Jugendliche Lebensstile und Nachhaltigkeit

?My Life ?? My Style ?? My Future?? was a project in which pupils of two Viennese schools analysed their own lifestyles and those of other teenagers by using social research methods. The article presents quantitative results regarding consumption patterns, communication styles, values and attitudes in order to explore the potentials for sustainability-related communication strategies for young people.     

Sozialpolitik als Instrument der Geschlechtergerechtigkeit

The German welfare state supports traditionally the male breadwinner model and remunerates continuous full-time employment. Recent developments in social policy like the reform of ??Elterngeld?? (paid parental leave) and the introduction of ??Pflegezeit?? (unpaid care leave) increase the value of unpaid care work done for the family and set incentives to share care work between the partners. Thus, ??Elterngeld?? and ??Pflegezeit?? work against the gender discrimination of the German welfare state and might foster gender equity. But, the analysis shows that the steps towards gender equity are only minor. The sharing of care work, the financial autonomy of the caring parent and the reconciliation of children care and employment do not materialise sufficiently.     

Empowerment fördern,neue Firmenkultur etablieren,Nachhaltigkeit sichern

In contrast to many other change processes that are often led by a defined process architecture with clear targets and a strategic framework that mainly addresses company leaders, this systemic approach within a medium-sized company fostered high participation and an organically growing change management. Focusing on the empowerment of employees from the start serves two parallel objectives: the development of a new organization and the transfer of the experience from the existing organization. In the following example, this dialectic challenge is targeted by an iterative process. The organic intertwining of operative and change specific tasks enables a participative target frame that step by step includes and fuels a new culture, modern leadership principles, and contribution.     

Trajectories of Employment Gaps of Refugees and Other Migrants: Evidence from Austria

This paper analyzes the labor market integration of non-European refugees originating from middle- and low-income countries for the period of 2009–2018 in Austria. We assess their probability of being employed relative to Austrian natives and compare it with that of other non-European migrants and European refugees and other immigrants from low- and middle-income non-EU countries. We draw on a register-based panel dataset covering the complete labor market careers of all individuals residing in Austria. We control for macrolevel explanatory variables (e.g., the labor market situation at the time and the place of settlement) and individual characteristics. The analysis shows that initial refugee employment gaps relative to natives are large in the first years, when labor market access is difficult. After a period of 7 years, the unconditional gap between refugees and natives declines to 30 percentage points, similar to that of other migrants, but the gap is still decreasing. After controlling for a set of explanatory variables, the conditional gap amounts to only 10 percentage points at that time. Moreover, our analysis provides insights into differences in employment gaps across population subgroups of immigrant groups and natives by gender, age, education level, and types of employment.

     

Visual Capacity,Out-of-home Activities and Emotional Well-being in Old Age: Basic Relations and Contextual Variation

This work examined the role of visual capacity in connection with psychological, social network related, and socio-structural predictors of out-of-home everyday functioning and emotional well-being. The results are based on a sample of 1519 community dwelling elderly (55–98 years; mean age 70.8 years), 757 of them were living in urban, and 762 were living in rural regions, half-and-half from East and West Germany. Structural equation modeling supported the hypothesis of robust relations among age, vision, intellectual functioning, out-of-home everyday functioning, and emotional well-being that are largely independent of the regional and societal macro context. In detail, vision mediated the effect of age on out-of-home activities of daily living (ADL/IADL) and leisure activities, while intellectual functioning mediated the effect of vision on out-of-home leisure activities. All effects on emotional well-being were mediated by out-of-home leisure activities. Enriching the micro level model with psycho-social variables (i.e., outdoor motivation and social resources) and an indication of the socio-economic situation (i.e., financial resources) revealed some contextual variations: At this meso level of analysis, social resources contributed less and outdoor motivation contributed more to out-of-home leisure activities in the urban than in the rural sample. Second, outdoor motivation was significantly related to social resources in the urban, but not in the rural sample. Third, financial resources contributed modestly but significantly to out-of-home leisure activities in the East German, but not in the West German urban and rural samples. It is concluded that visual capacity plays a substantial role in a robust micro level model able to predict everyday functioning and well-being. If additional resources adding to the prediction of these outcomes are also taken into consideration in a meso level analysis model, the whole variable interplay becomes more strongly affected by macro contextual variation.     

Being close: The quality of social relationships in a local organic cereal and bread network in Lower Austria

Experience of the drawbacks of a globalised and industrialised food system has generated interest in localised food systems. Local food networks are regarded as more sustainable food provision systems since they are assumed to have high levels of social embeddedness and relations of regard. This paper explores the social relations between food actors and how ‘local’ and ‘organic’ are expressed by detailing how actors describe qualities of their intra-network relationships, how they understand ‘local’ and how they are connected within the food system. A study from the province of Lower Austria in Austria, where organic cereals and bread are produced and marketed, serves to illuminate these issues. Actors agreed that geographical closeness contributed to the social closeness they experienced and that social relationships were a strong reason for being in the network. However, the meaning of ‘local’ was elastic depending on where inputs and consumers could be found. Furthermore, despite strong commitment to organic production methods and the local market, actors faced constraints that made them hybrids between organic and conventional, and between locally focused and globally dependent. Thus, the binary thinking along the local-global and organic-conventional divide does not hold. While it is important to not make a causal link between high quality of social relationships and local food networks, the case described here indicates the possibility of such a link.     

A bivariate Sarmanov regression model for count data with generalised Poisson marginals

We present a bivariate regression model for count data that allows for positive as well as negative correlation of the response variables. The covariance structure is based on the Sarmanov distribution and consists of a product of generalised Poisson marginals and a factor that depends on particular functions of the response variables. The closed form of the probability function is derived by means of the moment-generating function. The model is applied to a large real dataset on health care demand. Its performance is compared with alternative models presented in the literature. We find that our model is significantly better than or at least equivalent to the benchmark models. It gives insights into influences on the variance of the response variables.