Changing mortality and morbidity rates and the health status and life expectancy of the older population

This paper demonstrates the consequences of changes in mortality and health transition rates for changes in both health status life expectancy and the prevalence of health problems in the older population. A five-state multistate life table for the mid-1980s provides the baseline for estimating the effect of differing mortality and morbidity schedules. Results show that improving mortality alone implies increases in both the years and the proportion of dependent life; improving morbidity alone reduces both the years and the proportion of dependent life. Improving mortality alone leads to a higher prevalence of dependent individuals in the life table population; improving morbidity alone leads to a lower percentage of individuals with problems in functioning.     

Historical demography: achievements and prospects

Historical demography as a separate discipline came into existence when family reconstruction was first developed for the analysis of a pre-transition population. This paper assesses the significant achievements made in this field of population studies since then. Attention is also paid to equally significant findings obtained from aggregative analysis based on back projection, and to a large body of research results for the period of the demographic transition. In the last part of the paper, new research directions are discussed. Data issues as well as methodological ones are raised. Special attention is given to newly emerging Asian historical demography where different source materials require different methods and techniques, which in turn are expected to broaden the scope of the so far disproportionality fertility-oriented field. Finally, discussions are extended to economic, cultural and institutional aspects of the subject, with a plea not to isolate demographic analysis from other branches of historical research.     

LIGHTHOUSE PROVISION IN PREMODERN JAPAN

We investigate how lighthouses were provided in premodern Japan, with a specific focus on the role of the private sector. Using national survey data on lighthouses collected by the government in 1883, we find that lighthouses constructed by the private sector in the Edo period (1603?1868) accounted for nearly 70% of lighthouses existing at the time of the survey and that there was no significant difference in technical features between private and public lighthouses. However, we observe that almost all private lighthouses were located at ports, and additional case studies indicate that the public authorities endorsed the operation of some lighthouses, which might have contributed to their profits and improved their long‐term survival. We also find that various factors, including the formation of merchant coalitions and whether users were identifiable, influenced whether a private organization could circumvent the free rider problem. (JEL H41, L97, N45)     

Cosmopolitics: towards a new articulation of politics,science and critique

This paper explores how Ulrich Beck's world‐risk‐society theory (WRST) and Bruno Latour's Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) can be combined to advance a theory of cosmopolitics. On the one hand, WRST helps to examine ‘cosmopolitan politics’, how actors try to inject cosmopolitanism into existing political practices and institutions anchored in the logic of nationalism. On the other hand, ANT sheds light on ‘cosmological politics’, how scientists participate in the construction of reality as a reference point for political struggles. By combining the WRST and ANT perspectives, it becomes possible to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of cosmopolitics that takes into account both political and ontological dimensions. The proposed synthesis of WRST and ANT also calls for a renewal of critical theory by making social scientists aware of their performative involvement in cosmopolitics. This renewal prompts social scientists to explore how they can pragmatically support certain ideals of cosmopolitics through continuous dialogues with their objects of study, actors who inhabit different nations and different cosmoses.     

Indonesia’s social capacity for population health: the educational gap in active life expectancy

In this paper, we lay the initial groundwork for anticipating Indonesia’s future burden of disease by developing a demographic model of population health. We develop this model within the analytic framework of a Markov-based multistate life table model to calculate an important indicator of the burden of disease, the expected years of active life of elderly Indonesians. The magnitude of the gap points to the potential consequences of improvements in the nation’s educational level for the future burden of disease. The results show that having some education increases life expectancy but it also expands the expected years with a major functional problem. Overall educational attainment levels, however, are very low, indicating that Indonesia’s elderly are at the leading edge of improvements in the nation’s social capacity for health. The life tables suggest that at the early stages of development, longer life is accompanied by an expansion of morbidity.     

Being well and doing well: on the importance of income for health

Income is robustly associated with health status. Higher income is associated with lower mortality and morbidity, both cross-nationally and within societies. This relationship is not just confined to low levels of income, but extends well beyond median levels of income in society with diminishing marginal returns to health status with additional increments in income. Drawing upon the absolute and relative interpretations of income and conceptualising them simul-taneously at the individual and community level, we develop a typology of income–health relationships and discuss the distinctiveness of, and connections between, each type. We conclude that a multilevel conceptual and methodological framework is most appropriate to understand the income–health relationship.     

The welfare state as a context for children's development: a study of the effects of unemployment and unemployment protection on reading literacy scores

Data were analysed from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) to examine whether the relationship between parental unemployment status and child reading literacy is modified by the level of unemployment protection provided by the nation. The sample consisted of 61,946 children, nested in 3,918 schools among 17 market economies. The results of multi-level analyses indicated that, after controlling for a range of individual, family and school covariates, children with unemployed fathers in all countries had significantly lower reading literacy scores than those of employed fathers (β = −8.84, SE = 2.01). The contextual effect of unemployment protection was not significant after accounting for fathers' employment status (β = −18.63, SE = 16.26). However, there was a significant negative interaction between unemployment protection and fathers' unemployment, yielding the unexpected suggestion that, in countries with higher levels of unemployment protection, children with unemployed fathers fare worse, both in relation to children with unemployed fathers in lower protection countries, and in comparison with children with employed fathers (β = −26.96, SE = 8.08). Possible explanations are advanced for this result, including the potential for a 'discouraged child effect' arising from the potential association between unemployment protection and higher local unemployment rates (though unemployment rates at the national level were not significant).     

日本存款准备金制度的历史演进

日本于1959年引入了存款准备金制度.在金融自由化前,存款准备金制度与再贴现率操作共同发挥着金融调节手段的作用.随着金融自由化的发展,人们逐渐意识到该制度会对银行存款业务的竞争力带来很大影响,因此下调了存款准备金率.20世纪90年代以后存款准备金率基本保持不变.作为日本银行诱导短期利率的一种框架,存款准备金制度现在仍有重要作用.     

Difference in Eye Gaze for Floor Apportionment in Native- and Second-Language Conversations

In face-to-face communication, eye gaze is known to play various roles such as managing the attention of interlocutors, expressing intimacy, exercising social control, highlighting particular speech content, and coordinating floor apportionment. For second language (L2) communication, one’s perception of eye gaze is expected to have more importance than for native language (L1) because eye gaze is assumed to partially compensate for the deficiencies of verbal expressions. This paper examines and clarifies the efficiency of the function of eye gaze in the coordination of floor apportionment through quantitative analyses of eye gaze during three-party conversations in L1 and L2. Specifically, the authors conducted ANOVA tests on the eye-gaze statistics of a speaker and two listeners during utterances while focusing on whether floor-switch occurs subsequent to the utterance. The analysis results show that the listener who is gazed at more by the speaker is more likely to be the next speaker with a higher probability in L2 than in L1 conversations. Meanwhile, the listeners gaze more at the speaker in L2 than in L1 conversation for both the utterances just before a floor switch and cases with no floor switch. These results support the observation that the eye gaze of the speaker is efficient for floor apportionment in L2 conversations and suggest that longer listeners’ eye gazes in L2 conversations also function efficiently in smooth floor apportionment.