Patterns of Family Support and the Quality of Life of the Elderly

Social Indicators Research - This study addresses the issue of the quality of life of the Korean elderly in the present day by looking at the relationship between the patterns of support exchange...     

Life with and without heart disease among women and men over 50

This article uses a demographic approach and data from the Health and Retirement Survey, a nationally representative sample of the U.S. population, to investigate sex differences in the length of life lived with heart disease and after a heart attack for persons in the United States age 50 and older. On average, women live longer than men with heart disease. At age 50 women can expect to live 7.9 years and men 6.7 years with heart disease. The average woman experiences heart disease onset three years older and heart attacks 4.4 years older than men.     

Inside the blogosphere: A taxonomy and framing analysis of abortion weblogs

This study analyses weblog abortion-related content sampled via a search and snowball method. When weblogs located inside of established media Web sites and other weblogs are compared, they are equivalent in the use of advocacy versus objectivist frames. Media weblog posts contain a political frame more frequently than non-media weblog posts do. In terms of diversity of frame, media weblogs employ more frames in their stories. Various explanations for these findings are offered in the context of current abortion-related content patterns.     

South Korean College Students' Holland Types and Career Compromise Processes

This study explored South Korean college students' career compromise processes and examined whether preferences for sex type, prestige, or interests would be differentiated by Holland theme interest types, gender, or college major. Participants were South Korean undergraduate students from 2 universities in Seoul, South Korea. They were asked to choose 1 occupation from each of 168 pairs of occupations using a forced‐choice format. A total of 376 surveys were analyzed. There were significant main effects for Holland interest types and for gender but not for college major on their career compromise processes. Implications for career counselors and researchers are discussed.     

Household Debt and Marital Instability: Evidence from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study

Korean society has recently experienced rapid increases in household debt and divorce rates. This study investigates whether household debt and debt ratios lower marital stability and increase the probability of divorce among Korean families. Six-year panels from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) household surveys were used for analysis. The effect of household debt upon the probability of divorce was estimated through pooled and population-averaged Logit models. The results suggest that household financial strain measured by the amount of household debt and the debt-to-income ratios does not significantly affect the probability of divorce. This finding contradicts the widespread notion that households’ excessive borrowing has been partially responsible for the recent increase in divorce rates in Korea.

Does severity matter?: An investigation of crisis severity from defensive attribution theory perspective

Although the concept of crisis severity has existed in the crisis communication literature for two decades, it has not been theoretically tested and explained. Based on Defensive Attribution Theory (DAT), this study intends to specify the relationship between crisis severity and crisis responsibility as well as organizational reputation within the SCCT model. Through a 2 (crisis severity) × 3 (crisis type) between-subject factorial experiment (n?=?274), the study revealed that higher crisis severity causes worse reputation regardless of crisis type. For accidental crisis, higher crisis severity leads to higher intentionality, one dimension of crisis responsibility. The findings indicate that crisis severity still has value in SCCT and deserves further investigation.     

Intergenerational Coresidence and Nearness in Korea and Japan: Unbalanced Aspects of Family Changes

Abstract  This study aims to explain similarity and difference in geographic proximity between elderly parents and their children in Korea and Japan. Using data sets from two nationally representative surveys conducted in Korea and Japan, this study examines the extent to which needs and kinship of elderly parents and regional constraints influence intergenerational coresidence and nearness.
Results highlight a complex feature of intergenerational relationship in Korea and Japan. Advanced economic and health conditions of Korean elderly parents increase the likelihood of living with children. For Japanese elderly parents, however, coresidence with children is significantly likely to occur in response to their disadvantaged economic status. These results suggest that the elderly Korean are more likely than the elderly Japanese to lack not only economic and health resources but also opportunities in obtaining family support in a time of need.
Characteristics of children, however, show a similar trend between the two societies. Both societies maintain a strong son preference for extended family living arrangement. Eldest children in both societies are more likely than their siblings to live with or near elderly parents. However, children of younger cohorts in both societies are significantly more likely than those of older cohorts to maintain a disperse geographic network indicating a significant change in family attitude among different cohorts.
Finally, this study finds a more disperse family network among rural elderly parents than urban elderly parents in both societies reflecting the fact that massive rural-to-urban migration of young population has contributed to geographic segregation of kinship in these societies.     

The Impact of Information Sharing and Advance Order Information on a Supply Chain with Balanced Ordering

This paper considers a supply chain with one supplier and multiple retailers that face exogenous heterogeneous end‐customer demands, where all parties utilize base‐stock policies. Each retailer is restricted to order once in every order cycle and their orders are replenished in a balanced manner within the cycle. Our study investigates the impact of information sharing and advance order information (AOI) on the supply chain. We find that the supplier benefits from the two mechanisms via two important factors, the information about observed end‐customer demands and the decision on re‐establishing the replenishment sequence. We derive the supplier's optimal sequence for stochastically comparable end‐customer demands with AOI and propose a sequencing rule for the setting with information sharing. Our numerical study examines the cost impacts of two proposed mechanisms on the entire supply chain.     

Membership Benefits Matter

Professional associations have provided various benefits to their members to bolster member retention and recruitment. This study explored factors that could influence members’ behavioral intentions in professional membership associations by surveying 13,229 members from eighteen associations. More specifically, this analysis focused on the effects of members’ perceptions of the personal and professional benefits offered by associations with which they are affiliated and their satisfaction with those benefits. Our results suggested that members’ perceptions of personal and professional benefits positively correlated with their intentions to renew and recommend membership. If a member perceived a higher level of benefits, he or she would demonstrate a greater likelihood of satisfaction with the benefits and therefore be more likely to renew membership or recommend it to others. This study could advance understanding of the factors that influence members’ behavioral intentions while also providing professional associations with strategies for retaining existing members.     

Income inequality,welfare regimes and aggregate health: Review of reviews

Wide income inequality in a society has been associated with worse aggregate health. Regarding the relationship, often termed as ‘the Wilkinson Hypothesis’, a number of empirical findings and related systematic reviews have reached inconsistent conclusions. In addition, the Scandinavian welfare regime is expected to have better aggregate health indicators in comparison with the other welfare regimes. The expectation is largely based on the Wilkinson Hypothesis because the regime has relatively narrow income inequalities. Again, related empirical findings and systematic reviews have produced inconsistent conclusions. This article reports on two rounds of ‘review of reviews’ (RR) over six previous (systematic) review articles. The first round of RR found that the review articles reached divergent conclusions. The second round of RR over another set of three review articles also demonstrated that their conclusions did not reach a consensus. Neither the hypothesised Scandinavia's good health nor the Wilkinson Hypothesis was given solid empirical backing.