Poverty Is Low Consumption and Low Wealth,Not Just Low Income

The purpose of this paper is to suggest an improved measure of financial poverty, based on household consumption and wealth as well as income. Data come from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) Survey, which appears to be the first national socio-economic panel survey to provide longitudinal data on all three measures of household economic well-being. National measures of poverty in Australia and other Western countries are usually based only on low income. But this is conceptually incorrect; the measures lack validity. To be poor is to have a low material standard of living—involuntarily. So measures of poverty should also take account of household consumption and wealth. If a household has an adequate current level of consumption, it should not be classified as poor right now, even if its current income is low. Similarly, if it has substantial wealth (net worth), it should not be viewed as poor because it could draw down on wealth to boost current consumption. The invalidity of income-based measures has long been recognised in principle (Ringen 1987, The possibility of politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press). In practical terms, the problem is to combine measures of wealth and income, and especially consumption, in the same survey. In the 2005 HILDA Survey a battery of household expenditure items was included which, benchmarked against the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Household Expenditure Survey for 2003–04, appeared to provide valid measurement of 53.4% of total household expenditure. These well measured items correlated 0.76 with total expenditure and, in combination with standard demographic variables, accounted for 78.3% of the variance in the total. This paper uses 2005–06 HILDA data to construct revised measures of financial poverty. The value of these measures for public policy and research purposes is illustrated. In particular, the new measures give much lower estimates of poverty than income-based measures. They can also be used to predict which households are at risk of future poverty.

软实力视角下中国政治价值观的历史溯源与现实审视

任何一个国家的政治实践背后都需要该国的政治文化支撑,一国的政治价值观以及意识形态的感召力和影响力既是政治文化的核心,也是国家软实力建设的重要方面。中国政治价值观是对科学社会主义政治价值观的继承和发展以及对人类共同创造的政治文明的吸收,并与中国传统政治理想、政治价值有机结合的产物。经过建党90多年的实践,不断塑造政治价值观,我国的政治软实力得到较大提升。当前,在全球化背景下,中国政治价值观建设以及国家政治软实力的提升面临着巨大的机遇和挑战。因此,要提高群众对中国特色社会主义的理论自信、道路自信和制度自信,加强政治制度建设,促进社会公正价值的实现。     

民事生效判决既判力探究

民事生效判决是基于国家司法权威做出的具有法律效力的判决,非经特别程序,不得任意撤销或变更。由于我国法律规定存在缺漏,且理论研究较为薄弱,实践中,各法院对生效判决既判力问题理解认识不一,做法各异。因此,加强对民事生效判决既判力问题研究,对司法公正、执法统一以及法律权威的树立具有重要理论和现实意义。     

Joan Acker and Doing Comparable Worth

Joan Acker's seminal book Doing Comparable Worth, based on her first‐hand experience of implementing comparable worth for Oregon state employees, constitutes a major contribution to understanding the obstacles to achieving the goal of equal pay and is a precursor of her inequalities regimes work. For Acker the foundering of the comparable worth exercise on the rocks of management's opportunistic strategy to marginalize trade unions provided a direct experience of how gender and class inequalities are simultaneously produced and reproduced. Consequently, wage setting is always political and change to wages generates widespread resistance above and beyond issues of gender inequalities. While the feminist activists may be rightly criticized for naivety in their belief in a technical solution to gender pay inequalities, their robust critiques of pay practices is sorely missing in today's renewed acceptance of a gender‐neutral labour market, and more limited feminist interest in theories of pay.     

Involuntary childlessness and voluntary fertility control during the fertility transition: Evidence from men who graduated from an American college

Abstract. Influences on the fertility of men during the American fertility decline are examined using a sample of about 1700 married men born between 1830 and 1880, all of whom attended Amherst College, Massachusetts. We consider two types of reduced fertility: involuntary childlessness as a function of health in early adulthood, and voluntary fertility control as a function of access to contraceptive technology. The relation between health, as measured by body mass index, and childlessness was nonlinear, with average sized men significantly more likely ever to father children than thin or bulky men. Among men who ever fathered a child, physicians fathered significantly fewer children while having probabilities of childlessness that were statistically indistinguishable from those of other men. Physicians may have had greater access to relatively new contraceptive technologies, which suggests a role for voluntary fertility control.     

Evidence that Self-Regulatory Mode Affects Retirement Savings

We examine how self-regulatory motivations of locomotion (initiation) and assessment (evaluation) are related to retirement wealth in middle-aged and older Americans. We test a hypothesis that high locomotion and some assessment levels predict high wealth levels. We use two national data sets: the 2008 Health and Retirement Study (N?=?6,464) and the 2005 Midlife in the United States (N?=?4,963). We found that a combination of high locomotion and moderate assessment motivation can maximize wealth accumulation. By creating this combination of locomotion and assessment motivations, policy interventions can be more effective in motivating wealth accumulation for retirement, such as a required annual review of retirement savings plans and understandable disclosure of the plans' costs.     

普世伦理初探

当今人类面临的各种全球性问题和道德挑战,使得普世伦理成为可能。“自下而上”的探究方式达成以社会道义为基本维度的普世伦理规范;各特殊道德主体所持价值目的异质性的既定存在,使得普世伦理的承诺只能是低限度的。     

Contingent Self‐worth in Chinese Adolescents and Young Adults: Relations with Global Self‐Esteem and Depressive Symptoms

Contingent self‐worth (CSW) is the extent to which an individual's sense of self‐worth is dependent on performance in a particular domain. CSW has been linked to poorer psychological health (e.g., lower global self‐esteem, greater depression and anxiety). However, the majority of work on CSW has been conducted with US college students. Far less is known about the influence of CSW for younger individuals or for non‐Western populations. This study examined relations between CSW domains and two indicators of well‐being (depressive symptoms and global self‐esteem) with Chinese adolescents (ages 13–16) and young adults (ages 19‐22). Results indicated that CSW in the domains of academic performance and others’ approval were positively related to depressive symptoms, whereas CSW in the domain of family support was negatively related to depressive symptoms. Others’ approval CSW was negatively related to self‐esteem for both adolescents and young adults, whereas CSW in the domains of academic performance and family support were related to self‐esteem for adolescents but not young adults. This study indicates that CSW is a meaningful and predictive construct for Chinese youth, and that cultural, environmental, and developmental factors may impact the relations between CSW and psychological health.     

试论老舍"现代性"思想的纬度与深度

依循现代性视角梳理了老舍有关现代性思想的纬度和可能具有的深度,指出老舍对“人的现代化”、“制度现代化”和“文化现代化”以及现代化负面问题的较为全面深入的思考,具有不可忽视的思想价值,显示了这位作家独特的思想品质。