Present and prospective health status of older adults in the Philippines: The role of education

Utilizing current information to project prospective ill health prevalence can help prepare the country to ensure the well-being of older people. The prevalence of ill health in terms of physical, psychological, and cognitive health dimensions was estimated by age, sex, and education attainment level using the 2018 Longitudinal Study on Aging and Health in the Philippines. Subsequently, the said rates were integrated into population projection estimates from 2020 to 2080. It was observed that the depression prevalence rate among older people was highest at above 40%, while physical and cognitive limitations were at around 18% and 22% respectively. It was also found that prevalence rates of ill health increased with age and that ill health was more prevalent among women than men, particularly at more advanced ages. The use of population projections has shown that education differentials in the analyses estimate lower prevalence rates of ill health for both sexes. The findings provide estimates for the prospective care needs of the older population in the Philippines. It was also suggested that education may possibly have preventive effects on ill health. Utilizing present information in order to prepare for issues can be beneficial for securing the well-being of older adults.     

Integration and the struggle to turn space into “our” place: Homemaking as a way beyond the stalemate of assimilationism vs transnationalism

This article investigates homemaking as a set of practices and a perspective on migrants’ ways of local incorporation, with its own material, emotional and relational underpinnings. Homemaking has the potential to emerge as an original category of analysis in immigrant integration, moving beyond the contraposition between assimilationism and transnationalism. Based also on our ongoing research, both in the United States and in Europe, we argue for the significance of migrants’ interactions with specific local structures of opportunities, including people and institutions as much as the built and natural environment. The latter is a critical site where the meanings, opportunities and contents of integration are negotiated between immigrant newcomers and their local and transnational counterparts. Migrants’ stratified rights, opportunities and aspirations to make themselves at home open a promising research perspective on group relations, as embedded in everyday materialities. While integration is a multi-dimensional and multi-scalar effort, it still rests on place-bound fields of inequalities and interaction within and between groups, and on underlying differences in views, emotions and practices of home. These are both a mirror of larger asymmetries of power and of the opportunities available to challenge them.     

Persistence in entrepreneurship and its implications for the European entrepreneurial promotion policy

By considering entrepreneurs who hire employees – employers – and entrepreneurs without personnel – own-account workers – as related but distinct groups within entrepreneurship, this work analyzes the roles of different factors in entrepreneurship survival in Europe from a new perspective: contrasting the determinants of own-account workers’ survival with those affecting employers’ survival in the EU-15. Our results confirm the presence of persistence in entrepreneurship. However, we also obtain a strong negative effect on survival of entering entrepreneurship from unemployment. Hence, policymakers should balance these mixed results to evaluate the medium- and long-term suitability of the existing entrepreneurial promotion policy across European regions.     

An Economic Model of Friendship: Homophily,Minorities, and Segregation

We develop a model of friendship formation that sheds light on segregation patterns observed in social and economic networks. Individuals have types and see type‐dependent benefits from friendships. We examine the properties of a steady‐state equilibrium of a matching process of friendship formation. We use the model to understand three empirical patterns of friendship formation: (i) larger groups tend to form more same‐type ties and fewer other‐type ties than small groups, (ii) larger groups form more ties per capita, and (iii) all groups are biased towards same‐type relative to demographics, with the most extreme bias coming from middle‐sized groups. We show how these empirical observations can be generated by biases in preferences and biases in meetings. We also illustrate some welfare implications of the model.     

Migration and Sexuality: A Comparison of Mexicans in Sending and Receiving Communities

The reconstruction of sexuality after migration is a central dimension of immigrant health and an integral part of the process of adaptation and incorporation. Despite its significance there is little quantitative information measuring the changes in sexual behavior accompanying migration. This article contributes to the literature connecting immigrant adaptation and health risks by comparing sexual practices and attitudes among Mexicans in Durham, NC, and Mexican sending communities. Consistent with a social constructivist approach to sexuality we show that compared to nonmigrants, Mexicans residing in the United States exhibit heightened exposure to risk, including casual and, among men, commercial partners. The enhanced risks associated with migration vary systematically by gender and marital status and are accompanied by variation in attitudes toward sexuality, with the U.S. context associated with higher tolerance for infidelity and biological explanations of sexuality. We discuss the implications for immigrant adaptation and health policies in the United States and abroad.     

Early Labour Market Returns to College Subject

Abstract. We estimate early labour market outcomes of Italian university graduates across college subjects. We devote great attention to endogenous selection issues using alternative methods to control for potential self‐selection associated with the choice of the degree subject in order to unravel the causal link between college major and subsequent outcomes in the labour market. Our results suggest that ‘quantitative’ fields (i.e. Sciences, Engineering, and Economics) increase not only the speed of transition into the first job and employment probability but also early earnings, conditional on employment.     

Social Networks and Employment: Mechanisms (Part 1)

While substantial progress has recently been made in the literature on social networks and employment, this research has not been accompanied by a larger organizing framework. In this article, we attempt to provide such framework while reviewing the literature that addresses the context of work and employment from a social network perspective – that is, research based on the assumption that actors are embedded in networks of social relations and interactions. In particular, our review focuses on the primary mechanisms that help explain how networks may shape employment outcomes and processes, namely, by conveying resources and providing signals to others. Ties among social actors may transfer better or unique resources such as information, learning, influence, and support, which consequently may affect key employment outcomes. Ties may also provide signals concerning ability, legitimacy/trust, status, and relationship meaning. We conclude by presenting a number of alternative arguments in the literature and discussing future directions for the research on social networks and employment.     

Innovation, workers skills and industrial relations: Empirical evidence from firm-level Italian data

The shifting of labour demand toward relatively more skilled workers has been a hot issue in the economic field for many years. A consolidated explanation for the upskilling phenomenon is that technological–organisational changes have driven the labour demand with detrimental consequences for less skilled workers (skill-biased technological–organisational change). In order to upgrade the skill workforce the firm has at least two main channels at its disposal: the external labour market strategy, mainly based on hiring and firing mechanisms; the internal labour market strategies, which improve the skill base of the employees through training activities.The main objective of the present work is to verify the relations between innovative strategies and both the workforce composition and the training activities, within an integrated framework that also leads us to consider the role of specific aspects of the industrial relations system.The firm level analysis is based on original datasets which include data on manufacturing firms for two Italian local production systems, located in the Emilia-Romagna region.The results suggest that the firms use both the two channels to improve their skill base, which is actually related to the innovation activities, although there is weak supporting evidence of the use of external labour markets to upgrade the workforce skills: the upskilling phenomenon seems to be associated to specific innovative activities in the technological sphere, while specific organisational aspects emerge as detrimental for blue collars. On the side of internal labour market strategies the evidence supports the hypothesis that innovation intensity induces the firms to implement internal procedures in order to upskill the workforce, confirming the importance of internal labour market strategies. Moreover, we have recognized the important role of firm level industrial relations in determining the training activities for the blue collar workers.