Illegal immigration booms and welfare in the host country

We assess the effects of an important influx of illegal immigration on production and welfare, applied to the Spanish economy during the nineties, through a calibrated general equilibrium model. Immigrants are perfect substitutes of unskilled native workers, according to their productivity, but they are unevenly rewarded. In a first simulation we analyse the effects of an exogenous increase of illegal workers equal to the estimates for the period. In another simulation an equivalent expansion in unskilled legal immigrants is then considered. Finally, a comparison of both simulations provides the scenario of illegal immigrants being legalised. The outcome suggests that the amount of remittances and the role of labour market mechanisms (e.g. trade unions) play an important role in overall results.     

Leveraging blockchain technology in humanitarian settings – opportunities and risks for women and girls

ABSTRACT

There is an increasing acknowledgement among policymakers and private-sector partners that we cannot overcome the challenges of our time without harnessing the potential of emerging technologies. As blockchain technology is rapidly being introduced to support work across a wide number of areas of humanitarian action, this article considers its potential impact on women and girls. The article draws on experiences emerging from UN Women’s explorations of blockchain technology and the first gender-responsive pilot targeting Syrian refugee women in UN Women’s cash-for-work programme in Jordan. The article reminds us how important it is to introduce technologies in ways that maximise their potential to advance gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in humanitarian settings, and minimise the risk of doing harm. Without conscious commitment to these aims, blockchain technology may exacerbate the marginalisation of women and girls.     

Intergenerational Programs Review: Study Design and Characteristics of Intervention,Outcomes, and Effectiveness

There is a growing interest in intergenerational connectivity through intergenerational programs. In this work, a review of intergenerational programs was performed, with focus on the program design and objectives as well as in their outcomes.

We used a systematic review method in which we screened 3,796 articles. After analyzing titles, abstracts, and full paper analysis, 16 articles were retained. Each study was reviewed, and data were extracted related to target population, study design, characteristics of intervention, outcomes, and effectiveness.

Intergenerational programs included educational programs and art, Information technology development, cultural heritage, health education, and therapeutic activities. Most of the programs collected both quantitative and/or qualitative data. Seven studies collected data in the beginning and at the end of the program. Significant diversity in sample size and intervention length was found. Measurement of outcomes was performed in both young and/or elderly group of participants. Programs impact evaluation varied between studies, including validated scales, interviews, observation, focus groups, and conversation analysis, narratives, videotaped sessions, and field notes.

Our study highlighted the diversity in the design of studies and in the program’s effectiveness evaluation. More randomized design studies are required to support researchers and practitioners in the development of future intergenerational programs.     

Building relationships on social networking sites from a social work approach

ABSTRACT

Our current age of connectedness has facilitated a boom in interactive dynamics within social networking sites. It is, therefore, possible for the field of Social Work to draw on these advantages in order to connect with the unconnected by strengthening online mutual support networks among users.

The aim of this article is to examine whether ‘connectedness’ in social networking sites improves online social capital and resilience of social service users.

Through our analysis of social networks carried out on an experimental model, we observed the patterns of connectedness on Facebook of 50 social service end-users from Málaga, Spain. The detection of online communities through the modularity algorithm has allowed us to ascertain whether individuals’ offline realities mirror their online realities. At the same time, we examined the influence certain interactions (likes, comments, etc.) have on leadership through online ethnography. Finally, online social capital, understood as the combination of connectedness and online interaction, has been correlated with users’ resilience. The results reveal that both connectedness and interaction feed themselves and have correlations with resilience.     

Child language brokering: challenges in Spanish intercultural education

Globalisation has resulted in multicultural and multilingual societies where individuals, who often do not speak the official language, need to communicate with different services offered by public institutions in the host country. School plays a vital role as an education and training institution, and must guarantee that every student receives equal opportunities, and, in accordance with the principles of intercultural education, facilitate the integration of foreign students both into society and the educational context. However, linguistic and cultural barriers may sometimes prevent communication between foreign students, their families and the education centre.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse survey responses and interview talk about communication between teachers and immigrant users who do not speak or barely know the host country language, especially the methods employed and the resources available to Spanish education centres to communicate with students and families who lack the necessary host language skills. A case study will be used as example of the situation in which both educators and families very frequently have to turn to child language brokering, using methodology based on qualitative analysis of surveys and interviews carried out in two primary schools in the Madrid area.     

Analytical results for IGFR and DRPFR distributions,with actuarial applications

An increasing generalized failure rate of a lifetime X defines an ageing concept, denoted by IGFR. Another notion, denoted by DRPFR, is defined by the decreasingness of the reversed proportional failure rate. In this article, we provide characterizations for both IGFR and DRPFR absolutely continuous lifetimes, based on monotonicity of quotients of probabilistic functionals and a result by Nanda and Shaked (2001 Nanda, A.K., Shaked, M. (2001). The hazard rate and the reversed hazard rate orders, with applications to order statistics. Ann. Inst. Stat. Math. 53:853–864.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We derive the necessary conditions for the IGFR notion, based on stochastic orderings of truncated distributions, and we prove that the product of DRPFR lifetimes is also DRPFR; that the IGFR property is preserved by composition with certain risk aversion utility functions; and that the order statistics and the records (and the subsequent order statistic (record)) are IGFR under suitable assumptions, with similar results for DRPFR lifetimes. Also, we provide sufficient conditions for the hazard rate ordering of products and random products of IGFR lifetimes, and similar results for the reversed hazard rate order and DRPFR lifetimes, with a complementary result for the mean residual life order of random products of two families of IGFR lifetimes, we derive the upper and lower bounds for the cumulative distribution function of the product of IGFR lifetimes, and we provide the lower bounds for the risk function of an IGFR lifetime based on the distribution moments, and these bounds are extended for the product of IGFR lifetimes. We discuss extensively the applications of the results in insurance portfolios.     

A Bayesian approach for misclassified ordinal response data

ABSTRACT

Motivated by a longitudinal oral health study, the Signal-Tandmobiel^® study, a Bayesian approach has been developed to model misclassified ordinal response data. Two regression models have been considered to incorporate misclassification in the categorical response. Specifically, probit and logit models have been developed. The computational difficulties have been avoided by using data augmentation. This idea is exploited to derive efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. Although the method is proposed for ordered categories, it can also be implemented for unordered ones in a simple way. The model performance is shown through a simulation-based example and the analysis of the motivating study.     

Multi‐pillared social insurance systems: The post‐reform picture in Chile,Uruguay and Brazil

This article focuses on an analysis of social insurance models and reforms in Chile, Uruguay and Brazil. Noting that these three countries are following different reform trajectories, the article explores trends in the restructuring of each of these insurance systems across the course of successive reforms. In the systems, different trends are supporting a closer link between contributions and benefits, according growing importance to private individual accounts and favouring the expansion of the role played by social assistance. These trends all suggest a move towards various forms of multi‐pillared social insurance, but with uncertain results in terms of redistribution and the dynamics of the fundamental objectives of social insurance.     

Application of a Markovian process to the calculation of mean time equilibrium in a genetic drift model

The most common phenomena in the evolution process are natural selection and genetic drift. In this article, we propose a probabilistic method to calculate the mean and variance time for random genetic drift equilibrium, measured as number of generations, based on Markov process and a complex probabilistic model. We studied the case of a constant, panmictic population of diploid organisms, which had a demonstrated lack of mutation, selection or migration for a determined autonomic locus, and two possible alleles, H and h. The calculations presented in this article were based on a Markov process. They explain how genetic and genotypic frequencies changed in different generations and how the heterozygote alleles became extinguished after many generations. This calculation could be used in more evolutionary applications. Finally, some simulations are presented to illustrate the theoretical calculations presented using different basal situations.