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"Leaving no one behind" (LNOB) constitutes one of the core principles underpinning the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We propose a complementary fuzzy logic approach to identify countries left behind in human development and each of its dimensions. We find that the countries left furthest behind at the beginning of the century were those that most reduced gaps with respect to better performing countries after two decades. Nevertheless, we cannot clearly speak of convergence in human development. There are notable exceptions, such as the Central African Republic, Liberia, Yemen, Haiti or Venezuela, which despite the improvement in their Human Development Index worryingly increased their gaps in human development dimensions relative to the rest of the world. Our analysis highlights significant advantages of using the proposed fuzzy-based LNOB approach to incorporate the moral imperative of leaving no country behind in the measurement of human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is considerable research evidence showing that immigrants are at great risk of poverty, there have been few comparative analyses of the poverty gap between immigrants and natives across Europe. We examine the patterns of variation in the immigrant-native poverty gap between and within countries. We simultaneously combine characteristics of households from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and some key country-specific factors, distinguishing among mixed and non-mixed immigrant households and natives. The main findings for 2012 reveal that immigrants, especially non-mixed immigrant households, are exposed to a higher risk of poverty than natives, though this gap varies across countries. We find evidence of significant household-level effects, but the contribution of country-level variables to explain cross-country differences in the poverty gap is substantially higher. Concerning household characteristics, employment and being young have less effect (positive and negative, respectively) on immigrants than on natives, while each additional child has a more negative effect. Education seems to have a lower effect on the likelihood of being poor for non-mixed immigrant households than for natives and owning a house reduces this likelihood more for non-mixed immigrant households. In terms of country-level factors, labour market and social benefits seem to be equally important for both natives and immigrants. We also compare the results in 2012 with those for 2007 to check for possible changes over time related to the influence of the economic cycle on the poverty gap and/or on the importance of household- and country-level factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macroeconomic conditions can have a substantial effect on the economic circumstances of individuals and therefore on the golf demand in a country. Using panel data on golf demand (number of golf players) and supply (number of courses), and indicators of the economic situation for 15 European countries, encompassing years 2000 through 2014,weestimate a dynamic panel datamodel inorder to evaluate the influence of the economic conditions and golf supply on the number of registered golfers. Economic situation is assessed through two variables: the gross domestic product (GDP) and the main stock market index of each country.We also test the hypothesis of uneven effects of the GDP before and after the beginning of the economic recession. The most crucial finding is that from the start of the financial crisis, the level ofGDP imposes statistically significant effect on golf demand, making those countries with higher GDP per capita the ones whose golf demand is harmed the least by the financial crisis. The number of golf players responds to the state of the economy after the start of the economic downturns, while the high persistence of the golf demand makes it rather difficult to find significant differences in the changes inGDP before the recession.Wealso find that the number of golf courses is not seen to bear a close relationship with the number of players unless we control for economic factors and business cycle. Within the economic factors, the level of development of a country, as measured by GDP per capita, outweighs stock market role in determining the demand for golf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses to what extent differences in the characteristics of individuals (micro-level perspective) and country-specific factors (macro-level perspective) can explain country differences with respect to material deprivation levels. Thus, our work aims to simultaneously consider the macro dimension and the predominantly individually-oriented study field of material deprivation using multilevel techniques. We make use of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Our results show that country-specific factors seem to be much more relevant than individual effects in explaining country differences in material deprivation. We estimate that the introduction of country-specific factors reduces the proportion of total variance due to between-country differences in deprivation by 72.7 percent, while individual-level variables reduce this proportion by only 9.4 percent. We also show, through interaction variables, that the effect of sociodemographic characteristics can be shaped by institutional and structural factors, especially by the level of GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Spain was one of the worst-hit countries, although not all areas and social groups were affected equally. This study focuses on Malaga, a cosmopolitan tourist destination located on the southern Mediterranean coast that has the sixth largest population in Spain. Specifically, it examines the relationship between multidimensional vulnerability and COVID-19 infection rates across the city's census tracts for the period February 2020 to February 2021. The analysis uses high frequency (daily) data on the accumulated incidence of the disease at 14 days and shows that COVID-19 did not spread symmetrically across the census tracts of Malaga but had a greater impact on the most vulnerable neighbourhoods. However, the pattern of this relationship was not uniform in the period examined, with specific contextual factors driving the higher infection rates across time. Our findings show that pandemic containment regulations cannot overlook vulnerability considerations and universal restrictions to reduce the spread of disease should be supplemented by targeted regulations for specific areas., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Housing deprivation is a key determinant of the capacity to prevent infection and to recover from a disease because poor housing prevents adequate sheltering during a quarantine. We analyze the degree of housing deprivation faced by households in European countries when COVID-19 lockdown measures were enacted. To do so, we propose a synthetic measure that includes more dimensions than the official Eurostat indicator of severe housing deprivation. We use a fuzzy set approach to measure housing deprivation so that, unlike traditional deprivation approaches, based on a dichotomous variable, we can identify different degrees of housing deprivation for each household in the population. We find similar orderings of housing deprivation dimensions by country with the highest degree of deprivation in the living space dimension and the lowest one in the standard housing or technology deprivation dimension. Nonetheless, housing deprivation levels differ across countries, with Eastern European households being significantly more housing deprived than the rest when the lockdown began. This result shows that the effects of the lockdown on social well-being have not affected all Europeans equally and emphasizes the need for government measures that promote decent housing., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

This paper examines the effects of growth and recession periods on child mortality in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) during the period 1990-2010. We provide empirical evidence of uneven effects of variations in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita on the evolution of child mortality rate in periods of economic recession and expansion. A decrease in GDP per capita entails a significant rise in child mortality rates, whereas an increase does not affect child mortality significantly. In this context, official development assistance seems to play a crucial role in counteracting the increment in child mortality rates in recession periods, at least in those LDCs receiving greater aid., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)