What future for the Global Aid for Trade Initiative? Towards an assessment of its achievements and limitations

As with any form of contemporary global governance, the impact of the global Aid for Trade Initiative (2006) has been mixed. However, to dismiss it as a failure would be premature. The co‐ordination system established was based on best‐practice techniques of governance in a diverse non‐hierarchical environment, such as the international development community. This form of co‐operation cannot overcome global economic and political asymmetries, but it can be effective in several respects. In particular, the Initiative led to increased funding for AfT and kick‐started a range of initiatives and technical advances; while the monitoring process has evolved significantly to give voice to new actors and issues. Although the future of the AfT Initiative is uncertain, its achievements merit careful consideration.     

Reports of Conferences,Institutes, and Seminars

Abstract

This column covers several conference sessions from the 14th annual Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference, providing guidance on how to navigate ebook duplication, improving documentation and workflows, implementing OpenAthens, and experiences with Project SILLVR (Streaming Interlibrary Loan Video Resources)and knowledge bases and related tools (KBART) automation. There is also a report from IFLA’s SIG Library Publishing Mid-Term meeting, which was an ideological meeting in nature, discussing community building, resource sharing, and status updates. A report from the 2018 Charleston Conference is also included.     

An empirical model to predict arsenic pollution affected life expectancy

A robust, globally implementable and simple empirical model to predict the arsenic pollution affected life expectancy using a stepwise regression was developed. Life expectancy calculated using a life table technique requires crude death rates data that are not available for small administrative units, complex calculations and does not consider socioeconomic parameters. Hence, a model was needed to forecast the impact of arsenic pollution and socioeconomic parameters on life expectancy for locations with limited data availability. A linear multiple regression technique was used to develop an empirical model to predict arsenic pollution affected life expectancy at birth. The model was calibrated using nine arsenic polluted administrative blocks of district Murshidabad, West Bengal, India and tested independently for three other arsenic polluted blocks of the same district. The R ² values for the plot of actual versus predicted life expectancy at birth were 0.98 for calibration, testing and independent validation. The model is complementary to the life table technique and offers a means to assist planning by public health engineers and health policy makers to mitigate arsenic pollution on a community priority basis.     

Information for Clinical Social Work Practice: A Potential Solution

The field of social work requires knowledgeable, skilled and self-confident professionals. We assume that many of these social workers will have less than optimal access to professionally relevant information, within and outside of their workplaces. We also assume that they, like others searching for information, will have a limited set of search skills yet will want to obtain the information for practice they need as easily as possible. Finally, we assume they will continue turning to the Internet to access relevant information. This paper describes Information for Practice (IP), an Internet service designed for social work practitioners based on these assumptions. Data regarding use of this service are presented.     

Can 401(k) accumulations generate significant income for future retirees?

This Issue Brief develops a model that project the proportion of an individual's preretirement income that might be replaced by 401(k) plan accumulations at retirement, under several different projected scenarios. The 401(k) participant behaviors in the model are based on the year-end 2000 database collected by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and the Investment Company Institute (ICI) in their collaborative effort known as the EBRI/ICI Participant-Directed Retirement Plan Data Collection Project. The most significant factor affecting projected replacement rates at retirement is having access to a 401(k) plan. Projected replacement rates from 401(k) accumulations at retirement are reduced significantly when participants are not offered a 401(k) plan in all portions of their careers. Most 401(k) participants tend to have contributions in any given year. Thus, projecting that participants always have contributions (their own and/or employer contributions) every year raises projected replacement rates, but not by much compared with the importance of being offered a plan to begin with. The model simulations show that participant activities such as taking loans, taking preretirement withdrawals, or cashing out account balances at job change reduce projected 401(k) accumulations and thus replacement rates at age 65. Because loans are forecast to be paid back to the account in full, their effect on replacement rates at retirement in the model is the smallest. Even if equity returns in the future are projected to replicate the worst 50-year segment in the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 history (1929 to 1978), 401(k) accumulations are still projected to replace significant proportions of projected preretirement income. Another projection scenario forecasts participants experiencing a simulated three-year bear market (negative equity returns) either early in their careers, near the middle of their careers, or at the end of their careers. Forecasts of the effects of bear markets on 401(k) balances show that a bear market in equities is projected to have the largest effect the closer it occurs to age 65 (retirement), even though older participants typically have diversified their portfolios away from equities. A three-year bear market for those early in their careers would reduce median replacement rates from 401(k) accumulations by an estimated 2.9-3.7 percentage points, compared with 13.4-17.7 percentage points for those immediately before retirement. Similarly, a simulated three-year bull market (positive equity returns) is projected to have a larger positive effect on projected account balances and replacement rates the closer it occurs to retirement.     

Women and Economic Security in Retirement:Implications for Social Security Reform

Gender-related parenting roles lower incomes of women during the working-age years and in retirement years. National retirement income programs contribute to this gender-related difference in retirement income to the degree that they consider lifetime earnings in calculating benefits. This article examines two national pension systems: those of Australia and Sweden. The pension systems of these two countries often are considered as the extremes of pension generosity, and they are based upon different philosophies about the role of government in insuring against economic risk. Due to fiscal issues and the changing roles of women in the labor market, both have reformed their systems. How system reforms can balance the role of the government in insuring against income risk and the growing financial independence of women in the work force are discussed.     

The timing of falls into poverty after retirement and widowhood

A major concern of workers, even those financially prepared for retirement, is that a small risk of poverty may grow over time. Cross-sectional data showing that older cohorts have higher poverty rates substantiate this concern. Using data from the Retirement History Study, we analyze changes in the hazard of entering poverty as a cohort of elderly couples retire and age and the wives are widowed. The initial fall into poverty among those who were not poor before the husband retired is more closely linked to the event of retirement or widowhood than to the slowly eroding household income over the period of retirement and widowhood. The death of her retired husband puts a wife in economic jeopardy whether this shock occurs one year after his retirement or some years later.     

Teaching about near-death experiences: the effectiveness of using The Day I Died

In this article, we reviewed results of research on near-death experiences (NDEs) over the past 3 decades and examined the effect of viewing the hour-long 2002 BBC documentary The Day I Died: The Mind, the Brain, and Near-Death Experiences on accurate knowledge about near-death experiences among advanced undergraduates at a southwestern university. In a quasi-experimental research design, the experimental group completed a 20-item questionnaire before and after viewing the documentary (n = 66; 45 females, 21 males), and the waitlist control group completed the questionnaire as pre- and posttest before viewing the documentary (n = 39; 36 female, 3 male). The two groups' scores at pretest were not significantly different (p > .05). Group by occasion repeated measures ANOVA revealed the experimental group's posttest scores moved significantly in the direction of correctness with a large effect size (p < .001; eta2 = .56), whereas waitlist control group posttest scores remained similar to pretest scores. We discuss two exceptions to the effectiveness of the documentary and recommendations for educators using it as well as for future research.     

Civil Society Opposition to Nonferrous Metals Mining in Guatemala

Drawing on a range of fieldwork interviews, this paper discusses the opposition of civil society to nonferrous metals mining in Guatemala. Guatemala’s mineral resources, and government efforts to encourage their extraction, are discussed, as is the emergent civil society of that nation. Guatemalan civil society has opposed mining due to the impacts of its environmental effects upon the poor engaged in subsistence agriculture. This opposition has involved protests, community consultations against mining, and networking with the forces of global civil society. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this opposition to mining is a manifestation of the opposition to neoliberalism currently underway in Latin America.