Identifying Factors that Influence State-specific Hunger Rates in the U.S.: A Simple Analytic Method for Understanding a Persistent Problem

An existing measure of food insecurity with hunger in the United States may serve as an effective indicator of quality of life. State level differences in that measure can reveal important differences in quality of life across places. In this study, we advocate and demonstrate two simple methods by which analysts can explore state-specific contributions to state-specific hunger rates. Using existing survey data and the U.S. Department of Agriculture measure of household food insecurity with hunger, we illustrate how comparing group-specific hunger rates within states and how the demographic method of standardization can both be used to assess how a state’s population and local characteristics influence hunger rates and other quality of life indicators associated with hunger.     

Political legitimacy versus economic imperatives in system transformation: Hungary and East Germany 1990–93

East European policy makers currently face critical trade-offs between economic imperatives and system legitimacy imperatives. Economic imperatives, derived from the goal of medium term prosperity, demand rapid privatization and marketization. System legitimacy imperatives demand measures to minimize the unemployment, wage cuts and income inequality resulting in the short term from privatization and marketization. In 1989–90 East Germany and Hungary appeared to face the least harsh trade-offs and to be best placed of the ex-communist countries to achieve successful system transformation. Unlike their East European neighbours, neither had to develop democratic and market institutions from scratch. East Germany would import the Federal Republic's political system and market institutions. Hungary already had organized political parties and had been developing market institutions since 1968. Using panel survey data, the paper shows that, despite considerable economic achievements since 1990, there is widespread personal dissatisfaction and distress, and the legitimacy of democratic and market institutions is weak. The main data sources are the Hungarian Socio-Economic Panel (1992–5777 individuals in 2888 households) and the East German segment of the German Socio-Economic Panel (1990–4453 individuals in 2179 households).     

Dimensions of mental health: Life satisfaction,positive affect,anxiety and depression

Psychological well-being and psychological distress are often regarded as distinct, if not orthogonal dimensions of mental health. Based on analyses in this paper, we consider the distinction misleading. Four dimensions seem worth measuring in general population surveys: life satisfaction, positive affect, anxiety and depression. Furthermore, one of the well-being dimensions, life satisfaction, is quite strongly correlated with a distress dimension, depression. A person is unlikely to be both satisfied with life and depressed, but may be satisfied and anxious. The paper is based on convergent validity (exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses) and divergent validity assessments of a range of widely used measures, which were included in the Victorian Quality of Life Panel Survey, 1987.     

Births,debts and mirages: The impact of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and other factors on Australian fertility expectations

This paper uses survey data to examine the effect of the income-contingent charge mechanism, the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), and other demographic and attitudinal variables on fertility expectations in Australia over the recent past. HECS requires former Australian students to fund some of the costs of higher education through the repayment of interest-free loans made by the Australian government. Its defining characteristic is that repayments only occur when and if students future incomes exceed a particular level. Since its introduction in 1989, media and other populist commentary has suggested that HECS has had unanticipated effects on behaviour. Most recently, attention has focused on the effects of HECS on fertility, with some arguing that university graduates are delaying births, and having fewer children, because of their HECS debts. This paper demonstrates that the introduction of HECS has had no discernible impact on Australian fertility rates, nor on the number of children that people expect to have. However, education, age and a number of attitudinal factors are associated with significant differences in fertility expectations.     

Internal Migration of the Foreign-Born: Population Concentration or Dispersion?

Recent analyses of the 1990 census migration data have pointed to the different demographic effects of internal migration and immigration. States and metropolitan areas either have large population gains through immigration or internal migration, but rarely both, leading to what has been labeled as an increasing demographic balkanization of the U.S. population. This paper explores the proposition that the internal migration of the foreign-born (pre-1985 arrivals) is likely to reinforce the demographic effects of immigration. Analysis is based on the five-percent Public Use Microdata file of the U.S. Census, with the demographic effects evaluated at both the state and metropolitan area levels. Distinctions were also made between nineteen separate national origin groups, increasing the detail of the analysis. Despite high internal migration rates and large net migration, there was little change in the overall distribution and concentration of the foreign-born population between 1985 and 1990. More important, however, distinctions were found across the national origin groups. While secondary migration leads to dispersion among some groups, other groups were becoming increasingly concentrated, suggesting that demographic balkanization of the American population is more variable than the literature would suggest.     

Participatory Partnerships: Engaging and Empowering to Enhance Environmental Management and Quality of Life?

It is generally believed that, when partnerships with civil society are created, members of the public become engaged in defining and solving problems, and as a result become empowered through enhanced understanding of substantive problems, and of the processes used by society to deal with them. In this context, two fundamental assumptions related to a partnership approach deserve examination. First, partnerships assume a shared vision among partners, and a willingness to work together in a spirit of collaboration and cooperation. However, humans often are competitive, protective and defensive, attributes unlikely to lead to collaboration and cooperation. Second, advocates of a participatory approach advocate, or assume, that citizens will become empowered through being part of a partnership process. If partnerships are to be encouraged, we need to know if such a transformation actually occurs. Two experiences in Canada, one dealing with shared decision making during a resource and land use management process in British Columbia, and the other focused on an environmental impact assessment process in Manitoba, provide evidence that challenges whether these assumptions are easily satisfied.     

Models of well-being and ill-being

The purpose of this paper is to present models of well-being and ill-being which integrate the effects of different types of independent variables. Using the more powerful techniques provided by the LISREL software, the paper replicates and extends analysis previously reported in SIR (Headey, Holmstrom and Wearing, 1984a). A preliminary issue is whether well-being and ill-being constitute different dimensions or whether they are polar opposites. Factor analytic evidence, derived from two waves of an Australian panel study (1981, 1983) with samples of 942 and 878 respectively, confirms that indicators of well-being and ill-being form distinct, although not orthogonal dimensions. In the models of well-being and ill-being estimated from the panel data, we attempt to integrate research dealing with the impact of social background, personality, social networks and satisfaction with particular domains of life. Two key personality traits which influence both well-being and ill-being are self-esteem and personal competence. Social background (SES) has greater influence on ill-being than well-being. Having a well-developed social network, on the other hand, contributes more to enhancement of well-being than relief of ill-being. This is largely because a rich social network is associated with satisfaction with leisure, friends and marriage, which themselves are the life domains most closely connected to feelings of well-being. By contrast, the domain of health is relatively closely associated with ill-being. The conclusion discusses public policy implications of the finding that well-being and ill-being have different correlates and causes. Conventional welfare policies are designed to relieve ill-being. Quite different policies (“positive welfare” policies) are required to enhance well-being.     

Stakeholder value disclosures: anchoring on primacy and importance of financial and nonfinancial performance measures

In the growing debate about stakeholder values, there has been little discussion about information overload or whether the requested disclosures can be effectively used. Stakeholder advocates call for complicated and massive environmental and related social disclosures while not considering how information overload might affect the discourse about corporate performance. Stakeholders, including shareholders, plead for more transparency in financial statements, management discussion and analysis (MDA), and other corporate disclosures. As we know, shareholders and boards of directors are most concerned with the ‘Holy Trinity’ of earnings per share, dividends and market value changes. We believe that managers and stakeholders involved in performance evaluations have multiple interests that extend beyond traditional shareholder value measures. We note that the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) was developed as one tool to reflect and communicate these multiple measures. We test how managers use (or ignore) multiple performance measures and we posit that stakeholders will face many of the same constraints when using and processing multiple disclosures including Corporate Social Reports (CSR), environmental, or similar disclosures. While we do not directly test a wide variety of stakeholder disclosures, we examine eight (four for a single subject) shareholder values (financial measures) and four stakeholder values (nonfinancial measures). The eight measures included in our research instruments serve as proxies for the multiple concerns that might be of interest to many stakeholders. Note that stakeholders are likely to be extremely interested in nonfinancial performance measures, while many shareholders will likely concentrate on financial performance measures. Field research has reported managers tend to favor financial measures while discounting or ignoring nonfinancial measures when evaluating subordinates, making it difficult to align performance evaluations and incentives with corporate strategies (Ittner et al. Account Rev 78:725–758, 2003). In this study, we find the relative weights managers place on financial and nonfinancial performance measures are influenced by both (1) presentation order and (2) the relative importance of specific measures. When financial measures are presented first, the manager who performs better on financial measures is rated higher than the manager who performs better on nonfinancial measures. However, when nonfinancial measures are presented first, managers who excel on nonfinancial measures are rated higher. Reports that include financial measures that are relatively more (less) important also produce higher (lower) ratings for the manager who excels on financial measures. Thus, the relative weights that superiors place on financial and nonfinancial measures in evaluating corporate managers’ performance are substantially anchored both by the order in which measures are presented as well as by the importance of the specific performance measures employed. Other stakeholder disclosures are likely to be similarly anchored, perhaps biased, by primacy and a priori importance rankings.     

Keeping Australia's Older Workers in the Labour Force. A Policy Perspective

As in other western industrialised countries the structural ageing of the Australian population has significant labour market implications. Government has responded with a range of policies to persuade older workers to abandon early retirement and/or remain in the workforce past traditional retirement ages. But whether this generation of workers will be prepared to change their retirement plans in response to policy encouragement, and whether current policy measures will translate into significant numbers of older workers extending their labour force participation is uncertain. Using the Australian Survey of Retirement Attitudes and Motivations (ASRAM) a recently completed, nationally representative survey of Australian workers aged 40 – 59 years we find that while the Government message about working longer is getting through, older workers are relatively unresponsive to current policy measures. Other policies, especially policies outside the financial realm, are needed to maximise the number of older Australians in the labour force.