Addressing economic vulnerability among low-income families in America: is the basic income approach a viable policy option?

ABSTRACT

Income instability characterizes the lives of many low-income families in America. Growing income inequality, wage stagnation, unstable jobs, and limited savings are only a few of the factors contributing to the chronic economic insecurity that many low-income families experience today. There has been a renewed interest in recent years in the idea of a basic income as a policy solution to address the problem of income instability. This brief provides an overview of the concept of basic income and discusses its strengths and limitations in promoting financial stability among vulnerable families in both the short- and long-term.     

考虑交易安全风险控制投入的在线旅游供应链网络均衡模型

基于包括供应商、平台和消费市场的三层供应链网络结构，利用变分不等式刻画均衡态时在线旅游供应链网络各成员的最优经济行为，以及平台交易安全风险控制投入对供应链平台企业、供应链整体的风险水平和期望收益的影响。研究发现，在平台企业风险控制投入相同情况下，平台和消费市场的产品交易数量和价格大致相同，验证了模型的合理性和有效性。其次，随着交易安全风险控制投入的增加，平台自身交易安全风险下降，供应链网络整体的交易安全水平和交易数量上升，但平台自身的期望收益下降。最后，随着更多的平台加入，平台的期望收益下降，市场需求价格下降，消费者获利。但部分平台企业的搭便车行为，会导致供应链整体的交易安全风险水平上升。     

Preface: Foresight in 2020: Race and Gender in the Upcoming Election

This essay introduces contributions to a special issue of Sociological Forum titled “Foresight in 2020: Race and Gender in the Upcoming Election.” All articles in the issue can be accessed at the journal’s website, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/15737861 . They will first appear under the “Early View” tab, and later in volume 35, supplement I.     

Income inequality and health outcomes in the United States: An empirical analysis

A growing body of research suggests a relationship between health and income inequality. This study specifically analyzes the correlation between income inequality, measured by state-level Gini coefficients from the American Community Survey (ACS), and individual behavioral, physical, and mental health outcomes from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) for 2006 through 2014. After controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, health insurance status, year trends, and state fixed effects, income inequality was found to have significant relationships with behavioral, physical, and mental health outcomes, including heavy drinking, obesity, exercise, diabetes, heart attack, heart disease, physical and mental health problems, and depression, and often the impact on low-income individuals is slightly smaller than on the high-income group. The research suggests that economic policies to address the rising income inequality in the United States might serve to also address some of our nation’s most troubling health statistics.     

Population change and the legacy of slavery

Despite increasing evidence of a contemporary legacy of slavery in the US South, scholars do not have a clear empirical understanding of the ways in which demographic forces can alter local connections to racial histories. In this study, we examine the influence of long-run trends in population change on the relationship between historical slave concentration and contemporary black-white poverty inequality in the American South. We combine one century and a half of county-level population data, including estimates of the slave and total populations in 1860, estimates of black and white population change starting in 1880, and black-white poverty disparities from the 2011–2015 American Community Survey. Our results offer new empirical evidence regarding the enduring influence of racial histories over time, and suggest that white population increase between 1880 and 1910 was particularly influential in understanding the local connection between slave concentration and black-white inequality. Moreover, rather than disrupting the transmission of the legacy of slavery, results indicate that white population increase may have helped spread this legacy of racial inequality to other counties through diffusion processes. We find that while local historical legacies are persistent, they are not permanent, and population trends are a critical force shaping local racial inequality.     

Digital remediation: social support and online learning communities can help offset rural digital inequality

ABSTRACT

While all students enter college with varying levels of digital skills, those from rural areas may face extra challenges because their own skills and those of their pre-college networks may be underdeveloped. Without some type of intervention, digital deficits can perpetuate further educational disadvantages. We developed an online learning community (OLC) in two sections of an introductory college course and integrated collaborative learning into students’ weekly activities. Regression analysis of survey data (N?=?373) shows three impacts: access to social support is associated with higher skill assessment and improvements in digital skills; rural status is associated with a clear and significant disadvantage in digital skill assessment; and that involvement in an OLC contributed substantially to improvements in digital skills. We conclude with limitations and considerations for future research.     

Gender equality regimes and evaluation regimes in Europe and their implications for policy design and evaluation

PurposeThis article starts from the assumption that it is important for the evaluation of gender equality interventions in RTDI (Research, Technology Development and Innovation) to consider its context regarding gender equality regime and evaluation culture because this context does influence effects and long term impacts of such activities. It aims to provide key characteristics for the differentiation of gender equality regimes and evaluation regimes to be considered when designing policy interventions or evaluating specific gender equality interventions in RTDI.Design/methodology/approachAfter a literature review of relevant typologies for welfare state and gender equality regimes, it was analysed to which extent the seven EFFORTI countries correspond to certain typologies based on the data basis of the context research performed in the EFFORTI project. For this context research, international/national and qualitative/quantitative data regarding the relevant framework conditions were firstly collected for each of the EFFORTI countries and secondly compared in a cross-country analysis.FindingsThe research showed that when it comes to gender equality policies, most EFFORTI countries can either be assigned to the Social-Democratic category or Conservative Equal Employment Regime category in the typology of von Wahl (2005), with the latter type tending to provide less favourable conditions for women in the general labour market as well as women in RTDI (e.g. overtime culture). In how far these different types of context can have an impact on the evaluation of interventions can be exemplarily illustrated using case studies carried out as part of EFFORTI.Connecting the typologies for gender equality policy with evaluation regimes has not proved fruitful, as the two discourses have only begun to converge in recent years. The evaluation regimes and cultures of the respective countries have therefore been described independently. However, it was shown that countries with more expertise in certain areas (e.g. gender, evaluations) developed more routinized and institutionalised procedures in the respective field.Originality/valueConsidering the different framework conditions is relevant when it comes to evaluation as different national contexts might require different policy and designs of activities, but might also shape the interventions’ effects. This article therefore aims to provide support in this regard for future evaluations of gender policies.     

Privilege and burden of im‐/mobility governance: On the reinforcement of inequalities during a pandemic lockdown

In order to contain the COVID‐19 pandemic, nation states have focused on the governance of im‐/mobilities: certain mobility restrictions have been enforced, while simultaneously some forms of mobility have been maintained or even enhanced in order to keep the system running in crisis mode. With a special focus on Austria, we analyse the specific politics of im‐/mobilities concerning the organization of paid work and show how the socio‐spatial conditions of who is permitted, denied or urged to work are inextricably linked to inequalities. It becomes apparent that while in principle all bodies are equally dependent on collective social relations and enduring infrastructure, not everybody contributes equally to their maintenance. In fact, the governance of im‐/mobilities follows and reinforces already prevalent inequality regimes based on class, gender and migration relations, thereby differentiating between bodies perceived as highly valuable and worth protecting and those categorized as less valued and potentially disposable.     

Black lives matter,capital, and ideology: Spiraling out from India

Piketty's propositions for arresting inequality are discussed through the lens of racism/casteism. We focus on the case of India's George Floyds—the persistence of caste and tribe oppression under economic growth in India—through the insights of our long‐term ethnographic research. We show that inequalities are intimately tied to dynamics of capitalist accumulation in which racial/ethnic/caste/tribe and gender difference is crucial. We argue for an analysis that truly integrates ideology and the dynamics of political economy. The wider implications, we argue are political; they lie in the question of what is to be done. Despite his ambitions to decenter economics, Piketty remains trapped in the logic of economics for what he proposes are essentially economic reforms within capitalism. Moreover, ideological change cannot be a matter of choice only, and cannot be challenged solely at the level of ideas around economic inequality. It will also have to be fought as a direct contest of oppressive ideologies such as racism, casteism, and patriarchy, leading to new counter‐hegemonic positions. We will argue that this takes us from a global history of ideology to a global anthropology of praxis. A first step is to genuinely center conversations with disciplines like anthropology, sociology, and subaltern history studying people and voices from below and from the margins, and the perspectives of scholars and activists from below and from the margins.