Evaluating social assistance reforms under programme heterogeneity and alternative measures of success

This article presents an assessment of welfare reforms under a framework of programme heterogeneity and alternative measures of success. The study focused on a specific programme – Madrid's Ingreso Madrileño de Integración (Madrid Regional Government's Welfare Programme) – which comprises heterogeneous sub‐programmes. We tested whether work‐related sub‐programmes performed better than general activities aimed at improving life skills by analysing the effects on different types of outcomes. We also tried to identify which work‐related sub‐programme worked best. Our results show that intensive employment activities yield remarkably better results than general work‐related schemes or life‐skills activities. However, increasing work participation does not automatically lift participants out of material hardship. Key Practitioner Message: ● Strategies to reduce the dependence of low‐income households on government support by improving employment opportunities; ● Evaluation of alternative work‐related sub‐programmes in welfare policies; ● New evidence on approaches that consider heterogeneous sub‐programmes and different types of outcomes might inform and partially shape the future public policy agenda in the welfare reform debate.     

Block–Savits Characterization and Star Ordering of Exponential Mixtures

Block and Savits (1980 Block , H. W. , Savits , T. H. ( 1980 ). Laplace transforms for classes of life distributions . Ann. Probab. 8 : 465 – 474 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) established a characterization of life distributions using the Laplace transform. In this article, we remark that one of the necessary conditions to be IFRA distribution is equivalent to the star ordering of exponential mixtures. It leads to the definition of two new classes of life distributions, called LIFR and LIFRA, and their dual classes: LDFR and LDFRA. It occurs that these classes have many useful aging properties and preserve known reliability operations. Properties of the classes are studied and relations with known classes are established.     

What does care have to do with human rights? Analysing the impact on women's rights and gender equality

Unpaid care work is a critical human rights issue, as well as a major obstacle to gender equality and poverty reduction. This article draws attention to the impact of heavy, intensive, and unequal burdens of unpaid care work on the human rights of women living in poverty, and analyses the relevance of international human rights law to decisions on the necessary responses and remedies. The authors present recommendations for policy and practice – both for national/local governments and for development practitioners – based on human rights law and standards.     

Blurred lines: German freelance journalists with secondary employment in public relations

Nearly half of all German freelance journalists have a second job, mainly in public relations (PR). This work combination can be problematic, since journalists and PR practitioners have different responsibilities. Working as a journalist entails contributing to the public duties of journalism such as informing the public, offering multiple viewpoints, and representing societal interests; in contrast, PR practitioners must advocate solely in their clients’ interests. Conflicts can arise between these two roles if a freelance journalist is, for instance, required to critically investigate his or her PR client. However, there has been little research on freelance journalists with secondary work in PR. This study seeks to address this gap in research; therefore, we conducted a quantitative online survey among German “PR-journalists”. Our results show that nearly half of the participants take on secondary PR work for financial reasons; however, a similar number of journalists take on PR-work voluntarily, as they find the work interesting and enjoyable. Moreover, participants described their professional identity very similarly to that of German journalists in general. The PR-journalists surveyed were aware of the potential for conflicts of interest arising from their dual role. While such conflicts have been rarely encountered by those in the study sample, most participants assumed that other PR-journalists face such conflicts often, and expressed concern that these conflicts are not handled professionally.     

Learning from survivors: mapping the past onto the present

This article presents findings from an exploratory study of the impact that one educational program had on public and private school participants from high schools on the west coast of the United States of America. Students interacted with Holocaust survivors and created cultural products in the form of short films relating to present-day events. Students transferred what they learned about the past into a message about the present. This article presents the educational impact that learning from survivors had on teenage students. I also argue that similar methods could be transferred, or exported, for use with a number of different, more local, ‘difficult history’ education initiatives.     

The effect of physiotherapy training programme on postural stability in men with hip osteoarthritis

This study presents the influence of a physiotherapy training programme over the standing balance in elderly hip osteoarthritis (OA) patients. The aim of this study was to analyse the standing balance in elderly male hip OA patients, and to investigate how the physiotherapy training programme could significantly improve the balance. The tests were performed on a group of selected OA patients as well as on a group of age- and sex-matched healthy control subjects before and after the physiotherapy training programme. The significant differences were observed between the results of tests performed before and after the physiotherapy training programme, and also between the hip OA patients and the control subjects in all CPF parameters, in both sagittal and frontal planes. In conclusion, the hip OA has an effect on the process of maintaining the standing balance. Moreover the physiotherapy training programme significantly improves the postural stability in male hip OA patients.     

Narratives of race and nation: Everyday whiteness in Australia

Australia's history as a white nation has been riddled with not only mis-treatment of the ‘other’, but in more recent times of a type of invisibility of the ‘other’ that has disabled many within this nation from recognising the continuation of practices and policies of racial discrimination. This paper presents the findings from research conducted over 2001–03 during the ‘boat people’ crisis in Australia, when a number of everyday individuals volunteered time to assist refugees. It goes on to argue that while the policies of Multiculturalism of the 1970s had attempted to create a more inclusive society and had for the participants in this research transformed into nation-defining narrative, its failure to incorporate everyday people in its inception and continuation was productive of a blind spot in relation to racial treatment because most could believe all was well in this arena.     

Falling Short of Highest Life Expectancy: How Many Americans Might Have Been Alive in the Twentieth Century?

Life expectancy at birth in the United States during the twentieth century was lower than in many other highly developed countries. We investigate how this mortality disadvantage in the last 100 years translates into the number of hypothetical lives lost and their sex and age structure. We estimate the hypothetical US population if it had experienced in each decade since 1900 the mortality level of the country with the then highest life expectancy and compare the results to the actual figures in 2000. By 2000, the number of additional people who could have been alive had the mortality levels in the United States been as low as those in countries with the highest life expectancy was 66 million. This number is distributed equally between males and females. Suboptimal mortality at reproductive ages is crucial for the cumulative effect of potential lives lost, resulting from premature deaths of women who could still become first‐time mothers or bear additional children. Out of the 66 million additional persons who could have been alive in 2000, 45 million are attributable to those indirect deaths. Although the differences in the composition of the population by sex and age under the two mortality regimes are minor, the majority of people who might have been alive—54 million—were of working age or younger.