Is Chinese National Health Insurance Effective in the Face of Severe Illness? A Perspective from Health Service Utilization and Economic Burden

Over the past decade, health insurance coverage has expanded dramatically in China. Health insurance benefits, however, remain shallow or ambiguous. This study examines the effect of Chinese national health insurance policy on health service utilization and economic burden in urban settings using the Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance Household Survey. We employ the Heckman selection model to correct for selection bias among hospital inpatients, and find that compared to individuals without health insurance, those with health insurance are more likely to be admitted to the hospital when their physicians recommended them to enter the hospital as inpatients. Health insurance is also associated with about 45.6 % decrease in out-of-pocket inpatient expenditures. Individuals with urban employee basic medical insurance see the largest decrease in economic burden, followed by individuals with urban resident basic medical Insurance, and those with new rural cooperative medical insurance.     

Social Capital and Self Perceived Health Among European Older Adults

There is increasing interest among researchers in the effects of social capital on the health of older adults. One of the key policy question for an ageing population concerns how do we identify the factors that influence health. Very recently, an increasing interest on social capital as a key determinant for health has developed and, surprisingly, not much is known for the European population. This paper analyzes the association between social capital and self-perceived health among older adults in Europe using a mixed effects logistic model. Social capital is considered in its two components—bonding and bridging—in order to understand if the relations inside or outside an individual inner circle have a different association with health. Our results give empirical support to the role of individual social capital in preventing a poor self-perceived health. This means that social capital, especially the bridging component of it, can be one of the key factors of ageing in good health and should be fostered by policy makers in order to give an answer to one of the most compelling challenge of our century: population ageing.     

National Culture,Gender Inequality and Women’s Success in Micro,Small and Medium Enterprises

Barriers faced by women entrepreneurs are different from the barriers faced by male entrepreneurs. These barriers differ based on age, culture, geographical region, education, marital status and ethnicity. This paper investigates barriers faced by women entrepreneurs and the moderating effect of culture on the relationship between barriers faced by women entrepreneurs and women entrepreneur’s success in micro, small and medium enterprises. The five main research findings from this study are (1) gender inequality is a major barrier to women’s success in micro, small and medium enterprises, (2) national culture is positively related to barriers faced by women entrepreneurs, (3) barriers faced by women entrepreneur’s is negatively related to women entrepreneurs’ success in micro, small and medium enterprises, (4) national culture is negatively related to women entrepreneurs success in micro, small and medium enterprises and (5) culture moderates the relationship between gender inequality and women’s success in micro, small and medium enterprises.     

Internet Use and Subjective Well-Being in China

Using data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies, we analyze the association between Internet use and various measures of subjective well-being (SWB) in a sample of 16- to 60-year-old Chinese. Our analysis shows that although intensive Internet use is significantly associated with lower levels of SWB, we hardly observe any associations when the focus is on participation in specific online activities. Nevertheless, SWB depends on the reasons for using the Internet and the extent to which individuals feel that their Internet use is displacing other activities. Our results suggest that, contrary to previous findings, differences in beneficial outcomes (the third level digital divide) do not necessarily arise from individuals’ actual Internet use (the second level digital divide) but rather may result from their subjective perceptions of such usage. Our findings also point to a possible cultural factor that puts Chinese Internet users at psychological risk.     

Conceptualising and Measuring Social Cohesion in Africa: Towards a Perceptions-Based Index

Social cohesion is a key concept in development studies. Weak social cohesion is often related to slow economic growth and (violent) conflict. So far few attempts have been made to measure this complex concept in a systematic manner. This paper introduces an innovative method to measure national-level social cohesion based on survey data from 19 African countries. We distinguish three dimensions of social cohesion; i.e. the extent of perceived inequalities, the level of societal trust, and the strength of people’s adherence to their national identity. Importantly, our Social Cohesion Index (SCI) is based on individuals’ perceptions vis-à-vis these three different dimensions of social cohesion rather than certain macro-level ‘objective’ indicators such as GDP/capita or Gini-coefficients. We develop two social cohesion indices: a national average SCI and a Social Cohesion Index Variance-Adjusted (SCIVA); the latter one takes into account the level of variation across different ethnic groups within countries. The SCI and SCIVA are computed for and compared across nineteen African countries for the period 2005–2012 on the basis of Afrobarometer survey rounds 3, 4 and 5. We also investigate quantitatively the relationship between countries’ levels of social cohesion and the occurrence of a range of conflict events. As expected, we find that countries with low levels of social cohesion in a particular year according to our SCI are more likely to experience a range of different violent conflict events in the subsequent year.     

Best Practice Principles for Community Indicator Systems and a Case Study Analysis: How Community Indicators Victoria is Creating Impact and Bridging Policy,Practice and Research

Numerous community indicator projects have been developed over the past 30 years and are now present in many countries including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South America. However, creating influence and action using community indicators requires long-term effort strengthened by partnership, policy applications, training and research. This paper provides a reflective case study analysis that reviews the development of the community indicator system of Community Indicators Victoria in Australia. The analysis includes a review of best practice indicator principles guiding the development of current and future community indicator systems and describes how these factors influenced the development, establishment, and expansion of the Community Indicators Victoria system.     

Bridging the Gap: Overcoming Data Difficulties During 40 Years of Measuring Well-Being in The Netherlands

For more than 40 years the Netherlands Institute for Social Research|SCP has studied the quality of life of the Dutch population. A characteristic element of that research is the use of time series. However, maintaining a time series over such a long period is not easy. All manner of problems arise, such as indicators no longer being relevant (who still has a black and white television?) or the changing importance that is attached to particular topics (sport is more important today than it was in 1974). The method of data collection can also change. In this article we take the perspective of a specific measurement to look at the changes that have taken place over the last 40 years and how those changes have been accommodated. We do this using the SCP Life Situation Index, which measures the objective quality of life of Dutch citizens. The conclusion is that it is possible to construct a long-term time series, but that it is not always possible to interpret changes from year to year: the perspective has to focus primarily on long-term developments.     

Estimates of Spatial Prices in India and Their Sensitivity to Alternative Estimation Methods and Choice of Commodities

This paper provides Indian evidence on sub-national PPPs that point to considerable spatial price heterogeneity within the country, based on Indian National Sample Survey (NSS) data. The prices of various commodities have been generated from the household specific unit values obtained from the information on expenditures and quantities from the NSS unit records. This paper shows that the CPD model, proposed in the cross country context, can be adapted to the household context to estimate spatial prices in the intra country context. The proposed CPD based model is shown to be formally equivalent to certain well known fixed weight price indices under certain parametric configurations. The empirical contribution includes a systematic comparison between the spatial price indices from alternative models, namely the CPD and utility based models, and the result that the utility based methods point to a much greater extent of spatial price heterogeneity than is suggested by the CPD type models. The results also record the sensitivity of the spatial price indices to the choice of commodities in the utility based approach. The pairwise comparison of estimates suggests that commodity selection may be more important than model selection in its impact on the spatial price estimates, though the latter is important as well. The study provides estimates of rural–urban differentials in spatial price indices that suggest some interesting differences between the constituent states. The results make a strong case for further research on the topic of sub-national PPPs in the context of large heterogeneous countries.     

A PPI-MVM Model for Identifying Poverty-Stricken Villages: A Case Study from Qianjiang District in Chongqing,China

To support China’s national poverty alleviation strategies, it is urgent to develop a scientific method for identifying the poverty-stricken villages and the contributing factors. Based on the anti-poverty plan of “Entire-Village Advancement” of China and the human-environment interaction perspective, the paper proposes a participatory poverty identification model that utilizes geographic information system to quantify and integrate various contributing factors for poverty at the village level. First, a set of poverty identification factors are determined from the human-environment interaction perspective. Secondly, the game theory is used to combine the participatory subjective weight method and the objective entropy method to weight the factors, and a participatory poverty identification with minimum variance model is developed to identify the poverty-stricken villages and their contributing factors. Finally, the model is applied to Qianjiang District in Chongqing, and the case study demonstrates the effectiveness of the model. The model not only identifies the poverty-stricken villages systematically but also helps guide policies for effective poverty interventions.     

Building Universal Socio-cultural Indicators for Standardizing the Safeguarding of Citizens’ Rights in Smart Cities

This research explores the opportunity to use standards as recommender instruments for designing urban policy. Standards are soft regulatory mechanisms that can be used for monitoring and safeguarding. More precisely, we explore the potential use of social standards for centering the focus of the smart cities initiative back to the citizens, and establishing a citizen-centered approach. This is in contrast to the industrial drive and technological emphasis which currently dominates. Accordingly, we present a set of novel citizenship indicators which serve as the basis for the social standardization of smart cities, something which is not now taking place, in order to ensure and safeguard the basic social urban rights of citizens. The juridical basis and well-established points of reference for building indicators for citizens’ rights in the city are two International Charters. These are the European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City, and the Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City. In this paper, we start by comparing and analyzing the rights contained in each of the two Charters, and elaborating indicators for measuring the promotion and protection of these rights. The elaboration of indicators has been based on different criteria and under the common premise of universal existence of feeding data, which is the most recurrent problem when building indicators meant to be global. Next, at the request of the International Standards Organization (ISO), we select the most relevant socio-cultural indicators for the Global Charter Agenda, which will be introduced in the on-going revision of the smart cities and communities standard ISO 37120:2014 Sustainable development of communities—Indicators for city services and quality of life. This will make ISO 37120 a more beneficial social standard for monitoring and safeguarding citizens’ rights in the smart city.