Comparing Care Regimes in Europe

Throughout Europe, the family is still an important provider of care, but welfare state policies of individual countries may support and/or supplement the family in different ways, generating different social and economic outcomes. This article compares and categorizes care strategies for children and elderly persons in different member states of the European Union, while also taking into account the varied modalities for providing care, like leave arrangements, financial provisions, and social services. In EU countries, care regimes function as “social joins” ensuring complementarity between economic and demographic institutions and processes. As these processes and institutions change, they provide impetus for care regimes to change as well. However, because ideas and ideals about care are at the core of individual national identities, care regimes also act as independent incentive structures that impinge on patterns of women's labor market participation and fertility.     

Financial Support from the Family Network and Illegal Immigration

Barriers to immigration of low‐skilled workers from developing countries into the advanced countries prevent many potential migrants from leaving their countries of origin. With very low home‐country wages in relation to the cost of undocumented migration, the opportunity to migrate often hinges on the possibility of obtaining credit from a human smuggling organization or family and friends. This paper examines the conditions under which migration is optimal for an individual who lacks liquid assets, with a focus on alternative options for financing migration costs. One is by accumulating the required amount of savings out of source‐country income, with or without financial support from the family or social network. The other is debt‐bonded migration, which involves borrowing from a smuggling organization and paying off the loan while working in the host country. I find that greater financial support from the family network increases the attractiveness of debt‐bonded relative to self‐financed migration.     

子女迁移背景下代际支持对农村老人生理健康的影响

利用相关跟踪调查数据,采用个体增长模型,结合农村实际状况,考察代际支持对农村老人生理健康的纵向影响。获得经济支持和日常照料对老人生理健康的发展有显著影响,提供经济支持和日常照料对老人生理健康的发展也有一定的显著影响,体现了代际支持对健康的选择效应和用进废退理论。在经济和健康的允许下,利他行为有利于老人生理健康的发展。"享清福"的观念有待思考。生活满意度和抑郁能够直接或通过代际支持间接地影响老人生理健康的发展。     

Does providing informal elderly care hasten retirement? Evidence from Japan

This paper examines the implications of providing care to elderly parents for adult children's retirement plans using micro data from a Japanese survey. We find no significant effect of caregiving on family caregivers’ planned retirement age if we do not take into account caregiving intensity but find a negative and significant effect on retirement plans for intensive caregivers, particularly among women. These findings suggest that relying on family members to provide elderly care can pose a serious challenge to the ongoing efforts of the government to promote the labor supply of women and the elderly as a way of addressing the shrinkage of the working‐age population in Japan. The estimation results suggest that ensuring access to formal care services can help family members reconcile their paid work with caregiving requirements, thereby alleviating the adverse effect of caregiving on their retirement plans. The results also suggest that the financial burden of formal care services could require caregivers to postpone retirement in some cases.     

城市居民的居住期望及其对养老方式选择的影响

以城市居民为研究对象,从江苏省四个城市随机抽取813位居民进行访问式问卷调查,以居住安排与养老方式的关系作为分析视角,从个体特征,家庭的社会经济地位,居住结构状况,养老观念等几个纬度出发,经由交互分析和Logistic回归分析的方法,具体阐明了城市居民的居住期望和养老意愿的现状,并进而论证了影响他们做此选择的可能因素。多数城市居民老年时将独自(与配偶)居住,依靠社会化养老或自我服务可能会成为城市居民安度晚年的主流形式。     

“One Man,One Dollar”? Campaign contribution limits,equal influence,and political communication

Arguably the most important campaign finance regulations in U.S. federal elections are limits imposed on individual campaign contributions. One of the principal arguments in support of these contribution limits has been that they equalize the influence of individual donors and thereby cause candidates' aggregate financial resources to more accurately reflect public support. I construct a formal model to evaluate this argument. The analysis shows that a necessary condition for it to apply is that a candidate's reliance on large contributions is negatively related to voter-preferred characteristics which cannot be credibly revealed through campaign advertisements. Using data on elections to the House of Representatives between 1992 and 2000, I find no evidence that such a relationship exists. This result casts doubt on the equalization argument in support of campaign contribution limits.     

The implications of nurse staffing information: the real value of reporting nursing data

There is a dearth of information about the relationship between the patient care contributions of nursing and its financial contributions to an organization. As consumers and legislators are becoming more aware of the ramifications of nurse staffing issues, and as they endeavor to address them with legislative solutions, the decision on how best to develop optimal staffing strategies may soon be taken away from nursing leaders. To maintain control of this important issue and develop solutions that will help highlight the economic and patient care contributions of nurses, a thorough understanding of the problem, and a new commitment are needed from nursing leaders to take charge of the issue. To relate nursing care to patient outcomes, meaningful data on the nursing care provided is needed in addition to data on the nursing needs of patients. Staffing and performance monitoring tools should be used to effectively plan, implement, and control financial and operating resources as well as measure the economic value of the nursing profession's contribution to the cost and benefits of patient care.     

The effect of physician board membership on uncompensated care provision

Previous studies indicate that nonprofit and for-profit hospitals provide comparable levels of uncompensated care, when taking into account their sizes. This evidence suggests that for-profit hospitals extract some indirect benefit when providing uncompensated care. Our article investigates how physician board membership affects uncompensated care provision. With data for hospitals in California from 1997 to 2010, we estimate a fixed-effect model where uncompensated care is a function of physician board membership, other board attributes, as well as hospital characteristics. Our results indicate that physician board membership in for-profit hospitals relates positively with uncompensated care provision. Prior evidence, such as Goldstein and Ward (2004) and Molinari et al. (1995), has shown that involving physicians in strategic decisions improves hospitals’ financial performance. Our results reinforce the notion that having physicians in leadership or strategic positions benefits for-profit hospitals. In these hospitals, physicians seem to understand the strategic component of providing uncompensated care, possibly due to their closer assessment of patients’ needs.     

更多兄弟姐妹是否降低个人教育成就?—来自中国家庭的微观证据

文章利用多个微观数据集,检验我国家庭内同胞数量的增加是否会降低个体教育成就,以及这种影响是否因个体性别而存在差异.实证结果给出了肯定的答案:兄弟姐妹会对个体产生教育挤占效应,并且这种效应存在显著的性别差异.即个体的兄弟姐妹数量增加,将导致个体的受教育年限下降,无论个体是男是女都如此,但对女性来说这种效应会更加严重.上述结论在多个微观数据集和系列检验中均显示稳健.研究还表明,中国家庭偏好男孩的传统观念以及劳动力市场的性别歧视,是导致同胞数量对女性的教育挤占效应更加严重的重要原因.文章的研究结论对改善女性在教育中受到的歧视具有重要的政策含义.     

中西合璧的老人支持体系——香港所追求的全面照顾模式

以老人照顾体系发展的四个阶段,回顾香港过去五十年来从家庭维系传统孝亲价值,政府角色对照顾责任的厘清,传统家庭对机构照料的忌讳,到近年来从"在社区照顾"发展至"就地养老"的概念;从人口结构的变化、社会经济发展的变迁以及政府角色与责任的不同作了探讨剖析。说明"全面照顾模式"如何结合上述价值与社会体系背景,将政府与民间的各层面力量融入成为全方位、多面向与多选项的照顾体系,说明了对于政策制定者、服务提供者以及社区工作者这又意味着什么样的挑战。     

我国农村计划生育服务机制与转型研究

采用典型案例研究方法,对我国农村计划生育服务发展和转型模式进行研究。我国农村计划生育服务拓展和转型是多重因素共同作用的结果,与当地人口发展、妇幼保健、公共卫生资源和经济社会发展水平密切相关。需要完善计划生育服务财政投入体制,为服务转型和可持续发展提供可靠的制度保证,确立以家庭为基础的计划生育/生殖健康/家庭保健优质服务的战略指导框架,把农村计划生育服务机构建设成促进人口和家庭健康的公共服务系统。     

The health implications of social pensions: Evidence from China's new rural pension scheme

This paper estimates the causal effect of income on health outcomes of the elderly and investigates underlying mechanisms by exploiting an income change induced by the launch of China's New Rural Pension scheme (NRPS). Using this policy experiment, we address the endogeneity of pension income by applying a fixed-effect model with instrumental variable correction. The results reveal that pension enrollment and income from the NRPS both have had a significant beneficial impact on objective measures of physical health and cognitive function of the rural elderly. Pension recipients respond to the newly acquired pension income in multiple ways: improved nutrition intake, better accessibility to health care, increased informal care, increased leisure activities, and better self-perceived relative economic situation. These in turn act as channels from pension income to health outcomes of the Chinese rural elderly.     

Heterogeneity,impatience, and dynamic private provision of a discrete public good

We analyze dynamic private provision of a discrete public good by heterogeneous agents, who differ in terms of their levels of impatience, in a differential game framework. In contrast to the strategic complementarity result for homogeneous individuals, we show that an asymmetric completion Markov perfect equilibrium exists, where the individual contributions and the strategic behaviors depend crucially on an impatience differential: the difference in rates of time preference across groups of individuals. When this differential is insignificant, contributions of both types of individuals are strategic complements. On the other hand, when this impatience differential exceeds a threshold, the contributions of impatient individuals become strategic substitutes, whereas the contributions of patient individuals remain strategic complements. We show that group size has an interesting role to play in the strategic behavior: increasing the number of patient individuals aggravates the incentives to free‐ride by the impatient agents. We also derive a condition under which all the socially beneficial projects get completed in the equilibrium.     

Identifying non-cooperative behavior among spouses: Child outcomes in migrant-sending households

I propose a model of household decision-making under asymmetric information and show that resulting allocations may not be fully cooperative. The model yields a simple test for cooperative decision-making, which I apply to data from China. I find that, when the father migrates without his family, children spend more time in household production, while mothers spend less time in both household production and income-generating activities. This is not consistent with standard cooperative models of the household: simply reallocating time to compensate for the father's absence would cause an increase in household labor for both children and mothers and, if migration occurs in response to a negative shock, we should observe an increase in mothers' time in income-generating activities rather than a reduction. The results also do not appear to be driven by an increase in mothers' bargaining power, as children's human capital is not affected by migration, controlling for income.     

Social Control of Corporate Power: Comment

Economic activity takes place within an institutional framework. The economy, like society, represents a complex of institutions, ranging from the smallest, such as the family, to the largest and most comprehensive, the state (Chavance 2009). Institutional economics offers a broad perspective that brings forward the concept of gender, since gender is a fundamental organizing principle of institutions (Jacobsen 2003). A focus on social provisioning, typical for both feminist as well as institutional economists, leads to a broader understanding of economic activity. This broader approach includes activities like caring and care labor that cannot be entirely understood in terms of individual choices. In this paper, I explore the relationships between care and the economy from the perspective of neoclassical, institutional, and feminist economic theory. Economic theories are a basis for public policies that have a major impact on people’s lives. I argue that changing the dominating economic perspective into feminist-institutional one would improve the situation of care providers, who would, in turn, contribute to the development of society and the economy.     

战略承诺、融资约束与债务选择*——债券市场支持了谁的战略发展

本文旨在从战略承诺视角考察债券市场的资源配置功能。研究显示,自2007年《公司债券发行试点办法》实施以来,债券市场在支持企业的战略发展方面具有重要性。但进一步研究表明,该支持作用只存在于所受融资约束较低的企业中。即：市场化进程较高、终极控制人为国有性质、内部资本市场活跃的上市公司,其战略承诺越高时,越可能采用债券融资方式;而承受较高融资约束的企业的债券融资方式对战略承诺的敏感性则不稳健,或者敏感系数低于前者。这说明债券市场的资源配置功能受到了融资约束的限制,而非缓解了融资约束。进一步来说,“强者恒强、弱者恒弱”是金融资源配置的内在规律,而无论其形式在中介与市场之间如何变化。该结论深化了对金融资源配置功能的理解。依据本文的研究,未来改革既要完善金融体系,更要提升企业负债能力,否则,市场将很难依靠它的内在机制达到均衡配置。     

Nursing home costs and quality of care outcomes

The relationship between cost and quality of care in nursing homes was examined using quality indicator measures of resident outcomes. While each individual quality measure makes only small contributions to costs, when considered across the facility, quality could have a substantial financial impact on the operations of the home.     

The Care Economy in Post-Reform China: Feminist Research on Unpaid and Paid Work and Well-Being

ABSTRACT

As China embarked on the path of economic and social reforms, social provisions from the Maoist era were dismantled, and care responsibilities shifted back from the state to the household. Rural–urban migration, a steep decline in fertility, and increasing longevity have led to changes in the age structure of the population both overall and by region. Using seven different surveys, the eleven contributions in this volume study the distributive consequences of post-reform care policies and the impact of unpaid care responsibilities on women’s and men’s opportunities and gender inequality. Overall, reduced care services have created care deficits for disadvantaged groups, including low-income rural elderly and children. The shifted care burden has also limited women’s ability to participate fully in the market economy and has contributed to rising gender inequalities in labor force participation, off-farm employment, earnings, pensions, and mental health outcomes.     

The Impact of China's New Rural Pension Program on Elderly Labor,Grandchild Care,and Old-Age Support

ABSTRACT

This study examines how a social pension program changes paid work patterns and expectations about the source of future financial support for the elderly in China. Using the 2011 and 2013 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), the study finds that the New Rural Pension Program (NRPP) reduced the hours of farmwork and increased the hours of grandchild care among elderly rural men; and both elderly women and men reported less expected reliance on adult children for financial support when they become infirm. These differential effects probably occur because the size of the pension benefit is very small and because of previous gender differences in farmwork and grandchild care. Additionally, the study shows that adult children reduced out-migration and increased their hours spent in farming activities, indicating that the effect of the NRPP has spilled over to younger members of the household.     

Asymmetric treatment of identical agents in teams

We investigate when identical agents will be treated asymmetrically in a simple team setting. Asymmetric treatment is optimal when the agents’ individual contributions to team performance are strategic complements. Symmetric treatment of identical agents is optimal when the agents’ contributions are strategic substitutes or when they are independent.