The Relationship Between Life Satisfaction Among Wives and Financial Preparedness of Households in Japan

The wealth gap between the rich and poor is widening and contributing to Japan’s shrinking middle class. This study examined concerns about the future and life satisfaction and their association with household financial preparedness (e.g., savings, investments, life insurance) among married women in Japan. Double-hurdle models assessed the probability of having savings and the amount of these savings, using the sample from the 2006 Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (n = 1,206). Supporting earlier works from several other countries, concerns about the future were positively associated with the probability of having supplemental life insurance. Moreover, life satisfaction levels were positively associated with the probabilities of having savings, investments, and supplemental life insurance and with the amount of the investments. The findings suggest economic inequalities among women could widen in the future, as those who have and are expecting to have more financial resources are more likely to be prepared for future financial needs than those who do not.     

Area-based urban regeneration comparing Denmark and Japan

In this paper, we study the characteristics and results of two different approaches to urban regeneration which we have termed ‘Metagovernance’ and ‘Pluricentric coordination’ following. We studied this through a comparative study of area-based, participatory urban regeneration projects in Denmark and Japan, representing each one approach. The paper aims to clarify results of the two approaches in terms of five aspects of urban regeneration, relevant to the process and results: (1) strategic spatial improvement, (2) influence of the legal system and transparency of the processes, (3) empowerment of citizens and diversity of participants, (4) innovative capacity (diversity and creativity of the projects) and (5) continuity and flexibility of the projects. The paper concludes that each approach has strengths and weaknesses and that each country can learn from the other to strengthen future participatory urban regeneration.     

On the Estimation of the Density of a Directional Data Stream

Many directional data such as wind directions can be collected extremely easily so that experiments typically yield a huge number of data points that are sequentially collected. To deal with such big data, the traditional nonparametric techniques rapidly require a lot of time to be computed and therefore become useless in practice if real time or online forecasts are expected. In this paper, we propose a recursive kernel density estimator for directional data which (i) can be updated extremely easily when a new set of observations is available and (ii) keeps asymptotically the nice features of the traditional kernel density estimator. Our methodology is based on Robbins–Monro stochastic approximations ideas. We show that our estimator outperforms the traditional techniques in terms of computational time while being extremely competitive in terms of efficiency with respect to its competitors in the sequential context considered here. We obtain expressions for its asymptotic bias and variance together with an almost sure convergence rate and an asymptotic normality result. Our technique is illustrated on a wind dataset collected in Spain. A Monte‐Carlo study confirms the nice properties of our recursive estimator with respect to its non‐recursive counterpart.     

Private Military and Security Labour Migration: The Case of Fiji

Private military and security companies (PMSCs) are a fast‐growing global industry. While the rise of PMSCs and their activities have attracted much media coverage and growing scholarly attention, little is known about their sourcing of masses of military labour from the global South. This exploratory study examines the case of Fiji, whose thousands of ex/current disciplinary force personnel and unemployed men have been contracted by PMSCs to provide security work in Iraq and other high‐conflict areas. The article shows this to be an instance of unequal core‐periphery military labour trade, outlining its scale, processes and impacts on the migrants. It also illuminates how the migrants’ collective agency is demonstrated even under powerful structural constraints.     

The “Costs” of informal care: an analysis of the impact of elderly care on caregivers’ subjective well-being in Japan

This paper examines the impact of providing informal care to elderly parents on caregivers’ subjective well-being using unique data from the “Preference Parameters Study” of Osaka University, a nationally representative survey conducted in Japan. The estimation results indicate heterogeneous effects: while informal elderly care does not have a significant impact on the happiness level of married caregivers regardless of whether they take care of their own parents or parents-in-law and whether or not they reside with them, it has a negative and significant impact on the happiness level of unmarried caregivers. These findings call for more attention to be paid to unmarried caregivers, who presumably receive less support from family members and tend to be more vulnerable to negative income shocks than their married counterparts.     

Language Policy in Practice: Re‐bordering the Nation

We present findings from an anthropological field study on the role of language and language policy in migration from Poland to Norway, and the larger implications for emerging language and immigration policy in Europe. Initial fieldwork in Norway found that Polish workers without knowledge of the Norwegian language struggled to secure employment in the formal economy. The 2008 financial crisis intensified competition in the labour market and underscored fluency in Norwegian as a means of discriminating among workers. Comparative case studies of language schools revealed that these organizations are active participants in channeling Polish migrants' movements into a segmented labour market, often in ways that involve cooperation between private companies and the State. We frame the Norwegian case within the larger context of Europe and the trend there toward favoring integration over multiculturalism. The emergence of restrictive language policies in Europe may be interpreted as a legally and culturally acceptable means for discouraging access to rights associated with permanent residency or citizenship by work migrants from CEE countries, while at the same time permitting them access to the labour market for temporary work. The long‐term consequences of such policies for European society are uncertain.     

American Young Adults’ Rural-to-Urban Migration and Timing of Exits from Poverty Spells

This study examined the timing of exit from poverty among rural young adults who migrated to urban areas in the United States, using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, with a focus on gender and marital status. Poverty spells that involved relocation to urban areas lasted longer than those that did not. Poverty exit rates upon relocation to urban areas declined each year the young adults remained in poverty, but the impact remaining in urban areas had on reduced poverty exit rates diminished when family characteristics, human capital, and labor market factors were controlled.This research was supported by the United States Department of Agricultural through the Georgia Agricultural Experiment Station and also by the Jagdish N. Sheth Foundations Association for Consumer Research Public-Purpose Dissertation Award. An earlier version of this paper was prepared for a presentation at the Population Association of America Annual Meeting 2001, Washington DC. We thank Deborah Godwin and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and Karen Braxley for editorial assistance and insightful comments.     

Consistency of the recursive nonparametric regression estimation for dependent functional data

We consider the recursive estimation of a regression functional where the explanatory variables take values in some functional space. We prove the almost sure convergence of such estimates for dependent functional data. Also we derive the mean quadratic error of the considered class of estimators. Our results are established with rates and asymptotic appear bounds, under strong mixing condition. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed estimator is illustrated throughout an empirical study.