Datafying anti-poverty programmes: implications for data justice

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to illuminate the significance of datafication for anti-poverty programmes, meaning social protection schemes designed specifically for poor people. The conversion of beneficiary populations into machine-readable data enables two core functions of social protection, those of recognising entitled beneficiaries and assigning entitlements connected to each anti-poverty scheme. Drawing on the incorporation of Aadhaar, India’s biometric population database, in the national agenda for social protection, we unpack a techno-rational perspective that crafts datafication as a means to enhance the effectiveness of anti-poverty schemes. Nevertheless, narratives collected in the field show multiple forms of data injustice on recipients, underpinned by Aadhaar’s functionality for a shift of the social protection agenda from in-kind subsidies to cash transfers. Based on such narratives the paper introduces a politically embedded view of data, framing datafication as a transformative force that contributes to reforming existing anti-poverty schemes.     

Use of the scale-up methods in injury prevention research: An empirical assessment to the case of choking in children

The scale-up method estimates the size of hard to count subpopulations. This method is based on the idea that the proportion of subjects in a subpopulation E known to each member of the general population T is the same as the proportion of members of E belonging to general population T.     

Some simulations and applications of forecasting long-memory time-series models

In this paper, we show some results of forecasting based on the ARFIMA(p,d,q) and ARIMA(p,d,q) models. We show, by simulation, that the technique of forecasting of the ARIMA(p,d,q) model can also be used when d is fractional, i.e., for the ARFIMA(p,d,q) model. We also conduct a simulation study to compare the two estimators of d obtained through regression methods. They are used in the hypothesis test to decide whether or not the series has long memory property and are compared on the basis of their k-step ahead forecast errors. The properties of long-memory models are also investigated using an actual set of data.     

Multifamily therapy in the community mental health network: A pragmatic randomized and controlled study

Multifamily therapy (MFT) is a psychotherapeutic group intervention for patients with severe mental disorders (SMDs) and their families. The present study is a multicenter, randomized, and controlled trial that analyzes the benefit of MFT during outpatient treatment. The recruited patients were randomly assigned to the experimental group (n = 26), which received 24 MFT sessions in addition to their treatment as usual (TAU), or to the control group (n = 29), which received only TAU (individual and family sessions). Six months after the inclusion in the MFT, the experimental group showed a significant decrease in number of visits to the psychiatric emergency services, number of psychiatric admissions, and the days of admission. The need for hospital care 6 months after recruitment was also lower in the experimental group compared to the control group. These results suggest that the implementation of MFT during outpatient treatment facilitates community management of people diagnosed with mental health problems.     

Adjustment mechanisms and intergenerational actuarial neutrality in pension reforms

In the context of the reform of defined benefit pension systems under population ageing, we focus on the introduction of automatic adjustment mechanisms linked to life expectancy. Our goal is to establish a relationship between changes in the key parameters of the pension system and changes in life expectancy, applying the principle of intergenerational actuarial neutrality. For a defined benefit pension scheme, we first obtain the fundamental adjustment equation and then, for particular cases, we derive different designs of automatic adjustment mechanisms depending on the involved parameter. We include a numerical application only for illustrative purposes.     

THE LABOR MARKET IN THE ART SECTOR OF BAROQUE ROME

We analyze the labor market for painters in Baroque Rome using unique data on primary sales of portraits, still lifes, genre paintings, landscapes, and figurative paintings. In line with the traditional artistic hierarchy of genres, average price differentials between them were high. The matched painter‐patron nature of the dataset allows us to evaluate the extent to which price heterogeneity is related to unobservable characteristics of painters and patrons. We find that the market allocated artists between artistic genres to the point of equalizing the marginal return of each genre. Residual price differences at the employer level can be explained in terms of incentive mechanisms to induce effort in the production of artistic quality and compensating wage differentials. (JEL C23, D8, J3, Z11)     

Staging precariousness: The Serpica Naro catwalk during the Milan Fashion Week

The article illustrates the Italian process of work precarisation and the collective resistance of precarious workers. It interprets them in terms of the birth of a collective identity that conducts a critique against precariousness while developing learning resources. Through discursive analysis of the Serpica Naro catwalk, organised in the area of Milan by the activists of the May Day Parade and the San Precario network, the article illustrates the process of construction of this collective identity that uses irony and playfulness to resist and denounce precarious working conditions. The purpose is to interpret the anti-precariousness movement as a process of critical urban learning that creates the viability of spaces for resistance in metropolitan contexts.     

If we practice posthumanist research,do we need ‘gender’ any longer?

This article offers a reflection around the question of ‘do we need ‘gender’ any longer?’ In taking up this problem and inspired by the way in which postqualitative inquiry has opened a conversation with Deleuzian philosophy and formulated a ‘concept as/instead of method’ line of thought, I wonder whether new images of thought might give the concept of gender ‘the forces it needs to return to life’ or the forces to abandon it. I propose four different images that might provoke the desire to experiment with a new image of thought in relation to the problem: a vegetal mode of thought, a musical mode, a fleshy mode as labiaplasty, a nonliving mode. This choice is connected to the dualities they target: the human/vegetal living world, the rational/artistic production of knowledge, the dis‐embodied/corporeal being in the world, the life/nonlife hierarchization. Each way of thinking of ‘gender’ stages, enacts, performs a different material reality of the concept that shifts the focus from linguistic representations to discursive practices. Hence, if gender has become a dominant discourse, it may be that positive repetition of this discourse might become a way of opening a new site inside it, by de‐territorializing it and re‐territorializing it otherwise.     

Are time and money equally substitutable for all commodity groups in the household’s domestic production?

Review of Economics of the Household - This article uses time-use and household expenditure data to measure the substitutability between time and money within the Beckerian household production...     

Correction to: The impact of parental illness on children’s schooling and labour force participation: evidence from Vietnam

Review of Economics of the Household - The original version of this article unfortunately contained some errors in reference citations and in significance indicators in some of the tables. These...