Gender Equality in Europe: The Development of the Sustainable Development Goal No. 5 Illustrated by Exemplary Cases

Social Indicators Research - The inequality between genders is a problem virtually in all countries. A comparison among 28 nations of the European Union together with a data set corresponding to a...     

Interactive production planning and ergonomic assessment with Digital Human Models--introducing the Editor for Manual Work Activities (ema)

The aging workforce is a risk factor for manufacturing industries that contain many jobs with high physical workloads. Thus, ergonomic risk factors have to be avoided in early phases of production planning. This paper introduces a new tool for simulating manual work activities with 3D human models, the so-called emaΦ. For the most part, the emaΦ software is based on a unique modular approach including a number of complex operations that were theoretically developed and empirically validated by means of motion capturing technologies. Using these modules for defining the digital work process enables the production planner to compile human simulations more accurately and much quicker compared to any of the existing modeling tools. Features of the emaΦ software implementation, such as ergonomic evaluation and MTM-time analyses, and the workflow for practical application are presented.     

Workplace bullying, emotions, and outcomes

This study examines emotional experiences as potential mediators between exposure to workplace bullying and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention to leave the organization, respectively. A total of 5,520 respondents participated in the study. Drawing upon affective events theory (AET), the results show that emotions partly mediate these relationships and, hence, support the notion that emotions play a central part in the relationship between bullying and essential occupational outcomes.     

The variation in family background amongst young homeless shelter users in Denmark

This article analyses variation in the family background of young homeless people in a cohort of young Danes. The study is based on administrative data for individuals who were 18 years old in 2007 and their parents. Homelessness is measured by shelter use over a five-year period. Data also cover education, employment, mental illness, substance abuse problems and placement outside home in childhood for the young persons, and education, employment, civil status, mental illness and substance abuse problems for their parents. A cluster analysis identifies two groups, each comprising half of the young shelter users. In the first group, social marginalisation is transmitted between generations, as most parents have low education and mental illness or substance abuse problems, and are unemployed. In contrast, the young people in the second group come from wider socioeconomic backgrounds, with few of their parents having mental illness or substance abuse problems. These young people develop psychosocial problems and become homeless without strong predictors from their family background. Amongst the young shelter users from families with severe social problems a higher share are in the Not in Education, Employment or Training group. They also have more shelter stays, compared to young shelter users from families with fewer social problems.     

Dread and Risk Elimination Premium for the Value of a Statistical Life

The value of a statistical life (VSL) is a widely used measure for the value of mortality risk reduction. As VSL should reflect preferences and attitudes to risk, there are reasons to believe that it varies depending on the type of risk involved. It has been argued that cancer should be considered a “dread disease,” which supports the use of a “cancer premium.” The objective of this study is to investigate the existence of a cancer premium (for pancreatic cancer and multiple myeloma) in relation to road traffic accidents, sudden cardiac arrest, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Data were collected from 500 individuals in the Swedish general population of 50–74‐year olds using a web‐based questionnaire. Preferences were elicited using the contingent valuation method, and a split‐sample design was applied to test scale sensitivity. VSL differs significantly between contexts, being highest for ALS and lowest for road traffic accidents. A premium (92–113%) for cancer was found in relation to road traffic accidents. The premium was higher for cancer with a shorter time from diagnosis to death. A premium was also found for sudden cardiac arrest (73%) and ALS (118%) in relation to road traffic accidents. Eliminating risk was associated with a premium of around 20%. This study provides additional evidence that there exist a dread premium and risk elimination premium. These factors should be considered when searching for an appropriate value for economic evaluation and health technology assessment.     

Dynamic Valuation Decomposition Within Stochastic Economies

I explore the equilibrium value implications of economic models that incorporate responses to a stochastic environment with growth. I propose dynamic valuation decompositions (DVD's) designed to distinguish components of an underlying economic model that influence values over long investment horizons from components that impact only the short run. A DVD represents the values of stochastically growing claims to consumption payoffs or cash flows using a stochastic discount process that both discounts the future and adjusts for risk. It is enabled by constructing operators indexed by the elapsed time between the trading date and the date of the future realization of the payoff. Thus formulated, methods from applied mathematics permit me to characterize valuation behavior and the term structure of risk prices in a revealing manner. I apply this approach to investigate how investor beliefs and the associated uncertainty are reflected in current‐period values and risk‐price elasticities.     

Happiness and Satisfaction with Work Commute

Research suggests that for many people happiness is being able to make the routines of everyday life work, such that positive feelings dominate over negative feelings resulting from daily hassles. In line with this, a survey of work commuters in the three largest urban areas of Sweden show that satisfaction with the work commute contributes to overall happiness. It is also found that feelings during the commutes are predominantly positive or neutral. Possible explanatory factors include desirable physical exercise from walking and biking, as well as that short commutes provide a buffer between the work and private spheres. For longer work commutes, social and entertainment activities either increase positive affects or counteract stress and boredom. Satisfaction with being employed in a recession may also spill over to positive experiences of work commutes.     

The impact of professional and personal satisfaction on perceptions of rural and urban: Some analytic evidence

Studies of rural-urban location decisions traditionally used ana priori definition of rural/urban based on population size. A group of 29 physicians (study group) practising in communities of less than 10 000, that were part of a larger sample, perceived their communities as ‘urban’. A matched group of physicians (control group) in the same communities, who perceived the communities as ‘rural’, was selected. The research question raised was: Are there personal and professional factors that could reliably predict the perception of rural and urban? A logistic regression analysis was done using professional and personal satisfaction items as predictors of the two groups. The analysis gives some evidence that, once the effect of community size is removed, the perception of rural urban can be explained by satisfaction with the following: (i) access to specialist expertise, (ii) quality of education for children, (iii) quality of life for children and (iv) quality of housing; satisfaction with size of community was not a significant predictor of rural/urban perception.     

Impact of the psychosocial work environment on registered absence from work: A two-year longitudinal study using the IPAW cohort

During the Intervention Project on Absence and Well-being (IPAW), a 5-year project conducted in Denmark, we investigated psychosocial work environment factors as independent predictors of the number of absence days per year. The present two-year longitudinal study used the IPAW cohort, but was not intended to study intervention effects, which will be reported later. Data were derived from baseline questionnaires and employers' registers of absence for 1919 participants (1305 women, 614 men, mainly in low-skilled jobs) in different occupations from 52 workplaces. These workplaces included municipal care, municipal technical services and a large pharmaceutical company. Analyses were performed by Poisson regression accounting for over-dispersion. After controlling for age, family type, health behaviours and physical work environment variables, we found that high levels of decision authority predicted low absence rates in both women and men. We tested two new psychosocial constructs developed for this study: Predictability (relating to being informed on future events at work) and Meaning of Work (relating to how meaningful and useful the work is perceived to be). Higher Predictability was a significant predictor of lower absence rates in men. This study adds to the body of evidence that the psychosocial working environment influences absence and should therefore be considered to be an important target for intervention.     

Self-reported health, self-esteem and social support among young unemployed people: a population-based study

A population-based study was performed in southern Sweden in the autumn of 1998. The aim was to study connections between self-reported health, self-esteem and social support among unemployed (≥ three months) young people. The sample consisted of 264 unemployed individuals aged 20–25 years, and 528 individuals of the same age, randomly selected from the population register and not registered as unemployed. The response rate was 72%. Defined by means of factor analysis, mental health consisted of the symptoms tearfulness, dysphoria, sleeping disturbance, restlessness, general fatigue and irritability. The unemployed had more mental health problems than young people who were working or studying. Restlessness and dysphoria were significantly over-represented in the unemployed among both sexes. However, good social support seemed to predict mental health. Support from parents was most important, particularly in males. Those with low self-esteem and poor parental support were especially vulnerable.