Habermas talking: An interview

Theory and Society -     

The Pre- and Post-1997 Well-Being of Hong Kong Residents

Since July 1997, Hong Kong has become a Special Administrative Region (SAR) under the sovereignty of China. This paper compares the social well-being of Hong Kong residents before and after the change of sovereignty by analyzing six sets of survey data collected between 1990 and 2001. These are six biennial territory wide Social Indicator Surveys conducted to collect subjective assessments of well-being of Hong Kong residents. Analysis of the survey data which are typically categorized subjective evaluations has to deal with the commonly encountered problems of direct quantification (Schuessler and Fisher, 1985) and incomplete data (Little R.J.A. and Rubin D.B., 2002, Statistical Analysis with Missing data (Wiley-Interscience, New Jersy). The problems are handled by applying optimal scaling and hot-deck imputation as recommended by Shen S.M. and Lai Y.L. (2001, Social Indicators Research 55, pp. 121-166). Different life domain measures as well as compound measures in the form of indices are studied. The data analysis indicates that the residents of Hong Kong were most satisfied in 1997 and least satisfied in 1995. It reveals that the sovereignty change had major impact on many life domains of the people of Hong Kong and the effect was compounded by the economic situation of the territory.     

Roads and Diversification of Activities in Rural Areas: A Cameroon Case Study

This article uses the 2001 Cameroon National Household Survey (ECAM II) to analyse how road access affects labour activities. It shows that one‐size‐fits‐all road investments are irrelevant because the effects of roads are neither systematic nor uniform: the impacts of isolation on household well‐being through labour‐market opportunities are heterogeneous and depend on local characteristics. In view of the diversification of activities in household strategy, it finds that better road access increases the number of activities within those households that are most isolated.     

Return to Education and the Changing Role of Credentials in the Croatian Labor Market

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe experienced a rapid increase of return to education with the advent of the transition. We look at the dynamics of wage premiums in Croatia and estimate how much the return to education has changed between 1996 and 2004 on the basis of labor force survey data. We also extend the paper in order to address additional features of the wage structure, such as non-linearities in the return to education associated with attainment of credentials. We find that contrary to most transition countries, premiums for education in Croatia began to grow only after the mid 1990s. However, by 2004, they reached the levels of premiums found in other transition countries and advanced market economies, thus creating market incentives for investment in education. We also find that major part of this higher rate of return came through higher return to credentials.