reconsideration of the consistent poverty measure from both conceptual and empirical perspectives. In particular, I examine the claim that low income and material deprivation measures should be given an ‘equal weight’. I argue that, from a conceptual perspective, the nature of the indicators at hand means that a deprivation-led measurement approach might be understood to align with the definition of poverty which Nolan and Whelan outline and, from an empirical perspective, that it is the material deprivation measure—and not the low income measure—which is particularly effective in identifying individuals at risk of multiple forms of deprivation. However, I argue that greater attention needs to be given to the question of whether indicators of material deprivation provide a sufficient measure of material poverty and suggest that advancing the measurement of material deprivation beyond its relatively rudimentary state represents an important priority for poverty research.     

‘十二亿人口日’的警示——纪念‘9.25’公开信发表15周年

今春二月,春寒料峭。侧耳倾听,在滚滚的春雷声中,和响着我国人口发展的隆隆脚步声。2月15日清晨6时14分,随着一个新的小生命呱呱坠地,标志着我国人口迈进了12亿的大门。这是由国家统计局向世人宣布的令世界瞩目的信息。中国政府决定,2月15日定为“中国的12亿人口日”。     

‘三结合’领导工作刍议

在计划生育工作中,一些地方创造出了“三结合”的经验,为我们继续做好这项工作,指明了一条必由之路。搞不搞“三结合”、能否搞好“三结合”,关键在各级领导。从领导工作的角度来思考,至少应做到以下几点:     

Tribal membership requirements and the demography of ‘old’ and ‘new’ Native Americans

This paper examines the twentieth-century population recovery of Native Americans with reference to urbanization, intermarriage, and differing definitions of the Native American population from census and tribal enrollment data. The recent increase in the Native American population reflected in regular US decennial censuses since 1960 is discussed in terms of changing self-identification of individuals as Native American. Also discussed are criteria for enrollment in Native American tribes, particularly blood quantum requirements. Census enumerations are compared with tribal enrollment data, and it is illustrated that a large proportion of those identifying as Native American in the census are not enrolled in Native American tribes. Special attention is given to how Native American tribal enrollment criteria might impact future population size.     

Negotiating the ground: ‘mobilizing’ a divided field site in the ‘post-conflict’ city

ABSTRACT

While an exploration of mobility patterns in ‘post-conflict’ societies has much to tell us about how division is produced through ordinary activities, less work has considered the practical application of a mobilities ‘lens’ during fieldwork in such contexts. Negotiating the ground in highly polarized contexts presents a unique array of challenges, but also offers opportunities to make use of mobile methodologies. This paper discusses the advantages of GPS-based technologies and walking interviews to a recent activity-space segregation study in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and reflects on methodological issues posed by the ‘post-conflict’ field site.     

Toward a comprehensive ‘quality-of-life’ index

Any attempt to construct an overall measure of the quality-of-life (“QOL”) of a community, population group, or larger society must inevitably confront the critical obstacle posed by the absence of a common numéraire. The diverse elements that significantly affect the “QOL” of individuals and social groups are each subject, at least in principle, to some form of measurement, but no satisfactory method has yet been devised whereby these different measurements could be reduced to a single metric.The construct that is developed in this paper cannot claim to have overcome this fundamental problem; nor does it settle the equally basic difficulties relating to what specific indicators to include in the composite construct, and how to weigh their individual values. However, it illustrates one possible approach toward the development of a summary index value that provides some insight into both direction (“favorable” or “unfavorable”) and magnitude of observed year-to-year changes in a selected number of fairly representative socioeconomic indicators for which measures were available for the United States annually from 1969 to the present. The information provided by this index lacks explanatory power, but examination of the components of the observed changes in the index does yield some useful insight into the relative contribution of changes in different “areas of concern” to the overall changes observed in the “QOL” in the United States during the 1969–1985 period.     

India’s ‘Missing Women’ and Men’s Sexual Risk Behavior

Although scholars and policymakers have long been concerned with the ??missing women?? of India, little rigorous research has examined the consequences of India??s sex ratio imbalance for young men??s sexual risk behavior and reproductive health. We use data from the third wave of India??s 2005?C2006 National Family and Health Survey to examine the influence of the community female-to-male sex ratio at ages 10?C39 on men??s likelihood of marrying early in life, of engaging in premarital, multi-partnered, and commercial sex, and of contracting a sexually-transmitted disease. We estimate logistic regression models that control for respondents?? demographic and socioeconomic status and that adjust for the clustering of observations within communities. Net of the effects of other characteristics, the female-to-male sex ratio is positively and significantly associated with the likelihood that men marry prior to age 18 and inversely and significantly associated with the odds that men have had intercourse with a commercial sex worker. However, no significant net associations are observed between the sex ratio and the other outcomes. Education, wealth, religious affiliation, caste, and geographic region emerge as significant predictors of Indian men??s sexual risk behaviors.     

Assessing the ‘Agedness’ of A Population

In this paper we follow a lead provided by Basu and Basu [‘The Greying of Populations: Concepts and Measurement,’ Demography India 16, pp. 79–89], in order to advance a class of ‘agedness’ indices which, because they have been motivated by analogous considerations in the poverty measurement literature, can find application in that area of enquiry as well. The properties of the proposed indices are discussed, and illustrations of empirical application are provided. The note is intended as a contribution to the larger enquiry into the measurement of development indicators.     

Corruption and the ‘Paradox of Redistribution’

The existing literature on the determinants of income redistribution has identified a ‘paradox’. Namely, that countries with a high degree of market income inequality redistribute little, which is in disagreement with the median voter theorem. In a first step, this paper outlines several mechanisms that explain why government corruption might be partially responsible for this ‘paradox’. In a second step, different corruption perception indices and an instrumental variable approach are used to provide empirical evidence that indicates a significant negative impact of corruption on redistribution levels for a sample of 148 developing and developed countries. This finding suggests that, next to political and need factors, government corruption explains to some extent the ‘paradox of redistribution’. This is especially true for many developing countries, given that they typically have relatively high degrees of corruption and low levels of redistribution.     

The ‘digital glimpse’ as imagining home

This paper proposes the concept of the ‘digital glimpse’, which develops the existing framing of imaginative travel. Here it articulates the experiences of mobile workers digitally connecting into family life and everyday rituals when physically absent with work. The recent embedding of digital communication technologies into personal relationships and family life is reconfiguring how absence is experienced and practiced by workers on the move, and through this, new digital paradigms for life on-the-move are emerging. This paper explores how such social relationships are maintained at-a-distance through digital technology – using evidence from qualitative interviews with mobile workers and their families. Digital technology now enables expressive forms of ‘virtual travel’, including video calling, picture sharing, and instant messaging. This has implications for the ways in which families can manage the social and relational pressures of being apart. Experiences of imaginative travel created through novel media can enrich the experience and give a greater sense of connection for both those who are at home and those who are away. While technology is limited in its ability to replicate a sense of co-presence, ‘digital glimpses’ are an emergent set of sociotechnical practices that can reduce the negative impact of absence on family relationships.     

对我国‘民工潮’现象的透析

在我国八十年代末兴起的第一次“民工潮”之后,“民工潮”一浪高过一浪。目前常年外出民工约6000万,其中跨省区流动民工约3000万。这对我国社会经济生活产生了巨大的影响。对我国“民工潮”现象也是众说纷纭,本文试图对我国“民工潮”现象进行一些透析。     

On a ‘Level-Sensitive’ Headcount Ratio: Revisiting Shorrocks’ Poverty Index

It is often argued that indicators of achievement or deprivation should be measured such that they display a property of ‘level-sensitivity’, whereby a given change in the indicator acquires a greater significance the higher (lower) the level of achievement (deprivation) at which the change occurs. In this note, it is shown that a level-sensitive headcount ratio of poverty can be derived from an application of the very useful graphical device called ‘a deprivation profile’ advanced by Anthony Shorrocks (in: Jenkins et al. (eds.) The Distribution of Welfare and Household Production: International Perspectives, 1996).     

对计划生育‘三结合’的几点认识

计划生育工作“三结合”,即计划生育工作同发展农村经济相结合、同帮助农民勤劳致富奔小康相结合、同建设文明幸福家庭相结合,是计划生育工作深入发展的结果,是人民群众的一种创造。它顺应了农民致富奔小康、建设文明幸福家庭的强烈愿望,丰富了计划生育工作的内容,有利于改善计划生育工作的环境。因此,“三结合”是新时期抓好农村计划生育工作的有效途径。通过对一些     

公开出售‘农转非’户口利弊及对策

我国经济体制改革的目标是建立社会主义市场经济。按市场经济要求,一切经济主体,无论是宏观、中观、微观经济调控,还是生产、分配、消费的各个环节,都要无条件进入市场,以商品交换的形式出现;一切资源(人造资源、人力资源、自然资源等)的组合和配置,都要借助于市场调节;一切经济关系,无论是哪个方面的,哪个层次的,都要通过商品交换而实现;一切经济行为、经济活动,都     

‘Walking out’: the mobilities of love

ABSTRACT

In this article, I propose that mobility performs a crucial role in the production and sustenance of intimate relationships and focus, in particular, on courtship practices and their modern-day equivalents. I pursue this discussion through close readings of literary and autobiographical texts from the nineteenth century through to the millennium, and by means of a framework that triangulates the work of Tim Ingold, David Seamon and Henri Bergson. My focus here is on how the mobilities we practice during the everyday routines of courtship – i.e. the paths we make, the routes we take, the roads we travel, the journeys we repeat, the transport we use – come to characterise the relationship concerned and impact upon its progress. Both Ingold’s work on ‘lines’ and Seamon’s on ‘place-ballet’ are conceptually suggestive in this regard and speak to recent work in mobilities/cultural geography on the significance of patterns of movement in the praxis of relationships.