Towards Understanding Variations in Social Care for Older People in England

Indicators of the public provision of old age social care are routinely recorded in England and have been used for diverse purposes including performance monitoring. Despite long‐term policy guidance promoting more homogeneous service provision, large variations can still be observed between local authorities (the providers of state‐funded social care). Our aim is to better understand such variations in a small selection of key aggregate indicators. Drawing on multiple data sources and pursuing a two‐step strategy, we first assess the explanatory power of a set of structural predictors and then add to the models a set of specific care management ‘process’ predictors. We find that structural factors beyond the control of local authorities explain a considerable share of the observable variation. The additional explanatory power of care management characteristics is small in comparison. Therefore, our findings suggest that caution must be taken when aggregate indicators of service provision are used for performance monitoring purposes, as a degree of autonomy over outcomes may be implied which in light of the empirical evidence is unrealistic. Past attempts to influence the aggregate pattern of service provision – apparently seeking greater ‘territorial justice’– are likely to have had adverse implications for service users and the uniformity of service delivery across England. Questions are raised about the adequate role of central government in a policy environment characterized by longstanding local government responsibility.     

Measuring Differences in Living Standards Within Households

This article presents a quantitative approach used to investigate differences in living standards between spouses within households. Adopting a specially adapted, standard poverty measurement approach—nonmonetary indicators—it explores differences between spouses in terms of possessions and access to certain goods and services and the control and management of household resources. Using data from a unique module in the Living in Ireland Survey (N = 2,248 individuals) as an exemplar, the article focuses on 3 methodological issues: (a) the development of specially designed nonmonetary indicators to explore differences in living standards within households rather than between households (including the role played by qualitative findings in developing those indicators and how focus groups were used to assess and validate the method), (b) the use of multivariate analysis to assess the impact of a wife's independent income in ameliorating differences in living standards between spouses, and (c) the deployment of a mechanism for use in quantitative surveys to record spousal presence and allow measurement of any subsequent difference in individual responses.     

现代渔业的概念界定、特征探究及体系设计

现代渔业研究在理论问题、战略实施和公共政策方面取得阶段性成果,但学术研究深度和广度均不够,且研究缺乏力度和持续性。现代渔业发展观是渔业可持续发展战略的理论扩张和实现途径,具有可持续发展、动态演进、国际公认、设施装备、科技先导、产业升级、管理先进型特征,其产业体系通过渗透融合、交叉融合而形成。对现代渔业发展进行评价理论性极强,评价指标体系的构建涉及多学科理论、耗时费力且政策性强,由内部具有逻辑关系的设施装备、科技先导、产业升级和管理先进系统所构成的指标体系理论框架。     

西部地区教育现代化指标体系的构建

教育指标作为教育现象数量的科学范畴,是综合反映教育发展状况和进程、制定教育发展目标和规划的数据指标。本文在分析教育现代化内涵基础上,综合分析国内区域教育现代化指标研究成果,提出我国西部地区教育现代化指标体系构建的建议和策略。     

Revisiting property crime and economic conditions: An exploratory study to identify predictive indicators beyond unemployment rates

Numerous researchers have questioned the use of the unemployment rate as an explanatory factor in econometric studies which address the relationship between the economy and crime. This paper presents the findings from an exploratory study which sought to test the efficacy of the unemployment rate for predicting reported property crime rates and to identify other economic indicators which may also prove to be useful for predicting crimes with economic under tones or motives. Specifically, larceny-theft, burglary, motor vehicle theft, robbery, fraud and embezzlement. Given the exploratory nature of the study seven stepwise regressions were computed with unemployment emerging as a significant predictor for only one of the criminal offenses. Findings identified other useful economic variables, such as average wage and salary disbursements, supplemental security income receipts, the consumer price index and per capita personal income which should be considered in lieu of unemployment rates.     

Measuring Youth Development: A Nonparametric Cross-Country ‘Youth Welfare Index’

This paper develops an empirical methodology for the construction of a synthetic multi-dimensional cross-country comparison of the performance of governments around the world in improving the livelihood of their younger population. The devised ‘Youth Welfare Index’ is based on the nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology and allows for cross-country benchmarking and comparison over time. The value added of the youth index is to produce country-specific rankings and trace performance evolution with respect to indicators solely centered on youth, unlike other development indicators like the Human Development Index (HDI) which bundles many social and development indicators.

Moving towards local-level indicators of sustainability in forest-based communities: A mixed-method approach

Forest-dependent communities can beexemplified in terms of subsistencedependence, park-based tourism dependence, ortraditional logging dependence. In monitoringthe sustainability of these places,researchers have struggled to develop relevantindicators responsive to their unique social,economic, and environmental conditions. Inthis study, we attempt to deal with theseconditions by employing a quality-of-lifeframework in the selection of local-levelindicators, and by scrutinizing theseindicators in term of their relevance tospecific sustainability concerns. We usedworkshops, an indicator evaluation framework,and survey research to identify relevantlocal-level indicators of sustainability intwo Saskatchewan communities. Findingsemphasize the need for caution in assertingthe utility of ``one-size-fits-all' approachesto community sustainability. These communitiesdefine progress toward sustainability quitedifferently and therefore require a unique setof progress measures.     

国家精品课程复核的制度设计

国家精品课程复核的目的是对公共资金使用的问责,其制度设计遵循系统性、科学性、导向性与可行性原则。依据行政合同的法律要求及问责理论,可以将国家精品课程复核的基本要素界定为：复核主体、复核对象、复内容、复核方法、后果处理等五个方面;参考国家精品课程的评审指标,可以从输入、过程、输出、支撑和特色五大方面具体设置复核指标：并设置院校自评与外部复核相结合的复核基本程序。     

Measurement of social development: an international comparison

PQLI and HDI are the two most popular measures of development, besides per capita income. Over the years, PQLI appears to be not much in use for regional comparisons, especially after the introduction of HDI. While PQLI considers only the physical variables—adult literacy, life expectancy at birth and infant survival rate, HDI has life expectancy at birth, educational attainment and real GDP per capita (PPP$). PQLI and HDI are similar, the main difference between the two being the inclusion of income in HDI and exclusion of the same from PQLI. In a sense, HDI represents both physical and financial attributes of development and PQLI has only the physical aspects of life. The present author took the lines of PQLI to express development in terms of physical variables and considering development as a multidimensional phenomenon, Ray (1989) [Ray, A. K. (1989). On the measurement of certain aspects of social development, Social Indicators Research (Vol. 21, pp. 35–92). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.] included as many as 13 physical variables to represent social development across 40 countries; no financial variable was included in the construction of composite index, termed as the Social Development Index, SDI. Incidentally, like PQLI, SDI was introduced before HDI. Unlike PQLI and HDI, SDI considers (i) a large number of indicators representing various concern areas and (ii) a set of objective methods for combining the development indicators as a composite index. Ray (1989) has been restated and updated in this article with newer cross-country information. In the present study, SDI has been constructed for over 102 countries, including 21 OECD countries, using 10 development indicators, instead of 13 indicators in the past. Apart from presenting objective methods for combining indicators into SDI, the present study asserts that SDI works better than HDI as a measure of development for an international comparison. The views expressed in the article are those of the author and not of the institution he serves.     

Environmentally Responsible Happy Nation Index: Towards an Internationally Acceptable National Success Indicator

Amidst increasing attention to happiness studies by economists, the New Economics Foundation launched in July 2006 the Happy Planet Index (Marks et al. 2006). This is the ratio of the average happy life years (HLY) to the per capita ecological footprint of the country concerned. HLY is in turn the product of the average happiness (or life satisfaction) index and the life expectancy index. Some essential revisions to this index are proposed to reach an internationally acceptable national success indicator that aims positively at long and happy lives but negatively at the external costs of environmental disruption. Hopefully, this ‘environmentally responsible happy nation index’ will lead to some re-orientation of both the market and national governments towards something more fundamentally valuable.