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Aims: In this paper, we investigated which socioeconomic and demographic groups first adopted digital primary care video consultations when they became accessible to the entire population in Sweden. Methods: We analysed data on all patients (378,000) who had a consultation with the largest provider of digital healthcare in Sweden – Kry – in the first years of national availability of the service, 2016–2018. We studied their income, education, demographics, and diagnosis backgrounds using matched registry data. Moreover, to compare users and non-users of digital primary care, we used data on all physical primary care users in one Swedish region: Skåne. Results: We found that this digital primary care was first used by young and higher-income adults, but not far from half of adult users had incomes below the national median. Digital care patients were more educated than the general population, reflecting that urban inhabitants were more likely than rural inhabitants to be users. First-generation immigrants were less represented among digital care users than in the population. However, second-generation immigrants with two foreign parents were slightly over-represented. The prevalence of some chronic diseases in pre-digital secondary (specialist and hospital) healthcare data among digital care users was similar to the population adjusted for age. Studying all physical primary care users in Skåne region, young digital care users had more primary care diagnoses and previous in-person primary care appointments than non-users, while the pattern was reversed for older users. Conclusions: When digital primary care became nationally available, younger, urban and more educated patients were the first to adopt the new technology. Regarding medical history, young users of digital care had a higher previous disease burden than young non-users, suggesting that these digital services were first adopted by young people with high primary care needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lives of rural households are predominantly based on agriculture and its allied activities. However, there are signs of an agricultural crisis resulting in dependence on alternative sources of income. This paper analyzes the factors that influence the decision of farm households to participate in non-farm activities for alternative income. The official data for two years on the Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households are explored and a pooled probit regression model is run to examine the determinants of income diversification. Our findings reveal that farm income and irrigated land negatively influence diversification. However, diversification of those having lower access to farm holdings, socioeconomic deprivation, and improved access to education, informal credit, and crop insurance point out positive participation in non-farm enterprises. In addition, the population belonging to hilly and coastal plain regions and the age group 30–64 years are more likely to diversify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: The association between belonging to a disadvantaged socio-economic status or social class and health outcomes has been consistently documented during recent decades. However, a meta-analysis quantifying the association between belonging to a lower social class and the risk of dementia has yet to be performed. In the present work, we sought to summarise the results of prospective, longitudinal studies on this topic. Methods: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective, longitudinal studies measuring the association between indicators of social class and the risk of all-cause/Alzheimer's dementia. The search was conducted in four databases (Medline, Embase, Web of Science and PsychInfo). Inclusion criteria for this systematic review and meta-analysis were: (a) longitudinal prospective study, (b) aged ⩾60 years at baseline, (c) issued from the general population, (d) no dementia at baseline and (e) mention of social class as exposure. Exclusion criteria were: (a) study of rare dementia types (e.g. frontotemporal dementia), (b) abstract-only papers and (c) articles without full text available. The Newcastle–Ottawa scale was used to assess the risk of bias in individual studies. We calculated the overall pooled relative risk of dementia for different social class indicators, both crude and adjusted for sex, age and the year of the cohort start. Results: Out of 4548 screened abstracts, 15 were included in the final analysis (76,561 participants, mean follow-up 6.7 years (2.4–25 years), mean age at baseline 75.1 years (70.6–82.1 years), mean percentage of women 58%). Social class was operationalised as levels of education, occupational class, income level, neighbourhood disadvantage and wealth. Education (relative risk (RR)=2.48; confidence interval (CI) 1.71–3.59) and occupational class (RR=2.09; CI 1.18–3.69) but not income (RR=1.28; CI 0.81–2.04) were significantly associated with the risk of dementia in the adjusted model. Some of the limitations of this study are the inclusion of studies predominantly conducted in high-income countries and the exclusion of social mobility in our analysis. Conclusions: We conclude that there is a significant association between belonging to a social class and the risk of dementia, with education and occupation being the most relevant indicators of social class regarding this risk. Studying the relationship between belonging to a disadvantaged social class and dementia risk might be a fruitful path to diminishing the incidence of dementia over time. However, a narrow operationalisation of social class that only includes education, occupation and income may reduce the potential for such studies to inform social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The theory that property rights increase household income among low-income households is widely acknowledged, yet empirical studies find scarce evidence of this effect. These studies encounter theoretical deficiencies and methodological challenges of endogeneity and selection bias in making causal inference. This paper examines effects of property rights on income using a control group design and propensity score matching. It employs the continuum of property rights as a conceptual framework, applying it to the case of Zango I social housing project and Paraiso, a slum, in Luanda. Results show the likelihood that property rights increase tenure security and income through the mechanism of home business activities but not through labour market participation or credit access. In contexts where housing projects for low-income groups depend on the informal sector and are located far from city centres, home business activities can be an important mechanism through which property rights may alleviate poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are several factors which have an influence in the selective collection of the municipal waste. To define a selective collection system, the waste generation pattern should be firstly determined and these factors should be analyzed in depth. This paper tries to analyze the economic income level and the seasonal variation on the collection and the purity of light-packaging waste to determine actions to improve the waste management plan of a town. In the first stage of the work, waste samples of the light-packaging containers were collected in two zones of the town with different economic characteristics in different seasons during one year. In the second stage, the samples were characterized to analyze the composition and purity of the waste. They were firstly separated into four fractions: metals; plastic; beverage cartons; and misplaced materials. The misplaced fraction was in its turn separated into cardboard, rubber and leather, inert waste, organic matter, paper, hazardous waste, clothes and shoes, glass and others. The plastic fraction was separated into five types of plastics and the metal fraction into three. In the third stage, the data have been analyzed and conclusions have been extracted. The main result is that the quality of the light-packaging fraction collected in these zones during both seasons were similar. This methodology can be extrapolated to towns with similar characteristics. It will be useful when implementing a system to collect the waste selectively and to develop actions to achieve a good participation in the selective collection of the waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: We examined the development of research articles published in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health and its predecessors Acta Socio-Medica Scandinavica and the Scandinavian Journal of Social Medicine from 1969 until 2020 to be able to identify the place of international comparisons of socioeconomic inequalities in health in the journal. Methods: Altogether 3237 research articles were screened to yield 126 comparative research articles. Examining full texts of the comparative articles led to 13 articles reporting comparisons of health inequalities. Results: The first one came out in 1972, but the rest only after the mid-1990s. The most common socioeconomic indicator was education, but also occupational class and income was used. The most common health indicator was self-rated health. The articles compared Nordic countries with each other, but also with non-Nordic countries. Although the number of comparative studies on health inequalities was relatively small, there were examples of well-designed studies using advanced methodology. We examined only published journal articles over the past five decades, not submitted but rejected papers. Conclusions: In the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health and its predecessors, comparisons of health inequalities were few and emerged relatively late, that is, during the past two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Income is a relevant factor for explaining outbound tourism demand. However, when working with regional- or country-level data, it is difficult to disentangle the role of income in stimulating tourism travelling from other factors that correlate with greater income levels. This paper exploits a natural experiment from Spanish Christmas Lottery to estimate the causal effect of income shocks on outbound tourism. We leverage the staggered and quasi-random assignment of lottery winnings across Spanish regions to estimate the elasticity of outbound annual trips and expenditure to windfall gains. Using difference-in-differences with the amount of lottery prizes as an indicator of treatment intensity, we show that lottery winnings per capita increase both the annual number of tourism trips and expenditure per capita. This effect operates during the first 2 years following the draw, which is likely explained by bandwagon and income multiplier effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working-age households where no-one is in work have become an increasing focus of policy concern even before the economic crisis, and the European Union (EU) has included household joblessness in its new poverty reduction target for 2020. This paper focuses on the variation across EU countries in the prevalence of household joblessness and its impact on income poverty and deprivation, and on the implications for the new EU poverty reduction target. It highlights first that there are some divergences across key data sources in the extent of joblessness. The prevalence of household joblessness varies substantially across EU countries, but there is little evidence of a consistent pattern among groupings of countries often categorized together in terms of welfare regime or geographically. In aggregate there is little association between the overall extent of household joblessness in a country and the percentage in relative income poverty or above a material deprivation threshold. At a micro level, being in a jobless household has a substantial impact on the likelihood of being in relative income poverty or deprived, but the scale of these impacts is shown to be very much greater in some countries than in others, and to vary between single-adult and multiple-adult households. In most EU countries little more than half the working-age adults in jobless households are either income-poor or deprived, so including joblessness in the poverty reduction target does make a difference, without a clearly articulated rationale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion, on the eve of the elaboration of policies designed to help reach the Europe 2020 target of lifting 20 million people out of poverty, it is important to take stock of the outcomes of the Lisbon agenda for growth, employment and social inclusion. The question arises why, despite growth of average incomes and of employment, poverty rates have not gone down, but have either stagnated or even increased. In this paper we identify the following trends: rising employment has benefited workless households only partially; income protection for the working-age population out of work has become less adequate; social policies and, more generally, social redistribution have become less pro-poor. These observations are indicative of the ambivalence of the Lisbon Strategy and its underlying investment paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in basic income proposals. While this is not an entirely new phenomenon, what is different about the current discourse is the Left's wholehearted embrace of what has traditionally been seen as a conservative social policy in Britain. It is my contention that UBI is potentially a dangerous policy for the Left, in that it risks undermining the – admittedly imperfect – welfare protections already in existence. This paper draws on Marxist political economy in order to demonstrate how the emancipatory potential of UBI has been somewhat overstated by some of its Leftist supporters, while a discussion of the neutrality of the State is important in considering how this 'shape-shifting social policy' is likely to be implemented in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Means-tested transfer schemes in Europe and elsewhere tend to include not only income tests but also asset tests of various sorts. The role of asset tests in minimum income protection provisions has been extensively researched in the Anglo-Saxon context. Far fewer authors have assessed the role of asset tests on social policy in a continental European context. Although asset tests may be useful in singling out the more deserving of the poor, we know relatively little of their actual impact on eligibility and social outcomes in European welfare states. This paper looks at the prevalence and design of asset tests in European minimum income protection schemes. We distinguish between two main types of asset tests: outright disqualification when assets reach a certain value, versus a more gradual tapering at a fictional rate of return. We then analyse in greater detail how asset tests in Belgium and Germany, as representatives of these two types, affect minimum income protection eligibility and poverty outcomes. We use the EUROMOD microsimulation model on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey data in order to assess the effects of asset tests. This survey was explicitly designed to more realistically reflect assets and capital incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amongst the claims often made to justify contemporary housing reforms in Australia is that extending choice and opening services to competition will lead to improved outcomes for tenants and encourage service agencies to become more efficient. This paper considers the veracity of 'choice' and 'competition' based reforms by drawing on international examples and the views of practitioners working in the Australian housing sector. Situating Australian reforms in an international context it explores why some practitioners have misgivings about policies that seek to advance 'choice' as the guiding principal for housing reform. The key arguments are first: that interventions to extend individual choice are likely to have only limited traction when organizations are struggling to operate with limited resources and second: households on low incomes often struggle to take up the choices that are made available through these service reforms. In the conclusion, it is suggested that the current Australian housing agenda to extend competition and choice is best situated within the wider setting of neoliberal policymaking. Though both concepts might appeal to those advocating consumer rights, their deployment serves to conceal a broader political agenda – to restructure welfare provision in ways that advantage the commercial sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of COVID-19 (or Novel Coronavirus) pandemic on the income and wage of individuals working in tourism and hospitality industry in India. As the tourism and hospitality industry is a labor-intensive industry, the impact of COVID-19 pandemic-induced economic downturn is expected to be particularly severe here. To estimate this impact, I use a large, representative panel survey from India, and employ difference-in-differences method in this study. The estimated decline in total income ranges between 3.12 and 6.39%, and wage fall ranges between 3.21 and 5.98%, for the sample with individuals who are still earning a non-zero income from this industry. Once I include the individuals who have completely lost their livelihood (zero income) due to COVID-19 pandemic in the sample, impact on income is estimated to be a fall of 58.69% and impact on wage is estimated to be a decline of 58.59%. I also discuss the recommendations made by UNWTO to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on tourism and hospitality industry, and map Indian government's policy measures to those recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies on neighbourhood change attribute a key role to mobility in social upgrading and downgrading patterns, while incumbent processes—i.e. changes in the socioeconomic status of non-migrants—are often ignored. This paper explores the relationship between mobility and neighbourhood change by examining income developments of in-migrants, out-migrants and non-migrants of neighbourhoods in three Dutch cities. The paper demonstrates that in- and out-migration are not the only processes at work and that changes in the socioeconomic status of non-migrants are of importance too. Within upgrading neighbourhoods, incumbent processes of non-migrants seem to be an important driver of upgrading. Furthermore, although in-migrants have relatively low incomes when moving in, they experience strong income gains in the years after in-migrating. The contribution of out-migrants to upgrading is mixed. In line with previous studies, migration reinforces downgrading processes, although at the same time, incumbent processes of non-migrants impede downgrading. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers the origins and traces the history of the Social Fund, an ideologically-motivated social policy departure of the Thatcher era. It identifies the controversy, in research communities amongst others, which surrounded the establishment of the Fund, and considers the evidence of recurring difficulties in its practical operation over a thirty-year period. It then turns to the Coalition administration in Westminster’s decision to divest itself of responsibility for key parts of the Fund, devolving such obligations to local authorities in England, the Parliament in Scotland and the Assembly in Wales. The paper sets out a comparison of the approaches being developed to discharge the Fund’s prior responsibilities in the three nations. It concludes that the essential policy thrust lies in a determination to roll back central state obligations in poverty relief and income maintenance which had hitherto been accepted by all post-war administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the development of Honneth’s thought on work. It considers how his initial concerns with the embodied experience of labour and the absence of a contemporary and compelling class-specific lexicon with which to explore suffering at work have been surpassed and subordinated by his analysis of the social relations of recognition in civil society, which is distributed according to a contested and contestable achievement principle. I argue that despite the purchase of the criticisms offered by recent rejoinders, they fail to engage with the strength of his analysis: that modern economics contains a normative (recognition) order which works to justify the extant division of labour and income, even if its current formulation supports inequity, exclusion and exploitation. Feminist political economy is an ally in this analysis. The paper explores the points of intersection between these projects, but argues that incorporating feminist insights will require a fundamental revision to Honneth’s account of social rationalization in modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air quality has been demonstrated to be an important determinant influencing tourist decision making. In this paper, we investigate the effect of air quality in the place of origin on a resident's tourism consumption and the moderating effect of household income on this relationship. We develop a conceptual framework to rationalize the effect and empirically examine it at the household level using China Labor-force Dynamics Survey data from 2016. The results show that poor ambient air quality increases tourism consumption. Furthermore, this relationship becomes stronger for the higher-income group: One standard deviation increase in the Air Quality Index would increase tourism expenditure as much as a 22.56% increase in family income. The methods of instrumental variable and functional-coefficient regression were employed for robustness analysis. These findings contribute to the literature by providing a new perspective for tourism demand studies and direct implications for tourism management and policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, the notion of 'social investment' (SI) has gained considerable traction in the political debates over welfare state futures. The multifaceted character of SI policy interventions, the effects of policy complementarities and interactions for different social groups and generational cohorts, and the challenge of delineating effects across different time dimensions, we argue, are not (yet) properly addressed by current empirical research. This paper contributes to reorienting the measurement of SI returns into a longer-term perspective, conceptualising them as people's work- and welfare- related outcomes. It operationalises in a novel fashion macro-level data across OECD countries to analyse the medium-term aggregate effects of SI stock, flow and buffer policies with a focus on arguably the most critical stages in the post-industrial life-cycle course: transition into employment and family formation. Our findings imply that the so-called 'Matthew effects', following the biblical proverb 'to him that hath shall be given', identified in previous research stem from a measurement of SI returns conceptualised in a short-term redistributive perspective. Moving on to longer-term returns to SI policies at the societal level reveals positive outcomes for families with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agriculture (UA) has recently received increasing attention in both scholarly and policy cycles as a potential tool for poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper focuses on urban crop cultivation (UCC) and examines men’s and women’s motives and needs in UCC, the (perceived) contribution of UCC to household livelihoods, and the benefits men and women derive from it. Although the contribution of UCC to overall household food and incomes appeared to be modest, for the majority of farming households such benefits were nonetheless greatly valued and bore varied and important meanings for men and women. The paper also examines the implications of recent national UA policy responses in Kenya for urban development and household livelihoods, and for equitable distribution of UA’s benefits for men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the combined problem of high car dependence and housing affordability, in view of likely continued volatility in oil prices (and hence higher petrol and diesel prices), and rising house prices. Household budgets are likely to be stretched where there are high levels of car dependency and housing unaffordability – with little flexibility for rising costs in either or both of these. A composite car dependence and housing affordability (CDHA) index is developed, using indices of oil vulnerability related to car travel and housing affordability. Greater London is used as the case study, with 2001 and 2011 data analysed at the level of Lower Super Output Areas, and presented using Geographic Information System and R statistical software. The findings reveal that there are high levels of composite car dependence and housing price vulnerability in many suburban areas across Greater London, adding to the previous areas of social deprivation found mainly in East London. The composite CDHA index illustrates where the most vulnerable areas are spatially. Many neighbourhoods may become less attractive for those on median or even relatively high incomes. The areas most affected may become much more expensive to live in, potentially leading to much greater pressure on travel and housing costs as people could be forced to live further from the centre of London, including beyond the Greater London boundary, which has further implications for travel. Failing to consider these emerging affordability issues represents an oversight in terms of transport planning in London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of changes in employment status on health within couples have attracted increasing attention. This paper contributes to this emerging research by investigating whether the impact of a partner's employment status on individual self-rated health varies systematically across countries with varying decommodification levels. We use longitudinal data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and hybrid models. We find that a change in an individual's employment status may affect the health not just of the person who experiences this transition, but that of his or her partner. The likelihood that such a spillover will occur varies across countries with different decommodification levels. The negative effects of a partner's employment status on self-rated health are observed when the generosity of welfare state support is limited. The moderating effects of financial support from the state are not very strong, though. They are not robust across all our models and do not extend to all the dimensions of the generosity of welfare state support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Housing is an important determinant of health. Little research has explored hospital and community agency staff perspectives on how to support the housing needs of low-income older adults. Therefore, this paper examines the challenges associated with supporting low-income seniors as they transition from hospital to home and explores what role, if any, patient navigation models of care could have in addressing housing needs. Methods: A thematic secondary analysis that triangulated data from two qualitative studies was used. In total, interviews and/or focus groups with 109 hospital and community care workers were re-analyzed, applying a new interpretive lens to the data to reveal new insights. Data were collected in Ontario, Canada. Results: Participants described how low-income older adults have increasing complex care needs that influence their housing, but housing supports are limited and difficult to navigate. Participants believed further support was needed and suggested that a housing-specific patient navigation model of care may be beneficial, but difficult to implement due to the limitations of existing services. Discussion: Our findings provide a unique perspective on the challenges hospital and community staff face in caring for older adults with housing needs. Patient navigation with a focus on housing may support these older adults. Further work needs to be undertaken to better understand how to best implement sustainable housing patient navigation models of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using data on low-to-moderate-income households in the US Community Advantage Program survey, this paper examines homeownership, neighbourhood characteristics and the interaction between the two on the positive behaviour of children from low- and moderate-income households. To control for potential selection bias and endogeneity problems, propensity score weighting and hierarchical regression are employed to tease apart the effects of homeownership, neighbourhood characteristics and their interaction on child positive behaviour. No effect is found of homeownership or neighbourhood characteristics on children’s positive behaviour when the interaction between the two is not included in the model. However, homeownership was found to have a stronger positive effect on children’s positive behaviour as neighbourhood population density increases and, at approximately 4000 persons per square mile (approximate population density of San Diego, CA), homeownership has a significant positive effect on children’s overall scores on the positive behaviour scale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scholarly interest in the study of education from the perspective of political science has increased rapidly in the last few years. However, the literature focuses on comparing education politics at the country level, neglecting the analysis of micro-level foundations of education policies in terms of individual preferences and their interaction with macro contexts. This paper provides a first step in addressing this research gap, engaging in a multilevel analysis of survey data for a large number of OECD countries. The core research question is how institutional contexts – in this case socio-economic and educational inequalities – shape the micro-level association between the individual income position and support for education spending. The core finding is that these different dimensions of inequality have different implications at the micro level. Higher levels of socio-economic inequality enhance the conflict between the rich and the poor over public investments in education. By contrast, when access to higher levels of education is effectively restricted, the rich are more likely to support public education spending. This is because higher levels of educational stratification ensure that further public investments in education benefit the rich relatively more than the poor, who in turn become less willing to support this kind of public spending. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In what social contexts are rich people more likely to support government redistribution of income? Motivated by the literature on inequality aversion and the literature on the relationship between ethnic fractionalization and redistribution, the paper examines whether the relationship between own income and redistributive preferences depends on the regional level of poverty and the ethnic composition of the poor. Using data from the European Social Survey, the paper demonstrates that support for redistribution among the rich is lower when the proportion of ethnic minorities among the poor is high. Several possible mechanisms to account for this relationship are examined. The paper finds no support for explanations based on more animosity towards the poor or towards ethnic minorities and no support for explanations based on lower social trust or social capital: instead, rich people are less concerned with downward income mobility when the proportion of minorities among the poor is high. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on recent developments in ‘ideal-typical’ welfare analysis, including findings on East Asia, Eastern Central Europe and, for the first time, Latin America. The characteristics of a new ideal-typical welfare regime in large parts of Latin America are singled out, looking at key features of major welfare state systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Environment & Urbanization is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper modifies traditional break-even analysis and develops a model that reflects the influence of variation in payer mix, the collection rate, profitability and autonomous income on the desired volume alternative. The augmented model indicates that a failure to adjust for uncollectibles and the net surplus results in a systematic understatement of the desired volume alternative. Conversely, a failure to adjust for autonomous income derived from the operation of cafeterias, gift shops or an organization's investment in marketable securities produces an overstatement of the desired volume. In addition, this paper uses Microsoft® Excel to develop a spreadsheet that constructs a pro forma income statement, expressed in terms of the contribution margin. The spreadsheet also relies on the percentage of sales or revenue approach to prepare a balance sheet from which indicators of fiscal performance are calculated. Hence, the analysis enables the organization to perform a sensitivity analysis of potential changes in the desired volume, the operating margin, the current ratio, the debt: equity ratio and the amount of cash derived from operations that are associated with expected variation in payer mix, the collection rate, grouped by payer, the net surplus and autonomous income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data derived from participant observation and stories told by people in Chegutu, Zimbabwe, this paper argues that urbanites who engage in informal economic activities sometimes defend their right to the city through repertoires of quiet encroachment. To that end, findings from this study demonstrate the connection between the micro (Chegutu) and the macro (across Zimbabwe) in relation to the nature of economic activities people carry out in response to the prevailing poor material conditions. The ability of urban subalterns to secure their livelihoods has been dealt a heavy blow by reckless neoliberal economic restructuring and gross economic mismanagement by the political leadership in Zimbabwe. This article complements the growing body of literature on the urban informality by analysing the various ways people sustain their livelihoods in an economy where market-driven production has replaced national capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on qualitative data, in this article the authors apply Katz's conceptual framework of agency as resilience, reworking and resistance practices to theorise UK migrant workers' responses to worsened employment conditions, stress of unemployment and reduced incomes during the Covid-19 pandemic. The article draws attention to the range of micro practices these workers adopted to survive and rework existing conditions to their advantage – actions which rarely feature in academic writing, yet which recognise those who do not 'resist' as conscious agents who exercise power. Meanwhile, although outright oppositional responses to deteriorating employment conditions are rare, the article demonstrates the nature of workplace union representation as a central factor in resisting managerial control. The article extends Katz's framework by considering the 'how' and 'why' behind migrant workers' responses, to understand better their dynamic choices of resilience, reworking and resistance practices in the chaotic circumstances of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, disappointing poverty trends and welfare state limitations in many European countries – including constraints on minimum income benefits – have paved the way for a larger role of the third sector. An interesting but controversial form of third-sector in-kind support is food aid provision. In Europe, food aid is, so far, a non-rights-based practice displaying worrisome discretionary and stigmatizing characteristics. Yet, the phenomenon of food aid in Europe has spread, professionalized, and penetrated the institutions of the welfare state. This raises the question if, how and to what extent food aid plays a role in bypassing structural constraints on minimum income protection. This article applies an exploratory case study approach to estimate the monetary value of food aid in relation to statutory minimum incomes in four EU-countries. We use cross-nationally comparable food reference budgets to price food aid packages in Belgium, Finland, Hungary and Spain. The results show that food aid, although not sufficient to close the at-risk-of-poverty gap, is non-trivial for some European households. In Spain and Belgium food aid packages can reach up to €100 a month (expressing 7% to 11% of respective minimum income benefit levels). Importantly, we perceive (formalized) cooperation and interaction between local welfare agencies and food charities in all countries, suggesting that welfare state actors use non-rights-based food aid for filling gaps in the social safety net. The large between- and within-country variation of the monetary values of food aid packages points, however, to food aid as a problematic discretionary practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the rise in employment, consistently high EU-average poverty rates continue to generate debates about the factors that explain the level and changes in the relative poverty rate, both within and across countries. Assuming a strong negative correlation between poverty and employment, the article investigates the role of four mechanisms responsible for this blurred relationship. Using decomposition analysis and macro-level regression analysis, we investigate the extent to which (i) the distribution of employment across households with different levels of work intensity, (ii) the expansion of non-standard work, (iii) the change in the effectiveness of social welfare systems, and (iv) the change in median income and the corresponding shift in the poverty threshold have contributed to changes in relative income poverty in the last decades. We found that employment growth benefits poverty reduction, but this positive effect was partially offset by the precarious characteristics of some newly created jobs. If the distribution of jobs had favoured the jobless more in the pre-crisis period, the relative income poverty rate would have been lower. Although the share of persons in jobless households decreased during the recovery years, their risk of poverty increased due to the retrenchment of social transfers during and after the Great Recession. Furthermore, the use of a floating threshold, which is linked to changes in median income, underestimates the strength of the relationships between poverty, employment and social transfers: when the poverty threshold is kept fixed, not only do the dynamics of poverty look different, but the estimated coefficients are considerably larger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Prior studies on emerging economies contend that increasing returns to human capital has contributed to the growth of wage inequality over the last few decades. However, this explanation fails to account for an important dynamic of contemporary wage inequality: the growth of top labor incomes. Research on advanced economies show the emergence of a wage premium in the financial sector increased top labor incomes, but studies have yet to investigate whether a financial wage premium is contributing to the growth of top labor incomes in emerging economies. The present study addresses this theoretical and empirical gap by conceptualizing and measuring the financial wage premium across the distributions of labor income in the most important subset of emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC). Drawing on harmonized labor force data from the Luxembourg Income Study, we utilize unconditional quantile regression modeling and treatment effect estimation to examine the financial wage premium across the distributions of labor income in the BRIC before and after the Great Recession. Consistent with studies on advanced economies, we find a substantial wage premium among top earners in the financial sectors of the BRIC, which has grew in the post-recession period. However, we find significant variation in size and growth of the financial wage premium because of the variegated nature of financialization across the BRIC. We conclude by suggesting that subsequent studies should explore the heterogeneous effects of subordinate and state financialization on wage dynamics in emerging economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines changes in earnings of the workers over 1 year. The results show differential impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on income of the workers. The findings suggest that workers, whose occupations were restricted in the initial phase of lockdown, continue to do worse even after lifting the restrictions. Females, casual workers and the less educated are among the worst affected by the economic shock. They continue to lag behind with no sign of catching up with other groups. The study asks for short- and long-term policy measures to address the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current research depicts suburbs as becoming more heterogeneous in terms of socio-economic status. Providing a novel analysis, this paper engages with that research by operationalising suburban ways of living (homeownership, single-family dwelling occupancy and automobile use) and relating them to the geography of income across 26 Canadian metropolitan areas. We find that suburban ways of living exist in new areas and remain associated with higher incomes even as older suburbs, as places, have become more diverse. In the largest cities the relationship between income and suburban ways of living is weaker due to the growth of condominiums in downtowns that allow higher income earners to live urban lifestyles. Homeownership is overwhelmingly more important than other variables in explaining the geography of income across 26 metropolitan areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides a novel axiomatic analysis of exploitation as the unequal exchange of labour in economies with heterogeneous optimising agents endowed with unequal amounts of physical and human capital. A definition of exploitation is proposed, which emphasises the relational nature of exploitation and the resulting inequalities in the allocation of labour and income. It is shown that, among all of the major definitions, this is the only one which satisfies two formally weak and normatively salient axioms, and allows one to generalise a number of core insights of exploitation theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New public transport investment can improve accessibility for existing and new users of the urban transport network and this can lead to land value uplift with uplift benefits being distributed in relation to the proximity of the location of the property to the infrastructure. This paper quantifies land value uplift and its spatial distribution for accessibility to different destinations for residential properties around a new-build Liverpool Parramatta transitway for buses in a suburban area of south-west Sydney, Australia. Geographically weighted regression (GWR) is used to take account of spatial dependency in the estimation process with the results being presented in map form. Results indicate that property prices are mainly determined by the property’s internal features and the neighbourhood effects, but accessibility by car and accessibility to employment along the transitway also contribute non-marginally. The GWR local model shows that accessibility varies significantly over geographical space demonstrating the advantages of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The effects of the Great Recession on housing equity and homeownership have been well-documented. However, we know little about how rental households fared and the efficacy of housing subsidies in addressing affordability gaps. This paper examines the extent to which rental housing became less affordable for Extremely Low-Income (ELI) households – those earning less than 30% of the Area Median Income (AMI). I then run regression models to determine the local characteristics most strongly associated with larger affordability gaps, with a focus on whether housing subsidies are effective at combating such gaps. Rental affordability gaps became more pronounced during the Great Recession. In nearly 70% of the counties in my sample, there was an increase from 2007 to 2010 in the number of ELI households per affordable rental unit. Across the country, the increase was 17%, a dramatic increase in only three years. There is considerable variation across the country, with acute affordability crises often concentrated in the South, particularly Florida. Regression models provide compelling evidence that housing vouchers, public housing, and project-based Section 8 subsidies play an important role in limiting the extent to which large numbers of ELI households are competing for a shortage of low-cost rental units. However, these programmes do not respond quickly to local needs – such as those brought about by the Great Recession. A pilot study where local housing authorities had funding to be more agile and responsive would be an important step toward crafting better policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of hukou and college education on job placement and wage attainment for Chinese rural migrant workers in the cities. The analysis of the 2010 Chinese General Social Survey shows that when rural-born individuals gain both urban hukou and college education, they enjoy equal job-sector placement and they earn significantly higher wages than the college-educated locals. But in the absence of a rural-to-urban hukou transfer, migrants have fewer opportunities to go to college than local peers, and even college education does not gain a migrant an equal chance of working in the state sector or receiving equal earnings. A major contribution of this study is to suggest a nine-category analytic scheme, which takes into account how education, hukou and type of workplace affect one another in jointly influencing labour market inequality between rural migrants and urbanite workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life satisfaction and motives for moving home are complex entanglements, reflecting multiple desires and experiences. The aim of this paper is to show that a focused analysis of satisfaction with particular life domains can prove that changing a place of residence is not only a life stressor, but also a positive means leading to enduring improvements in individual satisfaction. Using the British Household Panel Survey we examine overall life satisfaction and satisfaction in various life domains such as housing, job, social life, household income, spouse/partner and health, both prior to and after moving. A temporal pattern of movers’ satisfaction for a number of years before and after the move is derived employing a fixed-effects panel data model. Our results reveal that residential relocation increases housing satisfaction considerably. The positive effect of moving on housing satisfaction is much stronger and endures longer for those with a sustained desire to relocate ahead of movement. Despite some decrease over time, five years after moving survey respondents still had significantly higher housing satisfaction than before their move. Changes in satisfaction with other life domains are much less pronounced and no lasting improvements in satisfaction are observed for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study analyses the role of generalized trust and control in households' employment of domestic help. Applying a basic trust game with uncertainty, we argue that households differ in their estimate of the proportion of opportunistic domestic workers, variation which we ascribe to generalized trust. Households with low trust should estimate a lower proportion of non-opportunistic individuals, making them less willing to accept a domestic worker. Control, through direct supervision of the domestic worker, is assumed to serve as a substitute for trust and is expected to increase acceptance. We also consider the role of income, which we expect to alter the relation between the potential losses and gains associated with outsourcing. To test our hypotheses, we use a factorial survey conducted in 2020 in Germany and the UK (N = 1877) which enables us to explore the robustness of the effects across countries. Experimental results show that individuals are more accepting of domestic outsourcing if they have higher trust, higher income, and if control of the worker is easily possible. Interaction effects reveal that the positive effect of higher trust and higher income is only relevant in low control situations. This suggest that households with higher trust and income have an advantage when it comes to fully utilizing the benefits of domestic help since costly control is not required. Consequently, the results substantially contribute to existing literature on explaining causes of social inequality in service use beyond financial restrictions and shed light on the complex interplay of trust and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the European Union (EU) increasingly strengthens its social integration, opposition towards this process can also be observed, here defined as 'welfare Euroscepticism'. To better understand this newly defined policy paradigm, this article aims to explain longstanding cleavages in both social policy and EU research: socioeconomic status (SES) divides. Contrary to the literature on public support for European integration, this article argues that higher SES groups are more likely to be welfare Eurosceptics than lower SES groups. This argument and its underlying explanations are examined through a multilevel approach using European Social Survey data from 18 EU member states, using the example of a potential EU-wide minimum income scheme. First, the results demonstrate that welfare Euroscepticism is indeed more prevalent among higher SES groups than lower SES groups (measured through occupation, education, income, and employment). The results indicate robust self-interest patterns among higher SES groups that do not want to carry (perceived) financial burdens of EU social policies. The opinion patterns also emphasize the multidimensionality of attitudes towards EU policies since the SES cleavages can reverse, depending on the policy in focus. Overall, the results indicate much potential to mobilize the larger proportion of the public to support EU social policies, that is, lower SES groups. However, potential conflicts may arise when the EU expands on policies that their traditional supporters – higher SES groups – are more likely to oppose. The article also shows that welfare solidarity on the individual and the country level can mitigate such conflicts. This is because higher levels of welfare generosity and lower levels of welfare chauvinism on the individual and the country level are related to smaller SES cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Focusing on the relationship between unpaid labor and the occurrence of depressive symptoms, this study aimed to explore the factors influencing the inequality of depressive symptoms and their contribution among Chinese urban and rural employed people. Methods: This study utilized the 2020 China Family Panel Studies' national resampling data. Multivariate logistic regression was used to explore the factors influencing the occurrence of depressive symptoms among employed persons in urban and rural areas in China, respectively. Fairlie decomposition was used to explore the contribution of influencing factors such as unpaid labor to the difference in the occurrence of depressive symptoms between urban and rural areas. Results: About 2,136 (21.70%) participants had depressive symptoms, of which 1,197 (24.75%) rural employed people had depressive symptoms and 939 (18.75%) urban employed people had depressive symptoms. The results of Fairlie decomposition analysis showed that 70.51% of the differences in depressive symptoms between urban and rural Chinese employed people could be explained by the covariates included in this study, including education level (52.44%), age (−11.91%), housework time (10.42%), self-rated health status (10.22%), self-rated income status (2.53%), exercise (2.36%), job satisfaction status (1.99%), chronic disease status (1.90%), and marital status (1.79%). Conclusion: This study found that the proportion of depressive symptoms was lower among urban employed residents than among rural employed residents. This difference was mainly caused by unpaid labor time, socioeconomic status, personal lifestyle, and health status. Housework, which is one of the unpaid labor, contributed to this depressive symptom difference in the third place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]