Urban gentrification: Evaluating alternative indicators

The study seeks to ascertain whether the operational definition of “gentrification” has an impact on the apparent extent, location and causal factors associated with the phenomenon. Four alternative definitional criteria are specified, based on areal changes in: proportion black, proportion college-educated, real incomes and real property values. The stringency of the given change needed to qualify as gentrification is also varied. Census tract changes from 1970–80 in Philadelphia are analyzed. Results indicate great sensitivity in the number and location of “gentrified” tracts to the definition chosen and stringency applied. Even more importantly, the 1970 characteristics of tracts which statistically explain their subsequent gentrication vary dramatically across these definitions.     

Population in the UN Environment Programme's Global Environment Outlook 2000

Most specialized agencies in the United Nations system have taken to compiling a periodic status report on their field. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) issued the first in a proposed biennial series in 1998, titled Global Environment Outlook‐1 or GEO‐1. The second in the series, Global Environment Outlook 2000, was published in 1999. GEO‐2000 is described by the UNEP's Executive Director, Klaus Töpfer, in the foreword as “a comprehensive integrated assessment of the global environment at the turn of the millennium… [and] a forward‐looking document, providing a vision into the 21st century.” Its status, however, is rendered uncertain by the printed caution that “The contents of this volume do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of UNEP or contributory organizations.” GEO‐2000 paints a generally bleak picture of environmental trends. It evidences a wide array of particulars (“In the Southern Ocean, the Patagonian toothfish is being over‐fished and there is a large accidental mortality of seabirds caught up in fishing equipment”), but perhaps of more import are its statements about the root causes of environmental problems and what must be done. The excerpts below reflect some of these general views as they pertain to population. They are taken from the section entitled “Areas of danger and opportunity” in Chapter 1 of the report, and from the section “Tackling root causes” in Chapter 5. High resource consumption, fueled by affluent, Western lifestyles, is seen as a basic cause of environmental degradation. Cutting back this consumption will be required, freeing up resources for development elsewhere. Materialist values associated with urban living are part of the problem, given the concentration of future population growth in cities. And “genuine globalization” will entail free movement of people as well as capital and goods, thus optimizing “the population to environmental carrying capacity.” Some of these positions are at least questionable: the supposed “innate environmental sensitivity of people raised on the land or close to nature,” or the aim of “globalization of population movements.” The latter does not appear in the recommendations, perhaps because of an implicit assumption that the effect of open borders on environmental trends is unlikely to be favorable. (For an earlier statement of the same sentiment—from 1927—see the comments by Albert Thomas, first director of the ILO, reproduced in the Archives section of PDR 9, no. 4.)     

In-migration,customary land tenure,and complexity: exploring the relationship between changing land tenure norms and differentiated migrant livelihoods in Brong Ahafo,Ghana

This article focuses on the relationship between in-migration from Northern Ghana and changing land tenure norms in Ghana’s central “transition zone” in Brong Ahafo Region. Using the complex adaptive systems (CAS) theoretical framework, it theorizes this relationship as part of a wider set of “co-evolving” social and environmental conditions across Brong Ahafo. It presents new qualitative research findings which show differentiated livelihood trajectories for Northern Ghanaian migrant farmers in Brong Ahafo in three case study sites in different districts and links these to migrants’ diverse land tenure arrangements under customary tenure regimes in Brong Ahafo. I argue that differentiated outcomes for migrants at rural destinations have implications for the extent to which out-migration from environmentally marginal regions such as Northern Ghana can be viewed as a form of “adaptation” to environmental change.     

Psychological Mechanism of Subjective Well-Being: A Stable Trait or Situational Variability

This study explored the holistic configuration of self-control and self-esteem with Latent Profile Analysis and examined the effect of self profiles on five adolescent quality of life indicators, including deviant behavior, friendship, academic achievement, time management and life satisfaction. The sample included 488 Taiwan junior-high students selected from a panel data. Four-group solution is considered optimal across years. At time 1, the “Quality Selves” group (high SC–SE) had consistent best performance in all the adolescent quality of life indicators while the “Disadvantageous Selves" group (low SC–SE) displayed consistent the worst. Given the same level of SC in “Baseline” group and “Self-Esteem” group, higher SE in the “Self-esteem” was related to higher evaluation of life satisfaction while no difference was found in other 4 quality of life indicators. At time 2, “Self-Esteem” became the “SC-Improved” who had the same best quality of life as the “Quality Selves,” while the “Baseline” was renamed as the “Lower Baseline” who performed similarly as the worst adjusted “Disadvantageous Selves” in indicators, except fewer deviant behaviors. Group membership was generally stable and self-profile transitions were more likely upward than downward. Along the adolescent period, findings suggest the level of SC need to be strengthened in order to sustain a good quality of life. Meanwhile, higher SE seems to be a propelling factor for students to gain better SC at a later time. Educational programs solely aim at cherishing self could move beyond for a double-core direction that also enhances adolescent social adaption with self-discipline training.     

What state,what markets,for what development?

The collapse of “real socialism” and “peripheric late capitalism” and the exhaustion of the various models of “Welfare capitalism” demand the theoretical and practical reconstruction of the entire field of the eco-socio-economy of development and planning. Among the criteria for a new approach would be social equity and environmental prudence. This project should be then translated into a strategy for development which implies in turn a re-definition of state, market and the role of civil society and the forms of interaction between social actors. At the same time, the ways of articulation between the various areas - local, national, global — of development should be defined. In this framework, planning should be seen as a set of procedures for promoting societal debate on the “project”, in order to elaborate long-term strategies and identify the range of the decisions to be taken.     

The uneven geography of research on “environmental migration”

Climate change and environmental hazards affect the entire world, but their interactions with—and consequences on—human migration are unevenly distributed geographically. Research on climate and migration have their own geographies which do not necessarily coincide. This paper critically confronts these two geographies by presenting the first detailed mapping of research in the field of environmentally induced migration. After a brief review of the geography of research on climate change, the paper presents an overview of nearly 50 years of case studies on the basis of CliMig, a bibliographic database of 1193 scientific papers and books on climate/environmental change and migration, among them 463 empirical case studies. We analyze the locations of these case studies, the academic affiliations of their researchers, and the origin of their funding. Mapping the locations of case studies worldwide points toward blind spots in the research and identifies “overstudied” areas. We describe the methodologies used in the studies and present a typology of environmental hazards. Our results show that research on environmental migration is mainly done in countries of the Global South, whereas climate science research in general is focused on countries of the Global North. We contend that the peculiar geography of environmental migration cannot be explained solely by the uneven vulnerability of southern populations to the environment. It must also be understood through the lens of post-colonial and securitization studies as the result of a framing of “environmental refugees” (and refugees in general) as an intrinsically “southern problem” and as a security risk for the North. This paper is an original contribution to the literature on the North-South divide in scientific research and will help to outline future directions of investigation.     

Neighborhood Priority or Desegregation Plans? A Spatial Analysis of Voting on San Francisco’s Student Assignment System

In 2011, San Francisco held an unprecedented citywide vote on its public schools’ student assignment policy. Proposition H provides a unique opportunity to learn more about the public’s desire for “neighborhood schools,” as compared to their interest in maintaining districtwide desegregation efforts. This paper takes the approach of applying geographic information system tools and regression analysis to understand the relationships between neighborhood, race, income, and attitudes toward student assignment systems. By comparing the election results with demographics and school quality data, we identify patterns of support for the narrowly defeated proposition. Support for a shift toward neighborhood-based schools was higher in census tracts with high-performing schools, more school age children, high median income, or a large fraction of foreign-born residents, and lower in tracts with a high percentage of Latinos. The shifting race- and class-based politics of the city foreshadow expected demographic shifts in the US.     

A gross mating table for a West Indian population

At a sample survey carried out in Trinidad in 1958 data were collected on the participation of women in three union types: “visiting”, “common law” and “married”. It is assumed that the maximum number of changes of union type in which a woman is involved is three. From the survey material the chances of non-East Indian women moving from one type of union to another as they pass through the childbearing span (taken here as 14 to 45) are calculated. These chances are used to construct a table showing the types of unions in which a cohort of 10,000 women are involved between the ages of 14 and 45.

This table makes possible the estimation of the length of time spent by the average woman in the three union types as well as the time spent in the “single” state, the numbers of women participating in these union types at different ages and the stability of these types of union.

This table emphasizes that despite the fact that the “visiting” type is very important at lower ages, there is a progressive concentration in “married” and “common law” types with advance in age, and by age 45 more than half the women are “married” and about one-fifth are in “common law” associations. It also shows that the average woman spends the longest period of childbearing life in the “married” state (9.6 years), the shortest time in “visiting” unions (4.1 years) and 5.9 years in “common law” unions. Stability is strongest in the case of the “married” type and lowest for the “visiting”; this, however, may be viewed not so much as evidence of family disorganisation, but as a progressive shift from a less stable to a more stable union type.     

Causal direction in a model of life satisfaction: The top-down/bottom-up controversy

In social indicator studies, there is some controversy about the causal direction between subjective well-being and domain-specific satisfaction variables; a “top-down” approach is distinguished from a “bottom-up” approach. In this paper, the effects in both directions are estimated in a model with reciprocal relationships as a starting model. It can then be determined which of the two effects for each pair of variables is strongest and which effect can be ignored in the model. This procedure is applied to four different datasets collected in the Netherlands, and to models with different exogenous variables. Comparing the best solutions obtained for all different models and datasets, it is shown that the direction of the effects is not consistent across models and datasets. We have to conclude that it is impossible to obtain a stable solution for the model of subjective well-being in this study. As a consequence, we also have to conclude that the results from other studies cannot be trusted in which the causal order in a model of subjective well-being is tested.     

On the utility of population forecasts

Many customers demand population forecasts, particularly for small areas. Although the forecast evaluation literature is extensive, it is dominated by a focus on accuracy. We go beyond accuracy by examining the concept of forecast utility in an evaluation of a sample of 2,709 counties and census tracts. Wefind that forecasters provide “value-added” knowledge for areas experiencing rapid change or areas with relatively large populations. For other areas, reduced value is more common than added value. Our results suggest that new forecasting strategies and methods such as composite modeling may substantially improve forecast utility.     

Global concerns,local negotiations and moral selves:

Parents are contradictorily positioned within the “sexualisation of childhood” debate. They (“we”) are assumed to be concerned about sexualisation, and are urged to challenge it through campaigning, “saying no,” discussing “media messages” with children, and so on. Yet “irresponsible” consumption practices, particularly by mothers, are also held responsible for sexualisation. We argue that parental concern may be overstated: participants in our qualitative research into “sexualised goods” tended not to perceive their own children as “sexualised,” did not accept that products are inherently sexualised, and subscribed to ideas about child development and “good” parenting that entailed letting children make their own decisions about such items. Nonetheless, mothers are increasingly compelled to participate in the “sexualisation debate,” and doing so appears to encourage perpetual self-scrutiny and surveillance of others to maintain boundaries between “acceptable,” peer-group-appropriate and “inappropriate” practices and choices. In this sense sexualisation can be seen as a site for the formation of ethical, responsibilised parent subjectivities. We argue that it has costs for (working-class) women and girls in particular: it naturalises social inequalities by obscuring the constraints on individual choice, converges with older discourses that make women responsible for male sexual violence, and reinforces narrow and conventional moral agendas.     

中国老年人口健康预期寿命差异的分解研究

健康预期寿命是反映人群健康长寿的重要指标,健康预期寿命差异反映了一个国家或地区的健康不平等状况。利用多状态生命表分析了中国老年人口健康预期寿命在过去十余年间的趋势与变动,并通过夏普利值分解法测算了人口社会学等11类因素对老年人口健康预期寿命差异的具体贡献值。得到以下四项重要研究结论:第一,从2005年到2018年,中国老年人口健康预期寿命差异的程度略有增加,女性、农村群体相比对应群体差距始终较高;泰尔指数分解发现,组内不平等(而非组间不平等)是造成上述差异的主要原因;老年人口健康预期寿命的性别差异呈现出高龄老人缩小而低龄老人扩大的趋势。第二,婚姻状况是健康预期寿命变动最重要的影响因素,但影响程度呈现逐年下降趋势,反之,受教育程度的影响在逐年上升;进一步将11类影响因素归类后发现:"个体特征"是最重要的影响因素,"经济因素"和"行为因素"的重要性次之,"环境因素"的影响最小。第三,上述影响因素对中国老年人口健康预期寿命的影响总体呈上升趋势,分城乡、分性别后依然呈现出相同的特征。最后,各因素在不同城乡、性别、婚姻状态的群体中的影响存在异质性。     

A stochastic approach to the estimation of the prevalence of IUD: Example of Taiwan,Republic of China

Assuming three patterns of changes in number of new IUD insertions, three stochastic models have been developed for the estimation of the “prevalence” of IUD in situ at a given point of time. The advantages of these models, compared with the conventional ways of estimating IUD prevalence, rest with their ease of use and simplicity of method for calculating variances of the estimates. The models are also useful for family planning administrators to set program targets. A correction factor to estimate the number of IUDs which, although “currently in situ,” are worn by women who have “passed over” the upper age limit of their reproductive spans has also been developed. This is particularly useful in estimating the “effective retention” of IUD.     

人口稀释效应对经济增长异质性的影响——基于人力资本积累、R&D传导的机理分析

将人口增长“稀释效应”嵌入一个四部门水平创新框架,提出一个同时内生化个体经济行为、R&D技术进步与人力资本积累的内生增长模型,推导并刻画了经济收敛于BGP均衡及影响经济增长率的因素,为解释人口增长对经济增长产生不确定影响的“正负符号之争”提供了微观基础分析。边际贡献在于:修正设定知识积累存在非规模效应且人力资本积累存在“稀释效应”,放宽对参数的上限或正负进行先验设定。得出结论:人口增长产生负向“稀释效应”与正向“思想效应”是影响经济增长的微观传导路径,正负效应共同作用门槛值大小的不同决定人口增长与经济增长呈非单调异质性不确定影响,进一步分析了稀释效应与门槛值之间的内在关联,数值模拟量化了参数效应。     

Fetal movements: What are we telling women?

Problem

Information that women receive about the importance of monitoring fetal movements and what to do if there are changes is inconsistent and may not be evidence based.

易房养老：“以房养老”的多元模式探索

“以房养老”是在我国人口老龄化、家庭养老功能弱化与社会养老功能严重不足的特定时代背景下，即将于近期内全面启动的民生工程重要举措之一。本文提出，在构建符合我国国情的多元化养老服务体系中，除国务院文件倡导的“反向按揭”（也称“倒按揭”）之外，“以房养老”还可以有多种不同的形式作为补充，以通过自有住房租赁或买卖获取差价用于养老补贴的“易房养老”，即为其中值得倡导与推广的模式之一。     

2000年以来人口学研究国际前沿解读——基于CiteSpace对Web of Science数据库的文献计量

为探究国际人口学学科的文献特征与趋势,本文运用科学计量学的前沿研究方法,基于Web of Science数据库(2000—2018年)收录的人口学研究领域的文献数据,应用CiteSpace软件,就被引文献和主题词进行实证分析。结果表明,人口转变、国际移民、低生育率与生育行为是21世纪以来国际人口学最核心的学术研究分支;受教育程度、已婚女性、人口特征、年轻女性、年轻人、生殖健康等主题词是该领域的研究热点,具体来看,“代际问题”、“缓慢衰老”、“结婚与同居”、“生育意图和生育行为”、“移民融合”以及“女性雇佣和生育”等主题是近年来国际人口学界研究的前沿方向。     

The best friend,the boyfriend,other girls,hot guys,and creeps: the relational production of self on Tumblr

This article interrogates how youthful feminine selves are relationally articulated by reference to post-feminist economies of value on the blogging platform Tumblr. I examine a public on Tumblr in which everyday experiences in young women’s lives are narrated through reaction-GIF blog posts. Combining GIFs and captions, the posts capture moments ranging from the rage “when I see some chick getting all flirty with my crush” to the self-satisfaction “when my bestie and I congratulate each other on being the most attractive betches in the room.” In this context, post-feminist individuality is relationally made in two principal ways: through implicit assumptions of the reader as “spectatorial girlfriend” who is able to understand and “get” the references in the posts; and through the key social figures of the best friend, Other girls, hot guys, creeps, and the boyfriend, who are reconfigured as resources through which to tell a normative post-feminist self. Such techniques of conversion and use demonstrate not only that young women are labouring to demonstrate selfhood within frameworks of post-feminist normativity, but that post-feminist cultures also construct social knowledges which young women use to connect with imagined others.     

The Influence of the Built Environment and Other Factors on the Physical Activity of Older Women from Different Ethnic Communities

ABSTRACT

Inactivity has been identified as a major contributor to the burden of disease in older women. Study aims were: (a) to assess the personal, social, and environmental facilitators and impediments to physical activity in older women from ethnic communities; and (b) to determine the factors associated with physical activity participation. Older women (aged 60–84 years) were recruited from the local Italian (n = 20), Vietnamese (n = 26) and Anglo-Celtic (n = 26) communities. A survey questionnaire was administered in the participants' preferred language. The most common barriers were: “I am not in good health,” “I am self-conscious about my looks,” “I am too tired,” “I don't have time,” and “The weather is bad.” When comparing the ethnic groups, the Vietnamese women reported fewer barriers than the Italian women (2.6 vs. 5.9). While the Vietnamese women were much more likely to report being “self-conscious about my looks,” the Italian women more commonly reported poor health, being too tired, and not liking exercise as barriers. Overall, those living alone were more likely to be active and those who reported fear of injury, less active. Recognizing ethnospecific differences in the prevalence of barriers may be important when devising strategies to increase activity levels of older women.     

“The Consummate Material Girl?”

This paper examines one facet of the media persona of high profile South African liberation struggle figure, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela: how English-language media represented her conspicuous consumption during a monumental decade in the country's history, the 1990s. In the framework of theories of post-coloniality and intersectionality, the paper analyses the discourses in a corpus of thematically coherent media texts featuring Winnie's lifestyle and consumption practices. Media narratives of Winnie's taste for “diamonds,” “champagne,” “mansions,” and “expensive clothes” are deconstructed as ideologically loaded and influenced by racialized and gendered power struggles. The extent to which Winnie is presented as having “sold out” on the liberation struggle and having “bought in” to neoliberal values is theorized in the context of the politics of wealth and poverty in a newly liberated society.