Conceptualising and Measuring Social Cohesion in Africa: Towards a Perceptions-Based Index

Social cohesion is a key concept in development studies. Weak social cohesion is often related to slow economic growth and (violent) conflict. So far few attempts have been made to measure this complex concept in a systematic manner. This paper introduces an innovative method to measure national-level social cohesion based on survey data from 19 African countries. We distinguish three dimensions of social cohesion; i.e. the extent of perceived inequalities, the level of societal trust, and the strength of people’s adherence to their national identity. Importantly, our Social Cohesion Index (SCI) is based on individuals’ perceptions vis-à-vis these three different dimensions of social cohesion rather than certain macro-level ‘objective’ indicators such as GDP/capita or Gini-coefficients. We develop two social cohesion indices: a national average SCI and a Social Cohesion Index Variance-Adjusted (SCIVA); the latter one takes into account the level of variation across different ethnic groups within countries. The SCI and SCIVA are computed for and compared across nineteen African countries for the period 2005–2012 on the basis of Afrobarometer survey rounds 3, 4 and 5. We also investigate quantitatively the relationship between countries’ levels of social cohesion and the occurrence of a range of conflict events. As expected, we find that countries with low levels of social cohesion in a particular year according to our SCI are more likely to experience a range of different violent conflict events in the subsequent year.     

Best Practice Principles for Community Indicator Systems and a Case Study Analysis: How Community Indicators Victoria is Creating Impact and Bridging Policy,Practice and Research

Numerous community indicator projects have been developed over the past 30 years and are now present in many countries including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South America. However, creating influence and action using community indicators requires long-term effort strengthened by partnership, policy applications, training and research. This paper provides a reflective case study analysis that reviews the development of the community indicator system of Community Indicators Victoria in Australia. The analysis includes a review of best practice indicator principles guiding the development of current and future community indicator systems and describes how these factors influenced the development, establishment, and expansion of the Community Indicators Victoria system.     

Estimates of Spatial Prices in India and Their Sensitivity to Alternative Estimation Methods and Choice of Commodities

This paper provides Indian evidence on sub-national PPPs that point to considerable spatial price heterogeneity within the country, based on Indian National Sample Survey (NSS) data. The prices of various commodities have been generated from the household specific unit values obtained from the information on expenditures and quantities from the NSS unit records. This paper shows that the CPD model, proposed in the cross country context, can be adapted to the household context to estimate spatial prices in the intra country context. The proposed CPD based model is shown to be formally equivalent to certain well known fixed weight price indices under certain parametric configurations. The empirical contribution includes a systematic comparison between the spatial price indices from alternative models, namely the CPD and utility based models, and the result that the utility based methods point to a much greater extent of spatial price heterogeneity than is suggested by the CPD type models. The results also record the sensitivity of the spatial price indices to the choice of commodities in the utility based approach. The pairwise comparison of estimates suggests that commodity selection may be more important than model selection in its impact on the spatial price estimates, though the latter is important as well. The study provides estimates of rural–urban differentials in spatial price indices that suggest some interesting differences between the constituent states. The results make a strong case for further research on the topic of sub-national PPPs in the context of large heterogeneous countries.     

Building Universal Socio-cultural Indicators for Standardizing the Safeguarding of Citizens’ Rights in Smart Cities

This research explores the opportunity to use standards as recommender instruments for designing urban policy. Standards are soft regulatory mechanisms that can be used for monitoring and safeguarding. More precisely, we explore the potential use of social standards for centering the focus of the smart cities initiative back to the citizens, and establishing a citizen-centered approach. This is in contrast to the industrial drive and technological emphasis which currently dominates. Accordingly, we present a set of novel citizenship indicators which serve as the basis for the social standardization of smart cities, something which is not now taking place, in order to ensure and safeguard the basic social urban rights of citizens. The juridical basis and well-established points of reference for building indicators for citizens’ rights in the city are two International Charters. These are the European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City, and the Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City. In this paper, we start by comparing and analyzing the rights contained in each of the two Charters, and elaborating indicators for measuring the promotion and protection of these rights. The elaboration of indicators has been based on different criteria and under the common premise of universal existence of feeding data, which is the most recurrent problem when building indicators meant to be global. Next, at the request of the International Standards Organization (ISO), we select the most relevant socio-cultural indicators for the Global Charter Agenda, which will be introduced in the on-going revision of the smart cities and communities standard ISO 37120:2014 Sustainable development of communities—Indicators for city services and quality of life. This will make ISO 37120 a more beneficial social standard for monitoring and safeguarding citizens’ rights in the smart city.     

Trajectories of Unintended Fertility

Having an unintended birth is strongly associated with the likelihood of having later unintended births. We use detailed longitudinal data from the Add Health Study (N = 8300) to investigate whether a host of measured sociodemographic, personality, and psychosocial characteristics select women into this “trajectory” of unintended childbearing. While some measured characteristics and aspects of the unfolding life course are related to unintended childbearing, explicitly modeling these effects does not greatly attenuate the association of an unintended birth with a subsequent one. Next, we statistically control for unmeasured time-invariant covariates that affect all birth intervals, and again find that the association of an unintended birth with subsequent ones remains strong. This persistent, strong association may be the direct result of experiencing an earlier unintended birth. We propose several mechanisms that might explain this strong association.     

Religion,Contraceptive Method Mix,and Son Preference Among Bengali-Speaking Community of Indian Subcontinent

This paper examines the influence of religion on contraceptive method mix in the context of son preference among Bengali-speaking population of eastern India (i.e., West Bengal and Tripura) and Bangladesh. In spite of cultural similarity and parallel programmatic approach to family planning in these two distinct geopolitical spaces, differential use of contraception is evident. Using National Family Health Survey (2005–2006) and Bangladesh Demographic Health Survey (2007) and by employing sequential logit model, the paper finds evidence of latent son preference in adoption of modern contraception in Bengali-speaking Hindu and Muslim communities of eastern India. However, such practice is observed only among Hindus in Bangladesh. The paper further argues that although diffusion of the culture of son preference cuts across religious groups among Bengali-speaking community in eastern India, religious identity dominates over region in Bangladesh, encouraging minority Hindus to adopt a distinct pattern of contraceptive behavior with reference to sons. Such finding calls for further research in understanding the pros and cons of behavioral diffusion in majority–minority population mix in similar tradition and culture.     

Fertility after natural disaster: Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua

This investigation evaluates the effect of Hurricane Mitch on women’s reproductive outcomes throughout Nicaragua. This research aim is achieved by analyzing a unique Nicaraguan Living Standards Measurement Study panel dataset that tracks women’s fertility immediately before and at two time points after Hurricane Mitch, combined with satellite-derived municipality-level precipitation data for the 10-day storm period. Results show higher odds of post-disaster fertility in municipalities receiving higher precipitation levels in the immediate post-Hurricane Mitch period. However, fertility normalizes between disaster and non-disaster areas 4 to 6 years after the storm. These findings suggest that the disruptive effects of a natural disaster such as Hurricane Mitch can have an initial stimulative effect on fertility but that effect is ephemeral.     

Emerging issues in urban ecology: implications for research,social justice,human health,and well-being

Urbanization affects landscape structure and the overall human condition in numerous ways. Green spaces include vegetated land cover (e.g., urban forests, trees, riparian zones, parks) which play a distinctive role in urban ecology. This article reviews emergent literature on the linkages between urban green spaces, social justice, and human health. We explore this subject in the context of landscape structure, ecosystem services, and distributional equity as it relates to various health outcomes. Finally, we conclude by identifying gaps in the scholarship and potential areas of future research.     

Does Tourism Consumption Behaviour Mirror Differences in Living Standards?

Based on the theoretical foundation of well-being measurement, the study explores differences in living standards by analysing the distribution of tourism expenditure. A mixture of regression models is used to explore the heterogeneity in tourism consumption by identifying groups of families with similar tourism consumption behaviour as a function of certain socio-demographic and economic factors. The empirical analysis, performed on Italian expenditure data, suggests that there are three different patterns of consumption behaviour conditional to the socio-demographic and economic covariates in the tourism market and that differences in tourism consumption between groups of households mirror inequalities in living standards.     

Longitudinal Factor Analysis of Public Expenditure Composition and Human Development in Brazil After the 1988 Constitution

The way public policies are managed in Brazil has changed since the 1988 Federal Constitution. This study aimed to identify how changes in the structure of public expenditure composition at Brazilian federal states influenced local human development in these states. The states’ public expenditures were categorized according to their nature as spending indices whereas human development was measured through a human development index (HD). To verify the relationships between these variables, an accounting-social theoretical model was created and estimated through latent growth modeling (LGM). The LGM measurement period comprised five administration cycles of the Brazilian states (1988–2011). Variables were measured on data of the second year of state government term; their mean initial values and growth rates were recorded. Results show that, influenced by policies of centralized regulation promoted by the federal government, only the social spending growth rates had statistically significant effect on the human development growth rate, although not considered of great magnitude. Among mean initial values, the most significant was that of minimum spending (SIm), which denotes the direct impact of the Fiscal Accountability Law [Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal, in Portuguese] on human development improvements. The mean initial value of economic spending also showed a positive and significant effect on HD growth rate.