Dynamic modelling of long-term care decisions

This paper describes and analyzes research on the dynamics of long-term care and the policy relevance of identifying the sources of persistence in caregiving arrangements (including the effect of dynamics on parameter estimates, implications for family welfare, parent welfare, child welfare, and cost of government programs). We discuss sources and causes of observed persistence in caregiving arrangements including inertia/state dependence (confounded by unobserved heterogeneity) and costs of changing caregivers. We comment on causes of dynamics including learning/human capital accumulation; burnout; and game-playing. We suggest how to deal with endogenous geography; dynamics in discrete and continuous choices; and equilibrium issues (multiple equilibria, dynamic equilibria). We also present an overview of commonly used longitudinal data sets and evaluate their relative advantages/disadvantages. We also discuss other data issues related to noisy measures of wealth and family structure. Finally, we suggest some methods to handle econometric problems such as endogeneous geography.     

A global count of the extreme poor in 2012: data issues,methodology and initial results

The 2014 release of a new set of purchasing power parity (PPP) conversion factors (PPPs) for 2011 has prompted a revision of the World Bank’s international poverty line. In revising the line, we have sought to minimize changes to the real purchasing power of the earlier $1.25 line (in 2005 PPPs), so as to preserve the integrity of the goalposts for international targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the World Bank’s twin goals – which were set with respect to that line. In particular, the new line was obtained by inflating the same fifteen national poverty lines – originally used by Ravallion et al. (World Bank Econ. Rev. 23(2): 163–184 2009) to construct the $1.25 line – to 2011 prices in local currency units, and then converting them to US dollars using 2011 PPP conversion factors. With a small approximation, this procedure yields a new international poverty line of $1.90 per person per day. In combination with other changes described in the paper, this revision leads to relatively small changes in global poverty incidence for 2011: from 14.5 % using the old method to 14.1 % using the new method. In 2012, the new reference year for the global count, we find 12.7 % of the world’s population, or 897 million people, are living in extreme poverty. There are changes in the regional composition of poverty, but they are also relatively small. This paper documents methodological decisions taken in the process of updating both the poverty line and the consumption and income distributions at the country level, including issues of inter-temporal and spatial price adjustments. It also describes various caveats and limitations of the approach taken.     

The FARSEEING real-world fall repository: a large-scale collaborative database to collect and share sensor signals from real-world falls

Background

Real-world fall events objectively measured by body-worn sensors can improve the understanding of fall events in older people. However, these events are rare and hence challenging to capture. Therefore, the FARSEEING (FAll Repository for the design of Smart and sElf-adaptive Environments prolonging Independent livinG) consortium and associated partners started to build up a meta-database of real-world falls.

Results

Between January 2012 and December 2015 more than 300 real-world fall events have been recorded. This is currently the largest collection of real-world fall data recorded with inertial sensors. A signal processing and fall verification procedure has been developed and applied to the data. Since the end of 2015, 208 verified real-world fall events are available for analyses. The fall events have been recorded within several studies, with different methods, and in different populations. All sensor signals include at least accelerometer measurements and 58 % additionally include gyroscope and magnetometer measurements. The collection of data is ongoing and open to further partners contributing with fall signals. The FARSEEING consortium also aims to share the collected real-world falls data with other researchers on request.

Conclusions

The FARSEEING meta-database will help to improve the understanding of falls and enable new approaches in fall risk assessment, fall prevention, and fall detection in both aging and disease.

     

Der Einfluss der Gruppengröße auf die Aktivität von Parteimitgliedern

In this paper, we aim to test Olson’s (The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1965) assumptions of group size effects on free-riding tendencies in political parties. Multilevel analyses of the Deutsche Parteimitgliederstudie (German Party Membership Study) 2009 reveal that for members of the CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, the assumed negative relationship between the number of party members in the district association and their individual level of activity can only be shown for the eastern states of Germany. Moreover, we show that selective incentives are not suitable for reducing the negative impact of a increasing membership figure, while normative incentives are associated with an increasing free-riding tendency with increasing number of members in the western and eastern Bundesländer. Our results only partly support the assumptions on collective action problems and point to a need for further theoretical and empirical research on group size effects and on the role incentives’ play in explaining the activity in political parties.     

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).     

Social Networks and Social Settings: Developing a Coevolutionary View

One way to think about social context is as a sample of alters. To understand individual action, therefore, it matters greatly where these alters may be coming from, and how they are connected. According to one vision, connections among alters induce local dependencies—emergent rules of social interaction that generate endogenously the observed network structure of social settings. Social selection is the decision of interest in this perspective. According to a second vision, social settings are collections of social foci—physical or symbolic locales where actors meet. Because alters are more likely to be drawn from focused sets, shared social foci are frequently considered as the main generators of network ties, and hence of setting structure. Affiliation to social foci is the decision of central interest in this second view. In this paper we show how stochastic actor–oriented models (SAOMs) originally derived for studying the dynamics of multiple networks may be adopted to represent and examine these interconnected systems of decisions (selection and affiliation) within a unified analytical framework. We illustrate the empirical value of the model in the context of a longitudinal sample of adolescent participating in the Glasgow Teenage Friends and Lifestyle Study. Social selection decisions are examined in the context of networks of friendship relations. The analysis treats musical genres as the main social foci of interest.     

犯罪圈的扩张及其合理限制——以我国刑事立法的变迁为视角

犯罪圈的扩张是我国刑事立法的主导方向,现代化的发展、权利的保护是犯罪圈在特定时期不断扩大的主要原因。立法上的犯罪化的内在根据,在于行为具有应受刑罚处罚程度的社会危害性。犯罪圈的扩张应当受到合理限制：遵循刑法的谦抑性原则,考虑新增罪名与其他罪名的关系,考虑国民的感受与认同并理性对待民意,在注重入罪的同时,也应做到及时地出罪。     

浅析高校女教工在山西转型跨越发展中的使命

在山西＂十二五＂转型跨越发展的过程中,高等教育在推动区域科技进步与产业转化、为区域经济发展提供智力与技术支持、为区域经济发展奠定软环境基础等方面都具有重要作用。而随着数量、素质的不断提高、结构比例的持续优化,作为具有合素质较好、知识层次较高、创新能力较强、社会影响较大等特点的高校女教工群体更应该在人才培养、科学研究、社会服务等诸多方面,充分发挥其作用,为推动山西转型跨越发展做出更大的贡献。