Measuring Precarious Employment: A Proposal for Two Indicators of Precarious Employment Based on Set-Theory and Tested with Dutch Labor Market-Data

Scholars claim that precarious employment is rising. The precariously employed earn low wages, have little job- and income security and occupy jobs that can generally be deemed low quality. These employees are at a disproportionally high risk of poverty and are at risk of detrimental psychological effects. Despite the salience of the issue, precarious employment remains an elusive concept and has proven difficult to measure directly. Instead, measurement tends to rely on non-integrated indicators and proxies, thus introducing significant issues concerning the validity of found results. This paper proposes two integrated indicators for specific aspects of precarious employment. Indicator 1 focuses on income insecurity and is constructed using wage, supplementary income and unemployment benefit entitlements. Indicator 2 focuses on job insecurity and is constructed using contract type and unemployment duration. Additionally, to check for the coexistence of job- and income insecurity at the individual level and give a more holistic picture of precarious employment, Indicators 1 and 2 are integrated. First, previous research on precarious employment and job insecurity is reviewed to bolster the indicators’ validity. Second, the indicators are constructed using an approach grounded in crisp-set theory and data from the Dutch “Organisatie Strategisch Arbeidsmartkonderzoek” labor supply panel. Finally, the indicators are tested by assessing precarious employment over time, by educational level, sector and immigrant status.     

孩次递进生育指标和生育指标的调整——与郭志刚教授商榷

文章主要针对郭志刚教授《关于生育政策调整的人口模拟方法探讨》一文,从普查数据计算年龄别孩次递进比、依据递进生育率推算的出生数和根据递进生育率进行预测三个方面讨论了郭志刚教授该文中的方法,并提出了自己的看法。     

Time in the Development of Indicators on Sustainable Wellbeing: A Local Experiment in Developing Alternative Indicators

This paper is a theoretical and methodological study on the topics of distribution of and competition between time spans dedicated to social activities in the development of sustainable well-being indicators. This article seeks to answer the following question: why and how should we take into account social time in the development of alternative indicators? To bring to light the complex relationship between well-being, sustainability and people’s relationship to time, this article draws on an experiment aimed at developing Regional Sustainable Well-being Indicators (Indicateurs de Bien-être Soutenable Territorialisés—IBEST), which took place in the Grenoble urban area. This experiment was based on two methodologies; the first one being a quantitative survey, and the second one being a series of qualitative interviews coupled with a participatory approach. One of the datasheet indicators developed following this methodological crossover is the activity times balancing indicator, which allows us to take into consideration the pressure affecting time spent on social activities (work, leisure, families and civic engagement).     

Measuring Progress and Well-Being: A Comparative Review of Indicators

We provide a new database sampling well-being and progress indicators implemented since the 1970s at all geographic scales. Starting from an empirical assessment, we describe and quantify trends in the institutional basis, methodology, and content of indicators which are intended to capture the broadest conceptions of human social progress. We pay special attention to the roles of sustainability and subjective well-being in these efforts, and find that certain types of indicators are more successful in terms of transparency, accountability, as well as longevity. Our taxonomy encompasses money-denominated accounts of “progress”, unaggregated collections of indicators, indices, and measures oriented around subjective well-being. We find that a most promising innovation is the indices whose weights are accountable to empirical data, in particular through models of subjective well-being. We conclude by amplifying others’ advocacy for the appropriate separation of current well-being from environmental indicators, and for the avoidance of aggregation except where it is meaningful.     

A Quality of Growth Index for Developing Countries: A Proposal

This paper proposes a new quality of growth index for developing countries. The index encompasses both the intrinsic nature and social dimensions of growth, and is computed for over 90 countries for the period 1990–2011. The approach is premised on the fact that not all growth is created equal in terms of social outcomes, and that it does matter how one reaches from one level of income to another for various theoretical and empirical reasons. The paper finds that the quality of growth has been improving in the vast majority of developing countries over the past two decades, although the rate of convergence is relatively slow. At the same time, there are considerable cross-country variations across income levels and regions. Finally, empirical investigations point to the fact that main factors of the quality of growth are political stability, public pro-poor spending, macroeconomic stability, financial development, institutional quality and external factors such as FDI.     

Indicators and Indices of Child Well-being: A Brief American History

This paper traces the history of indicators and indices of child well-being from its origins in the social indicator movement of the 1970s through recent developments in the field. Initial work calling for comprehensive sets of indicators of child well-being and later recommendations for indicator improvement are detailed. Products that resulted from these recommendations, such as comprehensive indicator reports and online resources are described. The development of child well-being indices is shown to parallel the history of indicators. The contributions of state and international indicator and index projects are included as well. Important aspects of child well-being indicator development are uncovered through documenting its history, including the need to focus on subjective as well as objective measures of well-being, and the need to develop indicators for the multiple ecological contexts of children’s lives, but to separate measures of context from measures of child outcomes. A rough consensus emerges across the history of indicator efforts on the critical domains of child well-being: physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and economic well-being. Recent recognition of the importance of indicators of positive development is noted. This paper was funded by the KIDS COUNT project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.     

Household and Contextual Indicators of Poverty in Tunisia: A Multilevel Analysis

Using micro data from the 2010 National Survey on Households’ Budget, Consumption and Standard of Living, this study aims to investigate main factors contributing to poverty distribution, one of the most severe socioeconomic problems in Tunisia. To this end, we use a multilevel Logit model and a multilevel mixed linear model to simultaneously analyze the micro-level (household) and macro-level (governorate) factors that might affect the household poverty status. Household size, household composition, occupation, education levels, the gender of the household head and the number of earner by household variables were assessed at the micro-level. Unemployment rate, poverty rate, industrial and agriculture parts and the migration are included to control the effect of contextual effects. Our findings showed that the likelihood of household being poor is positively and significantly related to household size, more children and lower education level. Extreme poverty is more likely to occur in rural than urban areas. Macro-level analyses indicated that greater neighbourhood unemployment rate was associated with higher odds of poverty, while greater industrial agglomeration and migration balance were associated with reduced odds of poverty.     

Social Indicators of Substance Abuse Prevention: A Need-Based Assessment

We combine a variety of census and archival data to assess the relationships between social area characteristics and substance use. We found a substantial association between social area characteristics and substance use. We focus on intra and inter community, family, school and individual domain correlations to produce a prevention need-based score to rank communities from high to low need areas. Our analyses support the general risk and protective factor model advocated by Hawkins et al. (1992). As an important outcome of this work we suggest an objective criterion for selecting variables for the final model of the social indicators; suggest a set of weights for the selected factors and validate the selected factors with regard to substance abuse by linking the social indicator database to substance abuse outcome measures from another independent database. The selection criterion was based on intra domain correlations and proved to be robust. The weights were proportional to the information conveyed by each extracted factor. Analyses of intra-domain correlations are useful in identifying the types of prevention programs needed for each municipal area. Analyses of inter-domain correlations resulted in producing an overall need score based on social area characteristics. Many of the domains revealed more than one dimension, especially the school and the community/environment domains. Our analysis supports the use of social area characteristics in predicting the need for substance abuse prevention and treatment. It also suggests cautious and well informed decisions in selecting the indicators for a need based model.     

Nowcasting Indicators of Poverty Risk in the European Union: A Microsimulation Approach

The at-risk-of-poverty rate is one of the three indicators used for monitoring progress towards the Europe 2020 poverty and social exclusion reduction target. Timeliness of this indicator is critical for monitoring the effectiveness of policies. However, due to complicated nature of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) poverty risk estimates are published with a 2–3 years delay. This paper presents a method that can be used to estimate (“nowcast”) the current at-risk-of-poverty rate for the European Union (EU) countries based on EU-SILC microdata from a previous period. The EU tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD is used for this purpose in combination with up to date macro-level statistics. The method is validated by using EU-SILC data for 2007 incomes to estimate at-risk-of-poverty rates for 2008–2012 and to compare the predictions with actual EU-SILC and other external statistics. The method is tested on eight EU countries which are among those experiencing the most volatile economic conditions within the period: Estonia, Greece, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal and Romania.     

Analysis of Cultural Indicators: A Comparison of Their Conceptual Basis and Dimensions

Multiple organizations and institutions have been resorting to indicators on diverse aspects of culture (e.g., creativity, social cohesion, cultural vitality, economic participation), according to their particular purposes and views of what is to be measured. This paper presents results from a research report of a qualitative study that analyzed 35 papers on cultural indicators found via Internet, based on four categories: purpose, assumptions about culture, concept of culture they sustain, and dimensions of indicators considered. Results show that even when the importance of culture is widely recognized in the papers, most of them propose indicators without having solid theoretical foundations, and with an emphasis on the relation between culture and economy. Also, most of the documents do not have a definition of culture or present an instrumental conceptualization of it, where culture is valued not as an end in itself but as a resource than can serve to development.     

The Rising Burden of Healthcare Expenditure in India: A Poverty Nexus

The increasing burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases are imposing unavoidable costs on Indians. As a consequence it exacerbate poverty and drag many poor further down by heavy medical expenses. This study aims to estimate the extent of healthcare expenditure on the individuals who were hospitalized due to various diseases. Further, this study examines the burden of healthcare expenditure on impoverishment level in India. The unit level record of the 71st round of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) is used in the analysis. The result reveals, cost of hospitalization due to non-communicable diseases is three times higher than communicable diseases in India. Therefore, an overall level of impoverishment has been increased by 1.61 percent/year which shows the high financial risk for the people surviving at the threshold of poverty.     

Criminal Victimization and Crime Risk Perception: A Multilevel Longitudinal Study

In a national sample of the Italian population, surveyed four times between October 2002 and January 2007 (N = 2,008), we performed a multilevel longitudinal study aimed at predicting the increase in crime risk perception as a function of three families of independent variables, respectively lying at the within individual level (direct victimization and indirect victimization), at the between-individuals level (being a woman, being an older person, being a poorly educated person and size of area of residence) and at the ecological level (county’s crime rate, unemployment rate and immigration rate). Direct and indirect victimization, being a woman, being an older person, living in a large town and in a context characterized by high crime and unemployment rates positively influenced the change in crime risk perception, while the other individual and ecological predictors we used in our predictive model did not. Strengths, limitations, implications and future developments of this research are discussed.     

The Measurement of Targeting Design in Complex Welfare States: A Proposal and Empirical Applications

Social Indicators Research - The extent to which welfare states target resources to the poor and the effect this may have on redistribution and public support remains an important question in...     

The Efficiency of the Italian Judicial System: A Two Stage Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

Social Indicators Research - During the last two decades there was great attention for improved performance in the public sector. We know how important a good judicial system is: it...     

Clustering of the Italian Regions Based on Their Equitable and Sustainable Well-Being Indicators: A Three-Way Approach

Social Indicators Research - The aim of this study is to provide an analysis of the Italian regions according to their equitable and sustainable well-being indicators pertaining to several...     

Data Envelopment Analysis for Composite Indicators: A Multiple Layer Model

The development of a composite indicator (CI) over a set of individual indicators is worthwhile in case the methodological aggregation process is sound and the results are clear. It can then be used as a powerful tool for performance evaluation, benchmarking, and decision making. In this respect, data envelopment analysis (DEA), as a self appraisal technique, has recently received considerable attention in the construction of CIs for policy analysis and public communication. However, due to the ever increasing complexity of numerous performance evaluation problems, more and more potential indicators might be developed to represent an evaluation activity in a more comprehensive way. These indicators might also belong to different categories and further be linked to one another constituting a multilayer hierarchical structure. Simply treating all the indicators to be in the same layer as is the case in the basic DEA model thereby ignores the information on their hierarchical structure, and further leads up to weak discriminating power and unrealistic weight allocations. To overcome this limitation, a multiple layer DEA-based CI model is developed in this study to embody a hierarchical structure of indicators in the DEA framework, and both its primal and dual form are realized. The proposed model is illustrated by constructing a composite road safety performance index for a set of European countries.     

Segregation and Social Welfare: A Methodological Proposal with an Application to the U.S.

The aim of this paper is twofold: (a) to define a new concept, the welfare loss that a society experiences due to the segregation of the demographic groups that comprise it and (b) to propose measures that quantify this phenomenon satisfying a set of normative properties. In aggregating the well-being losses (gains) of the groups derived for being concentrated in low-status (high-status) organizational units, this paper embraces the distributive approach adopted in the literature on economic deprivation and poverty. The advantages of these measures are shown by exploring the welfare losses that the United States has experienced from 1980 to 2012 due to occupational segregation by both gender and race/ethnicity. Our analysis shows that our measures reveal certain aspects of the phenomenon that do not emerge when using overall segregation measures. Thus, for example, while nothing seems to have changed in U.S. labor market in the last decade according to some well-known overall segregation measures, the social welfare loss due to segregation has actually increased.     

The Impact of Adaptive Preferences on Subjective Indicators: An Analysis of Poverty Indicators

Subjective indicators are often criticized since they are thought to be particularly affected by the phenomenon of adaptive preferences and social comparison. For social policy purposes, processes of downward adaptation in disadvantaged individuals are of particular importance, i.e., it is supposed that such people compare themselves with others who are in the same precarious situation or even worse off and, as a result, lower their expectations and adapt their aspirations and preferences to their material and financial constraints. Based on the 2006–2010 waves of the Swiss Household Panel study, this contribution examines whether, and to what degree, indicators of material deprivation, subjective poverty and subjective well-being are affected by such downward adaptations. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that the bias caused by adaptation processes varies considerably among different measures and that, although subjective indicators are indeed often affected by this phenomenon, there are also robust measures, notably Townsend’s deprivation measure, Halleröd’s proportional deprivation index and the subjective well-being measure of general life satisfaction.     

LGBT Health in the Midlands: A Rural/Urban Comparison of Basic Health Indicators

Research into the health and wellbeing of rural lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations is limited. A community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach was used to develop an online survey for LGBT Nebraskans. The 770 participants replied to an array of questions on social determinants of health and basic health outcomes. Only significant differences in having health insurance were found between urban and rural participants. Social determinants of health were explored. Results of this study suggest that regional culture may be more salient to health for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons living in the Midwest than rural or urban residence.