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Debate on the role of charitable grant-making foundations often references concerns about their lack of transparency. There has, however, been limited empirical investigation of foundation transparency levels. In this study, we report the largest-ever investigation of transparency among grant-making foundations in England and Wales. Based on a novel dataset, which captures the level of grant-specific data published by more than 2,200 foundations over five years from 2014 to 2018 (inclusive), we find that: (a) overall, these foundations are transparent in their disclosure of grant-specific data; (b) the results also paint a picture of stability – of those foundations with published trustees’ annual reports and accounts in all five years of this study, 78 per cent had the same disclosure practice throughout; and (c) a specific regulatory change mandating grant-specific disclosure has not substantially increased levels of disclosure. This study therefore provides detailed evidence that contributes to and expands the conversation on English and Welsh foundation transparency.

In this study, we examine whether welfare deservingness judgements in the United Kingdom are affected by a bias against claimants from stigmatised social class backgrounds. In the United Kingdom, as in other countries, stereotypes of a perceived social ‘underclass’ are widespread. Political and media discourse frequently portrays members of this ‘underclass’ as lazy, feckless and not genuinely in need of support. Yet despite strong academic interest in perceived welfare deservingness, existing research has largely neglected the role of social class bias in deservingness judgements. To address this gap, we use a novel vignette experiment administered to a representative sample of British respondents to provide the first direct evidence of discrimination against welfare claimants with ‘underclass’ signifiers. We find that the British public are more likely to endorse a sanction against a claimant from an ‘underclass’ background than against an otherwise identical claimant from a less stigmatised class background. We also asked respondents to justify their decisions and, applying computational methods to analyse these free-text responses, we find that ‘underclass’ claimants are more likely to be blamed for violating the conditions of their benefit, while claimants from other class backgrounds are more often given the ‘benefit of the doubt.’ Our findings have important implications for our understanding of the relationship between social class background and public deservingness perceptions, and potentially for the differential treatment of claimants by the benefits system.

Samenvatting In het tweede en derde kwartaal van 2020 was er sprake van een uitzonderlijk grote arbeidsmarktmobiliteit. Dit artikel beschrijft deze mobiliteit en welke groepen het vooral betrof. Daarnaast wordt aandacht besteed aan steunmaatregelen van de overheid tijdens de coronacrisis. De centrale vraag is welke beroepsgroepen tijdens deze coronacrisis vooral werden getroffen en welke daarbij ook aanspraak hebben gemaakt op deze steunmaatregelen. Dit wordt bekeken voor het tweede kwartaal van 2020 door verschillende data-en administratiebestanden aan elkaar te koppelen. Uit de analyse blijkt dat vooral in de dienstverlenende beroepen de coronamaatregelen tot de grootste afname in het aantal werkenden heeft geleid. Werknemers in deze beroepsgroepen waren relatief vaak werkzaam in een bedrijf dat gebruikmaakte van steunmaatregelen (NOW) en dat was ook het geval voor zelfstandigen met een creatief beroep (TOZO). De genuanceerde inzichten per beroepsgroep op basis van de gekoppelde bestanden bieden aanvullende inzichten over de arbeidsmarktdynamiek tijdens de coronacrisis.

Peer-review is widely used throughout academia, most notably in the publication of journal articles and the allocation of research grants. Yet peer-review has been subject to much criticism, including being slow, unreliable, subjective and potentially prone to bias. This paper contributes to this literature by investigating the consistency of peer-reviews and the impact they have upon a high-stakes outcome (whether a research grant is funded). Analysing data from 4,000 social science grant proposals and 15,000 reviews, this paper illustrates how the peer-review scores assigned by different reviewers have only low levels of consistency (a correlation between reviewer scores of only 0.2). Reviews provided by ‘nominated reviewers’ (i.e. reviewers selected by the grant applicant) appear to be overly generous and do not correlate with the evaluations provided by independent reviewers. Yet a positive review from a nominated reviewer is strongly linked to whether a grant is awarded. Finally, a single negative peer-review is shown to reduce the chances of a proposal being funding from around 55% to around 25% (even when it has otherwise been rated highly).

Local state and third sector actors routinely provide support to help people navigate their right to social security and mediate their chequered relationship to it. COVID-19 has not only underlined the significance of these actors in the claims-making process, but also just how vulnerable those working within ‘local ecosystems of support’ are to external shocks and their own internal pressures. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with organisations providing support to\ud benefit claimants and those financially struggling during COVID-19, this paper examines the increasingly situated nature of the claims-making process across four local areas in the United Kingdom. We do so to consider what bearing ‘local ecosystems of support’ have on income adequacy, access and universality across social security systems. Our analysis demonstrates how local state and third sector actors risk amplifying inequalities that at best disadvantage, and at\ud worst altogether exclude, particular social groups from adequate (financial) assistance. Rather than conceiving of social security as a unitary collection of social transfers, we argue that its operation needs to be understood as much more fragmented and contingent. Practitioners exhibit considerable professional autonomy and moral agency in their discretionary practice, arbitrating between competing organisational priorities, local disinvestment, and changing community needs. Our findings offer broader lessons for understanding the contemporary governance of social security across welfare states seeking to responsibilise low income households through the modernisation of public services, localism, and welfare reforms.

Unemployed people in Britain who are in receipt of government welfare benefits can have these benefits stopped if they fail to comply with certain conditions. Such a stoppage is known as a ‘benefit sanction’. The present working paper has two aims: i) to provide an introduction to British system of sanctions, specifically as it applies to unemployed people who are not disabled, and ii) to identify demographic inequalities in the application of sanctions. Using data published by the UK Department of Work and Pensions, we find that some groups of unemployed claimants (younger people, men, and ethnic minorities) are at substantially higher risk of experiencing a sanction. This working paper will be updated at a later date with analyses investigating the drivers of this inequality.

The ‘omnivore’ hypothesis currently dominates the academic literature on the social patterning of taste. It argues that cultural elites no longer resemble the traditional stereotype of an elitist snob. Instead, they are more likely to be ‘omnivores’ with broad tastes encompassing both elite and popular cultural forms. The omnivore hypothesis has inspired more than two decades of research and debate, without a clear resolution. In this article, we argue that progress in the omnivore debate has been impeded in part due to an elision of two distinct interpretations of the omnivore hypothesis: a strong interpretation, which holds that cultural elites are generally averse to class-based exclusivity; and a weak interpretation which holds that, while elites have broad tastes which encompass popular forms, they do not necessarily repudiate class-based exclusion. We demonstrate how drawing this distinction helps to clarify the existing empirical evidence concerning the omnivore hypothesis.

The quantification of longevity risk in a systematic way requires statistically sound forecasts of mortality rates and their corresponding uncertainty. Actuarial associations have a long history and continue to play an important role in the development, application and dispersion of mortality projections for the countries they represent. This paper gives an in depth presentation and discussion of the mortality projections as published by the Dutch (in 2014) and Belgian (in 2015) actuarial associations. The goal of these institutions was to publish a stochastic mortality projection model in line with both rigorous standards of state-of-the-art academic work as well as the requirements of practical work such as robustness and transparency. Constructed by a team of authors from both academia and practice, the developed mortality projection standard is a Li and Lee type multi-population model. To project mortality, a global Western European trend and a country-specific deviation from this trend are jointly modelled with a bivariate time series model. We motivate and document all choices made in the model specification, calibration and forecasting process as well as the model selection strategy. We show the model fit and mortality projections and illustrate the use of the model in several pension-related applications.

This paper compares participation in different forms of political action between natives, immigrants and non-citizen immigrants using data from thirteen European countries across six waves of the European Social Survey. The authors highlight problems associated with previous categorizations of political action, and find that when political action is disaggregated and relative participation between groups is examined, that immigrants’ patterns of participation are not substantially different from those of natives. When comparing citizen immigrants to non-citizen immigrants, previous research has suggested that citizenship acts as a “ticket” to non-institutional, unconventional, confrontational forms of political action. The authors’ findings instead suggest a more complicated relationship between immigrant/citizenship status and preferences for political action since citizenship may facilitate participation in both so-called institutional and extra-institutional activities depending on the context of action.

Quantitative social science (QSS) has the potential to make an important contribution to public policy. However it also has a number of limitations. The aim of this paper is to explain these limitations to a non-specialist audience and to identify a number of ways in which QSS research could be improved to better inform public policy.

De statistiek van de verwachte baanvindduur van werklozen biedt aanvullende informatie op de statistieken die het CBS al publiceert over werkloosheidsduren. Deze baanvindduur gaat over de verwachte baanvindduur van werklozen en is geschat aan de hand van een duurmodel. In deze bijdrage wordt uitleg gegeven over de manier waarop deze baanvindduren zijn samengesteld en hoe deze te gebruiken. Vervolgens worden de meest recente resultaten gepresenteerd.

Patterns of cultural consumption have a strong social gradient which is primarily driven by education, but what explains these educational differences in cultural preferences remains unclear. Explanations based on information processing capacity have gained widespread currency; the perceived cognitive ‘difficulty’ of both appreciating high culture, and of maintaining broad, omnivorous tastes. If, on average, high culture is more complex than low culture then a higher level of information processing capacity may be required to derive enjoyment from it. In contrast, socialization theories suggest that exposure to ‘high’ culture, may explain this gradient, particularly among university graduates with degrees in the Arts or Humanities. To test these two theories we use the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion survey ( n = 1,079) and estimate the association between degree type and measures of cultural preference and consumption, including: film directors, artists, and cultural participation. Compared to non-graduates, arts, humanities, and social science graduates are more likely to enjoy highbrow directors and artists, and are more likely to be cultural omnivores; while graduates from other subjects are not clearly distinct from non-graduates in their cultural preferences. These findings suggest that information processing plays a minor role in shaping the social gradient in cultural consumption.

Following the shooting of Mark Duggan by police on 4 August 2011, there were riots in many large cities in the UK. As the rioting was widely perceived to be perpetrated by the urban poor, links were quickly made with Britain's welfare policies. In this paper, we examine whether the riots, and the subsequent media coverage, influenced attitudes toward welfare recipients. Using the British Social Attitudes survey, we use multivariate difference-in-differences regression models to compare attitudes toward welfare recipients among those interviewed before (pre-intervention: i.e. prior to 6 August) and after (post-intervention: 10 August-10 September) the riots occurred (N = 3,311). We use variation in exposure to the media coverage to test theories of media persuasion in the context of attitudes toward welfare recipients. Before the riots, there were no significant differences between newspaper readers and non-readers in their attitudes towards welfare recipients. However, after the riots, attitudes diverged. Newspaper readers became more likely than non-readers to believe that those on welfare did not really deserve help, that the unemployed could find a job if they wanted to and that those on the dole were being dishonest in claiming benefits. Although the divergence was clearest between right-leaning newspaper and non-newspaper readers, we do not a find statistically significant difference between right- and left-leaning newspapers. These results suggest that media coverage of the riots influenced attitudes towards welfare recipients; specifically, newspaper coverage of the riots increased the likelihood that readers of the print media expressed negative attitudes towards welfare recipients when compared with the rest of the population.

Cultural consumption is often viewed as a form of embodied cultural capital which can be converted into economic rewards (e.g., earnings) because such practices increase the likelihood of moving into more advantaged social positions. However, quantitative evidence supporting this theory remains uncertain because it is often unable to rule out alternative explanations. Cultural consumption appears to influence hiring decisions in some elite firms, in both the US and the UK, but it is unclear whether these processes are applicable to other professional occupations and other labour market processes, such as promotions. We examine these processes using data from Understanding Society, an individual-level panel survey conducted in the UK, allowing us to explore whether cultural consumption predicts future earnings, upward social mobility and promotions. People who consume a larger number of cultural activities are more likely to earn higher wages in the future, to be upwardly socially mobile, and to be promoted. Cultural consumption, then, can function as cultural capital in some labour market settings, potentially contributing to the reproduction of income inequality between generations.

The ‘inequality hypothesis’ proposes that higher levels of societal income inequality have a direct negative causal effect on health. Support for this hypothesis has been mixed; particularly among older people. However, most previous studies have not accounted for people’s exposure to inequality over the long-term. We aimed to address this problem by examining the implications of long-term inequality exposure for older people’s physical health. Data on individual health and covariates were drawn from three large, comparable surveys of older people, covering 16 countries: the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, the Survey of Health and Retirement in Europe and the U.S. Health and Retirement Study. Historical inequality information was derived from the Standardised World Income Inequality Database. We used multilevel regression methods to model the association between long-term average inequality and three measures of physical functioning: grip strength, lung function and self-reported activity limitation. Exposure to higher average long-term levels of inequality was significantly negatively related to objectively measured grip strength and lung function, but unrelated to self-reported limitations (although increasing inequality over time was positively related to self-reported limitations). The grip strength and lung function associations were partially explained by between-country differences in height, and in the latter case this factor may fully account for the apparent effect of inequality. We discuss implications of these results for the inequality hypothesis.

Following the shooting of Mark Duggan by police on 4 August 2011, there were riots in many large cities in the UK. As the rioting was widely perceived to be perpetrated by the urban poor, links were quickly made with Britain's welfare policies. In this paper, we examine whether the riots, and the subsequent media coverage, influenced attitudes toward welfare recipients. Using the British Social Attitudes survey, we use multivariate difference-in-differences regression models to compare attitudes toward welfare recipients among those interviewed before (pre-intervention: i.e. prior to 6 August) and after (post-intervention: 10 August-10 September) the riots occurred (N = 3,311). We use variation in exposure to the media coverage to test theories of media persuasion in the context of attitudes toward welfare recipients. Before the riots, there were no significant differences between newspaper readers and non-readers in their attitudes towards welfare recipients. However, after the riots, attitudes diverged. Newspaper readers became more likely than non-readers to believe that those on welfare did not really deserve help, that the unemployed could find a job if they wanted to and that those on the dole were being dishonest in claiming benefits. Although the divergence was clearest between right-leaning newspaper and non-newspaper readers, we do not a find statistically significant difference between right- and left-leaning newspapers. These results suggest that media coverage of the riots influenced attitudes towards welfare recipients; specifically, newspaper coverage of the riots increased the likelihood that readers of the print media expressed negative attitudes towards welfare recipients when compared with the rest of the population.

Fuel poverty is a risk factor for ill-health, particularly among older people. We hypothesized that both the risk of fuel poverty and the strength of its detrimental effects on health would be increased in areas of colder and wetter climate.Individual data on respiratory health, hypertension, depressive symptoms and self-rated health were derived from the 2008/09 wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Climate data for 89 English counties and unitary authorities were obtained from the UK Met Office. Multilevel regression models (n = 7160) were used to test (i) the association between local climate and fuel poverty risk, and (ii) the association between local climate and the effect of fuel poverty on health (adjusted for age, gender, height, smoking status and household income).Individual risk of fuel poverty varied across counties. However, this variation was not explained by differences in climate. Fuel poverty was significantly related to worse health for two of the outcomes (respiratory health and depressive symptoms). However, there was no significant effect of climate on fuel poverty's association with these outcomes.Although there is regional variation in England in both the risk of fuel poverty and its effects on health, this variation is not explained by differences in rainfall and winter temperatures.

Richard Wilkinson's 'inequality hypothesis' describes the relationship between societal income inequality and population health in terms of the corrosive psychosocial effects of social hierarchy. An explicit component of this hypothesis is that inequality should lead individuals to become more competitive and self-focused, less friendly and altruistic. Together these traits are a close conceptual match to the opposing poles of the Big Five personality factor of Agreeableness; a widely used concept in the field of personality psychology. Based on this fact, we predicted that individuals living in more economically unequal U.S. states should be lower in Agreeableness than those living in more equal states. This hypothesis was tested in both ecological and multilevel analyses in the 50 states plus Washington DC, using a large Internet sample (N = 674,885). Consistent with predictions, ecological and multilevel models both showed a negative relationship between state level inequality and Agreeableness. These relationships were not explained by differences in average income, overall state socio-demographic composition or individual socio-demographic characteristics.

In this article, we have analysed whether graduates from activating learning environments assess themselves as having more generic and reflective competences than graduates who studied in conventional learning environments. We have also investigated whether graduates from different learning environments look back differently on their training for the workplace. Contrary to earlier research we have used data from a large-scale survey among higher education graduates, the ‘Higher education and Graduate Employment in Europe’ project (CHEERS). The CHEERS-data distinguishes different kind of learning environments and 36 different kind of competencies among more than 1,200 graduates from 12 universities in the Netherlands. Results show that graduates from activating learning environments attribute more generic and reflective competences to themselves than graduates from conventional learning environments. In addition, results indicate that the quality of contents of majors and of curriculum design are significantly related to the presence of generic and reflective competences according to the perception of graduates. Finally, results demonstrate that the competences learning ability, analytic competences, working independently and working in a team positively contribute to the development of competences in the later careers of graduates.

In the netherlands, unemployment among immigrants is several times higher than among the native dutch population. Furthermore, immigrants work relatively often in low-level jobs. This is often already the case when they first enter the labour market. In this article we explore how such disadvantages at the time of labour market entry can be accounted for. Special attention is paid to the role of educational qualifications and social background. The data used come from three large-scale school-leaver surveys that were conducted in 1998 among school-leavers and graduates from all types of secondary and tertiary education in the netherlands. Three aspects of the labour market position are analysed: paid employment, permanent employment and occupational prestige. The results of multivariate analysis show that school-leavers from immigrant groups are less likely to have a paid job, are less likely to have a permanent job, and have a lower occupational prestige than native dutch school-leavers. In case of (permanent) employment chances, the effect of ethnic background cannot be ascribed to the attained level of education and social background. With respect to job security the net effect of ethnic background seems then to be related to other, specific ethnic factors. With respect to the occupational prestige achieved by school-leavers, by contrast, the results show that educational qualifications and social background can largely account for the occupational disadvantages suffered by immigrants. When these factors are taken into account, moroccan school-leavers achieve even more occupational prestige than dutch school-leavers.

In dit artikel onderzoeken we of er, los van de conjuncturele ontwikkelingen, sprake is van een structurele verandering in de arbeidsmarktdynamiek in Nederland gedurende de periode 2003-2013. We bekijken verschillende maten voor arbeidsmarktdynamiek: (1) totale reallocatie van werkenden, dat wil zeggen de som van de stromen van werkenden in en uit banen, (2) de afzonderlijke stromen in- en uit banen, (3) stromen in en uit banen verbijzonderd naar stromen van werk naar werk en stromen tussen werk en werkloosheid/inactiviteit. We vinden dat zowel de instroom als de uitstroom uit banen structureel is toegenomen. Deze toename betreft echter vooral stromen tussen werk en geen werk. De baan-baanmobiliteit is niet structureel toegenomen. Mensen vinden na baanverlies minder vaak aansluitend een nieuwe baan en hebben eerst een periode geen werk. De toegenomen flexibilisering komt vooral voor rekening van lager en middelbaar opgeleiden. Zij zien de kans om werkloos te worden structureel toenemen, terwijl de kans om vanuit werkloosheid weer aan de slag te gaan niet is toegenomen.

Maatschappelijke, economische en technologische ontwikkelingen hebben de beroepsloopbanen van mannen en vrouwen de laatste veertig jaar ingrijpend veranderd. De vraag naar hoger opgeleiden is sterk toegenomen. De baan voor het leven is niet meer vanzelfsprekend. Steeds meer werkenden hebben een flexibele arbeidsrelatie of werken als zelfstandige zonder personeel. Vrouwen worden geacht economisch zelfstandig te zijn en stoppen na de geboorte van kinderen meestal niet meer met werken. Om de beroepsloopbanen van individuen in kaart te brengen volstaat het niet om de arbeidspositie te vergelijken tussen personen met verschillende leeftijden, omdat de arbeidspositie verschilt van cohort tot cohort. Er spelen zowel leeftijdseffecten als generatie-effecten (Liefbroer & Dykstra, 2007; Van Gaalen et al., 2013). Het CBS heeft een statistiek over arbeid naar geboortegeneratie en leeftijd ontwikkeld (CBS, 2013). Op basis van deze statistiek wordt in dit artikel een beeld gegeven van de veranderende beroepsloopbanen van opeenvolgende geboortegeneraties.

Background A large proportion of the population of England live in substandard housing. Previous research has suggested that poor-quality housing, particularly in terms of cold temperatures, mould, and damp, poses a health risk, particularly for older people. The present study aimed to examine the association between housing conditions and objectively measured respiratory health in a large general population sample of older people in England. Data and methods Data on housing conditions, respiratory health and relevant covariates were obtained from the second wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Multivariate regression methods were used to test the association between contemporary housing conditions and respiratory health while accounting for the potential effect of other factors; including social class, previous life-course housing conditions and childhood respiratory health. Results Older people who were in fuel poverty or who did not live in a home they owned had significantly worse respiratory health as measured by peak expiratory flow rates. After accounting for covariates, these factors had no effect on any other measures of respiratory health. Self-reported housing problems were not consistently associated with respiratory health. Conclusions The housing conditions of older people in England, particularly those associated with fuel poverty and living in rented accommodation, may be harmful to some aspects of respiratory health. This has implications for upcoming UK government housing and energy policy decisions.

Een startkwalificatie wordt in het Nederlandse onderwijs- en arbeidsmarktbeleid gezien als het minimale niveau om op de arbeidsmarkt aan de slag te kunnen. Zonder een startkwalificatie (minimaal een havo-, vwo- of mbo-diploma op niveau 2) zouden schoolverlaters over te weinig kwalificaties beschikken om een goede intrede te kunnen maken op de arbeidsmarkt en onvoldoende basis hebben gekregen om zich gedurende de loopbaan verder te ontwikkelen (Beckers & Traag, 2005a, 2005b; Bierings & De Vries, 2011; De Vries et al., 2003). In deze bijdrage vergelijken we de eerste vier jaar van de beroepsloopbaan van voortijdig schoolverlaters en schoolverlaters met een startkwalificatie. We kijken daarbij zowel naar de kans op een baan als naar de loonontwikkeling van schoolverlaters met werk. 1

Het aantal zelfstandigen is in de afgelopen jaren toegenomen (Kosters, 2009; SER, 2010). Waren er in 2003 nog 880 duizend zelfstandigen in Nederland; in 2010 zijn dit er ruim een miljoen. Deze bijdrage gaat in op de arbeidsdynamiek van zelfstandigen in Nederland. Hoeveel personen beginnen voor zichzelf, wie beeindigen zelfstandigheid en wat zijn de kenmerken van deze personen? Hiervoor wordt bekeken welk deel van de zelfstandigen een jaar later is veranderd van arbeidspositie. 1 En andersom, welke personen na een jaar vanuit een andere positie zijn begonnen als zelfstandige. Er worden vier arbeidsposities onderscheiden: (1) zelfstandige, (2) werknemer, (3) werkloos en (4) inactief. 2 Bekeken wordt de periode 2003-2004 t/m 2009-2010. Door deze specifieke periode te analyseren kan aandacht worden besteed aan de dynamiek van zelfstandigen voor en tijdens de economische crisis. De cijfers in deze bijdrage zijn afkomstig van de Enquete Beroepsbevolking (EBB) en gaan over personen van 15 tot 65 jaar.

In this paper we investigate the relationship between geographic mobility and education-job mismatch in the netherlands. We focus on the role of geographic mobility in reducing the probability of graduates working (i) jobs below their education level; (ii) jobs outside their study field; (iii) part-time jobs; (iv) flexible jobs; or (v) jobs paid below the wage expected at the beginning of the career. For this purpose we use data on secondary and higher vocational education graduates in the period 1996–2001. We show that graduates who are mobile have higher probability of finding jobs at the acquired education level than those who are not. Moreover, mobile graduates have higher probability of finding full-time or permanent jobs. This suggests that mobility is sought to prevent not only having to take a job below the acquired education level, but also other education-job mismatches; graduates are spatially flexible particularly to ensure full-time jobs. Resumen en este artículo investigamos la relación entre movilidad geográfica y desequilibrio entre educación y puesto de trabajo en los países bajos. Nos centramos en el papel de la movilidad geográfica en reducir la probabilidad de graduados trabajando en (i) trabajos por debajo de su nivel educativo; (ii) trabajos fuera de su campo de estudio; (iii) trabajos a tiempo parcial; (iv) trabajo flexible; o (v) trabajos pagados por debajo del salario esperado al principio de la carrera profesional. Con este propósito utilizamos datos de graduados de educación secundaria y superior vocacional durante el periodo 1996–2001. Mostramos que los graduados que tienen movilidad tienen una probabilidad más alta de encontrar trabajo del nivel educativo adquirido que aquellos que no la tienen. Además, los graduados con movilidad tienen mayor probabilidad de encontrar trabajo a tiempo completo o permanente. Esto sugiere que la movilidad se busca para prevenir no solo el tener que aceptar un trabajo por debajo del nivel educativo adquirido, sino también otros desequilibrios entre educación y puesto de trabajo; los graduados son flexibles espacialmente en particular para asegurarse trabajos a tiempo completo.

A hearing aid, in particular a behind-the-ear hearing aid, comprising a first unit (1) that includes an amplifier (4), a hook (3) formed with a duct (16) and a space (8). A second unit (2) includes an electro-acoustic transducer (12). The second unit is intended to be worn in the ear. A tubular element (15) for the mechanical connection of the two units accommodates connecting means (14) for electrically coupling the transducer (12) to the amplifier (4). The element (15) is axially slidable inside the duct. This enables the hearing aid to be adapted to the size of the ear of the person wearing the hearing aid. The connecting means (14) is long enough so that even for a big ear, the electrical connection is still intact or can be made. When the hearing aid is adapted to a smaller ear, the connecting means (14) is then too long but the space (8) takes up the excess length of the connecting means.