Symbiosis of Microcredit and Private Moneylending in Cambodia

Microcredit's potential for poverty reduction is a highly contested issue. In Cambodia, the dramatically increasing commercial microcredit coexists with widespread private moneylending. These two practices are rooted in different economic world views: neoliberalism on the one hand, and the traditional Khmer economic sociality permeated by patronage on the other. The ethnography shows that far from competing with each other, microcredit and private lending have adapted to form a symbiotic relationship, and much private lending is financed through microcredit. While microcredit is often beneficial to people living well above the poverty line, the widespread access to credit, through microloans as well as private lending, is threatening the livelihoods of the economically most vulnerable and precipitating their social, economic and spatial exclusion from their local communities. In contrast to the social and economic exclusion caused by land grabbing and forced evictions, which has received a fair amount of public attention, exclusion as a consequence of indebtedness has, for sociocultural reasons, remained much less visible.     

Marxist and Neo-Marxist Interpretations of Ethnicity

Abstract

This paper reviews both the contributions and inadequacies of Marxist and neo-Marxist efforts to account for the persistence of ethnicity in modern societies. The former approach relegates ethnic group relations and consciousness in capitalist society either to a vestigial survival of pre-capitalist class relations or as a case of false consciousness. It treats ethnicity as a necessarily dependent variable, and predicts that ethnicity eventually will disappear. Recognizing the continuing significance of ethnic forces in modern capitalist societies, neo-Marxists concerned with uneven development at both an external global and an intra-societal level offer explanations as to how structures of ethnic inequality are functional for capitalist accumulation. Critiques of such theories are offered. The essay concludes by evaluating the limitations and prospects of a Marxist analysis of ethnicity.     

Family Benefits and Fertility: An Econometric Analysis

A population's growth potential is significantly underestimated by conventional calculations of population momentum which assume an immediate drop to replacement level fertility. Here we assume that the growth rate of births linearly declines to zero over a specified time interval, and find simple and intuitively meaningful expressions for the size of the ultimate birth cohort and the resultant population momentum. In particular, we find that the increase in the number of births over the transition is equal to growth at the initial rate for half the time needed to attain a constant birth level. Thus our formula readily calculates the growth potential of a population under a gradual approach to stationarity without the need for a numerical projection. Calculations for actual and hypothetical populations are presented to show the demographic impact of such gradual approaches to zero growth.     

Residential Segregation, Nativity Status, and Hispanic Living Arrangements in Later Life

This study examined the relationship between residential segregation in metropolitan areas and the living arrangements of middle-aged and older Hispanics. We specifically considered whether the relationship between residential segregation and living arrangements was different depending on nativity status. This study also explored whether measures of assimilation were related to living arrangements. Using data from the 2000 Census Public-Use Microdata Sample (5 %), our multilevel logistic regression models showed that residing in metropolitan areas with higher residential segregation indexes of evenness, isolation, and clustering was related to an increased likelihood of living in a co-resident household versus an independent household. We discovered that the relationship was in the same direction for US-born and foreign-born Hispanics but the relationship was stronger for US-born Hispanics. Finally, we found that as assimilation increased, so did the likelihood of living independently and that persons living in the ten largest immigrant gateway cities were most likely to co-reside as compared to live independently. These results underscored the importance of developing theoretic models of ethnic group living arrangements that include characteristics of both individuals and the community.     

Gender and geographic differences in Medicare service utilization during the last six months of life

ABSTRACT

End-of-life issues are important for senior women, particularly rural women, who are more likely than their urban counterparts to live alone. The role of residence as a factor for health-care utilization among Medicare beneficiaries during the last six months of life has yet to be investigated. The purpose of this study is to examine whether service utilization in the last six months of life differs across gender and rurality. The sample was restricted to fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries who died between July 1, 2013, and December 31, 2013 (n = 39,508). The odds of rural beneficiaries using home health (aOR 0.87; 95% CI 0.81–0.93) and/or hospice (aOR 0.82; 95% CI 0.77–0.87) in the last six months of life were lower than urban beneficiaries. Female beneficiaries were more likely to use support services such as hospice (aOR 1.24; 95% CI 1.18–1.29) and/or home health services (aOR 1.07; 95% CI 1.02–1.13) than male beneficiaries. The odds of female beneficiaries using inpatient (aOR 1.14; 95% CI 1.08–1.20) and/or outpatient (aOR 1.06; 95% CI 1.01–1.12) were higher than male beneficiaries. This research is important as we examine the range of health services used during the last six months of life, by gender and rurality. Future research is needed to understand how access to health services, residential isolation, and age- and disease-related factors relate to women’s observed greater use of inpatient, outpatient, hospice, and home health services in the last six months of life.