What is Happening with Quality of Life Among the Oldest People in Southern European Countries? An Empirical Approach Based on the SHARE Data

Population aging in developed countries has created new challenges to improve the well-being of individuals at different age cohorts. This issue is especially significant for Southern European countries, were aging societies have worse health and less socio-economic resources. The aim of this study is to contribute to this body of literature and to estimate the effect of aging on quality of life of oldest people. This paper uses the latest available data (6th wave) from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Specifically, robust ordinary least squares and multilevel regressions are employed to analyse the effects of socioeconomic, health, and community factors on quality of life among the oldest population for Southern European countries. Our findings confirm the significance of several factors on life satisfaction among the oldest population in this group of countries. Moreover, we show that the determinants which are correlated with quality of life include predisposing, health, geographic area and social isolation factors.     

Relationship between duration of second stage of labour and postpartum anaemia

Aim

To assess the relationship between the duration of the second stage of labour and postpartum anaemia during vaginal birth.

THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION AND THE UNSECURED CREDIT MARKET

The information technology (IT) revolution coincided with the transformation of the U.S. unsecured credit market. Households' borrowing increased rapidly and there was an even faster increase in bankruptcy filings. A risk of default model with asymmetric information and costly screening is introduced to study this period. When information costs are high, the design of contracts under private information prevents some households from borrowing with a risk of default. As information costs drop, households borrow more and bankruptcy filings increase. Quantitative exercises suggest that the IT revolution may have played an important role in the transformation of the unsecured credit market. (JEL E43, E44, G33)     

New bounds for locally irregular chromatic index of bipartite and subcubic graphs

A graph is locally irregular if the neighbors of every vertex v have degrees distinct from the degree of v. A locally irregular edge-coloring of a graph G is an (improper) edge-coloring such that the graph induced on the edges of any color class is locally irregular. It is conjectured that three colors suffice for a locally irregular edge-coloring. In the paper, we develop a method using which we prove four colors are enough for a locally irregular edge-coloring of any subcubic graph admiting such a coloring. We believe that our method can be further extended to prove the tight bound of three colors for such graphs. Furthermore, using a combination of existing results, we present an improvement of the bounds for bipartite graphs and general graphs, setting the best upper bounds to 7 and 220, respectively.     

Kontexteffekte in Familien – Angleichung von Paaren und intergenerationale Transmission am Beispiel Religiosität

The present contribution shows conceptual and methodological approaches for the study of social context effects within families. Family members mutually constitute the social context in which family behavior and personality development take place. Social influence in families becomes evident empirically in family members’ significant similarity concerning a wide variety of characteristics. The present study focuses on intrafamily convergence with regard to religiousness. In an empirical illustration, both (a) horizontal intracouple alignment and (b) vertical intergenerational transmission processes are examined. Besides the finding that experiences during religious socialization in the parental home have a stronger impact than partner influences in adulthood, our analyses show that social context effects are more pronounced the stronger the cohesion of the respective interaction dyad is (e.g., according to measures of relationship quality).     

Male Honor and the Ruralization of HIV/AIDS in Michoacán. A Case of Indigenous Return Migration in Mexico

The purpose of this text is to analyse the motives of seasonal migrant workers for attempting to get their wives pregnant when they return to Mexico. The meanings attributed to paternity, pregnancy and rearing are analysed from the perspective of the migrant worker and his wife. Ethnographic research was conducted in several Purépecha communities in Michoacán, supported by interviews with indigenous, who travelled to the United States for periods of up to three years, and with their wives, who stayed in Mexico. The migrant workers interviewed consider pregnancy and the paternity derived from it as an important means of male legitimization and sexual control of their wives, particularly valid in their rural communities of origin, where they know they are absentee males. When they return to Mexico they seek sexual relations for reproductive purposes, since they fear their wives will have extramarital relations in their absence. From these findings, it was considered necessary to implement sexual and reproductive health policies with pluri‐ethnic and gender approaches that take into account male beliefs and practices regarding paternity and pregnancy in a rural context. The development of sensitizing policies aimed at migrant males during their stays in Mexico is recommended.     

Alzheimer's disease and euthanasia

Employing the tenets of philosophical materialism, this paper discusses the ethical debate surrounding assisted suicide for persons suffering end-stage Alzheimer's. It first presents a classification of the dissociative situations between "human individual" and "human person". It then moves on to discuss challenges to diagnosed persons and their caregivers in relation to the cardinal virtues of Spinozistic ethics - strength of character (fortitudo), firmness (animositas) and generosity (generositas). Finally, a number of ideas attached to the debate - "right of choice", "death with dignity", "quality of life" and "compassion in dying" - are discussed in order to clarify their foundations.