The intergenerational education spillovers of pension reform in China

Economic theory establishes that pension privatization weakens the link between old and young and so reduces the incentive to invest in public education in an economy with lower return rate of capital than growth rate of wage. However, empirical studies of the link change are few. In this paper, we investigate the effects of pension privatization and the central government’s subsidy to individual accounts on public education spending in a three-period overlapping generation model. And then, we take contemporary pension reforms in a number of Chinese provinces as offering natural experiment conditions. Using a difference-in-difference framework and 282 municipal districts panel data over years 1998–2009, we test the pension-education theoretical link change. Both our theoretical and empirical results confirm that pension privatization is adversely associated with local public spending on education in China. Private pension subsidies, moreover, magnify this effect. Our study supports the theoretical assertion and selective empirical findings of a negative intergenerational effect of pension privatization.     

Stochastic Modelling of Times to Temperature for Furnaces Supplying Titanium Blooms to a Rolling Mill at TIMET

In conjunction with TIMET at Waunarlwydd (Swansea, UK) a model has been developed that will optimise the scheduling of various blooms to their eight furnaces so as to minimise the time taken to roll these blooms into the finished mill products. This production scheduling model requires reliable data on times taken for the various furnaces that heat the slabs and blooms to reach the temperatures required for rolling. These times to temperature are stochastic in nature and this paper identifies the distributional form for these times using the generalised F distribution as a modelling framework. The times to temperature were found to be similarly distributed over all furnaces. The identified distributional forms were incorporated into the scheduling model to optimise a particular campaign that was run at TIMET Swansea. Amongst other conclusion it was found that, compared to the actual campaign, the model produced a schedule that reduced the makespan by some 35%.     

The contemporary crisis and the social relations department at Harvard: A case study in hegemony and disintegration

The history of sociology is marked by periods of theoretical pluralism and hegemony. Their interplay has resulted in the slow and uneven development of the discipline. Today, however, bodies of theory and practice have become so diverse that many scholars worry that sociology is in a state of disintegration. The theoretical career of Talcott Parsons provides a microcosm in which to explore similar processes. Building on the success of The Structure of Social Action, Parsons led a movement that transformed Harvard's Department of Sociolgy into the Department of Social Relations. There he attempted a grander, but failed synthesis in Toward A General Theory of Action. His case provides a situation in which to explore features of disciplinary integration and fragmentation. The comparison stimulates one to fashion an informed sense of whether sociology is now facing its latest crisis or may be in the process of decomposition as a corpus of study. This research was supported by grants from the American Sociological Association's Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline and by Indiana University Northwest through a sabbatical leave.     

‘We fight for all living things’: countering misconceptions about the radical animal liberation movement

This qualitative content analysis of online documents compiled from the North American Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Earth Liberation Kollective (ELK) and Grassroots Ontario Animal Liberation (GOAL) network websites and Facebook pages explores how activism within the Radical Animal Liberation Movement (RALM) intersects with other social movements. While most literature to date traces the RALM’s (dis)junctures with other forms of social justice activism through analyses of their broad ideological assumptions, or the views of renowned RALM scholars, this research provides authentic insights into the voices of Canadian, American and Mexican activists as they are represented in documents they author themselves. Like activists in anarchistic, anti-capitalist, immigrant rights, Indigenous, prison abolition, prisoner support and radical feminist movements, those in the RALM critique capitalism, colonialism, hierarchy, racism, sexism, state power and the prison industrial complex. Our research calls into question the existing narratives that depict the RALM as an extremist, single-issue movement oblivious to all other forms of social inequality, injustice, marginalization and oppression. Rather, RALM activists are building alliances with other radical social movements to achieve the common goal of ending both human and animal suffering and exploitation.     

Listening Environment and the Bottom Line: How a Positive Environment Can Improve Financial Outcomes

Amidst the onslaught of communication at work, employees’ voices can be neglected in favor of the bottom line. This research initiates an exploration of the relationship between employee perceptions of the listening environment at work and organizational financial performance indicators. In this exploratory pilot study, we collected data from N = 65 employees of a single firm with multiple geographically and financially independent units. Using simple regression analysis, researchers compared data between units to determine if employee perceptions of positive qualities of the listening climate are related to improvement in sales and net income. Results suggest a potentially positive relationship between employees’ perceptions of a positive listening environment and these organizational performance indicators, suggesting that listening is an important step in building the communication climate of a productive company.     

Childless Elders in Assisted Living: Findings from the Maryland Assisted Living Study

We compared data drawn from a random sample of 399 current assisted living residents and a subsample of 222 newly admitted residents for two groups: childless residents and residents with children. The percentage of childless residents (26%) in our study was slightly higher than U.S. population estimates of childless individuals aged 65 years and older (20%). In the overall sample, the two groups differed significantly by age, race, and women's years of education. The childless group was slightly younger, had a higher percentage of African American residents, and had more years of education than the group with children. In the subsample, we looked at demographic, functional, financial, and social characteristics and found that childless residents reported fewer diagnoses of dementia and fewer visits from a relative but more reported paying less money per month for assisted living and having private insurance than residents with children. As childlessness among older adults continues to increase, it will become increasingly important to understand how child status affects the need for and experience of long-term care.     

Building relational capital: The contribution of episodic and relational community engagement

In this study, we provide evidence of the theorized connection between community engagement and the development of social capital, and the perceived value or worth of relationships among organizations and stakeholders. Using thematic analysis to understand the policy and practice frameworks of community engagement in Australian local government organizations, our analyses reveal two different types of community engagement—relational and episodic—each of which has the potential to contribute to relational dimension of social capital. The study introduces and develops new thinking around the ideas of episodic and relational engagement within the context of community engagement, and their respective contributions to the development of relational capital. Recognizing and identifying episodic and relational community engagement as separate phenomena allows researchers and practitioners to understand the theoretical dimensions of community engagement as a framework for practice.     

Conducting Successful Memory Interviews with Children

Practitioners interview children in a range of settings to assess their wellbeing and to make decisions about their care. These interviews often have a significant memory component. Interviewing children about their past experiences, however, is a challenging task. It requires practitioners to be sensitive to children’s developmental capacities and vulnerabilities, to understand how to facilitate effective retrieval and reporting of information, and to set aside the usual dynamics and expectations of how adults and children communicate. Managing these challenges requires constant evaluation, self-reflection, and professional development. Fortunately, several decades of research into children’s memory and narrative development has provided a robust platform on which to base practice. Here, we provide a framework for devising a general approach to memory interviews with children that is both evidence-based and practical.     

Human capital,family structure and religiosity shaping British Muslim women’s labour market participation

Economic activity among Muslim women in the UK remains considerably lower and their unemployment rate significantly higher than among the majority group even after controlling for qualifications and other individual characteristics. This study utilises two data sets to explore possible factors underlying these differences, such as overseas qualifications, language skills and religiosity. It reveals that while religiosity is negatively associated with labour market participation among British Christian-White women, economic activity among Muslim women are not negatively affected by high religiosity. Furthermore, family structure and the presence of dependent children were among the most important factors explaining the latter’s labour market participation, although these relationships were moderated by qualifications. More women with higher qualifications were economically active even if married and with children, although some of them experienced greater unemployment, probably due to discrimination in recruiting practices and choices and preferences on religious grounds.     

VARIANCE FUNCTION REGRESSIONS FOR STUDYING INEQUALITY

Regression-based studies of inequality model only between-group differences, yet often these differences are far exceeded by residual inequality. Residual inequality is usually attributed to measurement error or the influence of unobserved characteristics. We present a model, called  variance function regression , that includes covariates for both the mean and variance of a dependent variable. In this model, the residual variance is treated as a target for analysis. In analyses of inequality, the residual variance might be interpreted as measuring risk or insecurity. Variance function regressions are illustrated in an analysis of panel data on earnings among released prisoners in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We extend the model to a decomposition analysis, relating the change in inequality to compositional changes in the population and changes in coefficients for the mean and variance. The decomposition is applied to the trend in U.S. earnings inequality among male workers, 1970 to 2005.