Academic literature on the topic 'Socio-economic status (SES)'

Aim: Subjective appraisals of socio-economic status (SES) are robustly associated with health outcomes, even when controlling for objective SES. Is this because objective SES is not accounted for in a sufficiently exhaustive way? Methods: I pool eight waves of nationally representative survey data from Germany (German General Social Survey, 2004–18, N=13,557) to assess the association between two separate subjective appraisals of SES (a 10-point scale and subjectively chosen social class membership) and poor self-rated health using logit and linear probability models. I account for an exhaustive range of objective SES variables, including respondents’ household incomes and social status, as well as occupational status, social class and education of respondents and of their partners, fathers and mothers. Results: The association between subjective SES and poor self-rated health remains stable, even when accounting for a wide range of objective SES markers. This is true for both subjective SES measured on a 10-point scale and as a subjective class identification. Conclusions: Even when controlling for a large number of objective SES markers, subjective SES and self-rated health are linked, suggesting that subjective assessments of SES are meaningful measures of SES which form a distinct pathway to health.

The health status of any country depends on the socio-economic status (SES) and the per capita income of its citizens. The SES also decides the affordability and utilization of the health facilities. Constant changes in the price of goods in the country due to inflation make it mandatory to constantly update the income-based socioeconomic scales. This paper attempts to provide updates in Kuppuswamy, B.G. Prasad and udai pareek socioeconomic scales for 2017.

The study focuses on the socio-economic status (SES) of slum dwellers in Varanasi city. From the five wards of Varanasi slums, 200 households were interviewed with a predesigned questionnaire. To show the status of the families in the slum, we used Kuppuswamy's socio-economic class. The average score of Kuppuswamy'ssocio-economic status of slum dwellers is 7.7. In Varanasi city, based on the Kuppuswamy SES score, families belong to Upper-lower SES, and their average SES is seven. The states should focus on poverty, unemployment, income, and essential services in city areas. The present study suggests improving the socio-economic condition, which led to improved social, educational, and income status in slums.

Background: Areas of low socio-economic status (SES) have a disproportionate number of emergency medical admissions; we quantitate the profile of multi-morbidity related to SES. Methods: We developed a logistic multiple variable regression model, based on over 15 years of hospital data, to examine the effect of socio-demography on hospital outcomes. Results: Admissions from low SES cohort were a decade younger, and had a shorter hospital stay, and lower 30-day episode mortality outcome. The number of morbidities was equivalent between groups, but the more disadvantaged were more likely to have a respiratory diagnosis or diabetes. Conclusion: Low SES emergency admissions present > 10 yr. earlier than the high SES population; their equivalent multimorbidity, despite a lower age, could reflect accelerated disease progression.

This article documents differences in cognitive development, as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), between children from households with high and low socioeconomic status (SES) in two different phases of early childhood in four developing countries. A large number of potential mediators, such as urban residence, preschool attendance, early nutrition, caregiver’s education, and primary school attendance are discussed. Overall, the SES gradient is reduced but persists in most countries even when controlling for all the mediators. The mediational analysis shows that, while urban residence, caregiver’s education and early nutrition appear as significant mediators of the SES-PPVT relation for all countries and most ages, the size of the effect varies widely. For instance, after adding all mediators, the magnitude of the SES-PPVT relation drops by almost half in Peru (mainly due to urban residence), India (mainly due to caregiver’s education at age 5 and urban residence at age 8) and Vietnam at age 5 (mainly due to caregiver’s education). However, it only drops by one third in Ethiopia (mainly due to caregiver’s education at age 5 and urban residence at age 8). The relative importance of each mediator also changes depending on children’s age. Preschool attendance only appears as a minor mediator in Ethiopia and Vietnam at age 5, while primary school attendance does not appear as a significant mediator in any country.

<span lang="EN-US">Due to the rapid development and dynamics of education, parents are becoming increasingly focused and concerned about their children’s education. Parents have a significant influence on students’ academic performance (AP) based on various perspectives, one of which is socio-economic status (SES). A systematic literature review is required to provide an overview for educators and policy makers in Indonesia to address problems that arise in students’ AP due to SES factors. However, there are limited research studies that systematically review the literature on SES in regards to students’ AP. This study was guided by the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) review protocol employing two databases: Scopus and Google Scholar, regarding students’ SES and student AP. There were 316 articles were screened and 51 articles that met the predetermined criteria were obtained. This study performed content analysis to codify, organize categories, and develop themes. Based on the thematic analysis, this study grouped three main themes: SES based on student roles, SES based on teacher roles, and SES based on family roles. This review contributes to the existing literature by providing direction for further research and as a catalyst for developing new literacy related to SES in education.</span>

ABSTRACTThis study explored associations between socio-economic status (SES) at different phases in the lifecourse and regular internet use among older adults. A sample (N = 11,035) from the 2010 wave of the United States Health and Retirement Study was used. Odds ratios were estimated to explore the relationship between regular internet use in older adulthood and measures of SES in childhood and in adulthood, and cumulative SES. Findings provided support for the lifecourse perspective, suggesting that variations observed among older adults are reflective of cumulative experiences. Three main themes emerged: higher SES in childhood increased the odds of being an internet user in older adulthood; SES advantages tended to accumulate, so that having at least one period of high SES in the lifecourse increased the odds of being an internet user in older adulthood; age did not appear to modify the positive relationship between cumulative SES and internet use.

Stress research is an important area in medical sociology. Psychosocial stress accounts for negative health outcomes across various physiological systems and can have far-reaching consequences for the organism’s health. Socio-economic status, in its turn, influences the likelihood of stress exposure and how its consequences will be addressed. All in all, there is ample systematic evidence in support of complex associations between socio-economic status, stress and health outcomes. Following a series of discoveries in the biomedical sphere, our understanding of stress became considerably more complex, and the causal mechanisms of this process have become more prominent in research literature over the last few decades. Integration of this new data from biology, genetics and medicine into sociological, anthropological and socio-epidemiological research of stress has changed not only how this research niche conceptualizes and measures stress but also how the role that the society and social structures play in patterned distribution of disease, aging and mortality is understood. Although the link between stress and health is well studied, the mechanisms linking socio-economic status, the stress process and health outcomes have received rather less attention. An online quantitative study (n = 902) carried out in Kyiv during 2020–2021 focused on the question of the SES–stress link in the context of health outcomes. Specifically, the study tested the following propositions: (a) stress affects self-rated health and wellness of individuals; (b) current SES affects individual self-rated health and wellness; (c) individuals from low SES categories face higher current perceived stress levels compared to individuals from higher SES categories; (d) individuals who report having low SES in childhood have higher perceived stress levels during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to their counterparts whose familial socio-economic status was higher when they were children; and (e) having chronic conditions exacerbates individual stress levels.

In this study we used the data from Afghanistan Health Survey 2006. For this study, 8278 households were randomly selected in which 8281 women aged 10-49 years were interviewed by survey teams using a structured questionnaire. The information was also collected for all children aged 5 years or less from all these households. The sample includes 7843 (13.8%) children under the age of 5 years old. Literacy of mothers (ability to read), age of mother at marriage, number of children, exposure to mass media (listening to radio or watching TV) were the independent variables and BCG vaccination, initiation of breastfeeding (within first hour of life or after first hour); and use of bed net (to protect a child from Malaria) were dependent variables. Chi square and Odd Ratio test was used to test significance of the associations. Logistic Regression test was used to control for the confounders. In this study we found that those listening to radio at least once a week were more likely to start breastfeeding during the first hour of life. Those watching TV at least once a week were more likely to vaccinate their children for BCG. These associations were significant after controlling for confounders (economic status of the family and distance to health facility). The fact that why the other independent variables did not have association with BCG vaccination, initiation of breastfeeding and use of bed net can be either due to limitation of the study or there are other reasons that require further investigations.

The purpose of the research was to explore how leaders and teachers of low socio-economic status (SES) Catholic secondary schools engaged with a system led reform to build capacity for leadership to improve learning in their school communities. The research was informed by the school and system improvement literature which noted the limited success of large-scale reforms in secondary schools and identified the need to understand how leaders can better build capacity for improvement. The case study focussed on the leadership of four low SES Catholic secondary schools from New South Wales (NSW), Australia who were part of the National Partnerships programme under the direction of a Diocesan school system. The research explored the experiences of system leaders, principals, curriculum coordinators, leaders of pedagogy, heads of department and teachers as they engaged with the system driven reform. The research demonstrated that leadership of learning in secondary schools should be shared with heads of department who are professionally valued, developed and positioned to work closely with classroom teachers. The study confirmed that leaders of learning who share whole school approaches to promote literacy, student centred pedagogy, use of data and the moral purpose of the reform initiative improve student outcomes. In this study a broadly distributed model of leadership characterised by relational trust and teamwork built both a learning culture and the capacity to improve student outcomes. It also found that system reform was more likely to succeed when it was adapted by school leaders to meet their local context. This research is significant in this field because it provides a practical understanding of how leadership should be distributed to build capacity and improve student outcomes, as well as contributing towards better understanding of the importance of middle leadership of heads of departments and instructional coaches in reforming and improving learning outcomes in secondary schools.

This research studied two predominantly rural counties in Virginia to understand whether residents have equal access to uncontaminated drinking water by socio-economic status. Statistical associations were developed with the total value of each residence based on county tax assessment data as the independent variable to explain levels of nitrate, the presence of bacteria (total coliform and Escherichia coli), and specific household well characteristics (well age, well depth, and treatment). Nearest neighbor analysis and chi-square tests based on land cover classifications were also conducted to evaluate the spatial distribution of contaminated and uncontaminated wells. Based on the results from the 336 samples analyzed in Louisa County, rural residents with private wells may have variable access to household drinking water free of bacteria; particularly if lower-value homes in the community tend to be older with more dated, shallower wells. This study also suggested that, in Louisa County, the presence of water treatment devices was also significantly related to total home value as an index of socio-economic status. Analysis of the 124 samples taken from household wells in Augusta County did not result in any significant associations among selected well characteristics, total home value, and water quality. Lower community participation in Augusta County as a result of a more expensive water quality testing fee may have contributed to the lack of hypothesized relationships in that countyâ s case study.
Master of Science

Introduction: Early Childhood Caries (ECC) is a serious public health concern globally especially in developing countries like South Africa. The main source from which infants acquire the causative bacteria - Mutans Streptococci (MS) is their mothers. The mothers with high levels of MS have a greater chance of transmitting the bacteria, particularly if they are involved in practices such as tasting the infant’s food and/or sharing eating utensils. Current research indicates that dental public health programmes fail to prevent ECC because of late intervention. Objective: This study sought to determine the existing knowledge, attitudes and perceptions (KAP) of pregnant women about ECC in a population in Tshwane district, Gauteng province, South Africa and to compare these KAP across socio-economic groups (SES). Methodology: A cross-sectional analytical study involving consenting pregnant women recruited from selected private and public antenatal healthcare facilities in the Tshwane District area was conducted. This study involved the use of a validated self-administered structured questionnaire and an oral epidemiological clinical examination (modified by WHO Oral Health Assessment 1997 Guidelines). One calibrated examiner using a dental explorer and a mouth mirror under natural light carried out the oral examination. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, principal component analysis to obtain a composite score for participant’s attitude towards ECC; and chi-square and independent student’s T-test to compare different groups. Significance level was set at p<0.05. Results: Response rate was 88.9% (n=353). Respondents’ age ranged from 18-44years (Mean age=31years). Only 18.7% of the respondents had complete knowledge of the cause of dental caries i.e. both sugar (diet) and biologic agent (bacterial plaque) whilst over half of the respondents (55.5%) mentioned only one factor. The participants’ knowledge of the cause of ECC was significantly associated with SES. A few mothers-to-be (13.9%) believed in the caries transmission from mother to child. Reported mean age for the child’s first dental visit was 2 years and 8 months. Only a quarter of respondents received oral health education for their unborn child during the antenatal visits. The majority of the pregnant women (93.8%) expressed the desire to receive information during the antenatal visit. The participants’ attitudes towards ECC was significantly associated with SES. The caries prevalence of the pregnant women was high at 64.3%, with mean DMFT of 2.97(SD 3.20). High participant DMFT was significantly associated with reports of ‘rotten teeth’ in their other children. Only 19.3% mothers-to-be had visited a dental care provider in the last 6-months. Conclusion: The knowledge of the pregnant women studied on ECC is incomplete and limited, while their attitudes and perceptions towards ECC was satisfactory. Therefore there is a need for the integration of oral health education with maternal and child health activities in both antenatal and post-natal clinics. There is a need for the oral health professionals to collaborate with other health works to reduce the prevalence of ECC.
Dissertation (MSc Dent)--University of Pretoria, 2019.
Community Dentistry
MSc Dent
Unrestricted

This study investigated how much influence the SES of parents has on students’ achievements in the Awutu-Senya and Effutu Educational Directorates of the Central Region of Ghana. The study focused on parents’ financial status, educational qualifications, jobs, enabling learning environment provided by parents and the type of school attended and how these affected students’ achievements. The study adopted a cross sectional and a multi-site case study designs. The population consisted of school officials, teachers, students of SHS and parents in the Awutu Senya and Effutu Educational Districts in the Central Region of Ghana. A sample size of 531 respondents was chosen for the study. The instruments used in the data collection were questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, direct observation and secondary data. A range of sampling techniques from simple random, purposive, census, to cluster sampling techniques was adopted in selecting the participants. The researcher used descriptive and inferential statistics in presenting the data. Respondents agreed that parents’ financial circumstances affected students’ academic achievements in the study area. Respondents were of the opinion that learning environment provided by parents at home determined the academic achievements of students. The study found that students from high socio-economic homes were provided with most of the materials they needed to succeed in their education than their counterparts. Respondents agreed to some extent with the assumption that educational qualifications of parents influenced students’ academic success. They argued that parents’ educational attainments enhanced home environment for students’ learning. The study made original contributions by highlighting parents’ financial difficulties they faced in promoting their children’s education, isolating some of the influences of SES of parents on students’ learning and providing policy implications. The study recommends that Government of Ghana should expand its youth training programme on skills acquisition to cover all categories of people who desire skills.

Low socio-economic status (SES) students are less likely to gain access to the gatekeeper mathematics courses necessary for high school graduation and entrance to college. This study examined the effects of a constructivist-based fraction intervention on mathematics achievement, self-efficacy beliefs, and Algebra One enrollment of mathematically at risk low SES sixth grade students. Students' fifth grade mathematics CST and sixth grade fraction benchmark scores served as covariates in each analysis. Achievement was measured by the students' scores on their seventh grade fraction benchmark and mathematics California Standards Test (CST). A Fraction Self-Efficacy Survey measured students' beliefs. The sixth grade fraction intervention was a one week, 35 hour program. The experiment included 45 students who attended the intervention and 43 matched students who served as the comparison group. Teacher effects were controlled. The scores of students in the treatment group were significantly higher on both their seventh grade fraction benchmark (p < 0.001) and mathematics CST (p < 0.001). Students in the treatment group scored higher in overall self-efficacy beliefs than students in the comparison group and, although there was a trend towards significance (p = 0.065), the difference was not statistically significant. Additionally, logistic regression was used to determine that students' self-efficacy beliefs partially mediated the relationship between participation in the fraction intervention and their enrollment in Algebra One. Students who attended the intervention were three times as likely to enroll in Algebra One as their matched peers.

From the moment children are born, they begin a lifetime journey of learning about themselves and their surroundings. With the establishment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, it mandates that all children receive a high-quality education in a positive school climate. Regardless of the school the child attends or the neighborhood in which the child lives, proper and quality education and resources must be provided and made available in order for the child to be academically successful. The purpose of this ex post facto study was to investigate the relationship between the FCAT 2.0 mathematics scores of public middle school students in Miami-Dade County, Florida and the concentrations of a school’s racial and ethnic make-up (Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics), English for Speakers of other Languages (ESOL) population, socio-economic status (SES), and school climate. The research question of this study was: Is there a significant relationship between the FCAT 2.0 Mathematics scores and racial and ethnic concentration of public middle school students in Miami-Dade County when controlling SES, ESOL student population, and school climate for the 2010-2011 school year? The instruments used to collect the data were the FCAT 2.0 and Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) School Climate Survey. The study found that Economically Disadvantaged (SES) students socio-economic status had the strongest correlation with the FCAT 2.0 mathematics scores (r = -.830). The next strongest correlation was with the number of students who agreed that their school climate was positive and helped them learn (r = .741) and the third strongest correlation was a school percentage of White students (r = .668). The study concluded that the FCAT 2.0 mathematics scores of M-DCPS middle school students have a significant relationship with socio-economic status, school climate, and racial concentration.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD
The major objective of this study was to investigate the nature of the relationship between achievement motivation, autonomous and social achievement values, study habits and attitudes, locus of control and socio-economic status (SES) as independent variables on the one hand and the level of achievement as dependent variable on the other. The subjects were 548 second and third year social science students who were studying in seven different directions at the University of the Western Cape during 1990. The following measuring instruments were used in the investigation: The Ray-Lynn (1980) Achievement Orientation questionnaire; Strumpfer's (1975) questionnaire for the measuring of autonomous and social achievement values; Rotter's (1966) internal/external locus of control scale, as adapted by Collins (1974); The study habits and attitudes subscales of the Brown and Holtzman (1955) Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes (SSHA) questionnaire, as adapted for South African conditions; A brief biographical questionnaire The achievement criterion consisted of the average achievement point, which is constituted of a proportion of achievement obtained in continuous evaluation, and a proportion of achievement obtained in the final examination. The following findings were made: Achievement motivation plays a much smaller role in achievement than can be expected and its influence is gender specific. It explains only about 5% of the variance in the achievement of males, and non in the case of females. Academically successful and unsuccessful students could also not be distinguished from each other in terms of level of achievement motivation. The measuring instrument for achievement motivation, although valid and reliable, probably does not succeed in measuring aspects of achievement motivation which are related to a specific situation such as the academic. While social achievement value is not related to achievement, autonomous achievement value explains 4,8% of the variance in achievement of males but none in the case of females. Successful and unsuccessful students also do not differ from each other with regard to their achievement value orientation. Study habit and attitude do not differ in their ability to predict the achievement criterion and explain 4,1% and 5,3% of the variance in achievement of males respectively, but none in the case of females. Successful and unsuccessful students can be distinguished in terms of their study habits and attitudes. Socio-economic status has a differential influence on achievement. While higher SES females achieve at a higher level than low SES females, males do not differ in this regard. The subjects are predominantly internally orientated as far as locus of control characteristic is concerned. Although internal individuals display more "positive" characteristics compared to external individuals, the two groups do not, however, differ as far as level of achievement is concerned, irrespective of gender or socio-economic status. African students have a more positive attitude towards study compared to English and Afrikaans speaking, as well as bilingual (English and Afrikaans speaking) students. Females in this study are generally more homogenous than males. It is recommended that: The suitability of the average achievement point as a criterion of achievement be studied; A broad investigation be launched into practices and problems which might centre around the system of continuous evaluation at uwc, with specific reference to possible problems that students, lecturers and big departments may experience; The nature of differences which might exist between higher and low SES female, and low SES female and low SES male students be investigated; The nature of debilitating factors which affect the achievement of low SES female students be investigated; The tendency towards greater homogeneity among female influence thereof on university study; The adjustment of African students at uwc be studied with the objective of identifying factors that obstruct their academic progress

Nations are faced today with a new set of social and economic challenges: economic globalisation has intensified bringing with it a more intense phase of cultural interconnectedness and political interdependence. Globalisation has also further driven and multiplied international flows not only of capitals, goods and services but also of people. National states have seen their capacity to govern undermined by these processes. However, in Europe, the nation continues to be a powerful source of identity and legitimacy. This chapter offers a reflection on the centrifugal and centripetal forces that challenge the nation today and the kind of analytical tools that we need to connect wider socio-economic transformations with nationalism theories. The chapter is organised as follows. I first briefly review globalisation as a socio-economic phenomenon and the changes it brings at the identity level, leading to what Bauman has termed liquid modernity. In section three I am arguing however that the increased and diversified types of international migration and mobility that globalisation brings, lead to the re-emergence of the nation as a relevant point of reference for identification as well as a relevant political community that can protect people and tame the forces of globalisation. Last I am surveying developments in several European countries showing how citizens seek refuge from the social and economic challenges of globalisation and international mobility in the warm embrace of the nation that offers both the promise of political sovereignty and legitimacy and that of a feeling of shared destiny – something that for instance regional formations like the European Union cannot offer.

South Korea’s economic miracle is a well-known story. However, today Korea is confronting a new set of internal and external risks, which may foreshadow the next crisis. The Korean economy has struggled with a faltering growth momentum and the rise of unprecedented socio-economic problems well before the pandemic crisis. After abrupt downshifts to markedly slower growth in the early 2000s, economic growth has continued to decelerate. Koreans are grappling with slow income growth, all time-high household debt, high youth unemployment, inequality, and social polarization. Politics is in disarray and is incapable of directing social discourse for the common good. Rapid population aging along with the world’s lowest fertility rates stokes fears of Japanification. Simultaneously, disruptive technologies and a fast-changing business environment, including the rise of China, clash with a range of long-standing structural problems. The contemporary challenges are radically different from those seen in the early stages of industrialization. There are multiple risks that threaten to self-perpetuate low or stagnant growth over the next decade or so, if not an outright financial crisis. Motivated by these latest developments, this book seeks to provide a timely and in-depth analysis of key current issues and foreseeable challenges of the economy, with a provocative reassessment of its future. Based on extensive new empirical works, it examines the underlying causes of the socio-economic problems. In a constructive spirit, it puts into perspective what would constitute critical elements of ideal policy solutions and the direction of the future government’s role.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

AbstractThe intergenerational transmission of socio-economic status is driven to a significant extent through parents with higher socio-economic status providing advantages to their children as they move through the education system. At the same time, attainment of higher education credentials constitutes an important pathway for upwards social mobility among individuals from low socio-economic family backgrounds. Given the critical importance of higher education for socio-economic outcomes of children, this chapter focuses on young people’s journeys into and out of university. Drawing on the life course approach and opportunity pluralism theory, we present a conceptual model of the university student life cycle that splits individuals’ higher education trajectories into three distinct stages: access, participation and post-participation. Using this model as a guiding framework, we present a body of recent Australian evidence on differences in pathways through the higher education system among individuals from low and high socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. In doing so, we pay attention to factors such as family material circumstances, students’ school experiences and post-school plans, and parental education and expectations—all of which constitute important barriers to access, participation and successful transitions out of higher education for low SES students. Overall, our results indicate that socio-economic background plays a significant role in shaping outcomes at various points of individual’s educational trajectories. This is manifested by lower chances amongst low-SES individuals to access and participate in higher education, and to find satisfying and secure employment post-graduation. Our findings bear important implications for educational and social policy.

AbstractThe main objective of this chapter is to understand the link between parental socio-economic status (SES) and union formation and dissolution processes from a cross-national comparative perspective. According to the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) theory, it can be expected that the impact of parental background on these union dynamics differs across societal contexts. Integrated results from prior studies using meta-analytical tools indicate that in many European countries, young adults from advantaged backgrounds delay their first co-residential union and have a higher risk to dissolve their union compared to young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds. The strength of this link between parental SES and union dynamics varies across countries. There is suggestive evidence that the link between parental SES and union dynamics is weakest in North-Western European countries that are most advanced in the SDT. However, next to these SDT-related indicators that focus more on cultural change, institutional country-level indicators, like the extent of educational expansion, and economic country-level indicators, such as the level of economic uncertainty, might also play a role.

AbstractThis book answers the following general question: when it comes to the impact of socio-economic status (SES) on student results in the context of the so-called Nordic model, what can we learn from large-scale international student assessments? The findings presented are not only new and valuable, but they also raise critical questions, some of which I will discuss below.

AbstractPrevious research has shown that parental as well as own socio-economic status (SES) influence nonmarital fertility. This chapter examines to what extent the effect of parental SES on partner status at first birth is mediated through own SES. Data from the Generations and Gender Survey, British Understanding Society Survey, Dutch Survey on Family Formation, American National Survey on Family Growth, and Canadian General Social Survey are used to examine 16 national contexts. In the majority of countries, the effect of parental SES on the likelihood of having a first birth in cohabitation and in marriage is partly explained by the intergenerational transmission of SES. A direct effect of parental SES is found in Canada, USA, Norway, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, and Romania. The effect of parental SES on the likelihood of having a first birth while being single and in marriage is partly explained by the intergenerational transmission of SES. In the USA, Austria, and Norway, a direct effect of parental SES was also found. The results suggest that in addition to the intergenerational transmission of SES, differences in family aid may influence the transition to adulthood. It is also possible that parental SES influences the motivation and ability to prevent pregnancies.

AbstractOriginally, the concept of resilience refers to one’s capacity to cope with unexpected shocks and unpredictable situations. Originating from ecological theories, the approach has gained ground in social sciences. In the context of education, the concept has been applied to explain how disadvantaged students can overcome structural constraints and become educationally successful and socially mobile (Werner, E. E., Vulnerable but invincible: a longitudinal study of resilient children and youth. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1982; Masten A. S., American Psychologist 56: 227–238, 2001; Reid, R., Botterrill L. C., Australian Journal of Public Administration 72:31–40, 2013; Máté, D., Erdélyi Társadalom 13:43–55, 2015).This paper is based on the analysis of the Hungarian National Assessment of Basic Competences (NABC) database which has been conducted annually since 2001. We created a typology of school resilience based on the schools’ social and ethnic profile as well as their performance indicators. We defined those schools resilient which over perform others with similar social intake, and we also identified irresilient schools which underperform others with similar social intake. The school types were created by correlating the socio-economic status index (SES) and school performance.Since the NABC database provides us with data on the estimated rate of Roma students in each school, it is possible to take into account the schools’ ethnic intake in the analysis of resilience. We conducted statistical analyses to compare the performance of resilient and irresilient schools in the light of the ratio of Roma students. Finally, we seek answers to the question whether ethnic segregation correlates with school achievement in Hungary. We could identify some crucial institutional factors contributing to resilience (or school success) in the case of schools with relatively high proportion of Roma students.

AbstractThis chapter takes as its starting point theorizing around nutrition and food system transitions thought to be increasingly occurring in urban Africa, and how this may be linked to a growing non-communicable disease burden. We focus specifically on the secondary city context by analysing household survey data gathered from six cities across Ghana, Kenya and Uganda during 2013–2015. We asked how diet composition and diversity, food sources and food security varied by socio-economic status, using expenditure and demographic data to create a proxy for household well-being. In this way, we investigate one of the claimed keystones affecting urban food systems and dietary health in sub-Saharan Africa—that of obesogenic urban food environments. Our findings indicate that the socio-economic status of a household was the most important factor influencing household dietary diversity and food security status, i.e. better-off households were more likely to feel food secure and eat from a greater variety of food groups. In addition, the number of income sources was additionally associated with higher dietary diversity. We also found that a household’s involvement in agriculture had only a small positive effect on food security in one city and was associated with a reduction in dietary diversity scores. Our findings emphasize the importance of supporting aggregated national and international statistics on agricultural production and trade with detailed local analyses that focus on actual household food access and consumption. We also see reasons to be cautious about making causal claims regarding consumption change and obesogenic urban environments as the major contributor to a rising obesity and non-communicable disease burden in Africa.

AbstractIndia is a land of huge geographical, demographic and economic variations. As such, it has a very heterogeneous population and huge variations in the socio-economic status, access to health care and literacy. These provide unique challenges in the development of health-care policies. With other pressing health issues like malnutrition, maternal and child’s health and infectious diseases, there are no nationwide policies for cancer care. In addition to this, the health-care budget allocation compared to developed countries is abysmal. This has led to inequities in the distribution and availability of cancer care in India. With a majority of the patients ending up in the private sector for treatment, and because of misuse of technology in cancer care for profit because of dysregulated health care, there is inequity in distribution of cancer care. Lack of affordable care and inaccessible areas lead to many patients presenting very late and or dropping out of treatment, thus adversely affecting the prognosis. This is reflected in a disproportionately high mortality to incidence ratio. In this chapter, we will see the obstacles faced and the optimisation efforts to improve cancer care in India.

AbstractThe literature is abound with references to the potential of indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) for sustainable landscape management, but empirical on-the-ground efforts that demonstrate this potential are still lacking. To identify interventions for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of forest restoration, participatory trials were set out in the Indian Himalaya, where per capita degraded land far exceeds per capita cropped/healthy forest land. Treatments were designed based on pooled indigenous and scientific knowledge taking into account farm-forest-livelihood interactions in cultural landscapes. The multipurpose tree-bamboo-medicinal herb mixed restoration plantation reached a state of economic benefit/cost ratio >1 in the eighth year and recovered 30–50% of flowering plant species and carbon stock in intact forest. The communities maintained but did not expand restoration in the absence of policies addressing their genuine needs and aspirations. Transformative change for sustainable restoration would include (1) nesting restoration in participatory, long-term, adaptive and integrated landscape development programmes, (2) formally involving communities in planning, monitoring, bioprospecting, and financial management, (3) assuring long-term funding but limited to the inputs unaffordable for local people, (4) stimulating the inquisitive minds of local people by enriching ILK and cultural heritage, (5) convincing policymakers to provide the scientific rationale behind policy stands, to support the regular interactions of communities with researchers, traders, and industrialists, to commit to genuine payment for ecosystem services in unambiguous terms at multiple spatial (household, village and village cluster) and temporal (short, medium and long-term) scales, and to support long-term participatory action research for development of “landscape restoration models” in varied socio-ecological scenarios.

AbstractUnder the inspiring and aspiring title: Paving the way for pushing and pursuing a “one for all, all for one” triple transition: social, green, and digital: The Three MuskEUteers, a group of remarkable co-authors and contributors have developed radically new forward-looking visions, principles, approaches, and action recommendations for an attuned indivisible social, green, and digital transition.The triple transition is aimed at helping humanity gather around a life-sustaining purpose, as opposed to life-destroying one in terms of wars of all kinds (military, economic, political, etc.); nature decay and wreckage (carbon footprint, plastic pollution, soil poisoning, etc.); human alienation (favelas, homeless persons, refugee camps, child malnutrition, poverty, exclusion of any kind); and geographic imbalances with empty rural spaces and overcrowded megacities (creating difficult access of rural and/or remote population to care, health, and other essential services; difficulty of urban population to contact with natural environments).The work highlights the urgent need to speed up a third social transition (Within this social transition dimension we understand the socio-cultural scope as any social shift implies a cultural transition and vice versa, with its very deep implications.), in addition to the green and digital transitions more widely recognised by the international community. Innovation, or a European industry-led twin transition aiming for climate neutrality and digital leadership, cannot be supported without a firm, responsive, responsible social and environmental engagement. Neither is it possible to tackle a JUST triple transition which is not firmly rooted in worthwhile human development, underpinned by the Sustainable Development Goals. And none of these transitions can go separately and/or isolated; they all need to intertwine around the notion of (more, firmer, and determined) just transition.European society is presented as a huge “co-laboratory” for this “all for one, one for all” boundaryless triple transition to respond to the urgent radical changes demanded by humanity and by the planet. The chapter proposes a radically new vision to pursue a non-explored transformative way to ideate, design, develop, and deliver science, innovation, and collaboration through experimentation and learning, and throughout multi-stakeholder engagement from the n-helix spectrum. It proposes systemic innovation tactics for the “how” (green, techno-digital), for the strategic “what” (green, social), for the purposeful “why” (green, social), and for the operational “how best” (green, social, techno-digital) within the governing principles of eco-centric society. This encompasses: Courageous goal-aligned alternatives, as a shift to new (yet ancient) principles of eco-centric rather than ego-centric behaviour. The adoption of a “complex system mind-set” to build up dynamic, context-sensitive, and holistic approaches to co-design mission and purpose-driven actions, outcomes, outputs, and no-harm impacts. The ignition of the transformative capacity of all forms of collaboration (international, interdisciplinary, intersectoral, intergenerational, inter-institutional, inter-genders) vs hierarchy as alternative governance and distribution models to overcome the unjust and unsustainable biased status quo within evolving, adaptable, flexible, and transformational n-helix ecosystems. The Three MuskEUteers, deeply anchored in European values (human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law, and human rights), will pave the way and drive humanity towards the achievement of the ambitious, but achievable, targets of the United Nations 2030 Global Agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals.Europe can be the initiator of co-laboratory experiments where social change drives the “all for one, one for all” dream into transforming this three-prong transition into possible real good ecosystems working.

This paper employs data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 study on mathematics performance in Australian secondary schools to determine the effect of mathematics anxiety on mathematics performance among secondary students. Data of school and student specific factors that are relevant to the Australian educational context are extracted from the PISA 2012 study. These data are used to measure the influence of these factors, as well as mathematics anxiety, on students' mathematics performance. Potential predictive factors are also used in the assessment including gender, socio-economic status (SES) and mathematics anxiety. Findings support the existence of an inverse relationship between mathematics performance and mathematics anxiety whereby the influence of mathematics anxiety varies based on students’ gender and SES.

Latvia has a significant number of lakes, even eventually more as 10 000 as they never been fully accounted, but just comparatively small number are subject to lake governance, since the entire national lake governance system is still under development and currently mostly municipalities themselves are step-wise developing and realising lake management plans, but municipal capacities vary significantly. According to EU Water framework directive, there are four river basin management systems established in Latvia, having related water and risk management documents in place, as well as, in the past decade, there have been both national and regional level planning guidelines developed for lake and river waterbodies management, but all mentioned has been not yet utilized in local practice, having some legal responsibilities’ and admin capacities’ deficiencies. Despite this, there has been seen slow improvement of the water quality and socio-economic usage of lakes, but more in the lake management practice is to be done, accounting also for climate change. The goal of this research was to study the municipal level lake management practice developments, applying general research-and-development (R&D) framework approach and researching particularly the status and development trends of the three governance’s dimensions’ employment – governance content by socio-ecological system (SES) approach, governance segments as for main stakeholders’ involvement and participation, as well as, the set of governance instruments, especially, institutional/administrative ones. There were chosen pilot municipalities, having diverse and successful lake management approaches utilised, and, for the first study stage, document analysis and semi-structured interviews with related municipal specialists were done, using case study research (CSR) methodology application. There were recognized five lake management approaches, even in most municipalities in Latvia, particularly in rural ones, lake management is traditionally done by the scarce municipal territory administrative units and Utilities departments/services, and, only limited number of municipalities, also particularly studied, have developed and are employing for lake management also nature resource/environmental departments, while only in few municipalities there are established special municipal lake management agencies. Promising looks NGO sector management approach used by some municipalities, both top-down either bottom-up establishment chosen to apply, but as most perspective could be recognised complex approach (cross-sector) management practice, where most or all above mentioned approaches are combined and complementary supporting each other, within particular municipality. All studied municipalities possess certain lake management success stories, to be studied further in very detail, however, in general, there is to be seen still limited understanding and utilisation of the SES approach, also still potential of various stakeholder’s involvement and pro-active development of all complementary governance instruments, even many of instruments are available in studied municipalities, but lake communication instruments (information, education/training, participation and lake-friendly behaviour) are mostly underdeveloped.

The overall frame of this research was the governance process of surface water resources in Latvia, particularly, public lakes, to be studied by applying triple dimensional governance framing model of complementary dimensions of governance stakeholders, governance content and governance instruments. Studies were realized in the area of Lake Lubans, administratively located on the border areas between two municipalities of Madona and Rezekne in the eastern part of the country. Lake Lubans is the largest lake in Latvia, as well as the largest dammed lake in Europe, included in surrounding NATURA 2000 nature reserve territory as also nationally largest inland protected wetland complex (Lubana Wetland/Ramsar site, 2009). Case Study Research methodology was applied by approaching the study area not only as a nature protection area but especially as a socio-ecological territorial and human system, using indepth semi-structured interviews in the surrounding areas/administrative territories with all main local-regional and also national stakeholder groups, as well as, applying document studies and territorial/objects’ observations. The National Nature Protection Agency’s Latgale region branch as the legal administrator supervises all nature protection territories in the region and also the Lubana Wetland, which is still lacking statutory Nature Protection Plan for the area; and, due to very limited administrative capacities, Agency is to be oriented more towards c ooperation with various other national and regional institutions from very different sectors, being organized under mainly two ministries involved – Environmental and Regional Development Ministry (nature, environmental, municipal and regional development sectors) and Agriculture Ministry (agriculture, forestry, fisheries, water infrastructure sectors), as well as, particularly, with many municipalities in the wetland area. But municipalities have to take into account also interests of local communities, the basic socio-economic development situation and possibilities, having also limited capacities, sometimes also approaches, which all is to be combined with strong nature protection requirements and limitations. This governance landscape requires co-relation of various and diverse interests and creates a rather fragmented and underdeveloped management of the lake. Lake water levels are fully regulated by the national Water infrastructure agency using dams and other hydro-technical systems, while water areas are used not only for highly popular angling, but also for active commercial fishing and various recreational activities, tourism, esp. bird watching etc., thus also keeping strong nature protection status in the same time, which all represent a unique challenge for to be developed multi-stakeholders and socioecological system (SES) approach for lake governance (assessment, planning, collaborative management, monitoring, and communication) developments in Latvia and alike.

Russia's spatial development strategy has a geopolitical dimension and aims to streamline it, accelerate socio-economic development of regions, and integrate them more closely, defining a list of macro-regions and their composition, and identifying priority geostrategic areas and cross-border geostrategic areas of the country. However, the status of these territories is not filled with real geopolitical content as a major transport hub, which determines their geostrategic character in matters of national security. On the example of the Astrakhan region, we studied the peculiarities and prospects of development of geostrategic territories in modern geopolitical processes of the Greater Caspian Region. The methodological basis of the study is a comparative analysis of the adopted legislative documents "Strategies of Socio-Economic Development of Regions of the Russian Federation" in 2005, the Spatial Development Strategy of Russia until 2030 (from 2016) and the Spatial Development Strategy of Russia until 2025. A number of criteria have been identified as essential: "borderland", concentration of socio-economic development efforts in a particular region, ensuring Russia's national security. The Astrakhan region represents the middle priority geostrategic transboundary territory of the Russian Federation and the world at large. In the framework of the implementation of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea of 12.08.2018, the Astrakhan region may be granted certain priority competences deriving from the provisions of the Convention and defining the status of the Caspian Sea. In modern geopolitical conditions the Astrakhan region acts as a kind of buffer of national security in the South of Russia, providing geostrategic and political interests of the country, which allow fully vesting the studied region with a special geostrategic status "a priority geostrategic territory of the Russian Federation".

Las nuevas tecnologías en ámbito urbano inciden fuertemente en la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos, de los city users, de los turistas, pero también en la eficiencia de las empresas, de los servicios públicos y en la atractividad para nuevas inversiones. Todas estas condiciones colocan las ciudades en posiciones mas o menos ventajosas de un mapa global virtual. Las ciudades competitivas atraen recursos, capital humano, creatividad e impulsan el crecimiento socio-cultural y económico. El mayor desafío al que nos estamos enfrentando es la gestión, el control y el diseño de las ciudades que apoyan su funcionamiento en instrumentos casi completamente virtuales. La ciudad virtual no reemplaza en ninguna manera la ciudad real, solo la enriquece de complejidad y de componentes inmateriales. Contrariamente, los modelos de ordenamiento territorial tradicionales se vuelven obsoletos al encontrar nuevos y grandes flujos de información que circulan, en tiempo real. El uso de nuevas y modernas tecnologías en el campo del urbanismo (en la gestión del territorio) comporta un cambio radical de la lógica de intervención del sector publico. El concepto de urbótica, o sea, el desarrollo de sistemas inteligentes integrados a nivel urbano, hace indispensable la necesidad de replantearse la lógica de intervención en dicho contexto; no se trata de agregar automatismos a la gestión y al control de la ciudad (como en el caso de los relevadores de velocidad, de emisión de agentes contaminantes, etc.) sino de un re-pensamiento radical que parte desde el análisis, la proyectación, la ejecución, la puesta en servicio y la evaluación de todo el proceso de ordenamiento territorial. En este trabajo nos proponemos delinear escenarios de desarrollo urbano altamente tecnificados, donde emerge la complejidad de la superposición de la ciudad física con la nueva ciudad virtual. No nos basaremos en ámbitos territoriales definidos, sino en un modelo teórico que pone en relación los los siguientes ámbitos temáticos: - Servicios urbanos; - Transporte publico; - Gestión del trasporto privado; - Seguridad urbana; - Sistemas de información al ciudadano; - Sistema de monitoreo y evaluación del sistema urbano. El resultado final será una estructura compleja y de fácil lectura que permitirá identificar puntos críticos del encuentro entre el sistema urbano tradicional y el sistema urbano virtual. Creemos fuertemente que este sea, hoy más que nunca, el primer paso para la redefinición de políticas de gobierno y ordenamiento del territorio y que los escenarios de desarrollo urbótico sean una posible alternativa de intervención en la ciudad no planificada. En el desarrollo del documento trataremos de demostrar como las nuevas tecnologías hoy disponibles pueden ser combinadas de manera tal de mejorar la calidad urbana en la ciudad informal, irregular, dispersa, sin orden aparente. Basándonos en los resultados de investigaciones anteriores que demuestran que la ciudad informal sigue reglas de asentamiento y formas de relación sensibles a la aplicación de dispositivos capaces de interactuar tanto con los ciudadano como con los planificadores, o sea reactiva a la urbótica. New technologies in urban areas have a strong impact on the quality of life of citizens, city users, tourists, but also on the efficiency of enterprises, public services and the attractiveness for new investments. All these conditions place the cities in a more or less advantageous position of a virtual global map. Competitive cities attract resources, human capital, and creativity and drive the economic and socio-cultural growth. The biggest challenge we are facing is the management, control and design of cities supported on almost entirely virtual instruments. Virtual city does not replace in any way the actual city. It only improve it of complexity and intangible components. In contrast, traditional governance models become obsolete to find large new flows of information circulating in real time. The use of new and modern technologies in the field of urban planning (in the management of the territory) involves a radical change in the logic of public sector intervention. The concept of Urbótica, that is, the development of integrated intelligent systems for the city, makes compulsory the need to rethink the logic of intervention in the urban context, it is not automatically added to the management and control of the city (as in the case of the speed relay, emission of pollutants, etc.) but a radical re-thinking that starts from the analysis, the design, implementation, commissioning and evaluating the whole process. In this work we propose to delineate high tech urban development scenarios, where the complexity arises from the superposition of the physical city with the new virtual one. We will not rely on defined territorial areas, but in a theoretical model that relates the following subject areas: - Urban services; - Public transport; - Management of private transport; - Urban Security; - Citizen information systems; - Monitoring and assessment of urban system. The result is a complex structure but simply to be read that will identify critical points in the encounter between the traditional urban system and the possible virtual one. We strongly believe that this is, today more than ever, the first step in the redefinition of government policies and land use planning. The development of urban scenarios based on high tech development (urbótica) is a possible alternative of intervention on unplanned city. In developing the document will try to show how new technologies available today can be combined so as to improve the urban quality in the city informal, irregular, scattered city, which follows rules of settlement and forms of sensible relation to the implementation of devices capable of interacting with both citizens and planners, so that is reactive to the urbótica.

When individuals decide to retire from the labour force, different sources of income can help to maintain consumption and welfare. One of those is public pensions. Their importance as an income source varies greatly according to socio-economic status (SES). This paper analyzes how replacement rates (RR) of public pensions (OAS and GIS) and mandatory public pension benefits (C/QPP) vary across SES by using the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults dataset (LISA). Using the longitudinal nature of this survey, we compute and compare average RRs by SES. We specifically consider the role of education and health, and we study how living arrangements can explain RRs variations. To give an idea the average RR of public pensions for individuals in bad health is 32%, while it is 21% for those who report being in good health. Including public pensions and C/QPP benefits, these numbers become 54% for those in bad health and 41% for those in good health. When estimating a multivariate regression model and controlling for past income, we find for couples, that past income does not eliminate differences in replacement ratio by individuals’ characteristics. We argue that assortative mating plays a role in explaining the variation of replacement rates across individuals’ characteristics.

When individuals decide to retire from the labour force, different sources of income can help to maintain consumption and welfare. One of those is public pensions. Their importance as an income source varies greatly according to socio-economic status (SES). This paper analyzes how replacement rates (RR) of public pensions (OAS and GIS) and mandatory public pension benefits (C/QPP) vary across SES by using the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults dataset (LISA). Using the longitudinal nature of this survey, we compute and compare average RRs by SES. We specifically consider the role of education and health, and we study how living arrangements can explain RRs variations. To give an idea the average RR of public pensions for individuals in bad health is 32%, while it is 21% for those who report being in good health. Including public pensions and C/QPP benefits, these numbers become 54% for those in bad health and 41% for those in good health. When estimating a multivariate regression model and controlling for past income, we find for couples, that past income does not eliminate differences in replacement ratio by individuals’ characteristics. We argue that assortative mating plays a role in explaining the variation of replacement rates across individuals’ characteristics.

The learning crisis in developing countries is increasingly acknowledged (World Bank, 2018). The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) include goals and targets for universal learning and the World Bank has adopted a goal of eliminating learning poverty. We use student level PISA-D results for seven countries (Cambodia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Senegal, and Zambia) to examine inequality in learning outcomes at the global, country, and student level for public school students. We examine learning inequality using five dimensions of potential social disadvantage measured in PISA: sex, rurality, home language, immigrant status, and socio-economic status (SES)—using the PISA measure of ESCS (Economic, Social, and Cultural Status) to measure SES. We document four important facts. First, with the exception of Ecuador, less than a third of the advantaged (male, urban, native, home speakers of the language of instruction) and ESCS elite (plus 2 standard deviations above the mean) children enrolled in public schools in PISA-D countries reach the SDG minimal target of PISA level 2 or higher in mathematics (with similarly low levels for reading and science). Even if learning differentials of enrolled students along all five dimensions of disadvantage were eliminated, the vast majority of children in these countries would not reach the SDG minimum targets. Second, the inequality in learning outcomes of the in-school children who were assessed by the PISA by household ESCS is mostly smaller in these less developed countries than in OECD or high-performing non-OECD countries. If the PISA-D countries had the same relationship of learning to ESCS as Denmark (as an example of a typical OECD country) or Vietnam (a high-performing developing country) their enrolled ESCS disadvantaged children would do worse, not better, than they actually do. Third, the disadvantages in learning outcomes along four characteristics: sex, rurality, home language, and being an immigrant country are absolutely large, but still small compared to the enormous gap between the advantaged, ESCS average students, and the SDG minimums. Given the massive global inequalities, remediating within-country inequalities in learning, while undoubtedly important for equity and justice, leads to only modest gains towards the SDG targets. Fourth, even including both public and private school students, there are strikingly few children in PISA-D countries at high levels of performance. The absolute number of children at PISA level 4 or above (reached by roughly 30 percent of OECD children) in the low performing PISA-D countries is less than a few thousand individuals, sometimes only a few hundred—in some subjects and countries just double or single digits. These four hard lessons from PISA-D reinforce the need to address global equity by “raising the floor” and targeting low learning levels (Crouch and Rolleston, 2017; Crouch, Rolleston, and Gustafsson, 2020). As Vietnam and other recent successes show, this can be done in developing country settings if education systems align around learning to improve the effectiveness of the teaching and learning processes to improve early learning of foundational skills.

From the standpoint of interdisciplinary self-organization theories and synergetics analyzes current approaches to modeling socio-economic systems. It is shown that the complex network paradigm is the foundation on which to build predictive models of complex systems. We consider two algorithms to transform time series or a set of time series to the network: recurrent and graph visibility. For the received network designed dynamic spectral, topological and multiplex measures of complexity. For example, the daily values the stock indices show that most of the complexity measures behaving in a characteristic way in time periods that characterize the different phases of the behavior and state of the stock market. This fact encouraged to use monitoring and prediction of critical and crisis states in socio-economic systems.

Calls for greater recognition of and attention to the influence of sex and gender on health have been longstanding, and the need for this has only been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from the direct effects of biological sex and socially-constructed gender differences on COVID-19 morbidity and mortality – with higher rates of severe disease and deaths among men, pandemic responses have also amplified existing gender inequalities, with women bearing the heaviest burden of the indirect health and socio-economic consequences. The interactions between sex, gender and COVID-19 are complex and evolving, and further shaped and influenced by context and the intersecting influence of other social determinants and/or identities (such as race, ethnicity, LGBTQIA or migrant status, etc.), which have exacerbated the devastating health impacts for specific women, men and gender-diverse people. Recognising both the urgency of integrating sex and gender into COVID-19 research, and the roadblocks in the way of achieving this, the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH) and the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape co- convened a collaborative gender and COVID-19 research agenda-setting exercise.

Calls for greater recognition of and attention to the influence of sex and gender on health have been longstanding, and the need for this has only been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from the direct effects of biological sex and socially-constructed gender differences on COVID-19 morbidity and mortality – with higher rates of severe disease and deaths among men, pandemic responses have also amplified existing gender inequalities, with women bearing the heaviest burden of the indirect health and socio-economic consequences. The interactions between sex, gender and COVID-19 are complex and evolving, and further shaped and influenced by context and the intersecting influence of other social determinants and/or identities (such as race, ethnicity, LGBTQIA or migrant status, etc.), which have exacerbated the devastating health impacts for specific women, men and gender-diverse people. Recognising both the urgency of integrating sex and gender into COVID-19 research, and the roadblocks in the way of achieving this, the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH) and the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape co- convened a collaborative gender and COVID-19 research agenda-setting exercise.

This book examines the role of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in contributing to the fiscal instability of the Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago (CCB6), with the aim of providing tangible guidance for policymakers seeking to address this issue. Using an original dataset of SOE performance in the Caribbean, the contributors focus on the fiscal implications of unchecked growth, poor oversight, and mismanagement of SOEs, with particular focus on commercial SOEs. The authors examine the historical, economic, and socio-political context of SOEs in the CCB6 and stress the need for simultaneous fiscal reform both at the federal and firm levels. The authors analyze the SOE sectors growth and performance to date, revealing entrenched challenges, specifically around incentives and accountability. The recommendations propose adaptations of accepted international best practices and lay out long-term objectives and the more feasible points of entry for fiscal reform.

Education Technology has the potential to be a powerful engine for transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean, however the size of the challenge is formidable. The region faces the worst socio-economic crisis in more than a century, is one of the lowest performing education systems globally and has a chronic skills gap. New solutions, new approaches and new thinking is needed now more than ever. Stakeholders in the region see the potential for EdTech to support greater access to education, better experiences and outcomes for learners, and greater efficiency. Interest and investment in EdTech is increasing, with over 1500 EdTech startups across LAC and a six-fold increase in private capital investment in the last year alone. This report combines the strengths of the IDB group and HolonIQ, two organizations passionate about the future of Latin America and the Caribbean with a belief in the power of education to change futures. It is in the spirit of collaboration that this project set out to map EdTech in the LAC region, surface the innovations and impact that EdTech is making, as well as to identify the challenges faced and opportunities for greater impact. The key recommendations in this report are designed to provide policy-makers, education leaders, EdTech entrepreneurs, investors and other stakeholders with information and inspiration to support their initiatives that improve and accelerate education technology for the region, in order to have a materially positive impact on education outcomes in the region.

Decentralisation, or devolving authority to the third tier of government to prioritise specific policy reforms and manage their implementation, is argued to lead to pro-poor development for a number of reasons: local bureaucrats can better gauge the local needs, be responsive to community demands, and, due to physical proximity, can be more easily held accountable by community members. In the education sector, devolving authority to district government has thus been seen as critical to introducing reforms aimed at increasing access and improving learning outcomes. Based on fieldwork with district-level education bureaucracies, schools, and communities in two districts in the state of West Java in Indonesia, this article shows that decentralisation has indeed led to community-responsive policy-development in Indonesia. The district-level education bureaucracies in both districts did appear to prioritise community preferences when choosing to prioritise specific educational reforms from among many introduced by the national government. However, the optimality of these preferences could be questioned. The prioritised policies are reflective of cultural and religious values or immediate employment considerations of the communities in the two districts, rather than being explicitly focused on improving learning outcomes: the urban district prioritised degree completion, while the rural district prioritised moral education. These preferences might appear sub-optimal if the preference is for education bureaucracies to focus directly on improving literacy and numeracy outcomes. Yet, taking into account the socio-economic context of each district, it becomes easy to see the logic dictating these preferences: the communities and the district government officials are consciously prioritising those education policies for which they foresee direct payoffs. Since improving learning outcomes requires long-term commitment, it appears rational to focus on policies promising more immediate gains, especially when they aim, indirectly and implicitly, to improve actual learning outcomes. Thus, more effective community mobilisation campaigns can be developed if the donor agencies funding them recognise that it is not necessarily the lack of information but the nature of the local incentive structures that shapes communities’ expectations of education. Overall, decentralisation is leading to more context-specific educational policy prioritisation in Indonesia, resulting in the possibility of significant district-level variation in outcomes. Further, looking at the school-level variation in each district, the paper shows that public schools ranked as high performing had students from more privileged socio-economic backgrounds and were catering for communities that had more financial resources to support activities in the school, compared with schools ranked as low performing. Thus, there is a gap to bridge within public schools and not just between public and private schools.

The study analyzes the traditional media during 2013-2021 and draws attention to a number of factors, factors of economic and global nature in the historical context, which affect the general state of the media market in Ukraine. The main goal is to outline the peculiarities of the development of the print media market in modern conditions and challenges. The study uses socio-communicative and axiological approaches, methods of content analysis, synthesis and general are the main methods that were used in the research process. In addition to catalysts for abrupt changes in the print media market of Ukraine, factors have been identified that significantly affect the development trends of the general media market: digitalization, destruction of logistics, periodicals, outflow of advertisers from traditional media (television, radio, newspapers and magazines). There are already forecasts that due to the increase in the price of paper on the world market there will be an increase in prices for printed products by 40%), the lack of a culture of consumption of subscription information, as there is a free alternative (social networks, search engines). Results/findings and conclusions of my research: a set of three crisis periods, as a result of which the factors identified in the study are the main characteristics of the development of the modern print media market in Ukraine. The print media market, due to the global situation through COVID-19, is going through difficult times. In fact, the prospect for further scientific research may be the study of the financial component of the Ukrainian media market in the context of general world trends.