Risk level assessment and occupational health insurance expenditure: a gender imbalance

It is tested whether occupational risk explains differences in reimbursements from occupational-injury insurance schemes in relation to socioeconomic differences in all municipalities in Stockholm county, Sweden. An occupational risk level is formed, which considered the proportions of workers in various industrial sectors and the probability of a worker being injured in each. A regression analysis is performed, treating socioeconomic condition and risk level as predictors of reimbursement. After controlling for variation in socioeconomic factors, occupational-risk level explains the pattern of payments to men but not to women. From a gender perspective, it can be concluded that women, as a group, are not compensated for their occupational risks to the same extent as men.     

An Insurance Model for Risk Management of Process Facilities

Most existing risk management models for process industries do not consider the effect of insurance coverage, which results in an overestimation of overall risk. A model is presented in this article to study the effect of insurance coverage of health, safety, environmental, and business risks. The effect of insurance recovery is modeled through the application of adjustment factors by considering the stochastic factors affecting insurance recovery. The insurance contract's conditions, deductibles, and policy limits are considered in developing the insurance recovery adjustment factors. Copula functions and Monte Carlo simulations are used to develop the distribution of the aggregate loss by considering the dependence among loss classes. A case study is used to demonstrate both the practical application of the proposed insurance model to improve management decisions, and the mitigating effect of insurance to minimize the residual risk.     

Fetishizing Music as Rape Culture

The concept of “rapey music” has recently emerged as a social problem in feminist and mainstream contexts. Rapey music references songs that critics perceive as artifacts of “rape culture” because they allegedly perpetuate sexual violence, misogyny, and rape myths. This article draws on the concept of “fetishism” to analyze accusations that certain songs are rapey and argues that such songs can be recuperated through a kink lens. In the first part, I review the burgeoning category of songs that have been condemned in feminist media analyses and the weak evidence that connects certain songs to sexual coercion, arguing that the terms “rapey” and “rape culture” operate as negative fetish concepts. I then analyze the disproportionate and more vehement targeting of Black performers, contending that a racialized fetishization underlies this phenomenon. In the last part, I defend music branded as “rape culture” by suggesting that its pleasurable dynamic can be understood through a non-normative kinky fetish framework.     

The im/mobilities of ‘sometimes-migrating’ for abortion: Ireland to Great Britain

ABSTRACT

This paper furthers the concept of im/mobilities through an investigation of the reproductive mobilities of women migrating for abortion from Ireland (north and south) to Great Britain. Where more often the focus of reproductive mobilities concerns the movement of people and matter in order to reproduce, there is less (although some) attention to movement aligned with the prevention of reproduction. We consider the variegated im/mobilities of conception not brought to birth, in the frictional movement of people, things, ideologies and imaginations in staying with and moving beyond the dichotomy of mobility and immobility. We engage in transdisciplinary dialogue between mobilities and migration studies. Hence, underlying this exploration is the concept of the ‘sometimes-migrant’, used to challenge binary oppositions between mobility and immobility, broader conceptualisations of ‘migrants’ as ‘exceptional’, and more specifically the notion of travelling for abortion as ‘abortion-tourism’. We adopt the call to focus on different incarnations of the ‘sometimes-migrant’ in the form of women travelling temporarily across national borders of intermittent porosity in order to seek care that is not available in their own country. Intersections of migration and mobilities reveal the ways women are im/mobilised through geopolitical and cultural practices at local and global scales.     

Pukhtun Ethnic Nationalism: From Separatism to Integrationism

There is many a myth about Pukhtuns. The British colonialists thought Pukhtuns were 'unruly' people that could not be tamed. When Pakistan came into being, Pukhtun nationalists were regarded as the most serious threat to the new state, and until the 1970s every government persecuted them. But during the last three decades of the twentieth century, Pukhtun politics underwent a sea change. Today, Pukhtuns, who were opposed to the creation of Pakistan and had demanded an independent state of their own, have become one of the most powerful partners in the state hierarchy. This paper critically examines the myths the orientalists have created about Pukhtuns and the changing pattern of Pukhtun politics.     

An Optimal Multivariate Stratified Sampling Design Using Dynamic Programming

Numerous optimization problems arise in survey designs. The problem of obtaining an optimal (or near optimal) sampling design can be formulated and solved as a mathematical programming problem. In multivariate stratified sample surveys usually it is not possible to use the individual optimum allocations for sample sizes to various strata for one reason or another. In such situations some criterion is needed to work out an allocation which is optimum for all characteristics in some sense. Such an allocation may be called an optimum compromise allocation. This paper examines the problem of determining an optimum compromise allocation in multivariate stratified random sampling, when the population means of several characteristics are to be estimated. Formulating the problem of allocation as an all integer nonlinear programming problem, the paper develops a solution procedure using a dynamic programming technique. The compromise allocation discussed is optimal in the sense that it minimizes a weighted sum of the sampling variances of the estimates of the population means of various characteristics under study. A numerical example illustrates the solution procedure and shows how it compares with Cochran's average allocation and proportional allocation.     

Social Health Indicators and Economic Growth: Evidence from East Asia and Pacific,Middle East and North Africa,South Asia,and Sub-Saharan Africa

The objective of this study is to empirically investigate a two-way statistical relationship between the social health indicators and economic growth in the context of four major regions of the world i.e., East Asia and Pacific, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. To recognize the relationship between the two variables, a time series, co-integration and Granger causality tests have been employed. Aggregate secondary data pertaining to these four regions from 1975 to 2011 on economic growth and social health indicators i.e., infant mortality, child abuse, child poverty, unemployment, weekly wages, health insurance coverage, teenage suicide, teenage drug abuse, high school dropouts, poverty, out-of-pocket health costs, homicides, alcohol related traffic fatalities, food insecurity, income inequality, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, basic health units and rural health centers has been used for analysis. This study evaluates four alternative but equally plausible hypotheses, each with different policy implications. These are: (1) social health indicators Granger cause economic growth, (2) economic growth Granger cause social health indicators (the conventional view), (3) There is a bi-directional causality between the two variables and (4) Both variables are causality independent (although highly correlated). The empirical results only moderately support the conventional view that economic growth has significant long run casual effect on social health indicators in East Asia and Pacific, MENA, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The present study find evident of unidirectional causality running towards economic growth to social health indicators, although, there are some bidirectional causality also exists between the variables. The percentage of unidirectional causality between economic growth and social health indicators is larger than bidirectional or neutrality hypothesis.     

Shrinkage Estimators of Intercept Parameters of Two Simple Regression Models with Suspected Equal Slopes

Estimators of the intercept parameter of a simple linear regression model involves the slope estimator. In this article, we consider the estimation of the intercept parameters of two linear regression models with normal errors, when it is a priori suspected that the two regression lines are parallel, but in doubt. We also introduce a coefficient of distrust as a measure of degree of lack of trust on the uncertain prior information regarding the equality of two slopes. Three different estimators of the intercept parameters are defined by using the sample data, the non sample uncertain prior information, an appropriate test statistic, and the coefficient of distrust. The relative performances of the unrestricted, shrinkage restricted and shrinkage preliminary test estimators are investigated based on the analyses of the bias and risk functions under quadratic loss. If the prior information is precise and the coefficient of distrust is small, the shrinkage preliminary test estimator overperforms the other estimators. An example based on a medical study is used to illustrate the method.     

Estimation of Slope for Linear Regression Model with Uncertain Prior Information and Student-t Error

This article considers estimation of the slope parameter of the linear regression model with Student-t errors in the presence of uncertain prior information on the value of the unknown slope. Incorporating uncertain non sample prior information with the sample data the unrestricted, restricted, preliminary test, and shrinkage estimators are defined. The performances of the estimators are compared based on the criteria of unbiasedness and mean squared errors. Both analytical and graphical methods are explored. Although none of the estimators is uniformly superior to the others, if the non sample information is close to its true value, the shrinkage estimator over performs the rest of the estimators.     

On Estimating the Finite Population Mean Using Two Auxiliary Variables in Two Phase Sampling in the Presence of Non Response

This article considers the problem of estimating the population mean using information on two auxiliary variables in the presence of non response under two-phase sampling. Some improved ratio-in-regression type estimators have been proposed in four different situations of non response along with their properties under large sample approximation. Efficiency comparisons of the proposed estimators with the usual unbiased estimator by Hansen and Hurwitz (1946 Hansen , M. H. , Hurwitz , W. N. ( 1946 ). The problem of non response in sample surveys . J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 41 : 517 – 529 .[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), conventional ratio and regression estimators using single auxiliary variable and Singh and Kumar (2010b Singh , H. P. , Kumar , S. ( 2010b ). Improved estimation of population mean under double sampling with sub-sampling the non-respondents . J. Statist. Plann. Infer. 140 ( 9 ): 2536 – 2550 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) estimators using two auxiliary variables have been made. Finally, these theoretical findings are illustrated by a numerical example.