Personal Versus Collective Quality of Life And South Africans' Evaluations of Democratic Government

In this paper, we examine the political consequences of quality of life, focusing on the link between perceived well-being and people's support for democratic government. We make two key distinctions. First of all, with regard to quality of life, we distinguish between assessments of personal, or household, quality of life, and assessments of collective (national, community) quality of life. Secondly, we follow David Easton in distinguishing between specific support (attitudes about specific leaders, parties and policies) and diffuse support (attitudes toward the political system in general). We find that personal quality of life is only weakly and inconsistently connected to specific or diffuse support. Perceptions of collective quality of life, however, are strongly related to both specific and diffuse support. Thus, South Africans are holding their government accountable to their perceptions of national well-being. Of greater concern, however, is that they also appear to be holding the democratic system accountable to such developments. Teaching people to distinguish between their evaluations of a specific government and their evaluations of the larger system of democratic government appears to be a key challenge confronting the development of a democratic political culture in South Africa.     

The domains of life satisfaction: An attempt to order chaos

While life satisfaction is commonly measured as an aggregate of individual life domains, the characterisation of such domains is uncertain. This study attempts to group 173 different domains names derived from the literature under seven headings as used by the Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale (ComQol). It was found that 68% could be classified in this way. Moreover, due to the repeated use of some domain names, the ComQol classification included 83% of the total reported data. The ComQol domain data did not differ from single-item global measures of life satisfaction and the within-study variance was lower using the ComQol rather than the original domains. A hierarchy of domain satisfaction was found which was dominated by the domain of intimacy. The other ComQol domains were quite tightly clustered within a range of 1.08 standard deviations. No difference was found between normative data and data gathered from people with a chronic medical condition, but people selected on psychiatric criteria had a lower life quality, most particularly in the domain of intimacy. It is concluded that life satisfaction, and therefore subjective well-being, can be economically and validly measured through the seven ComQol domains.     

Aggregate population and economic growth correlations: The role of the components of demographic change

The results of recent correlations showing a negative impact of population growth on economic development in cross-country data for the 1980s, versus “nonsignificant” correlations widely found for the 1960s and 1970s, are examined with contemporaneous and lagged components of demographic change, convergence-type economic modeling, and several statistical frameworks. The separate impacts of births and deaths are found to be notable but offsetting in the earlier periods. In contrast, the short-run costs (benefits) of births (mortality reduction) increase (decrease) significantly in the 1980s, and the favorable labor-force impacts of past births are not fully offsetting.     

Social indicators of youth development and educational performance: A programmatic statement

This paper argues for the use of social indicators, in conjunction with the traditional norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests, to assess the effects of local educational systems. A conceptual framework for the study of educational performance is presented, interrelating (1) personal resources invested by youth, (2) opportunities for development, (3) developmental behaviors, (4) educational system impacts, and (5) other contextual variables, which together affect (6) progress toward adulthood. Four types of variables and 15 content areas that should be monitored are described, with examples of social indicators for each. Procedures are presented for selecting variables, collecting time-series data, and analyzing and reporting the indicators, relying entirely on existing data sources. Appendices include a data base screening form, a statistic screening form, and a list of United States national, state, county, and city sources of time-series data relevant to youth development and educational performance.     

Birth control and the black American: A matter of genocide?

Demography - During the 1960’s and continuing into the 1970’s, the charge that birth control and abortion are integral elements of a white genocidal conspiracy directed against...     

Tobacco smoking and the sex mortality differential

This paper examines the effects of tobacco smoking on the sex mortality differential in the United States. It is found that all forms of smoking combined account for about 47 percent of the female-male difference in ₅₀ e ₃₇ (life expectancy between ages 37 and 87) in 1962,and about 75 percent of the increase in the female-male difference in ₅₀ e ₃₇over the period 1910–62. When these percentage effects of smoking are decomposed each into a sum of contributions by age and immediate medical cause of death, the degenerative diseases acting at the older ages are found to be of primary importance. The above results appear in large part to explain why the degenerative diseases also account for most of the 1910–65 increase in the female-male difference in life expectancy at birth. The analysis assumes that spurious effects due to the correlation of tobacco consumption with other mortality-related factors are small compared to the causal effects of tobacco consumption itself.     

A computer model of family building based on expected values

A computerized probability model of family building is described. Called FERMOD, the model is designed to follow the changing distribution of children ever born and birth intervals of a large homogeneous population as it moves through the reproductive period. Use of the model presupposes assumptions about such factors as risks of fetal wastage, lengths of pregnancy, and postdelivery amenorrhea conditional to outcome of pregnancy, length of reproductive period, fecundability, desired family size, preferred birth spacing!, and effectiveness of contraception. Use of FERMOD is illustrated in a limited application to United States fertility. Relations to other models are briefly discussed.     

超高效液相色谱的七年之痒:未来在何方

这篇文章对超高效液相色谱(UHPLC)技术进行了调查。文章中讨论的主题包括了使用者的受益,如何将传统方法过渡到UHPLC以及是否所有常规高效液相色谱(HPLC)模式都能应用到相应的UHPLC上。在接下来的10年中,我们可以期望这项技术得到不断改进,并且由于色谱仪器的使用寿命一般为10年,下一代的UHPLC色谱仪应该就会在1到2年之内开始出现。