The Political Economy of Social Insurance: Towards a Fiscal‐Centred Framework

This article draws attention to social insurance (SI) as a revenue raising institution, and explores the potential merits of drawing on new fiscal sociology for studying the development of SI systems. This is done by revisiting previous research conducted in Germany, the USA, Finland and Israel and by offering a new reading of their findings. The reviewed cases support two interlocking claims drawn from new fiscal sociology to the study of SI. The first is that state actors may perceive SI as an extraction instrument and employ it to advance fiscal and/or economic interests other than covering the costs of SI schemes. The second is that the design and management of contribution policies for such purposes may have substantial ramifications for the development of SI schemes. In addition, while current understandings tend to associate fiscal concerns with welfare state retrenchment, this article shows that they can also play a major role in driving welfare state expansion.     

Parents' perceptions of their children in a context of shared political uncertainty

The study describes the differences and similarities between parents’ feelings and their perception of their children’s feelings in a politically uncertain situation. The study focuses on Israeli families living in Judaea and Samaria (the West Bank) during two periods: the Intifada and the post‐Oslo Agreements years during the first phase of the peace process with the Palestinians. The research combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The results show that most of the feelings evoked by the uncertainty are negative emotions, such as fear, anger, hate, the desire for revenge, and avoidance. These emotions are experienced by parents and, according to the parents’ perceptions, by their children as well. In addition to the correlation between parents’ own experiences and their appraisal of their children’s, the children were perceived as having more negative feelings than the parents. Systemic analysis of the results indicates that the children are often a channel for expression of their parents’ emotions. Based on this finding, suggestions are made regarding intervention with children that takes family processes into account. Some direction for applying the findings of this specific study in other contexts of shared political uncertainty, such as Northern Ireland, are suggested.     

Age Is But a Number? An Exploration of Age Differences in Episodic Volunteering

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Age has long been understood as a strong demographic determinant of volunteering. However, to date, limited literature...     

Mark-specific hazard ratio model with missing multivariate marks

An objective of randomized placebo-controlled preventive HIV vaccine efficacy (VE) trials is to assess the relationship between vaccine effects to prevent HIV acquisition and continuous genetic distances of the exposing HIVs to multiple HIV strains represented in the vaccine. The set of genetic distances, only observed in failures, is collectively termed the ‘mark.’ The objective has motivated a recent study of a multivariate mark-specific hazard ratio model in the competing risks failure time analysis framework. Marks of interest, however, are commonly subject to substantial missingness, largely due to rapid post-acquisition viral evolution. In this article, we investigate the mark-specific hazard ratio model with missing multivariate marks and develop two inferential procedures based on (i) inverse probability weighting (IPW) of the complete cases, and (ii) augmentation of the IPW estimating functions by leveraging auxiliary data predictive of the mark. Asymptotic properties and finite-sample performance of the inferential procedures are presented. This research also provides general inferential methods for semiparametric density ratio/biased sampling models with missing data. We apply the developed procedures to data from the HVTN 502 ‘Step’ HIV VE trial.     

Marginal and hazard ratio specific random data generation: Applications to semi-parametric bootstrapping

Cox's partial likelihood for censored time-to-event data can be interpreted as a permutation probability, whereby covariate values are permuted to the observed times-to-event and censoring times. This interpretation facilitates a simple method for jointly generating times-to-event and covariate tuples with considerable flexibility, including time dependence of the hazard ratio and specification of both the marginal time-to-event and covariate distributions. This interpretation also facilitates a method for semi-parametric bootstrapping of hazard ratio estimators.     

Multidimensional Quality of Life: A New Measure of Quality of Life in Adults

This paper presents a new measure for assessing quality of life (QOL) –the Multidimensional Quality of Life (MQOL)– and describes its derivation, characteristics, structure and several applications. Reasons for developing the MQOL include the restricted range of assessed domains and the heavy emphasis on health in many standard assessment tools. The MQOL was derived by meaning probes into QOL in different samples. It is a 60-item self-report tool of high reliability and validity covering various themes and forming, in line with factor and cluster analyses, 17 scales that constitute five factors according to confirmatory factor analysis. It has been applied with thousands of individuals, in English, Hebrew, Russian and Arabic, and is adequate for healthy and physically or mentally sick individuals, under regular or challenging circumstances. Described studies present findings in samples of sick or healthy individuals (e.g., unemployed, members of a collapsing Kibbutz); relations between the MQOL and coping strategies in partners of sick individuals; and interrelations of overall and scale scores in new and old immigrants. Conclusions focus on the structure of the MQOL, the specificity of coping effects, and the stabilizing mechanisms of QOL.     

Using categorical markers as auxiliary variables in log‐rank tests and hazard ratio estimation

Markers, which are prognostic longitudinal variables, can be used to replace some of the information lost due to right censoring. They may also be used to remove or reduce bias due to informative censoring. In this paper, the authors propose novel methods for using markers to increase the efficiency of log‐rank tests and hazard ratio estimation, as well as parametric estimation. They propose a «plug‐in» methodology that consists of writing the test statistic or estimate of interest as a functional of Kaplan–Meier estimators. The latter are then replaced by an efficient estimator of the survival curve that incorporates information from markers. Using simulations, the authors show that the resulting estimators and tests can be up to 30% more efficient than the usual procedures, provided that the marker is highly prognostic and that the frequency of censoring is high.     

Saving Performance in Individual Development Accounts: Does Marital Status Matter?

Research indicates that marriage has a large effect on reducing the risk of poverty and is associated with a higher probability of attaining affluence over the life course when compared with nonmarriage. Using data from the American Dream Demonstration (N =2,364), this study compares savings performances of married and unmarried low‐income participants in a matched savings program—Individual Development Accounts. The results indicate that both married and unmarried low‐income participants can save in Individual Development Accounts. After controlling for program and other participant characteristics, there were no significant differences in savings between married and unmarried participants. We further examined possible factors that are associated with Individual Development Account savings performance for these two groups.     

Tree-structured subgroup analysis for censored survival data: Validation of computationally inexpensive model selection criteria

The performance of computationally inexpensive model selection criteria in the context of tree-structured subgroup analysis is investigated. It is shown through simulation that no single model selection criterion exhibits a uniformly superior performance over a wide range of scenarios. Therefore, a two-stage approach for model selection is proposed and shown to perform satisfactorily. Applied example of subgroup analysis is presented. Problems associated with tree-structured subgroup analysis are discussed and practical solutions are suggested.     

First-time mothers’ birth beliefs,preferences, and actual birth: A longitudinal observational study

Problem

Birth preferences, such as mode and place of birth and other birth options, have important individual and societal implications, yet few studies have investigated the mechanism which predicts a wide range of childbirth options simultaneously.