Global Convergence: Aging and Long-Term Care Policy Challenges in the Developing World

Aging around the world poses a global challenge in eldercare. This challenge is particularly felt in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where population aging outpaces the development of aged care policies and services. This Perspective highlights the phenomenon of global convergence in several unsettling trends and challenges shared across LMICs. These include the weakening of informal family care systems for the elderly, growing need for formal long-term care of the frail and disabled who can no longer be adequately supported by family members, and mounting pressures for policy responses to tackle these societal challenges. It is argued that policymakers should take a proactive stance. That is, when family care for the elderly falls short and family caregivers are increasingly under strain, the government should step in and step up support to fill in the gap by developing appropriate policies and a continuum of long-term care services that are accessible and affordable for the majority of older people in need. Three general principles are then suggested with regard to long-term care provision, financing, and quality assurance, which transcend national borders and can be used to guide long-term care policymaking across LMICs.     

Labour in Global Production: Reflections on Coxian Insights in a World of Global Value Chains

Abstract

This essay reflects on Robert W. Cox's work on global production, labour, and labour governance, and considers how his insights might illuminate the present conjuncture for labour in production. I work with an understanding of that conjuncture as involving the rise to pre-eminence of global production networks (GPNs) and global value chains (GVCs) as the contemporary expression of the ongoing globalization of production. The primary tasks of the essay are twofold: first, to explore the dynamics of labour and power in the GVC-based global economy, with a particular emphasis on labour exploitation; and second, to link these questions to those of the governance of the global economy, focusing on the shift towards transnational private governance as the dominant mode of contemporary governance, and on the evolving strategies of organized labour and the International Labour Organization in that context.     

Hesitant Madams in a Global City: Japanese Expat Wives and their Global Householding in Hong Kong

Care work, once a sanctioned labor of love, is increasingly commodified in transnational contexts. The picture of migrant women shouldering the housework and child care of local professonal women may seem like a mutually beneficial arrangement—matching the “needs” of the haves and have-nots—, but the global care chain ultimately works to maintain the traditional gendered division of labor as well as global inequality. To this trend of globalization of care work, Japan has been an exception; however, how much longer it will be so is now in a question, as the government paves the way for importing domestic labor from abroad. This article focuses on Japanese expat wives in Hong Kong in order to locate Japanese women vis-à-vis the global care chain. The narrative analysis on how they decide whether to hire a domestic worker in their home away from home highlights the sociopolitical nature of their supposedly private choices. Some drew on cultural ideal of wifehood and motherhood to rationalize their choice while others referred to racialized or even overtly racist and classist images of foreign domestic workers. A few women spoke against the system itself, showing awareness of its inherent social injustice. All such narratives are never purely personal; their decisions and the rationalization behind them sustain the prevailing discourses of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, and class, which, in turn, envelop their attempts at global householding.     

Employment Population Age-Share Differences: An International Comparison of the Economic Impact of Population Aging

International comparisons of the economic impact of population aging across nations can give valuable insights regarding which policies are most effective in addressing aging-related economic issues. Traditional old-age dependency ratios, by not accounting for differences in labor force participation rates, can be misleading. A new measure, the difference between an age group's share of total employment and its share of the total adult population, is developed and shown to be empirically sensitive to different policy actions. The analysis is built upon readily available and comparable International Labour Organization age-group data on population and labor force participation rates.     

Reforms of Retirement Policies: Three Common Paths in Aging in Japan and Korea

Faced with an unparalleled rate of population aging, Japan and Korea have been reforming their retirement policies. To date, however, while the age of mandatory retirement has increased, employees continue to face significant decreases in compensation and other working conditions, typically at age 60 in Japan and age 55 in Korea. Three factors have contributed to shaping the path of the policy reforms in both the countries, including (1) the productivist welfare regimes, (2) the structure of the labor market for young workers, and (3) seniority-based wage and compensation systems.     

American Indian Poverty in the Contemporary United States

Little sociological attention over the last two decades has focused on the deprivation experienced by indigenous people. Fusing insights from American Indian history and the race and labor market inequality literatures, we address this gap in this article through a historically informed labor market analysis of poverty—an analysis that considers the pervasiveness of contemporary Native poverty, its potential basis in labor market opportunities, and the extent to which it has been patterned by two major demographic and economic shifts: (1) the rapid urbanization of the American Indian population and (2) the proliferation of tribally owned casinos. Findings reveal, most notably, the incredibly rigid and durable character of poverty for this population, historically and currently and across geographic space, and with little overall impact of local labor market opportunity. The presence of tribal casinos reduces such poverty, but only to a small degree and not nearly enough to compensate for sizable American Indian and white poverty differentials. Group history is key, we conclude, to shaping how space, labor markets, and economic development reduce or buttress relations of inequality.     

Making the Poor Pay for the Rich: Capital Account Liberalization and Reserve Accumulation in the Developing World

Since the 1990s emerging market and developing countries (EMDCs) have been accumulating massive amounts of international reserves. The fundamental factor behind this reserve hoarding is financial in nature rather than trade-related, stemming from the widespread adoption of capital account liberalization in EMDCs, the resulting exposure to heightened financial volatility, and the consequent need to accumulate reserves as a self-insurance against potential disruptions in capital flows. Precautionary reserve hoarding, however, follows a circular logic that not only imposes heavy opportunity costs on EMDCs but also defeats the very purpose of capital account liberalization. When EMDCs accumulate reserves to hedge against capital account shocks, they are essentially recycling privately incurred short-term capital inflows into publicly incurred capital outflows, engaging in a reverse carry-trade that neither makes any economic sense nor results in any net transfer of financial resources from abroad. The net effect of this circular logic behind financial openness and precautionary reserve accumulation is a regressive and inequitable shifting of the costs of financial volatility from richer to poorer countries.     

Stress,Depression, and Drug Use Among Aging Mexican American Men Living in the Barrio

Residing in Mexican American barrios might place individuals at heightened risk for chronic financial and acute stress, which are associated with adverse mental health outcomes. Stressors could be exacerbated for substance users. This research explores relations between chronic financial stress, acute stress, and depressive symptomatology among aging Mexican American heroin and other drug-using men. A prospective cohort study and field-intensive outreach methodology were used to recruit 227 men for in-depth interviews. Participants were categorized into depressed and nondepressed groups based on symptomatology measured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Chronic financial stress (i.e., poverty) and acute stress (i.e., Life Events Questionnaire) associated with depressive symptomatology were tested using logistic regression. Findings suggest scores of depressive symptoms among substance users are highly related to chronic financial stress. Community-level interventions targeting chronic stressors present in the barrio could be especially salient in improving the mental health of Latino drug users.     

Has the Youth Labor Market in Japan Changed? An Event History Analysis Approach

Abstract: This paper examines whether the Japanese youth labor market has become more unstable, particularly since the 1990s. To address this problem, I suggest that we consider the transition rate of job exit to be the benchmark of instability in the labor market and focus on workers' career histories until they reach the age of 34 years. This paper presents six hypotheses that explain the instability of the youth labor market as follows: the total increase in the job-exit transition rate, the higher risk of job exit for provisional workers, the increase in the number of provisional workers, the increasing transition rate for provisional workers and stable regular workers, the impact of firm size, and the impact of the collapse of the bubble economy. I present the summary statistics of job exit rates and the results of the Cox partial likelihood estimation models. A conspicuous phenomenon of the 1990s entailed an increasing number of provisional workers who ran a higher risk of job exits compared to regular workers. However, the job exit transition rates are generally stable. Moreover, the transition rates for regular female workers have decreased since the 1980s due to the increasing realization of gender equality in society. Although partial likelihood estimation states that firm size and the type of officer concerned (public/private) had significant effects on the transition rates, their effect did not intensify after the collapse of the bubble economy. In sum, the evidence that the Japanese youth labor market changed in the 1990s is limited.     

Aging in Place at Home Through Environmental Support of Physical Activity: An Interdisciplinary Conceptual Framework and Analysis

This article presents a conceptual framework to link issues of health, services, physical activity, and environment to help older adults age in place in their own homes, which may reduce the demands on society to provide institutional long-term care. Using environments to promote physical activity has received attention by researchers, but its impact on aging-in-place at home has been largely ignored. This article interprets and synthesizes existing studies on aging-in-place in relation to health and services, contributions of physical activity to health and service accessibility, and environmental support of physical activity. The conceptual framework can serve as the core construct to address gaps in previous research and as a tool to refine practical targets for policies and interventions aimed at promoting healthy aging.     

Transforming Global Governance in the Post-2015 Era: Towards an Equitable and Sustainable World†

This article reports on a dialogic symposium that brought academics from a wide range of disciplines together with practitioners and activists. The purpose was to discuss key issues conditioning the possibility of establishing global governance mechanisms which could promote transition paths toward a more equitable and sustainable world. Following the structure of the symposium, the article is divided into four thematic sections. The first contextualizes the discussions by looking at the characteristics and challenges of global governance today. The second addresses power relations in global governance with a focus on the corporate and financial sectors. It discusses practices of multistakeholder governance and public–private partnerships, the unhealthy levels of corporate influence on the UN system, and the dominant discourse that naturalizes corporate power, ‘free’ trade, and corresponding definitions of ideas such as knowledge, efficiency, and development. The third section turns to sites and forms of countervailing power and practice with particular attention to transcalar approaches and social movement actors. It highlights the potential of multi-level, territorial approaches for breaking out of hierarchical and nation state-based frames and building alternative forms of democracy. It illustrates the relevance of bioregions and ecosystems as meaningful arenas for thinking about and organizing social and economic life and for managing common pool resources. It invokes the imperative of protecting the human rights framework from the multiple challenges it faces. Finally, it explores alternative ways of generating and sharing knowledge and of challenging narrowly defined ‘evidence-based’ policy by assembling legitimate, qualitative evidence rooted in lived realities. The concluding section raises the question of whether—and on what conditions—intergovernmental multilateralism can be seen as a locus for transformation, and suggests some avenues of future research.     

Invisible Women in History and Global Studies: Reflections from an Archival Research Project

This article questions the continuing invisibility of the significant scale of the involvement of women in historical movements/moments. The focus is on Mahatma Gandhi-led Civil Disobedience movement (1930–1933), which was a historic turning point enabling the political involvement of masses of women in South Asia. Using an individual narrative, multi-archival research, and secondary literature survey, this article contends that the thriving subaltern and feminist historical traditions have had limited impact on historical ‘gender mainstreaming’. Furthermore, the paper argues that revealing the diverse nature and the substantial scale of women's involvement in social/political change is important for two reasons: firstly, it contributes to a fuller understanding of history and, secondly, because historical research is essential for contemporary policy-making. Reclaiming the role of ordinary women in disparate history writing traditions thus can be a tool to understand and counter persistent gender inequality, in South Asia and in the larger global community.     

An American Wordless Picturebook in Italian Classrooms: Inspiring Global Connections of People,Places, and Environments

What happens when five teacher candidates and their professor bring a wordless picturebook into Italian classrooms? This article presents a grounded discussion of our immersive experiences from the United States and the minilessons they taught stemming from a piece of children's literature through our study abroad program in Italy. The opening of Italian classroom doors provided reflective observations of the critical and creative thinking processes of more than 200 Italian students (ages 7–16). We (one professor and five early childhood and special education teacher candidates) taught minilessons in five Italian schools during a monthlong study abroad program offered by our university (further described in Author 1, 2017). Although this project was conducted in Italy, we have since used this minilesson successfully in our own classes, and we invite you to adapt our use to fit your teaching.     

Public relations tactics and methods in early 1800s America: An examination of an American anti-slavery movement

Traditional public relations histories begin in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This study expands public relations history to the early 1800s by analyzing the use of public relations methods and tactics in an American anti-slavery movement, The American Colonization Society. In focusing on the American Colonization Society and backlash against it from abolitionist groups, this paper finds the use of newspapers to promote a cause, promotion of high profile endorsements, attempts to persuade a key public, creation of publications, efforts to lobby legislatures, and hired agents to found auxiliaries, all beginning in the early 1800s.