Of Population and False Hopes: Malthus and His Legacy

Population and Environment -     

The Impact of Economic Crisis on Happiness

There is a common belief that economic crisis will lead to a decrease in subjective wellbeing. Previous studies indicate that income is correlated with happiness and unemployment with unhappiness. The relationship between increased income and happiness is well documented while the impact of decreased income has been less explored. The aim of this paper is to study how the economic downfall in Iceland, followed by reduced income and increased unemployment, affects happiness as well as to explore which groups are most vulnerable to changes in happiness and which are most resilient. The study is a longitudinal, nationally representative postal survey which assessed 5,918 individual’s aged 18–79. A total of 4,092 (77.3%) answered again in 2009. The relationship between economic factors and happiness was explored using multiple linear regression to find out how much they explain of the happiness variance and the changes in happiness, together with demographic factors, health and social relationships. Results indicate that income and unemployment did not predict happiness but financial difficulties did. A decrease in happiness was detected after the collapse. The change in happiness from 2007 to 2009 was normally distributed, 40% had the same score in both years and an equal number increased as decreased. The explored factors did not explain the changes in happiness. The economic crisis had a limited affect on happiness. Those with financial difficulties were hardest hit. Changes in happiness need to be studied further since they are not well explained by the factors which influence cross-sectional levels of happiness.     

Intergenerational Neighborhood Attainment and the Legacy of Racial Residential Segregation: A Causal Mediation Analysis

Advances in mediation analysis are used to examine the legacy effects of racial residential segregation in the United States on neighborhood attainments across two familial generations. The legacy effects of segregation are anticipated to operate through two primary pathways: a neighborhood effects pathway and an urban continuity pathway. The neighborhood effects pathway explains why parent’s exposure to racial residential segregation during their family-rearing years can influence the residential outcomes of their children later in life. The urban continuity pathway captures the temporal consistency of the built and topographical environment in providing similar residential opportunities across generations. Findings from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and U.S. Census data indicate that the legacy effect of racial residential segregation among black families operates primarily through the neighborhood effects that influence children growing up. For white families, there is less support for the legacy effects of segregation. The findings are supported by a comprehensive mediation analysis that provides a formal sensitivity analysis, deploys an instrumental variable, and assesses effect heterogeneity. Knowledge of the legacy of segregation moves neighborhood attainment research beyond point-in-time studies of racial residential segregation to provide a deeper understanding into the ways stratified residential environments are reproduced.     

The Legacy of the Great Recession in Italy: A Wider Geographical,Gender, and Generational Gap in Working Life Expectancy

Under the pressure of population aging the Italian pension system has undergone reforms to increase labor force participation and retirement age, and, thus, the length of working life. However, how the duration of working life has developed in recent years is not well understood. This paper is the first to analyze trends in working life expectancy in Italy. We use data from a nationally representative longitudinal sample of 880,000 individuals from 2003 to 2013 and estimate working life expectancy by gender, occupational category, and region of residence using a Markov chain approach. We document large and increasing heterogeneity in the length of working life. From 2003–2004 to 2012–2013, working life expectancy for men declined from 35.2 to 27.2 years and for women from 34.7 to 23.7 years, increasing the gender gap to 3.5 years. Both young and old were hit, as roughly half of the decline was attributable to ages below 40, half above 40. Working life expectancy declined for all occupational groups, but those in manual occupations lost most, 8.5 years (men) and 10.5 years (women). The North–South economic gradient widened such that men living in the North were expected to work 8 years longer than women living in the South. The fraction of working life of total life expectancy at age 15 declined to record lows at 40% for men and 34% for women in 2012–2013. Policies aiming at increasing total population working life expectancy need to take into consideration the socio-demographic disparities highlighted by our results.

     

Legacy,Policy, and Circumstance in Fertility Transition

Divergent fertility trends in the course of development are commonly ascribed to differences in state action—that is, to government policy, deliberate or inadvertent. However, fertility outcomes can also, often more persuasively, be traced to differences in cultural and institutional inheritance and in the supply and growth potential of human capital. These are materials that states and societies find themselves endowed with—in brief, their legacy. In reality, legacy and policy are interwoven: policy actions build on some legacy elements and attempt to combat others. And there is a third set of factors influencing fertility outcomes, covering distinctive features of the economic and geopolitical environment and essentially fortuitous events—together termed circumstance. Legacy and circumstance can shrink or shift the policy space, helping to explain past failures in policy achievement. These broad considerations are the basis for a sketch of East Asian/sub‐Saharan African contrasts in fertility transition over the last 50 years. The sketch points to missing avenues of policy action in the African case in seeking to overcome legacy obstacles.     

农村老年人自杀及其危机干预（1980—2009）

调查显示,农村老年人自杀率在近10年来呈快速上升态势。摆脱疾病痛苦而形成的利己型自杀与因生存困境等而致的绝望型自杀则越来越成为农村老年人自杀的主要类型。在不同的文化区域中,农村老年人自杀的诸项特征呈现出较为明显的分布差异,这些差异性分布与不同区域所在地的社会结构与文化结构有关。同时,农村老年人自杀诸项特征在不同区域中趋同发展的趋势则表明。正式的医疗与养老等制度支持的长期缺位急需纠正和完善,从而缓解农村老年人自杀的危机。     

人口老龄化背景下的养老金危机--基于四维的视角

进入21世纪,人口老龄化作为一种全球性趋势正在给世界各国带来巨大的负担和成本,尤其是老龄化带来养老金的收支不平衡以及养老金模式的不可持续,给养老保险体系带来巨大挑战。而深层次的养老金危机深刻地影响着每个国家的财政收支、经济发展,甚至造成对政府的信任危机。以往的研究一般把养老金收支不平衡作为衡量养老金危机的一个重要标准。这种仅仅注重财务、而忽视其安全、公平和信任等因素的分析不利于我们把握养老金改革的重点,也不利于我们对于我国现行人口政策的反思。本文从养老金的财务、安全、公平和信任四个角度去分析我国的养老金危机,并进一步提出了对未来养老金改革应该要注意的一些原则性问题。     

浅谈我国当前人才危机的成因及对策

人才的外流以及人才的过剩与不足的矛盾等 ,都预示着中国人才危机的到来。面对入世和全球化进程中的人才争夺战 ,本文试图分析当前我国人才危机的成因并进而探讨其对策 ,对人才这一重大战略问题进行理论探讨 ,以期引起社会的关注与思考     

Never Waste a Good Crisis: Towards Social Sustainable Development

The report by the Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress highlighted the idea that sustainability in essence is about quality of life. This paper discusses and elaborates this notion. It argues that sustainable development should be seen as a process which does not focus on economic development alone, but which also includes well-balanced ecological and social development. Social aspects of sustainability deserve attention because of their instrumental and intrinsic relevance. A society needs a sense of community and commitment. The presence of social capital is very important for the liveability of a society. It is argued that the amount of social capital may fluctuate over time. This means that in the long term, future societies may be better in a social respect (more trust, more participation, less inequality) than today’s. Ensuring social sustainability is thus not only a matter of ensuring that present social cohesion is preserved, but also ensuring that this cohesion will increase or improve. The paper ends by addressing lines of research on social sustainability. The following research themes are mentioned: (1) Quality of life, social capital and social cohesion in a longitudinal perspective. (2) ‘Sustainability of what, why and for whom?’ Sustainability as an issue of choice: trade-offs. (3) Civil society and governance aspects of sustainability. (4) Public perceptions, values and opinions with regard to sustainability issues and (5) Fairness and inequality in relation to sustainability policy, both nationally and internationally.     

俄罗斯人口危机面面观

现当代的俄罗斯人口发展,已经形成了严重危机。俄罗斯人口危机有多方面的表现、形成原因,并深刻地影响着俄罗斯的社会和经济发展。俄罗斯政府采取了"鼓励生育"政策,希望能化解愈演愈烈的人口危机。     

Unraveling the Enigma of the Russian Mortality Crisis: A Review Essay on Charles M. Becker and David Bloom (eds.), The Demographic Crisis in the Former Soviet Union*

Richard Stone , Some British Empiricists in the Social Sciences , 1650–1900 Arup Maharatna , The Demography of Famines: An Indian Historical Perspective Timothy W. Guinnane , The Vanishing Irish: Households, Migration, and the Rural Economy in Ireland, 1850–1914 Gail Kligman , The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania Rosalind P. Petchesky and Karen Judd (Eds.) , Negotiating Reproductive Rights: Women's Perspectives Across Countries and Cultures     

Economic Crisis and its Consequences

Social Indicators Research - The financial crisis that began in late 1997, led to a catastrophic downturn of economic and social development in Korea. Rather than dealing with the macroeconomic and...     

Using Indicators of Multiple Deprivation to Demonstrate the Spatial Legacy of Apartheid in South Africa

This paper presents a spatial analysis of multiple deprivation in South Africa and demonstrates that the most deprived areas in the country are located in the rural former homeland areas. The analysis is undertaken using the datazone level South African Index of Multiple Deprivation which was constructed from the 2001 Census. Datazones are a new statistical geography designed especially for this Index using techniques developed in the United Kingdom. They are smaller in population size than wards, enabling fine-grained spatial analysis of deprivation across the whole of South Africa. The spatial scale used is the smallest to be used in a developing country to date. Levels of deprivation are compared between former homeland areas as a whole, the rest of South Africa and a case-study township, as well as between each former homeland. Individual dimensions of deprivation and an overall composite measure are presented. Municipality-level analysis shows that this spatial pattern of multiple deprivation continued to persist in 2007, demonstrating the ongoing spatial legacy of apartheid.     

俄罗斯人口危机的成因及俄学者对中国劳动移民的综合评价

引进外来移民是俄罗斯摆脱人口危机的现实途径之一。对引进中国劳动移民的利弊问题,俄学者对此看法各异,伴随着俄经济形势的好转,大多数俄学者肯定了中国移民对俄罗斯经济发展的作用,并提出形成完善的移民政策、引入适当数量的移民、避免非法移民流入及民族间冲突是解决俄罗斯人口危机和保证国家安全的有效方法。     

清代中期的人口发展

清代中期是中国人口迅猛发展时期,人口数量达到了传统社会的最高峰。但是人口过度发展也产生了人地矛盾突出、生活水平下降、社会危机加剧、生存环境恶化以及阻碍社会发展等一系列危机和隐患,正是这些危机和隐患导致了中国经济的落后,以及向近代转型的艰难。