CHILD CARE PRICES AND MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT: A META‐ANALYSIS

The literature estimates for labor force participation elasticity with regard to child care prices are extensive and varying. While some estimates imply substantial gains from child care subsidies, others find insignificant effects. To determine the causes of the variance, this paper reviews and analyzes the elasticity sizes using estimates from 36 peer‐reviewed articles and working papers in the literature. We start by reviewing the theoretical and empirical aspects related to participation elasticity with regard to child care costs, paying special attention to sample characteristics, methodological aspects, and macro level factors. We conclude by providing a meta‐regression using control variables based on our review of the literature to explain some of the differences between the estimates. As research builds on and improves the methods and assumptions in prior works, elasticity estimates have become smaller over time. This decline might also be partially explained by changes in labor market characteristics. In countries with high rates of part‐time work and very high or very low rates of female labor force participation, we find elasticity rates to be smaller.     

On the direct and indirect effects of the Great East Japan earthquake on self rated health through social connections: Mediation analysis

The Great East Japan Earthquake created health hazards for many people. Using Panel Data gathered in Iwanuma city, Japan, at two points in time (in 2010 before the quake, and in 2013 after the quake), we found that the high degree of housing damage negatively affected victims’ self rated health (SRH) (direct effect), and decreased the levels of their social connections, which in turn also had a harmful effect on their SRH (indirect effect). We also found that although the direct impacts of earthquakes disappear relatively quickly, the harmful indirect effects associated with a decrease in social connections are slower to dissipate. We conducted a first-difference two-step GMM estimation to consider the possible problem of endogeneity. The results support the above conclusion, and show that in the short-term, the indirect impacts of the earthquake accounted for 55 % of all the impacts experienced.     

Technologies in caregiving: professionals’ strategies for engaging with new technology

This article explores the adoption of new technology in organisations that provide senior citizen care. Inspired by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, we study how technology reduces complexity by identifying client needs and ensuring predictability in service delivery. However, how technologies are adopted in practice is not determined by technology since it is also structured by care-workers' continuous decision-making. Against this backdrop, we explore how technologies alter the conditions for decision-making in two settings of elderly care, and we describe how care workers seek to adapt technologies to their practical needs as well as conception of care ethics. Developing a systems theory approach, the article eschews a priori assumptions of technological constraint on care-workers’ professional autonomy, offering a more open-ended exploration of diversified strategies for coping with new technology. Our case studies show that employees develop diversified strategies for technology adoption, including both non-usage, heated resistance, excessive embrace, and creative adaption.     

智慧居家养老服务协同供给的优化路径研究——以广西钦州市智慧居家养老项目的实践经验为例

智慧居家养老服务的协同供给可以形成社会联动效应，降低公共服务成本。运用公共服务协同供给分析框架，通过交叉分类方法从协同主体的利益与目标两个变量的耦合性出发分析广西钦州市智慧居家养老项目中养老服务主体间不同种类的协同关系，可以从加强政府领导、形成合作联盟、建立市场标准、创新扶持政策4个方面完善政府、企业、社会组织之间不同类型的协同供给，实现社会资源的高效利用以及向智慧居家养老服务的发展和转变。     

Policy induced increases in private healthcare financing provide short-term relief of total healthcare expenditure growth: Evidence from OECD countries

Healthcare reforms have long been advocated as a cure to the increasing healthcare expenditures in advanced economies. Nevertheless, it has not been established whether a market solution via private financing, rather than public financing, curb aggregate healthcare expenditures. To our knowledge, this paper is the first that quantifies the impact of reforms that significantly increases (decreases) the private (public) share of healthcare financing on total healthcare expenditures relative to income in 20 OECD countries. Our reform measure is based on structural break testing of the private share of total expenditures, and verification using evidence of policy reforms. To quantify the effect of these reforms we apply Propensity Score Matching and Inverse Probability Weighted regression analysis. Over a 5-year evaluation period the reforms lead to an accumulated cost saving 0.45 percentage points of GDP. The yearly effects of the reforms are largest in the first years in the post-reform period and decreases in size as a function of time since the reform. Our findings suggest that the investigated healthcare reforms have a relatively short-lived effect on aggregate health spending relative to GDP. The findings are robust to various sensitivity tests.     

“Going natural”: Black women’s identity project shifts in hair care practices

Hair care, a seemingly mundane consumption practice, is packed with sociocultural meanings and constitutes an important realm of identity work for consumers. Drawing upon existing literature on consumer identity projects, this paper investigates the experiences of urban, Black women in Kenya as they disengage from the normative practice of altering their natural hair texture using chemical straighteners (a practice that conforms to Eurocentric beauty ideals of straight, flowing hair), and adopt the non-normative hair care practice of “going natural,” in which they embrace their natural hair texture and hairstyles. This paper traces the historical, sociocultural, and political events that underpin the normative ideology associated with the identity marker of natural Black hair, and how this ideology influences the women’s “going natural” experience. Findings reveal tensions that emerge in the women’s identity project disengagement and reconstruction process, and how the women navigate their position as they reimagine their embodied identity quest.     

In Data We Trust? An Analysis of Indonesian Socioeconomic Survey Data

What if a popular dataset that has generated a large amount of literature has been misunderstood and has led to misleading inferences? This paper examines household expenditure data from the Indonesian National Socio-economic Survey (Susenas), which started more than 50 years ago. Appropriate use of Susenas data for policy analysis requires an understanding that the survey’s expenditure variable does not measure true out-of-pocket expenses, because it includes subsidies received by households when obtaining goods and services. We also highlight an abrupt change in the survey instrument that occurred in 2015, when the reference period for certain items was extended. For health items, this generated a change in the expenditure series that can be misinterpreted as being the result of a social health insurance reform introduced in 2014 to lower the health care burden on households. Accordingly, we propose a way to account for this artificial expenditure movement in Susenas.     

辽宁省农产品电子商务发展对策分析

文章运用SWOT方法分析了辽宁省农产品电子商务的应用现状，运用SPSS软件进行了电子商务与第一产业关系的实证研究，并在此基础上提出了有针对性的对策建议。     

我国区域经济发展态势分析与展望

2007年我国中西部地区经济增长速度首次超过东部地区,区域经济继续保持普遍加速高位运行态势,地区差距继续向趋缓方向发展:增长速度继续呈"西部东部快、中部慢"格局,差距继续有所缩小;经济总量继续呈"东部大、中西部小"格局,总量比重结构差距呈"地带缩小、省区拉大"态势。2008年我国区域经济将继续保持良好发展趋势,增长速度可能稍有放缓,区域差距将继续保持"绝对差扩速放缓、相对差距略有缩小"态势。本文提出了2008年区域经济协调发展的若干对策建议。     

Efficiency outcomes of market concentration and managed care

The paper examines how hospital cost efficiency has reacted to extensive horizontal integrations of hospitals and rapid growth of managed care in the US health care industry. Cost efficiency is estimated by using panel data approaches to relax the assumptions for the hospital effects imposed in earlier studies. The paper shows that higher managed care penetration over time is associated with greater hospital efficiency, and higher market concentration is positively associated with efficiency when markets are highly competitive or highly concentrated.