Measuring Community Economic Resilience in Australia: Estimates of Recent Levels and Trends

We measure changes in community economic resilience (CER) across geo-locations in Australia between 2006 and 2011, a time span characterised by major natural and economic shocks. We build an index of potential CER that captures communities’ stocks of human, social, natural, physical and financial capitals, levels of economic diversity and accessibility to service centres. Using Census data and the ARIA index, we resort to principal component analysis to generate CER indexes at statistical area level 1, which is our community proxy. Our analysis of index values provides a number of useful insights. First, there was a statistically significant improvement over time in the overall CER index in all states and regions. Second, our CER measures improved at a different pace across regions and states while their rank remained mostly unchanged. Third, CER improved over time in social and physical capital and accessibility terms, but declined in human, natural, financial capital and diversity terms. Fourth, communities with a high economic diversity level reported higher capital stock except for natural capital, and communities with a low accessibility level had lower capital stock except for social and natural capital. Finally, CER has a long-term positive association with household income.     

Poverty,Infectious Disease,and Environmental Degradation as Threats to Collective Security: A UN Panel Report

Among the documents to be considered at the 2005 World Summit at the UN General Assembly in September is the report of the Secretary‐General's High‐Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. The Panel, chaired by Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand, brought together 16 prominent individuals to assess current threats to peace and security and the institutional capacity, especially within the UN, to respond to them. Its report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, was issued in December 2004. Most of the publicity surrounding the report focused on its recommendations for UN reform, especially its proposals for expansion of the Security Council. The first two‐thirds of the document, however, is concerned with the substance of collective security issues and prevention strategies. Defining a threat to international security as “any event or process that leads to large‐scale death or lessening of life chances and undermines States as the basic unit of the international system,” the Panel identified six clusters of existing or anticipated threats: Economic and social threats (in particular, poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation); inter‐State conflict; internal conflict (civil war, genocide, other large‐scale atrocities); nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons; terrorism; and transnational organized crime. The section of the report (paragraphs 44–73) treating economic and social threats, titled “Poverty, infectious disease and environmental degradation,” is reproduced below. Paragraph numbers have been omitted.     

The Influence of the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation Normative Content in Measuring the Level of Service

Human Rights to Water and Sanitation (HRWS) have been consolidated as relevant frameworks to measure different levels of services. It is essential to move forward with specific initiatives that interpret the content of these human rights and operationalize them through specific metrics. However, some critical issues emerge in attempting this. Different approaches are proposed in this article to tackle this challenge: (1) utilizing a participatory technique to discuss the relative importance of the normative criteria to define water and sanitation services, (2) defining a short list of key indicators to measure the different dimensions of HRWS, and (3) assessing the impact of different weighting systems in the constructing an aggregated index, which has been proposed as a useful tool to monitor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) from a rights perspective. Two municipalities (in Mozambique and Nicaragua) were selected as initial case studies. The results suggest that there is a common understanding among the experts about prioritization of the HRWS criteria. Differences in the relative importance given to the HRWS criteria can be explained due to the particularities of the local context. Further, the research suggests that expert opinions may be partially conditioned by targets and indicators proposed at the international level. Although the influence of weighting techniques on aggregated measures and their utilization in the decision-making process are limited, this methodology has a great potential for adapting specific WASH metrics to different regional, national, and/or local contexts taking into account the HRWS normative content.     

构建城乡统筹的最低生活保障体系

文章总结并考察了中国农村救助和最低生活保障制度的现状,分析了统筹城乡低保制度的必要性、可行性和现实紧迫性。在此基础上,我们提出了农村低保的“三梯队模型”和统筹城乡低保的目标,并初步设计了农村低保制度的框架体系和资金筹措等问题。     

以人的全面发展统筹解决人口问题

进入21世纪以来,我国人口发展面临着前所未有的复杂局面,稳定低生育水平的基础还不牢固,人口素质、结构、分布与经济社会发展的矛盾日益显现,人口发展越来越多地受到各种因素的综合影响。采取综合措施,以人的全面发展统筹解决人口问题,已经成为新时期我国人口和计划生育工作新的指导方针。     

我国人力资本流失与经济安全分析

随着全球化的发展,国家经济安全问题引起人们的广泛关注。本文认为,在全球化和知识经济时代,我国出现的人力资本大量流失现象同样对国家的经济安全构成威胁。因此,研究经济安全问题,还应高度重视人力资本安全问题。论文首先评估了我国当前人力资本的流失状况,接着重点分析了人力资本流失给我国国民经济发展带来的种种负面效应,最后提出我国政府应尽快建立人力资本安全保障体系。     

西方国家社会保障制度对经济发展的影响

西方国家的社会保障制度对经济发展产生了深远的影响。一方面 ,社会保障给经济发展创造了良好的环境 ,使劳动力再生产得以正常进行 ,促进了第三产业的发展 ,解决了一批人的就业问题 ,促进了经济向前发展 ;但另一方面 ,它增加了政府开支 ,导致越来越多的经济资源用于消费 ,影响了资本积累 ,出现积累基金与消费基金比例失调 ,使经济发展失去了动力 ,又阻碍了经济发展。社会保障制度的发展必须考虑经济增长的实际状况 ,使二者保持正常比例 ,才能使社会保障制度发挥应有的作用。     

Statistical Communique on Human Resources and Social Security Development in 2013

In 2013, under the strong leadership of the Central committee of the Party and the State Council and ,with the focus on malor objectives of the Party and the state. China adhered to the main work line of orienting by people＇s livelihood and giving priority to talents： laid equal emphasis on both normal operation and intemal construction; comprehensively promoted scientific development, reform and innovation of human resources and social security undertakings and made positive contributions to economic and social development.     

Disability Considerations for Measuring Poverty in Canada Using the Market Basket Measure

Social Indicators Research - Persons with disability (PWD) in Canada experience disproportionately high poverty rates. Poverty measures are often used to benchmark income assistance levels and...     

Developing a Model of Community Wellbeing and Resilience in Response to Change

This study examines the relationship between base of the pyramid (BoP) entrepreneurship success and wellbeing. The major contention is that the success of the BoP entrepreneurs is influenced by information and training support provided by large private organizations. A total of 134 BoP entrepreneurs, who run community information centres in remote areas of Bangladesh with the support of a leading private telecommunications company, participated in this research. The result revealed that support from a large private organization is important to ensure business success, and that this subsequently enhances the wellbeing of BoP entrepreneurs. Not only has this study empirically confirmed that assistance provided by large private organizations to BoP entrepreneurs influences business success, assistance also enhances the wellbeing of this vulnerable group and thus facilitate to reduce poverty within the local community. This study therefore can be a guideline for large private organizations that are willing to carry out pragmatic corporate social initiatives.     

Introducing the Disease Outbreak Resilience Index (DORI) Using the Demographic and Health Surveys Data from sub-Saharan Africa

Social Indicators Research - Although most studies on disease emergencies underscore the need for household readiness for shocks associated with disease outbreaks, no study to date has provided a...     

Measuring Human,Physical and Structural Capital Efficiency Performance of Insurance Companies

Based on the strategy perspective of intellectual capital, this paper proposes an integrated framework that is practical to estimate the human, physical, and structural capitals (intellectual capital) efficiency performance, at firm level. This paper uses a dynamic network data envelopment analysis model to estimate the intellectual capital efficiency at three levels in the insurance industry over the period of 2005–2012. Within the insurance industry, deficiencies occurred in the human and structural capital stages as opposed to the physical capital stage. A further investigation indicates that total investment is the major concern for the deficiencies. Moreover, the cluster analysis highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the insurers based on their inherently similar efficiencies. Malaysian insurance industry need to translate and promote the existing knowledge-based economy agenda lauded by the government to improve the intellectual capital efficiency, particularly at the human capital level.     

Stress and Resilience in the Oral Histories of Rural Older Women

Oral history research has seldom focused on the reflections of rural older women. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify: (a) stresses associated with major historical events that affected the lives of rural older women, and (b) strategies they used to deal with those stresses. Oral histories were gathered from a cross-section of 25 older women living in a small rural Midwestern community and analyzed using the method of constant comparison (Glaser & Straus, 1967 Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. 1967. The discovery of grounded theory, Chicago: Aldine.  [Google Scholar]). Content analysis revealed that economic hardship, disruption of family life, and fears and uncertainties were stressors associated with the Great Depression and world wars of the 20th century. Resilience was demonstrated by frugality, reliance on social supports, and acceptance. Implications for intervention with rural older women are discussed.     

Measuring Human Recognition for Women in Malawi using the Alkire Foster Method of Multidimensional Poverty Counting

Social Indicators Research - Policy indicators rarely account for the contribution of societal inter- and intra-personal interactions to economic development. We propose an index of...     

食品安全对低收入群体人力资本投资收益的影响

健康是人力资本持续获得投资收益的基本前提和保证。由于低收入群体有更大概率选择非安全食品,所以食品安全在很大程度上就与低收入群体的健康状况相关,势必会影响这些弱势群体原本就较低的人力资本投资收益的获得,如果任由非安全食品充斥农村市场,不但会导致低收入群体健康状况的下降,而且由于低收入群体的人力资本收益受到影响,还会在长期内造成更大的收入差距。     

Veiled Threats: Decentering and unification in transnational news coverage of the French veil ban

In October 2010, France approved a law banning the Islamic veil in all public areas, asserting the republican principle of laicité. This cross-cultural analysis applies Muhlmann's theoretical framework to French and US news coverage from March 2004 to October 2010 in order to discern whether coverage featured unifying frames invoking shared values; or decentering frames challenging consensual views and presenting alternative contexts.     

The Wisdom of Eve: On Differentiating the Colours of Emotion that May Be Threats to Good Life

Emotion??s twin roles?C??unite and divide?? our daily life, thus motivating the good and the worst in human behaviour. The way one ??feels?? does influence the way one ??acts?? toward others. If this reasoning is correct, then behaviour can never be without motive or ??motiveless.?? Given the importance of emotions in human communication and decision making, the context of intergroup relations, with its themes of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination against culturally dissimilar was touched on selectively. Using the Differential Emotions Scale and building upon Boyle??s (Personality 56:747?C750, 1984) work, with students, the present study reports a repeated-measure multiple discriminant function analysis for items across raters. The findings further indicate that most of the DES items are sensitive indicators. The correspondence of some of the results with prior research findings makes facial emotions less the holy grail of the social behaviour field. Likely consequences of emotions are considered, and research needs are discussed vis-a-vis uplifting individual happiness, collective identity and sense of connection to others. Perhaps its implications can be extended to the literature, thus revealing how the different lenses through which human emotions are usually viewed are connected by the incipient/concept attitude and self-identification/labelling that run through each of them.     

Measuring Material Hardship among the US Population of Women with Disabilities Using Latent Class Analysis

We use data from the 2002 wave of the National Survey of America’s Families to develop and validate discrete measures of material hardship that can be used to examine the difficulties that vulnerable populations such as people with disabilities have in making ends meet. Using latent class analysis, we estimate two measurement models: multidimensional and omnibus. The multidimensional model provides separate estimates for food, medical, and housing and utilities hardship. The omnibus model is a single model of 11 hardship indicators. Results show three distinct classes of food hardship, three classes of medical hardship, and two classes of housing/utilities hardship. The omnibus model reveals eight classes. Both the multidimensional and omnibus models are largely invariant between women with disabilities and women without disabilities, indicating that valid comparisons can be made between these populations using these classes of hardship. These classes can be utilized in further research on the hardship of women with disabilities to inform the development of policies targeted to alleviate the specific forms of hardship experienced by disabled women.     

Incidence, Depth and Severity of Children in Poverty

Recently, the first ever estimate of the number of children living poverty in developing countries was undertaken. The incidence of child poverty was estimated by establishing how many children suffer severe deprivation in at least one out of seven indicators which are internationally recognized as their rights as well as constitutive of poverty. This is a major step forward in the analysis of poverty. In this paper, we generalize these findings on the incidence of children living in poverty by exploring how to estimate the depth and severity of child poverty. Two countries can have the same proportion of children living in poverty, however, the actual plight of children could be very different depending on how many deprivations, on average, children suffer. In addition, even if they suffer from the same average number of deprivations, these deprivation could be the same for all children or be very unevenly distributed. We show how these considerations can be used to estimate the depth and severity of poverty. We use regional data to provide applied examples of this methodology. The method proposed in this paper is similar to the one used to estimate the incidence, depth and severity of income poverty. The paper also offers some possible generalizations and ways forward for future research.     

Connectivity and Resilience: A Multidimensional Analysis of Infrastructure Impacts in the Southwestern Amazon

Infrastructure is a worldwide policy priority for national development via regional integration into the global economy. However, economic, ecological and social research draws contrasting conclusions about the consequences of infrastructure. We present a synthetic approach to the study of infrastructure, focusing on a multidimensional treatment of indicators of connectivity and resilience. As our study case, we adopt a tri-national frontier in the southwestern Amazon being integrated by a highway, and use survey data for rural leaders to evaluate the relationship of community connectivity to market towns and social-ecological resilience. The findings show varying relationships among different dimensions of connectivity and resilience, which bear implications regarding indicator approaches to the study of infrastructure impacts.