Working‐age people with disability and labour force participation: Geographic variations in Australia

To examine geographic variation in labour force participation rate (LFPR) of working‐age people with disability in Australia and associated factors. This study uses Australian Census 2016 data at Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2) and engages multiple linear regression to explore the relationship between the dependent variable,= LFPR of people with disability, and diverse independent variables that reflect collective characteristics of people with disability and their non‐disabled peers within SA2. While LFPRs for people with disability varied greatly by SA2, people with disability had considerably lower LFPR than their non‐disabled peers in all areas. The LFPRs tended to be higher in SA2s with higher percentages of people with disability who had completed year 12 or gained post‐school education, with higher household income, and where a higher proportion of people with disability mainly spoke English at home. These results indicate that where people live matters. Geographic variation in LFPR for people with disability is associated with geographic variation in their educational attainment and other social and community characteristics of the areas in which they live. This study contributes towards gaining a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the factors that influence LFPR of people with disability in relation to their local community environment.     

Risk assessment for handling hazardous substances within the European industry: Available methodologies and research streams

After the Seveso disaster occurred more than 40 years ago, there has been an increasing awareness of the potential impacts that similar accident events can occur in a wide range of process establishments, where the handling and production of hazardous substances pose a real threat to society and the environment. In these industrial sites denominated “Seveso sites,” the urgent need for an effective strategy emerged markedly to handle hazardous activities and to ensure safe conditions. Since then, the main challenging research issues have focused on how to prevent such accident events and how to mitigate their consequences leading to the development of many risk assessment methodologies. In recent years, researchers and practitioners have tried to provide useful overviews of the existing risk assessment methodologies proposing several reviews. However, these reviews are not exhaustive because they are either dated or focus only on one specific topic (e.g., liquefied natural gas, domino effect, etc.). This work aims to overcome the limitations of the current reviews by providing an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the risk assessment methodologies for handling hazardous substances within the European industry. In particular, we have focused on the current techniques for hazards and accident scenarios identification, as well as probability and consequence analyses for both onshore and offshore installations. Thus, we have identified the research streams that have characterized the activities of researchers and practitioners over the years, and we have then presented and discussed the different risk assessment methodologies available concerning the research stream that they belong to.     

The Retrenchment of Marriage: Results from Marital Status Life Tables for the United States, 1995

Marital status life tables were calculated using 1995 US rates of marriage, divorce, and mortality. Compared to figures for 1988, the proportion of persons surviving to age 15 who ever marry remained fairly steady at about five‐sixths of all men and seven‐eighths of all women. The average age at first marriage rose substantially: to 28.6 years for men and 26.6 years for women. The probability of a marriage ending in divorce changed little and was .437 for men and .425 for women. It is likely that no US period or cohort will ever have half of all marriages end in legal divorce, though the highest cohort may reach 47 percent. Patterns of marriage and divorce observed since 1970 show the effect that cohabitation continues to have on the American family, where it is delaying, but not replacing, marriage.     

Extending conditional likelihood in models for stratified binary data

The conditional likelihood is widely used in logistic regression models with stratified binary data. In particular, it leads to accurate inference for the parameters of interest, which are common to all strata, eliminating stratum-specific nuisance parameters. The modified profile likelihood is an accurate approximation to the conditional likelihood, but has the advantage of being available for general parametric models. Here, we propose the modified profile likelihood as an ideal extension of the conditional likelihood in generalized linear models for binary data, with generic link function. An important feature is that for the implementation we only need standard outputs of routines for generalized linear models. The accuracy of the method is supported by theoretical properties and is confirmed by simulation results.This research was supported by MIUR COFIN 2001-2003.     

What do the parents of tomorrow know about child care? A survey of 14–16 year olds

What do the parents of tomorrow know about child care? This study aimed to obtain a baseline measurement of child care knowledge, to ascertain any differences in knowledge between adolescents with and without mild to moderate learning difficulties (MLD). In addition, we were interested to establish the effect of school nurse health education health input on knowledge in the learning difficulties subgroup. Assessment was by self‐completed questionnaire and interview of a random sample of 14–16 year olds attending mainstream and special schools. Sixty pupils from secondary school and 33 from a MLD school took part in the study. Pupil knowledge in basic parenting and child care was dependent on the type of school attended, reading ability of those attending the MLD school and the provision of health education in the special school by the school nurse. No associations were found between pupils knowledge and their gender, family position or family size. Pupils from both schools scored lower in the areas of health service organisation and personnel, health promotion and management of common childhood conditions. Adolescents have insufficient knowledge of basic child care and services available for new parents. The effect of school based health education in these areas is promising. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transnational women’s activism in Japan and Korea:the unresolved issue of military sexual slavery

This article is about the transnational links formed between the Korean and Japanese women‘s movements in their campaign on behalf of the victims of ‘military sexual slavery’ during the Second World War. There is a growing literature that examines such networks. Yet, a deeper understanding of the emergence and activities of transnational advocacy networks is needed, particularly in the context of political opportunity structures. Social scientists who have developed the concept of political opportunity structures have, however, not provided a gender‐specific analysis of these. Of particular interest is the exploration of the role played by gender in an international human rights discourse as a political opportunity structure for women’s groups in Korea and Japan. This article, thus, explores the ways in which the feminist movements in Korea and Japan have made use of transnational legal means in politicizing and popularizing the issue of ‘military sexual slavery’ at both regional and global scales.     

Employment with Alternative Incentive Schemes when Effort is Not Verifiable

Abstract. This paper compares macroeconomic results related to efficiency wages, contracts with bonus and tournaments in a framework with unverifiable effort. When effort is fully observable, both contracts with bonus and tournaments, unlike efficiency wages, solve the incentive problem without generating involuntary unemployment. Only tournaments, however, allow attainment of the Pareto optimal employment level. If effort is not fully observable, previous results must, to some extent, be reconsidered. Contracts with bonus also produce involuntary unemployment, while tournaments, in addition to continuing to produce a higher level of employment, generate involuntary unemployment only if a shirker who is not caught has some probability of winning.