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A cost-of-living crisis is currently affecting the UK. While this has been explored in terms of the effect on dental practice, the dental implications for patients and for population oral health have not received sufficient attention. This opinion piece discusses how: i) financial pressures leading to hygiene poverty may limit the ability to afford the basic products necessary to maintain oral hygiene; ii) food insecurity is associated with a diet high in sugar and lacking in appropriate nutrition; and iii) reduced disposable income may limit the ability to attend and successfully engage with dental care. The impact of the cost-of-living crisis on the lowest paid members of the dental team is also considered.The most common dental diseases are closely correlated with social and economic deprivation and the points discussed here act as a reminder of how the present financial circumstances have significant potential to widen oral health inequalities., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to the British Dental Association.)

Background: Despite recent substantial mental healthcare reforms to increase the supply of healthcare, mental health inequality in Australia is rising. Understanding of the level of inequity (unmet need gap) in psychiatric service use in Australia's mixed public-private health care system is lacking., Objective: To present a novel method to measure inequity in the delivery of psychiatric care., Methods: Data came from wave 9 (year 2009, n = 11,563) and wave 17 (year 2017, n = 16,194) of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. Multiple logistic regression was employed to estimate the psychiatric care utilisation compared to its need and the Gini index was used to estimate the standardised distribution of utilisation to measure the extent of inequity., Results: The results show the inequity indices (need-standardised Gini) in psychiatric care utilisation were significant and found to be 0.066 and 0.096 in 2009 and 2017, respectively, for all individuals. In 2009, the inequity indices were found to be 0.051 and 0.078 for males and females, respectively, and 0.045 and 0.068 for rural and urban residents, respectively. In 2017, the indices were calculated to be 0.081 and 0.109 for males and females, respectively, and 0.086 and 0.097 for rural and urban residents, respectively., Conclusions: This study showed a marked increase in unmet needs in psychiatric care utilisation since 2009. There is a greater need to develop policies to improve equity in psychiatric care utilisation in Australia., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

This paper discusses the precariousness of an academic profession in contemporary Slovakia and Poland. Although some of the patterns have been previously studied, this analysis sheds new light on the problems of Polish and Slovak academia as seen by foreigners, who, according to official policy, are expected to contribute to the excellence of Polish academia. In reality, low wages and underfinanced universities often make their work very difficult. The analysis is focused mainly on the issues related to low salaries and ways that allow foreign-born employees to secure extra income necessary to maintain the desired standard of living. Even if, for some interviewees, local salary is sufficient to live in CEE, other academics have higher demands because of their family situation (e.g., "international children"), extra travel expenses for private purposes, or spending on bilingual education in Poland or Slovakia. Foreign-born academics living in Poland and Slovakia compensate for low salaries in three distinct ways discussed in the paper -- by taking various academic and non-academic extra jobs, acquiring external funding from their home country's government, or relying on family economic resources.

California state-level policies are responsible for allocating nearly 80 percent of the revenue received by its K-12 school districts. In 2013-14, the state implemented the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), which changed the allocation formula from one based primarily on equal revenue per pupil to an equity-focused allocation based primarily on a district's share of students in poverty. This paper analyzes the relationship between revenue and poverty before and after the LCFF, focusing separately on state general purpose, state restricted, local, and federal funding. Although some special state revenue programs under the prior system led to an implicit positive relationship between revenue and poverty, the LCFF increased and strengthened that dramatically. Local revenue sources dampen this relationship, whereas federal sources augment it. Regression analyses suggest that prior to LCFF in 2007-08, districts with all students in poverty received $2,622 more per pupil in total than did districts with no students in poverty; after LCFF in 2017-18, high-poverty districts received $3,855 per pupil more in total. This paper also analyzes how high- and low-poverty districts changed their spending patterns over the decade punctuated by LCFF. Although revenue in both types of districts grew, and more so in high-poverty districts, low-poverty districts spent all additional revenue on staff compensation, but high-poverty districts allocated some to non-compensation areas. The more remarkable trend over this decade is the increase in spending on retirement and health benefits, which has the potential to curtail the potential effects of the LCFF.

There is no conclusion on whether green development can symbiotically coexist with shared development, and the effect of environmental protection tax on labor share provides new evidence to answer this question. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of change in labor share in the exogenous impact of the enforcement of the Environmental Protection Tax Law of China, and proposes relevant hypotheses. At the same time, empirical data of listed firms on the main board from 2013 to 2019 are collected. A difference-in-differences model is constructed to test the hypotheses empirically. The study found that the reform of environmental protection fee to tax reduced the labor share of high-polluting firms by an average of about 1.43%. However, it did not significantly reduce the share of corporate executives' income. The reform of environmental protection fee to tax reduces the labor share of high-polluting firms through the crowding-out effect and the substitution effect of production technology. The heterogeneity study revealed that the reform of environmental protection fee to tax has more substantial negative impacts on firms with high financing constraints, low market concerns, and low government subsidies. There is no significant difference between the impact on state-owned and private firms. The reform of environmental protection fee to tax has a more substantial negative impact on the firms in Central and Western China than those in more economically developed Eastern China., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Difference-in-differences (DID) analyses are used in a variety of research areas as a strategy for estimating the causal effect of a policy, program, intervention, or environmental hazard (hereafter, treatment). The approach offers a strategy for estimating the causal effect of a treatment using observational (i.e., nonrandomized) data in which outcomes on each study unit have been measured both before and after treatment. To identify a causal effect, a DID analysis relies on an assumption that confounding of the treatment effect in the pretreatment period is equivalent to confounding of the treatment effect in the post treatment period. We propose an alternative approach that can yield identification of causal effects under different identifying conditions than those usually required for DID. The proposed approach, which we refer to as generalized DID, has the potential to be used in routine policy evaluation across many disciplines, as it essentially combines two popular quasiexperimental designs, leveraging their strengths while relaxing their usual assumptions. We provide a formal description of the conditions for identification of causal effects, illustrate the method using simulations, and provide an empirical example based on Card and Krueger's landmark study of the impact of an increase in minimum wage in New Jersey on employment., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest: none declared., (Copyright © 2022 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

This study aims to investigate the impacts of traditional and green economic growth on poverty, income inequalities, and environmental degradation in the case of South Asian economies. In this regard, the study collects data for the period 2000 to 2018 from five South Asian economies (Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh) from world development indicators (WDI). The study applies second-generation unit root test and co-integration technique, CIPS unit root and Westerlund co-integration tests, to establish the stationarity of the series and co-integration relationship among variables. Furthermore, this study utilized dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS) and fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) models to investigate the long-run empirical estimates. The study finds that both traditional economic growth (GDP) and green economic growth (GGDP) have a negative impact on poverty and inequality; however, GGDP contributes more than traditional GDP to reducing poverty and inequality. Moreover, the study shows that economic growth has a positive long-run impact on environmental degradation while GGDP has a negative and significant long-run association with environmental degradation. The study recommends that policymakers should develop policies to develop green economic growth to save the environment and for the reduction in poverty and income inequalities in south Asian economies., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This paper introduces a new graphical tool: the mean deviation concentration curve. Using a unified approach, we derive the associated dominance conditions that identify robust rankings of absolute socioeconomic health inequality for all indices obeying Bleichrodt and van Doorslaer's (J Health Econ 25:945-957, 2006) principle of income-related health transfer. We also derive dominance conditions that are compatible with other transfer principles available in the literature. To make the identification of all robust orderings implementable using survey data, we discuss statistical inference for these dominance tests. To illustrate the empirical relevance of the proposed approach, we compare joint distributions of income and health-related behavior in the United States., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The recovery of the global economy in the aftermath of COVID-19 faces enormous challenges. Ensuring stable income growth of the population has become an important means for developing countries to ensure sustained economic development. Raising the overall income of the population is a public initiative that benefits all citizens; therefore, governments of developing countries should promote the implementation of relevant public policies and the provision of public goods to ensure that existing economic instruments can benefit the entire population. In this regard, public space, as a typical form of public good, may play an important role in promoting the benefits of existing economic policies for all residents. This paper examines how residents' use of public space contributes to their income growth through social capital. Hypotheses are tested based on an econometric analysis of 1565 questionnaires received from Chinese workers. The results show that residents' use of public space can indeed be an important way to increase their income, which is realized through the enhancement of social capital. The research presented in this paper provides a new influence variable of public space to improve residents' income. Further, it improves people's understanding of the three classical concepts—public space, social capital, and income—by establishing the logical connection and theoretical explanation of physical space, emotional space, and value space in human society. The conclusions of this paper highlight the important role of public space in urban and rural development planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a two-stage, matched design, we found dual enrollment students enrolled in college within one year of their expected high school graduation at higher rates than control students who did not take college classes in high school (OR = 3.06). For students that matriculated within one year after high school, compared to control, treatment students showed higher rates of persistence (OR = 1.30), and completion of "any" degree (OR = 2.08), a two-year credential within two years (OR = 2.87), and a four-year degree within four years (OR = 1.61). And five years after high school, treatment students had higher earnings (g = .079). Subgroup findings revealed no significant moderation effects of the treatment by income, race, gender, or achievement level. Prior quantitative studies have largely failed to consider the role of academic achievement, so that is an important contribution of this paper. Ours is also the first study we are aware of to examine the impact of dual enrollment on earnings. While awaiting future research replicating our achievement and earnings results, results suggest dual enrollment is a promising strategy for increasing postsecondary success and earnings after college.

International students in Canada make enormous contribution to the Canadian economy. As domestic students' enrolment has declined, international students' admissions have compensated for economic losses that Canadian universities incur from the decline of domestic students' enrolment. The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting international students' admissions to Canadian universities. Drawing on various secondary data sources, this article argues that international students in Canada are vulnerable due to their temporary immigration status. They are excluded from most governments' relief programs aimed at supporting Canadians during this pandemic. Most international students experience psychological and financial difficulties amid the pandemic. The situation is triggering a further decline in international students' admission, creating economic implications for Canadian universities. By exploring the challenges facing international students and the strategies required to strengthen international students' resilience and universities' capacities, the paper contributes to our understanding of the plights of international students and educational institutions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article from Economic Policy provides a summary of five papers that contribute to our understanding of economic and policy issues. The first paper examines the impacts of historical conflicts on the current conflict in Ukraine, emphasizing the importance of demining, preserving social cohesion, and addressing gender imbalances and conflict-related sexual violence. The second paper evaluates the effectiveness of legislation aimed at restricting the mobility of unemployed individuals within specific areas of a city, finding that these laws are ineffective and have unintended negative consequences. The third paper analyzes the macroeconomic impact of structural reforms in Italy, showing that these reforms can lead to increased productivity and GDP growth. The fourth paper presents a comprehensive analysis of China's foreign lending practices, highlighting unconventional confidentiality clauses and collateral arrangements used by Chinese lenders. The final paper explores the question of higher education subsidies, finding that increased subsidies can have positive fiscal and welfare impacts in many countries. These papers offer evidence-based recommendations and policy lessons for policymakers in various contexts. [Extracted from the article]

This paper undertakes a critical analysis of the various hegemonic educational discourses applied to schemes for a minimum income and the social effects that they cause in the field of education and training for groups at social risk. Through consideration of these discourses, it will be determined what role education plays within them, highlighting the principles of employability and the Theory of Human Capital underlying training in minimum income schemes. The paper will shed light to the "poverty business" that training courses for the poor have provided for certain private enterprises. These characteristics have taken the shape of an increasingly prevalent educational discourse that may be termed `the Holy Crusade to Educate the Poor'. Finally, the paper will argue about the possibilities and limitations of an alternative model for minimum income schemes: The Universal Basic Income (UBI).

A recent integrated health care initiative in Belgium supports 12 regional pilot projects scattered across the country and representing 21% of the population. As in shared savings programs, part of the estimated savings in health spending are paid out to the projects to reinvest in new actions. Short-term savings are expected in particular from cost reductions among high-cost patients. We estimate the effect of the projects on spending using a difference-in-difference model. The sensitivity of the results to the right-skewness of spending is commonly addressed by removing or top-coding high-cost cases. However, this leads to an underestimation of realized savings at the top end of the distribution, therefore, lowering incentives for cost reduction. We show that this trade-off can be weakened by an alternative approach in which cost categories that fall out of the scope of the projects' interventions are excluded from the dependent variable. We find that this approach leads to improvements in precision and model fit that are of the same magnitude as excluding high-cost cases altogether. At the same time, it sharpens the incentives for cost reduction because the model better reflects the costs that projects can affect., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Multiple studies examine how couples organize their economic resources, but most focus on wages, with little attention to assets. This paper helps to fill this research gap in Québec (Canada) by asking what proportion of married and cohabiting different-sex couples of working age jointly own their primary residence, instead of remaining in more independent arrangements regarding this asset-either through individual ownership of the home by the man or the woman or by not owning one at all. Also, drawing on transaction cost and institutional approaches to economic organization, we explore variation on several relationship characteristics. Individual ownership is uncommon, especially by the woman, but it is more prevalent among couples with little time together and who do not have children. Individual ownership is also more common among income-unequal couples than equal ones, because, we argue, it allows primary earners to cover housing costs without transferring wealth. Those results advance knowledge on both within-household wealth inequality and conjugal redistributive practices., (© 2022 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie.)

With concepts like the consumer revolution or the industrious revolution, the changing behaviour of private households in the 18th and early 19th centuries has become of great interest. The article suggests a new way to observe intentions and decisions, by utilizing a database of 850,000 classified ads from the Basel Avisblatt over a span of 116 years. Changes in food prices constantly altered the discretionary income of households, which forced budget-related decisions. By cross-correlating indicators of discretionary income with the changing number of different types of ads, patterns of utilizing the Avisblatt can be identified, and strategies to stabilize discretionary income deduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural selection has been documented in contemporary humans, but little is known about the mechanisms behind it. We test for natural selection through the association between 33 polygenic scores and fertility, across two generations, using data from UK Biobank (N = 409,629 British subjects with European ancestry). Consistently over time, polygenic scores that predict higher earnings, education and health also predict lower fertility. Selection effects are concentrated among lower SES groups, younger parents, people with more lifetime sexual partners, and people not living with a partner. The direction of natural selection is reversed among older parents, or after controlling for age at first live birth. These patterns are in line with the economic theory of fertility, in which earnings-increasing human capital may either increase or decrease fertility via income and substitution effects in the labour market. Studying natural selection can help us understand the genetic architecture of health outcomes: we find evidence in modern day Great Britain for multiple natural selection pressures that vary between subgroups in the direction and strength of their effects, that are strongly related to the socio-economic system, and that may contribute to health inequalities across income groups., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Objectives: To explore the influence of income on Low Birth Weight (LBW), taking into account other socio-economic measurements., Methods: This retrospective cohort study is based on the Israel National Insurance Institute (NII) database. The study population included 58,454 women who gave birth between 2008 and 2013 to 85,605 infants. Only singleton births at term (gestational age in weeks = 37 and later) were included. Logistic regression models with a Generalized Estimating Equation approach were used in order to assess the independent effect of income and Socio-Economic Regional Index (SERI), maternal age, family status, population group and occupational status on LBW. In addition, sibling analysis was conducted to assess the influence of a change in income on birth weight (BW) among 21,998 women., Results: Lower income was associated with higher odds of LBW (odds ratio (OR) = 1.266; 95% CI:1.115-1.437. Immigrants from Ethiopia, Bedouins from the Negev, the youngest, the oldest, and single mothers had higher odds for LBW newborns. Compared to women whose income quartile had not changed between the most recent and the first births, for women who experienced a deterioration of three and two quartiles in family income, significantly lower birth weight was observed at the time point with lower income: 103 g (p = .049) and 71 g (p = .008), respectively. Improvement in income revealed an almost linear increase in birth weight., Conclusions for Practice: In an effort to prevent LBW associated mortality and diseases, interventions should be focused first of all on women from population groups who are disadvantaged., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Purpose: This study examined the reciprocal relationships between depression and income, and gender differences in these relationships among older adults in South Korea., Methods: Using 2015 to 2019 of the Korea Welfare Panel Study (KoWePS), we studied 6,070 older adults (2,394 men and 3,676 women) aged 60 years over in 2015. The generalized estimating equation was employed to explore the effect of an individual income on depression and the reverse causal link-that of depression on income., Results: The study found the reciprocal relationships between income and depression. Income has a significant impact on depression. Higher-income was linked to decreased risks of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scores among older adults (B = -0.121, p < 0.001). Estimates of the reverse causal link show that higher CES-D scores were also linked to income reduction among Korean older adults (B = -0.007, p < 0.001). In addition, we also observed gender differences in the impact of income on depression but not in the reverse causal link. Income has more detrimental to psychological consequence for older men (B = -0.108, p < 0.001) than older women (B = -0.057, p < 0.001)., Conclusion: The finding implies that both psychological and social protection policies for the elderly are needed in view of gender perspective., Competing Interests: The authors declared that no conflict of interest., (© 2022 Korean Society of Nursing Science.)

This is the first study to comprehensively examine the impact of job losses during the Great Recession on mental health, physical health, health behavior, and risky health behavior of young adults (ages 18-27). We employ U.S. longitudinal data with individual fixed effects to control for time-invariant factors that may bias the results. We find that job losses during the recession of young adults living by themselves led to increased onset of doctor-diagnosed mental health problems and worries related to jobs. Poorer individuals suffered more from increased worries, obesity, and binge drinking. In contrast, for those living with their parents, job loss of young adults did not negatively affect their own health. Instead, fathers' job losses led to worse mental health, physical health, and health behavior for young adults. Overall, the results suggest that when living on their own, young adults were responsible for their households' livelihood, and consequently, own job losses led to stress and negative health outcomes. However, when living with parents, they were financially reliant on their parents. Therefore, own job losses did not affect health, but job losses of fathers, the primary income earners for most households, worsened the health of young adults., (© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background: Social vulnerability is a complex construct which is beyond relying on single measures. If socially vulnerable patients should be identified, we need a composite measure capturing the patient's overall circumstances. This study presents the development of a social vulnerability index (rSVI) for cancer patients based on administrative data from population-based registers., Methods: All patients, who died from cancer within 5 years after the cancer diagnosis during 2013-2018 (n = 44,187), were identified and divided in four subcohorts according to survival; index cohort surviving 3-5 years (n = 3044 surviving 3-5 years), cohort 1 (n = 27,170 surviving < 1 year), cohort 2 (n = 9450 surviving 1-2 years), and cohort 3 (n = 4523 surviving 2-3 years). Variables from ten registries on health and social issues were linked to each individual patient. Variables of interest were weighted to construct the rSVI using the index-cohort. rSVI was subsequently tested on the three other cohorts for validation., Results: The rSVI included weighted values for marital status, ethnicity, education, income, unemployment, psychiatric comorbidity, and somatic comorbidity. The validity of the rSVI was supported by the expected trend in proportions of vulnerable patients when applied on the other cohorts. Single social measures appeared insufficient in identification of vulnerable patients when compared with the rSVI., Conclusion: The rSVI provides a tool for identification of socially vulnerable cancer patients using administrative data. The index requires further validation in other patient groups and is tested against other measures of vulnerability. Future perspectives are to use the rSVI as predictor of advanced cancer patients' use of healthcare services., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Recent decades have witnessed a growing focus on two distinct income patterns: persistent pay inequity, particularly a gender pay gap, and growing pay inequality. Pay transparency is widely advanced as a remedy for both. Yet we know little about the systemic influence of this policy on the evolution of pay practices within organizations. To address this void, we assemble a dataset combining detailed performance, demographic and salary data for approximately 100,000 US academics between 1997 and 2017. We then exploit staggered shocks to wage transparency to explore how this change reshapes pay practices. We find evidence that pay transparency causes significant increases in both the equity and equality of pay, and significant and sizeable reductions in the link between pay and individually measured performance., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

The medicines regulatory landscape in Africa is undergoing transformation with at least two countries having National Medicines Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) that operate at World Health Organization (WHO) maturity level 3. However, this represents the exception as over 90% of African NRAs have limited capacity to perform core medicine regulatory functions, have a shortage of competent regulatory professionals, have high staff turnover, lack diversity of scientific expertise, and have staffing shortages relative to the high workload. A systematic approach to developing the regulatory workforce is therefore crucial to addressing the existing shortfalls in regulatory capacity, particularly at this time when efforts are underway to operationalise the African Medicines Agency (AMA). In this article, initiatives that are building African NRAs' regulatory capacity and developing their workforce are reviewed in preparation for work to be conducted by the AMA. We found that the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonisation (AMRH) initiative has been at the forefront of capacity building and workforce development mainly through the designation of specialised Regional Centres of Regulatory Excellence and the implementation of medicines regulatory harmonisation initiatives in regional economic communities. In addition, some NRAs within high-income countries and trusted institutions have been supporting regulators in low-income countries with registration assessments and facilitating access to quality-assured medical products through their stringent review procedures (SRPs). Capacity building has subsequently been facilitated through this active involvement of African regulators in SRPs. This article also provides recommendations for further capacity building and workforce development., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

This paper examines if universities in the UK mediate the impacts of spatial inequalities on earnings disparities among similar graduates and provides new evidence on the persistent income inequality at the neighbourhood level, using the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey data on the population of individuals graduating from universities in 2012/13. The results suggest that graduates from neighbourhoods with the highest university participation rate, on average, have higher earnings than those from the lowest-participation neighbourhoods, holding demographic features and university-related factors constant. The earnings gap by the neighbourhood quality remains substantial so that males from the lowest-participation neighbourhoods with a degree from the Russell Group barely earn higher incomes than their peers from the highest-participation areas who attended a less prestigious university. These results imply that universities in the UK do not fully level the playing field in terms of earnings disparities among graduates from different neighbourhoods.

Purpose: Kenya leads East Africa in creative goods export and enjoys high internet penetration. Therefore, identifying pathways, missed opportunities for accelerating job creation and development in the sector and strategies for mitigating youth-related challenges are essential. This paper therefore aims to examine the effects of digital media and the cultural and creative industry (CCI) on youth employment and economic development. Design/methodology/approach: The document review and analysis data came from 45 scientific and 23 grey literature articles. While the lack of primary data is a study limitation, secondary data were drawn from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Statistics and the 2016-2022 entertainment and media outlook analysis. Microsoft Excel 2021 for Windows was used to analyze quantitative data and generate results. Findings: Since the CCI sector is characterized by limited financial opportunities, low youth participation in the labor force and weak policy frameworks, success in the industry requires key pathways. These include investment in digital-led innovations, developing innovative models, building partnerships with the private sector, strategic investment by government in the potential creative industry sub-sectors and identifying successful scaling-up models. Originality/value: Information gathered through this study is crucial to counter the youth unemployment challenge and strategy identification, which could be used in skills and capabilities development in the potential creative economy. Future researchers must explore how to apply the proposed creative capacity theoretical lens to inform research in the sector.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how COVID-19 impacted overseas students' decision to apply for an undergraduate degree at UK universities. Design/methodology/approach: This study compares the number of university applications from overseas students in summer and autumn 2020 with those in the period 2011-2019. Multivariate analysis techniques are used. Findings: The results show that the pandemic has led to a drop in university applications from foreign students by 11-14%. Such decline has been driven by a reduction in the number of applicants from high-income countries as opposed to those from middle-lower income countries. Two explanations may account for this finding. First, students from affluent countries, compared to those from poorer countries, may be more likely to find a good alternative to the UK where to carry out their studies (including their home country). Second, the option of deferring study abroad plans due to the pandemic may be more affordable for applicants from high-income countries. Originality/value: While understanding how COVID-19 has impacted international student mobility is an emerging issue in the literature, not only are there few studies providing evidence on this, but these are based on qualitative analysis. This paper uses quantitative methods that allow to separate the effect of COVID-19 from that associated with other factors affecting the flow of international students.

Over a quarter of the members of the social work profession are working in health related settings yet preparing students to work in such multi-disciplinary environments, with hierarchical organizations and problem-focused systems, can create value conflicts, principally with the strengths-based paradigm inherent in social work practice. In order to prepare social work students for delivering services that honor the profession's ethics, values, and principles in medical environments, a focused academic curriculum and field experience are warranted. This conceptual paper aims to inform social work educators about the unique considerations for preparing students to practice in health care settings. We address how the underlying influence of the biomedical model, organizational culture, and billing and reimbursement services within the medical context can challenge social work values and practice. However, we illustrate how the Integrated Behavioral Health model can be applied to help students utilize clients' inherent strengths and problem-solving capabilities while they navigate the terrain of multi-disciplinary medical environments.

Undergraduate marketing degrees have been shown to have the same impact on post-graduation income for marketing jobs as non-marketing undergraduate degrees for similar marketing jobs. Moreover, having a marketing degree has been shown to not impact long-term career satisfaction. However, previous research has not accounted for the possible differential impact of curriculum design on post-graduation income and long-term career satisfaction. In other words, not all marketing programs are the same. In this paper, we describe an innovative yearlong marketing honors program that uses six best practices drawn from the marketing education literature in its design and implementation. We then compare the starting salaries after college and current career satisfaction of graduates from the marketing honors program with those of graduates from a non-honors marketing program in the same university. We demonstrate the differential impact of course-level, programmatic, and extra-curricular design choices on career outcomes. Implications are then discussed that impact marketing curriculum design.

To address the dramatic economic contraction brought on by the global pandemic, governments at all levels have taken on tremendous debt in order to provide economic stability and prevent a more dramatic collapse. It is likely that, as the initial phase of the pandemic passes, familiar neoliberal austerity claims about the necessity to trim education budgets will gain greater force and acceptance. However, I suggest that these neoliberal policies demand sacrifices of the wrong constituency: Given that Big Tech has amassed huge sums of money over the course of the pandemic, how is it morally justifiable that tech companies benefit from the pandemic while educational institutions shoulder the financial fallout of pandemic government spending? In this paper, I first outline how Big Tech profits from the education sector during the pandemic even as it undermines the democratic function of education in doing so. I then situate these more specific critiques within a broader consideration of the role technology plays in undermining a democratic society. In conclusion, I argue that a pandemic profiteering tax for Big Tech represents the best short-term solution to get ahead of the "austerity curve" and ensure that the COVID-19 crisis serves as an opportunity to deepen our commitments to promoting the democratic function education. Without such commitments, the pandemic will become the turning point at which Big Tech effectively coopts public education for its own ends, to the detriment of democracy. My underlying claim is that technology is in conflict with both democracy and education. This runs against the widespread notion that technology will help promote learning, and that technology helps inform and connect people and therefore helps promote democracy. In what follows I dispel such notions.

This paper makes two contributions to the literature on social stratification in vocational attainment. First, we evaluate whether labour market literacy, as measured by knowledge about earnings in different occupations, is socially stratified. Second, we analyse whether differences in expected earnings between high-income and low-income occupations contribute to the social stratification in vocational aspirations and attainment using serial mediation based on data from the German National Educational Panel Study. We find that students are well informed about earnings, on average, but substantially underestimate earnings in some occupations. Students from low socio-economic status (SES) families underestimate earnings more than those from high SES families, particularly earnings in high-status occupations. Therefore, low SES students expect smaller earning differences between high-income and low-income occupations than high-SES students. In turn, small expected differences between high-income and low-income occupations are associated with lower vocational aspirations as well as attainments. Differences in expected earnings of high-income and low-income occupations mediate 4% of the differences in vocational aspirations by parental SES and 2% of the differences in vocational attainment.

Purpose: Football tailgating is a focus of campus sustainability in the United States because it produces large amounts of waste. In states where recyclables can be redeemed for cash, this waste also is a resource for earning income. University officials face the challenge of encouraging proper waste disposal, cleaning up efficiently and coexisting productively with income-earning recyclers. This paper aims to understand how bridging formal and informal actors can yield improved campus waste management outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: Using the institutional analysis and development framework this study combines observational data throughout one football season with semi-structured interviews with informal recyclers, tailgaters and campus officials. Data are analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings: The case displays interaction between formal and informal waste management actors and between formal and informal rules of interaction. Campus officials have largely succeeded in encouraging proper waste management by tailgaters, who in turn loosely coordinate with income-earning recyclers under unwritten rules. Officials tolerate recyclers, but waste management could be improved with better communication and coordination and more trust between them. Many recyclers conduct their work with a sense of environmental stewardship that could support waste management efforts. Originality/value: Uncoordinated coexistence between formal and informal waste management systems is common in the global South. With few studies in the global North, this is the first the authors know of in a campus sustainability context.

Questions surrounding mobility and migration are often connected to matters of language, citizenship, socio-economic status and class that are inherently unequal between developed and less-developed nation states. Scholars of geography and demographics have conceptualized both internal and external/international migration with "push" and "pull" factors as salient reasons for mobility. Traditional causes of external migration and so-called "push factors" include conflict, natural disaster, economic collapse, war, and transformations of socio-political systems as well as more promising employment options and decent incomes as contributing factors to external migration (Gonçalves & Schluter, 2020, p.3). Such "forced moves" affect largely disadvantaged populations that are at risk (i.e. asylum seekers, refugees, victims of human trafficking) (Castles, 2003). For individuals engaging in lifestyle migration and lifestyle mobilities and considered voluntary migration, their life circumstances are extremely different in that they are often equipped with "privileged preconditions" (Mancinelli, 2020, p.419) as "nomads from affluence" (Cohen, 1973) including for the most part, education, specialized skills, high standards of living and favorable visa regimes of their home countries (primarily in the West). These factors facilitate a range of choices in terms of where they travel to (i.e. place), also known as network capital, the kind of work they engage in and the rate of their mobility. Based on years of ethnographic work, in this paper, we investigate the different dimensions and discourses of lifestyle migration and lifestyle mobilities, both of which we argue presents a new trajectory and venue to explore within the field of migration linguistics (Borlongan, 2023). By focusing on two different case studies within Norway, we also draw on the notion of mediational repertoires (Lexander & Androutsopolous, 2021) as part of the communicative ecology in which jobs are found and where communication takes place among different types of migrants and their new permanent or temporary homes.

This paper explores how internal characteristics of universities that reflect the structure of the budget and the makeup of the student body and academic staff influence the efficiency level of universities. We analyse a sample of 320 Russian public higher education institutions using the modern nonparametric methodology of an order-m conditional efficiency estimator. Our results suggest that the distribution of universities by efficiency scores may heavily depend on the aforementioned internal characteristics. The diversity of the academic staff, the student body and income sources positively affect the efficiency level, and so different policies and managerial practices aimed at increasing this diversity can be used as instruments for improving university efficiency and performance.