The guaranteed minimum income in Portugal: A universal safety net under political and financial pressure

The Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) was created in Portugal by a centre-left Socialist Party government in 1996, as the most important constitutive part of a ‘new generation of active social policies,’ which completed the existence in Portugal of a universal system of guaranteed income. Its transformation into a Social Integration Income (SII) in 2003 and its retrenchment in the period of the Great Recession and troika austerity (2011–2015) has reduced the scope of this policy measure as a universal safety net policy. This article examines the context and the major drivers for the creation and for the policy changes that occurred in the GMI/SII. Looking at the political debates and the changes in this policy measure along this period, we argue that the major reforms introduced since its creation reflect ideological cleavages within the political arena. Considering the very low share in total government current expenditure of GMI/SII, this can explain the social policy selective retreat associated to the changes introduced in this policy measure by the centre-right coalition in government, in the latest period of cost containment of social policy in Portugal, leading to a great decrease in the number of beneficiaries and to an increase of its inadequacy.     

On elliptical multilevel models

Multilevel models have been widely applied to analyze data sets which present some hierarchical structure. In this paper we propose a generalization of the normal multilevel models, named elliptical multilevel models. This proposal suggests the use of distributions in the elliptical class, thus involving all symmetric continuous distributions, including the normal distribution as a particular case. Elliptical distributions may have lighter or heavier tails than the normal ones. In the case of normal error models with the presence of outlying observations, heavy-tailed error models may be applied to accommodate such observations. In particular, we discuss some aspects of the elliptical multilevel models, such as maximum likelihood estimation and residual analysis to assess features related to the fitting and the model assumptions. Finally, two motivating examples analyzed under normal multilevel models are reanalyzed under Student-t and power exponential multilevel models. Comparisons with the normal multilevel model are performed by using residual analysis.     

Diagnostics in multivariate generalized Birnbaum-Saunders regression models

Birnbaum–Saunders (BS) models are receiving considerable attention in the literature. Multivariate regression models are a useful tool of the multivariate analysis, which takes into account the correlation between variables. Diagnostic analysis is an important aspect to be considered in the statistical modeling. In this paper, we formulate multivariate generalized BS regression models and carry out a diagnostic analysis for these models. We consider the Mahalanobis distance as a global influence measure to detect multivariate outliers and use it for evaluating the adequacy of the distributional assumption. We also consider the local influence approach and study how a perturbation may impact on the estimation of model parameters. We implement the obtained results in the R software, which are illustrated with real-world multivariate data to show their potential applications.     

Evaluation of open items using the many-facet Rasch model

The goal of this study is to analyze the quality of ratings assigned to two constructed response questions for evaluating the written ability of essays in Portuguese language from the perspective of the many-facet Rasch (MFR [15 J.M. Linacre, Many-facet Rasch Measurement, 2nd ed., MESA Press, Chicago, 1994. [Google Scholar]]) model. The analyzed data set comes from 350 written tests with two open-item tasks that were developed based on a rating process independently marked by two rater coordinators and a group of 42 raters. The MFR model analysis shows the measurement quality related to the examinees, raters, tasks and items, and classification scale that has been used for the task rating process. The findings indicate significant differences amongst the rater severities and show that the raters cannot be interchanged. The results also suggest that the comparison between the two task difficulties needs further investigation. An additional study has been done on the scale structure of the classification used by each rater for each item. The result suggests that there have been some similarities amongst the tasks and a need of revision for some criteria of the rating process. Overall, the scale of evaluation has shown to be efficient for a classification of the examinees.     

Two new defective distributions based on the Marshall–Olkin extension

The presence of immune elements (generating a fraction of cure) in survival data is common. These cases are usually modeled by the standard mixture model. Here, we use an alternative approach based on defective distributions. Defective distributions are characterized by having density functions that integrate to values less than \(1\), when the domain of their parameters is different from the usual one. We use the Marshall–Olkin class of distributions to generalize two existing defective distributions, therefore generating two new defective distributions. We illustrate the distributions using three real data sets.     

Dissonant Discourses in Institutional Communications on Sexual Violence

ABSTRACT

This article is a discourse analysis of a large Northwestern research university’s official communications regarding sexual violence for a 15-month time frame. Through close reading of these communications, we found that concurrent with high levels of criticism in the spring of 2014 over the university’s handling of a high-profile rape case, the university advanced dissonant discourses of risk and responsibility in its communications regarding sexual violence. At both the institutional and individual levels, these dissonant discourses work to construct who is at risk of committing or experiencing sexual violence, and who is responsible for preventing and responding to it. In conclusion, we discuss possible implications for these dissonant discourses on the future of campus sexual violence prevention and university response.     

Voluntary improvements to social security in Spain: Current legal standards and jurisprudence

This article presents a general overview of "voluntary improvements" as one form of voluntary social provision within the Spanish social security system. To this end, the article analyses different forms of voluntary improvements from both a legal and a jurisprudential perspective. Particular attention is given to problems that are a major source of conflict. In line with employment practice, voluntary improvements are articulated through collective bargaining. Although intended to encourage private initiative in matters of social provision, such improvements are nonetheless guided by the social security system, not least as a means to control both funding and procedure.