Family support for the elderly in China: issues and challenges

With the introduction of economic reforms, families in China are challenged by a variety of family-related problems. Demographic and social changes are affecting both the capacity and willingness of the family to provide care for the elderly. The Chinese Government is aware of the importance of the family in the welfare of its citizens, and has promulgated a series of laws and regulations prescribing family obligations. Yet formal services supporting families are extremely underdeveloped, and it is urgent that the government formulate an effective policy to facilitate, support, and maximize family care.     

Customer Order Scheduling in a General Job Shop Environment*

The primary objective of this study is to examine the performance of order-based dispatching rules in a general job shop, where the environmental factors are shop utilization and due date tightness. An order is defined as a collection of jobs that are shipped as a group—an order—to the customer, only on completion of the last job of the order. We specifically compare dispatching rules from past job-based studies to some rules adapted to encompass order characteristics. Standard flow time and tardiness measures are used, but in addition, we introduce measures that combine average performance with variation in an attempt to capture the performance of a majority of the orders processed in the shop. Of the 16 dispatching rules tested, our results show that four of the simple rules dominate the others. We also found that order-based rules perform better than their job-based counterparts. The study makes use of multivariate statistical analysis, in addition to the usual univariate tests, which can provide additional insight to managers using multiple criteria in their decision process.     

《汉纪》与《史记》、《汉书》比勘举要

东汉末年,荀悦受命以《左传》体即编年史体,重新整理纪传体《汉书》。建安三年,荀悦开始撰写《汉纪》,至建安五年完成。由于《汉纪》据《汉书》而成,乃中国第一部断代编年体史著,故历来不乏探讨两书关系的论著。《汉纪》在史体方面开创先河,但论者鲜有全面探讨《汉纪》与《史记》、《汉书》关系者。其实三书皆记西汉一代历史,而其中所记内容又多有重复,故本文拟通过比勘《史记》、《汉书》与《汉纪》,以补校今本《汉纪》,并据以订正《史记》与《汉书》之讹误。     

Using Ranked Weights and Acceptability Analysis to Construct Composite Indicators: A Case Study of Regional Sustainable Society Index

A variety of published composite indicators, i.e., Energy Trilemma Index and Sustainable Society Index, are commonly aggregated with equal weights. However, this plausible scheme is criticized as eclecticism and ignores the discriminating power of the different indicators. Differing from the traditional methods that assign weights to each indicator for the purpose of aggregation, this paper proposes a new mechanism to construct composite indicators using ranked weights and stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis. More specifically, this study comprehensively consider all possible preferences among the indicators. Under each preference, we develop a sophisticated mathematical transformation to calculate the least and most favorable scores of each entity, which formulates the lower and upper bounds of the intervals. Then an interval decision matrix, alternatively described as a stochastic decision problem, is formulated to construct the composite indicators. Holistic acceptability indices are generated and regarded as a new composite indicator, which is capable of providing a comprehensive and robust composite indicator with more discriminating power. We apply the proposed method to modify the regional sustainable society index and present the obtained results and comparisons.     

Educators sans frontières? Borders and power geometries in transnational education

ABSTRACT

Education work denotes a relational encounter among individuals positioned along axes of intersecting differences. Transnational education (TNE) offers a particularly intriguing context for conceptualising borders and power relation in knowledge production. Drawing upon empirical work conducted in the UK and Hong Kong, this paper interrogates the notion of border in TNE and analyses how ‘flying faculty’ involved in UK TNE programmes in Hong Kong perceive, manage and experience socio-cultural, institutional and other borders. We contextualise the personal experiences of these ‘educators sans frontières’ in the broader power geometries in which they are embedded. Our findings reveal the presence and strength of diverse borders in the TNE field. These borders are contexts of control and capital accumulation, where existing power relation is being negotiated and contested on a daily basis. We also highlight the rapidly changing power geometries in the field marked by the rise of the new powers, like Hong Kong, in the international higher education system. The paper ends by calling for more appreciation and efforts in harnessing the generative and creative potential of borders. Exploring borders as contexts of exchanges and co-production would contribute to more equitable partnerships among diverse stakeholders in the expanding TNE sector.     

Son Preference and Access to Social Insurance: Evidence from China's Rural Pension Program

Many scholars argue that the persistence of son preference in China is driven by greater anticipated old‐age support from sons than from daughters and the absence of formal financial mechanisms for families to save for retirement. The introduction of a voluntary old‐age pension program in rural China in the 1990s presents the opportunity to examine (1) whether parents with sons are less likely to participate in pension plans and (2) whether providing access to pension plans affects parental sex‐selection decisions. Consistent with the first hypothesis, we find that parents with sons are less likely to participate in the pension program and have less financial savings for retirement. Consistent with the second hypothesis, we find that an increase in county‐level pension program availability is associated with a slower increase in the sex ratio at birth.     

Ways that Social Change Predicts Personal Quality of Life

A notable way that social change affects personal quality of life would rely on the person’s experience with social change. This experience may influence societal quality of life and quality of work life, which may in turn affect personal quality of life. Additionally, the experience of social change is possibly less detrimental to personal quality of life later in the presence of higher existing personal quality of life. These influences over time become transparent through a three-wave panel study of 531 working people in Hong Kong, China. Findings show that although social change experienced did not generally impair subsequent quality of life, it tended to be more detrimental to the person with lower quality of life before. In addition, social change experienced tended to erode societal quality of life and quality of work life experienced, which appeared to be predictors of personal quality of life. Hence, there are possible ways for social change to predict personal quality of life.     

Confidence intervals for survival quantiles in the Cox regression model

Median survival times and their associated confidence intervals are often used to summarize the survival outcome of a group of patients in clinical trials with failure-time endpoints. Although there is an extensive literature on this topic for the case in which the patients come from a homogeneous population, few papers have dealt with the case in which covariates are present as in the proportional hazards model. In this paper we propose a new approach to this problem and demonstrate its advantages over existing methods, not only for the proportional hazards model but also for the widely studied cases where covariates are absent and where there is no censoring. As an illustration, we apply it to the Stanford Heart Transplant data. Asymptotic theory and simulation studies show that the proposed method indeed yields confidence intervals and bands with accurate coverage errors.     

Peer Group Patterns of Alcohol‐Using Behaviors Among Early Adolescents in Victoria,Australia, and Washington State,United States

The goal of this study was to examine and cross‐nationally compare the peer group patterns of alcohol‐drinking behaviors among cohorts of early adolescents (ages 11–14 years) in Victoria, Australia, and Washington State, United States. Latent transition analysis revealed that after 1 year, transitions congruent with peer influence (whereby non‐drinking adolescents initiated alcohol use in the presence of drinking peers) and reverse peer influence were observed in both states; however, transitions congruent with peer selection (whereby drinking adolescents self‐selected into drinking peer groups) were only observed among Victorian early adolescents. Findings were interpreted to suggest that Australian family and cultural norms that more commonly allow early adolescent alcohol use lead to a higher rate of peer selection.