European Regional Populations: Current Trends, Future Pathways, and Policy Options

Europe is currently experiencing an ageing population and slowing population growth of both the total and working-age populations. These trends are likely to continue. Even though population ageing will affect all European regions, different regions will be affected in different ways. Even under favorable conditions, 35–40?% of all NUTS2 regions will face a labor force decline. If economic conditions are poor, some regions may continue to grow, but 55–70?% of the regions will see a labor force decline by 10?% or more. In most regions of Eastern Europe, the labor force may decrease by more than 30?%. To keep regions prosperous (maintaining competitiveness) and to avoid worse inequality (maintaining cohesion), policy-makers must find ways to cope with these challenges through new fiscal and social policies, though policies directly affecting demographic and migratory trends may also be needed.     

Low income and ‘poverty lines’ in Norway: a comparison of three concepts

Borgeraas E, Dahl E. Low income and ‘poverty lines’ in Norway: a comparison of three concepts
Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 73–83 © 2008 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. In this article we address the question of how well three concepts of ‘poverty’ correspond with each other. We have compared three different measures of ‘poverty’ in Norway: income poverty and two measures of a minimum budget standard, one scientifically and one politically defined. The three measures rest on different underlying concepts, serve different purposes and yield significantly different poverty lines. If followed by the municipal social services, the governmental norms for social benefits will, paradoxically, leave the beneficiaries in income poverty as defined by that same government. The most generous poverty line of all three measures is provided by the minimum budget standard developed by the National Institute for Consumer Research in Norway, which rests on the assumption that a household's income has to give a sustainable financial situation in the longer run. Neither of the two other poverty measures have this property. All numbers pertain to the year 2005. Some political and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Intergenerational earnings mobility and divorce

This paper examines the potential effect of marital disruption on intergenerational earnings mobility. We observe the earnings of children born in 1960 and 1970 along with their biological fathers and mothers. The earnings mobility between sons and daughters relative to the earnings of their mothers and fathers is estimated. Our results suggest that divorce is associated with increased mobility, except between mothers’ and daughters’ earnings. Transition matrices reveal that the direction of the mobility is negative; children of divorced parents tend to move downward in the earnings distribution compared to children from intact families. Finally, we utilize information on the earnings mobility of siblings in dissolved families who grew up when the family was intact. The difference between pre- and post-divorce siblings is in turn compared with sibling differences in intact families.     

Income effects of divorce in families with dependent children

The Norwegian post-divorce transfer scheme for families with children guarantees minimum maintenance payments from the non-custodial to the custodial parent. We studied the economic effects of divorce in such families. When the mother has custody, she falls behind before maintenance payments. After adding these, the outcomes at the median are very similar for both parents, contrasting studies from other countries, but the risk of a drop in equivalized income is large.     

The importance of volitional narrative in treatment: An ethnographic case study in a work progran

The revised theory of the model of human occupation expands the concept of volition to include volitional narrative. This paper focuses on the application of this theory of volition to a client's experience in a work program. This ethnographic case study describes the volitional narrative and life world of one client who attended the occupational therapy work based program. For fifteen months the client was the subject of narrative interviews, participant observation, videotapes and telephone contacts. The findings will illustrate how knowledge of a client's volitional narrative and life world can shed critical light on understanding treatment conflicts. Finally, the discussion will underscore how important it is for work based programs to be designed to encourage therapists to adapt their treatment approaches to maximize the opportunities to seek out the client's volitional narratives and to create meaningful experiences that are consistent with the client's life world.     

ON‐THE‐JOB SEARCH AND MORAL HAZARD

We analyze the interaction between intertemporal incentive contracts and search frictions associated with on‐the‐job search. In our model, agency problems call for wage contracts with deferred compensation. At the same time workers do on‐the‐job search. Deferred compensation improves workers' incentives to exert effort but distorts their on‐the‐job search decisions. We show that deferred compensation is less attractive when the value to the worker–firm pair of on‐the‐job search is high. Moreover, the interplay between search frictions and wage contracts creates feedback effects. If firms in equilibrium use contracts with deferred compensation, fewer firms with vacancies enter the on‐the‐job search market, and this in turn reduces the distortions created by deferred compensation. These feedback effects between the incentive contracts used and the activity level in the search markets can lead to multiple equilibria: a low‐turnover equilibrium where firms use deferred compensation, and a high‐turnover equilibrium where they do not. Furthermore, the model predicts that firms are more likely to use deferred compensation when search frictions are high and when the gains from on‐the‐job search are small.     

Why Total Quality Management Programs Do Not Persist: The Role of Management Quality and Implications for Leading a TQM Transformation*

Top‐down total quality management (TQM) programs often fail to create deep and sustained change in organizations. They become a fad soon replaced by another fad. Failure to institutionalize TQM can be attributed to a gap between top management's rhetoric about their intentions for TQM and the reality of implementation in various subunits of the organization. The gap varies from subunit to subunit due to the quality of management in each. By quality of management is meant the capacity of senior team to (1) develop commitment to the new TQM direction and behave and make decisions that are consistent with it, (2) develop the cross‐functional mechanisms, leadership skills, and team culture needed for TQM implementation, and (3) create a climate of open dialogues about progress in the TQM transformation that will enable learning and further change. The TQM transformations will persist only if top management requires and ultimately institutionalizes an honest organizational‐wide conversation that surfaces valid data about the quality of management in each subunit of the firm and leads to changes in management quality or replacement of managers.