Immigration,living arrangement and the poverty risk of older adults in Hong Kong

Using 2011 census data, this study investigated how living arrangement affects disparities in poverty between older adults (aged 65 and older) who migrated to Hong Kong from Mainland China and those who were born in Hong Kong. Our sample consisted of 29,987 immigrants and 9,398 natives, all of whom were ethnic Chinese and living in Hong Kong at the time of the census. We found higher poverty rates among older immigrants than among natives, a disparity that persisted even after adjusting for living arrangement, human capital characteristics, assimilation‐related variables, household composition and demographic characteristics. We also found that living arrangement moderated the impact of immigrant status on the poverty risk among older adults, and that the impact was due mainly to the number of earners in the household. The implications of our results with respect to poverty among older adults and anti‐poverty measures are discussed.     

Surrendering the environment for capital gain and Olson’s group theory: A case study of the dissolution of housing co-operative societies in Hong Kong

This paper describes the rise of the co-operative housing of civil servants and its fall during the transition of Hong Kong from a British colony to a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China. Olson’s group theory was adopted to explain the timing of the dissolution in a context of uncertainty in the property rights of land; the terms of civil service appointments; and the housing market. The size of the ownership body and the value of the land were evaluated as factors affecting dissolution decisions. It was found that in agreement with Olson’s theory, the number of members of the body had a statistically significant positive relationship with the life (between formation and dissolution) of the co-operative body. In addition, it was also found that factors that affected the opportunity cost of maintaining status quo, including the value of the land on which the co-op scheme sits and the real option value of redevelopment, had a significant impact on the timing of the dissolution of the co-op. The implications for using Olson’s theory were also discussed.     

Resiliency in older Hong Kong Chinese: Using the grounded theory approach to reveal social and spiritual conditions

Resiliency refers to the personal disposition favoring resilience, which is a state of adjustment in the face of adversity. As the nature and origin of resiliency are unclear, especially in older Hong Kong Chinese, the present study adopts a qualitative, grounded theory approach to elucidate resiliency. Findings from the study are notable because they contrast with existing knowledge. The study conducted personal interviews with 15 older Hong Kong Chinese identified by elderly service workers as resilient to recent adversities. Consequently, the study identifies a grounded, social–spiritual dialectic theory that relates resiliency to its contributors in early living conditions, family socialization, and religious faith. According to qualitative data, resiliency, which is characterized by self-reliance, openness, and relaxation, turns out to be a result of isolation in living conditions and family socialization. Isolation can also lead to religious faith, which is another contributor to resiliency. These findings are different from existing knowledge that social support is a basis for resiliency. They imply the possibility of converting negative experiences into impetus for generating resiliency.     

Optimal experimental plan for multi-level stress testing with Weibull regression under progressive Type-II extremal censoring

In the design of constant-stress life-testing experiments, the optimal allocation in a multi-level stress test with Type-I or Type-II censoring based on the Weibull regression model has been studied in the literature. Conventional Type-I and Type-II censoring schemes restrict our ability to observe extreme failures in the experiment and these extreme failures are important in the estimation of upper quantiles and understanding of the tail behaviors of the lifetime distribution. For this reason, we propose the use of progressive extremal censoring at each stress level, whereas the conventional Type-II censoring is a special case. The proposed experimental scheme allows some extreme failures to be observed. The maximum likelihood estimators of the model parameters, the Fisher information, and asymptotic variance–covariance matrices of the maximum likelihood estimates are derived. We consider the optimal experimental planning problem by looking at four different optimality criteria. To avoid the computational burden in searching for the optimal allocation, a simple search procedure is suggested. Optimal allocation of units for two- and four-stress-level situations is determined numerically. The asymptotic Fisher information matrix and the asymptotic optimal allocation problem are also studied and the results are compared with optimal allocations with specified sample sizes. Finally, conclusions and some practical recommendations are provided.     

Social work and sustainable rural development: The practice of social economy in China

The impact of globalisation on local agriculture and food systems has brought issues such as food security and rural sustainability to the forefront of policy‐making in developing countries. In China, the restructuring of domestic agriculture and liberalisation of trade following accession to the World Trade Organization have led to the growing reliance on imported food and raised concerns for food self‐sufficiency and safety. Inspired by the concept of social economy, social workers in China have explored alternative pathways towards sustainable food production and consumption through local initiatives. Based on participatory action research in a Chinese village, this study examines the potential contribution of social work intervention in responding to China’s agrarian challenges. It is shown that by linking rural cooperatives with the local food system and allowing farmers to sell directly to urban consumers at fairer prices, social economy initiatives provide a viable pathway for sustainable transformation by empowering rural producers while giving urban consumers access to sustainably produced food.     

The meaning of leader integrity: A comparative study across Anglo,Asian, and Germanic cultures

The current study explores and compares the meaning of leader integrity in six societies representing three culture clusters, including Ireland and the U.S. (Anglo cluster), Germany and Austria (Germanic Europe cluster), as well as China (PRC) and Hong Kong (Confucian Asia cluster). Reponses were obtained from 189 managers using an on-line, open-response questionnaire and analyzed through a data-driven thematic analysis of the manifest and latent content of the responses. Looking within cultures, findings provide initial evidence of the culture-specific attributes and behaviors that leaders with integrity are expected to possess and convey toward others. Looking across cultures, comparative analysis revealed nine common themes that were endorsed in all or a majority of the societies: these include Guided by Strong Personal Moral Code/Values, Value–Behavior Consistency, Word–Action Consistency, Honest, Fair and Just, Openness and Transparency, Consideration and Respect for Others, Sense of Responsibility for/toward Others, and Abiding by Rules and Regulations. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

School‐based human rights education: case studies in Hong Kong secondary schools

In an era of rapid globalization, space and time are seriously compressed. People from different nations, cultures, religions and other backgrounds have become much more interconnected and interdependent. Since people are rapidly intermingling, what values should be considered as standards and norms in regulating this situation, so that people of different backgrounds can relate peacefully to each other with mutual respect? United Nations (UN) human rights standards could be considered as sets of shared global norms and values in a search for global ethics. As a consequence, the UN has been eager to promote human rights education (HRE), aiming at the cultivation of a human rights culture. This paper reports on two case studies of school‐based curriculum development of HRE in two Hong Kong secondary schools. We also recommend some research directions important for the implementation of HRE in schools. It is hoped that the paper can provide some insight into the development of quality HRE in schools.     

Choice of parametric models in survival analysis: applications to monotherapy for epilepsy and cerebral palsy

Summary. In the analysis of medical survival data, semiparametric proportional hazards models are widely used. When the proportional hazards assumption is not tenable, these models will not be suitable. Other models for covariate effects can be useful. In particular, we consider accelerated life models, in which the effect of covariates is to scale the quantiles of the base-line distribution. Solomon and Hutton have suggested that there is some robustness to misspecification of survival regression models. They showed that the relative importance of covariates is preserved under misspecification with assumptions of small coefficients and orthogonal transformation of covariates. We elucidate these results by applications to data from five trials which compare two common anti-epileptic drugs (carbamazepine versus sodium valporate monotherapy for epilepsy) and to survival of a cohort of people with cerebral palsy. Results on the robustness against model misspecification depend on the assumptions of small coefficients and on the underlying distribution of the data. These results hold in cerebral palsy but do not hold in epilepsy data which have early high hazard rates. The orthogonality of coefficients is not important. However, the choice of model is important for an estimation of the magnitude of effects, particularly if the base-line shape parameter indicates high initial hazard rates.     

Individual-level modeling of the spread of influenza within households

A class of individual-level models (ILMs) outlined by R. Deardon et al., [Inference for individual level models of infectious diseases in large populations, Statist. Sin. 20 (2010), pp. 239–261] can be used to model the spread of infectious diseases in discrete time. The key feature of these ILMs is that they take into account covariate information on susceptible and infectious individuals as well as shared covariate information such as geography or contact measures. Here, such ILMs are fitted in a Bayesian framework using Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques to data sets from two studies on influenza transmission within households in Hong Kong during 2008 to 2009 and 2009 to 2010. The focus of this paper is to estimate the effect of vaccination on infection risk and choose a model that best fits the infection data.     

Multinomial Selection for Comparison with a Standard

The multinomial selection problem is considered under the formulation of comparison with a standard, where each system is required to be compared to a single system, referred to as a “standard,” as well as to other alternative systems. The goal is to identify systems that are better than the standard, or to retain the standard when it is equal to or better than the other alternatives in terms of the probability to generate the largest or smallest performance measure. We derive new multinomial selection procedures for comparison with a standard to be applied in different scenarios, including exact small-sample procedure and approximate large-sample procedure. Empirical results and the proof are presented to demonstrate the statistical validity of our procedures. The tables of the procedure parameters and the corresponding exact probability of correct selection are also provided.