Distributive Justice and Social Policy: Some Reflections on Rawls and Income Distribution

This paper adapts the Rawlsian idea of decision making behind the veil of ignorance in the realm of income transfer systems. As rational decision makers, we would plan a society where the incidence of poverty is low, differences in the level of living between life cycles are small, income differences between the rich and poor are modest, income mobility from poverty to non-poverty is high, and where the living standard of the poor is decent. The results show that income mobility is not greater in those countries which have wide income differences, nor is the situation of the poor any better in countries with huge income disparities than in other countries. Cross-national comparisons indicate that high poverty rates are not associated with more rapid income mobility and higher standards for the poor.     

Domesticating insurance,financializing family lives: the case of private health insurance for children in Finland

This article explores the domestication of a financial instrument that is much used in contemporary Finland, but that most of its users do not primarily think about in terms of being a financial instrument: the private health insurance for children. In Finland, all children are covered by social insurance and are entitled to free public health service with very low costs, if any. Yet, some 40 percent of families want to supplement this service with private products. Many fear that the popularity of the private health insurance for children contributes to a vicious circle that ends up weakening the legitimacy of, and the service given by, the public health sector; inequality in the face of health risks threatens to be aggravated, as well. Therefore, this financial instrument has become an object of political controversy. The main question of the article is: how do economic, political and moral valuations become intertwined in the domestication of insurance? The concept of ‘domestication’ is found helpful for analysing the pragmatics of valuation and for appreciating the dynamics and the heterogeneity of forces at play when financialization influences everyday life. The study argues that when financial instruments are appropriated they are also transformed; thus, they should not be viewed as homogeneous tools that have similar effects in all contexts of use. The main empirical materials studied are interviews with families with and without private health insurance policies for their children.     

Making social policy work for economic development: the Nordic experience

The Nordic welfare states offer some lessons in a development context. A main achievement has been sustainable poverty reduction. Another important lesson is that, while democratization often leads to greater pressures for social policy expansion, social policy can also contribute to democratization. The Nordic countries further demonstrate that is possible to unify social protection with a competitive and growth-oriented economy. In a number of policy areas, particularly in relation to social services and labor market policy, the Nordic countries have also become leading modernizers. The women-friendly dual-earner model not only combats poverty among families with children, but also enables women to participate in the labor market. The future sustainability of the Nordic model of social policy hinges on the number of taxpayers that can be mobilized. In order to be successful in this, governments need to take a combined, or holistic, approach, and consider both micro motives and macro considerations.     

Social Policymaking and Its Institutional Basis: Transition of The Chinese Social Security System

This article discusses Chinese social policy development in response to the growth of the market economy. It provides a general overview of the system's evolution in three stages: (1) the pre‐reform period when a system of enterprise welfare was in operation; (2) a period of system transition; (3) the stage when state welfare began to take shape. These developmental trends are interpreted on the basis of three types of institutional relations: the State‐enterprise relation, the enterprise‐ (or employer‐) employee relation, and the individual/worker‐State relation. Moreover, the discussion deals with policy perceptions at each stage of the developmental process. Based on these analyses, it illustrates the transformation of the Chinese social security system in a broad socioeconomic and political context, where China struggled to establish a modern, market‐based enterprise system. The paper thus expounds issues of socialism, market forces and the power of organized labour.     

Making social policy work for economic development: the Nordic experience

The Nordic welfare states offer some lessons in a development context. A main achievement has been sustainable poverty reduction. Another important lesson is that, while democratization often leads to greater pressures for social policy expansion, social policy can also contribute to democratization. The Nordic countries further demonstrate that is possible to unify social protection with a competitive and growth‐oriented economy. In a number of policy areas, particularly in relation to social services and labor market policy, the Nordic countries have also become leading modernizers. The women‐friendly dual‐earner model not only combats poverty among families with children, but also enables women to participate in the labor market. The future sustainability of the Nordic model of social policy hinges on the number of taxpayers that can be mobilized. In order to be successful in this, governments need to take a combined, or holistic, approach, and consider both micro motives and macro considerations.     

Scheduling algorithms for computer-aided line balancing in printed circuit board assembly

Generalized flexible flow line (GFFL) is a scheduling environment comprising several machine banks which the products visit in the same order but can skip some machine banks. The type of machines in a bank can differ but they are suitable for performing the same manufacturing tasks. To change one product to another demands a set-up operation of the machine. This paper describes several scheduling algorithms for the GFFL problem. The overall structure of these algorithms is similar, consisting of machine allocation and sequencing phases. The algorithms have been integrated into an interactive production scheduling system for electronics assembly. Sample cases are used to illustrate the operation of the system in practice.     

Three Routes to Pension Reform: Politics and Institutions in Reforming Pensions in Denmark,Finland and Sweden

By analysing pension reforms in three Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland and Sweden – that apply different institutional solutions in their old‐age security programmes, this article argues that the political processes that shaped the country‐specific pension set‐ups in the 1950s and 1960s had important ramifications for subsequent reform possibilities. A high degree of inertia exists not only in the institutions themselves but also in the political reform options and the ways in which pensions were reformed. The analysis shows that the ‘new politics’ was not new in any of the three countries. Furthermore, given the differences in the three cases, the analysis questions the nature of pension reform. The Swedish reform in the late 1990s was a ‘big bang’ that eliminated the old and changed everything; the Finns built on piecemeal reforms of conversion that gradually changed the whole system; and, while the Danish story appears to be one of stability and status quo, the drift of Danish policy ultimately changed the basic characteristics of the system. Although all three countries have more or less thoroughly reformed their pensions, the reform processes have differed according to both historical legacies and institutional frameworks.     

Non‐parametric Bayesian Hazard Regression for Chronic Disease Risk Assessment

Assessing the absolute risk for a future disease event in presently healthy individuals has an important role in the primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and other chronic conditions. In this paper, we study the use of non‐parametric Bayesian hazard regression techniques and posterior predictive inferences in the risk assessment task. We generalize our previously published Bayesian multivariate monotonic regression procedure to a survival analysis setting, combined with a computationally efficient estimation procedure utilizing case–base sampling. To achieve parsimony in the model fit, we allow for multidimensional relationships within specified subsets of risk factors, determined either on a priori basis or as a part of the estimation procedure. We apply the proposed methods for 10‐year CVD risk assessment in a Finnish population. © 2014 Board of the Foundation of the Scandinavian Journal of Statistics