Relationship between the degree of perineal trauma at vaginal birth and change in haemoglobin concentration

Background

Postpartum anaemia is a problem with high prevalence that significantly affects maternal recovery. Among the causal factors is perineal trauma. However, it is still not known what degree of perineal trauma produces a greater reduction of haemoglobin.

Multidimensional Poverty in Nicaragua: Are Female-Headed Households Better Off?

The recognition of poverty as a multidimensional concept has led to the development of more adequate tools for its identification. By allowing for subgroup and regional decompositions, those instruments are useful to allocate public action where most needed. This paper applies the Alkire and Foster (2011a) Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) to study single-mother and biparental families in Nicaragua, modifying its original structure to match more closely with the country’s current structural problems. Using Nicaragua’s last Demographic and Health Survey (DHS 2011/2012), our multidimensional poverty figures contrast with the government’s national poverty line estimates, suggesting that income poverty overestimates the number of poor people. Thus, our MPI can help as a complement for traditional consumption poverty and Basic Needs analysis; even extending the exploration by using other official household surveys. On the other hand, multidimensional poverty analysis found poverty dominance of male-headed families over single-mother and female-headed biparental families, which serves to contradict the notion of women being more vulnerable than men. Within the MPI, the most important contributor was the Living Standards dimension, composed by indicators directly related to housing conditions, and the second most deprived dimension was Education. A strong policy implication that arises from our findings is the reduction of the urban–rural poverty gap. Specifically, our findings exalt the need for governmental policies directed to reduce Nicaragua’s housing and educational deficits as a priority, particularly in rural areas.     

Performance Appraisal and Job Satisfaction for Workers Without and With Disabilities by Gender

Social Indicators Research - This study analyses the effects of performance appraisal on the levels of job satisfaction reported by workers without and with disabilities (aged 16–64) by...     

Care of older people in migration contexts: local and transnational arrangements between Peru and Spain

Care arrangements for the elderly are becoming a main social process in contemporary societies due to socio-political and lifestyle changes over the last few decades. The family and the State play a basic role in the construction of care systems and in the establishment of strategies to access care resources. In the present context of migration, these resources interact at a transnational level, challenging family and State migratory regimes. These new realities need the recognition of basic international social rights, as the experiences of Peruvians living in a migration context in Spain show.     

Winning a Race: Narratives of Healing and Psychotherapy in Children and Adolescents Who Have Been Sexually Abused

This article explores the process of recovering from sexual abuse according to children and adolescents who have been sexually abused and have successfully completed psychotherapy. In this qualitative study, interviews were conducted with 20 participants from 8 to 18 years of age and then subject to narrative analysis. Results show that participants’ narratives of recovery involve an improvement of psychological well-being. Moreover, they feel better equipped to overcome future challenges, feeling empowered and able to retake control of their lives. Factors that support and inhibit recovery are examined, as are developmental differences. Discussion underlines the valuable role of psychotherapy in helping children and adolescents in their healing process, changing the meaning of the abusive experience, and developing new capacities.     

REPUTATION EFFECTS IN THE MARKET OF CERTIFIERS: EVIDENCE FROM THE AUDIT INDUSTRY

Certifiers verify unobserved product characteristics for buyers and thereby alleviate informational asymmetries and facilitate trade. When sellers pay for the certification, however, certifiers can be tempted to bias their opinion to favor sellers. Indeed, accounting scandals and inflated credit ratings suggest sellers may prefer to select dishonest certifiers. I test this proposition by estimating the effect of adverse quality signals on audit demand. Exploiting the natural experiment of Arthur Andersen's demise, I find that auditors with worse quality signals experience a fall in demand. This suggests that reputation effects are at work even in the presence of conflicts of interest. (JEL L15, L8, M4)     

Life Potential as a Basic Demographic Indicator

This paper proposes an indicator that integrates life expectancy with the demographic structure of the population for a given society. By doing this, we have a simple indicator of mortality and aging combined, which could be very useful for developed societies. As is widely known, life expectancy at birth is independent of the demographic structure of the population, and therefore is adequate for measuring overall mortality. However, it neglects to take into account the fact that as life expectancy increases society ages, and so looking at life expectancy alone can produce an overly optimistic view of the development process, especially if we pay attention to future sustainability. Aging can in fact affect quality of life and sustainability in the long run. The indicators for aging are usually very crude, such as providing information on the share of the population who are 65 and over. We propose a simple indicator that integrates life expectancy at different ages, not only at birth, with the demographic structure of the population at a given point in time. The indicator has an intuitive interpretation in terms of the life potential, or biological capital, of society; and given that it is a weighted average, its changes can be easily decomposed into reductions in mortality (gains in life expectancy) and aging for different age intervals.