Subjective Attendants of Unification and Transformation in Germany

The article is concentrated on negative aspects of quality of life, mainly anomie. Anomic attitudes have been thematized since the beginning of sociological analysis as phenomena accompanying rapid social change and economic crises. It is shown to what extent the processes of unification and transformation in Germany after 1990 are accompanied by a fragile perceived quality of life. That such a problematic has become virulent at the beginning of the nineteen-nineties indicates the fact that the unification of Germany and the transformation process of the former socialist states are undoubtedly part of the great rapid societal changes of the past decades.     

The Influence of the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation Normative Content in Measuring the Level of Service

Human Rights to Water and Sanitation (HRWS) have been consolidated as relevant frameworks to measure different levels of services. It is essential to move forward with specific initiatives that interpret the content of these human rights and operationalize them through specific metrics. However, some critical issues emerge in attempting this. Different approaches are proposed in this article to tackle this challenge: (1) utilizing a participatory technique to discuss the relative importance of the normative criteria to define water and sanitation services, (2) defining a short list of key indicators to measure the different dimensions of HRWS, and (3) assessing the impact of different weighting systems in the constructing an aggregated index, which has been proposed as a useful tool to monitor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) from a rights perspective. Two municipalities (in Mozambique and Nicaragua) were selected as initial case studies. The results suggest that there is a common understanding among the experts about prioritization of the HRWS criteria. Differences in the relative importance given to the HRWS criteria can be explained due to the particularities of the local context. Further, the research suggests that expert opinions may be partially conditioned by targets and indicators proposed at the international level. Although the influence of weighting techniques on aggregated measures and their utilization in the decision-making process are limited, this methodology has a great potential for adapting specific WASH metrics to different regional, national, and/or local contexts taking into account the HRWS normative content.     

From Rags to Riches? Immigration and Poverty in Spain

This article for first time explores the relationship between immigration and poverty in Spain. Using recent Spanish household surveys, it is found, first, that both moderate and severe poverty are more acute among immigrants than among nationals and social transfers play no substantial role in reducing monetary deprivation in the case of foreign-born population; in the second place, we perform an econometric analysis that shows that the different poverty risk faced by local and immigrant households is not driven by differences in basic household and demographic characteristics.     

The Features of Development in the Pacific Countries of the African,Caribbean and Pacific Group

In this article we present a new proposal for the measurement of development, applied to the Pacific Countries of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP), conditional on their insularity, and with privileged relations with the European Union. Our index has been constructed attending to the criteria defined in the Goals of the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose we will use the P₂ distance method for the year 2007, the last year for which data are available. This index integrates socio-economic variables that permit a territorial ordering of the Pacific ACPs, in terms of those partial indicators.     

Mortality inequality in two native population groups

A sample of people aged 40–67 years, taken from a longitudinal register compiled by Statistics Finland, is used to analyse mortality differences between Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers in Finland. Finnish speakers are known to have higher death rates than Swedish speakers. The purpose is to explore whether labour-market experience and partnership status, treated as proxies for measures of variation in health-related characteristics, are related to the mortality differential. Persons who are single, disability pensioners, and those having experienced unemployment are found to have substantially higher death rates than those with a partner and employed persons. Swedish speakers have a more favourable distribution on both variables, which thus notably helps to reduce the Finnish–Swedish mortality gradient. A conclusion from this study is that future analyses on the topic should focus on mechanisms that bring a greater proportion of Finnish speakers into the groups with poor health or supposed unhealthy behaviour.     

A reply to W. H. James

The objection of W. H. James to my computation on p. 330, for the sample of Créteil, is valid. For reasons that are developed elsewhere in my paper, the current pregnancy of any woman was omitted in the elaboration of Table 6. Therefore, in order to derive continuation rates, we must re-include this pregnancy in each individual pregnancy history. Since women whose previous pregnancies ended in induced abortions had been excluded, we must do the same for women whose current pregnancy was interrupted by an induced abortion.     

Monitoring Progress in Child Poverty Reduction: Methodological Insights and Illustration to the Case Study of Bangladesh

Important steps have been taken at international summits to set up goals and targets to improve the wellbeing of children worldwide. Now the world also has more and better data to monitor progress. This paper presents a new approach to monitoring progress in child poverty reduction based on the Alkire and Foster adjusted headcount ratio and an array of complementary techniques. A theoretical discussion is accompanied by an assessment of child poverty reduction in Bangladesh based on four rounds of the demographic household survey (1997–2007). Emphasis is given to dimensional monotonicity and decomposability as desirable properties of multidimensional poverty measures. Complementary techniques for analysing changes over time are also illustrated, including the Shapley decomposition of changes in overall poverty, as well as a range of robustness tests and statistical significance tests. The results from Bangladesh illustrate the value added of these new tools and the information they provide for policy. The analysis reveals two paths to multidimensional poverty reduction by either decreasing the incidence of poverty or its intensity, and exposes an uneven distribution of national gains across geographical divisions. The methodology allows an integrated analysis of overall changes yet simultaneously examines progress in each region and in each dimension, retaining the positive features of dashboard approaches. The empirical evidence highlights the need to move beyond the headcount ratio towards new measures of child poverty that reflect the intensity of poverty and multiple deprivations that affect poor children at the same time.     

An Index of Child Health in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Africa

In this article we present a new composite index of child health, applied to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Africa, one of the areas of the planet most castigated by poverty. Our index has been constructed attending to the variables defined in the Goals of the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose we will use the P₂ distance method for the year 2008, the last year for which data are available. This index integrates variables of child health that permit a territorial ordering of the LDCs of Africa, in terms of those partial indicators.