Do recipients of cash transfer scheme make the right decisions on household food expenditure? A study from a rural district in Pakistan.

OBJECTIVES: To assess spending by beneficiaries of Benazir Income Support Programme on monthly food commodities, and contribution of the cash grant programme on purchase of nutritious foods. METHODS: The descriptive cross-sectional survey of households enrolled in the Benazir Income Support Programme was conducted during July and August, 2013, in Matiari district of the Sindh province of Pakistan. Monthly household food expenditure on food commodities and use of the cash grant on type of food purchased was assessed through structured interviews of the beneficiaries. Results were computed in 2013 Pak rupees and converted to 2018 United States dollar. Women beneficiaries were also interviewed on decision-making regarding the use of the cash grant and on household food expenditure. RESULTS: The survey comprised 421 households. with a mean monthly expenditure on food of Rs 7,577, r 80.73 dollars. Women made decisions on food spending in only 135(32%) households, but in 235(56%) households, women were the primary decision-makers on cash grant spending. CONCLUSIONS: Unconditional cash grant did not meaningfully translate into the purchase of nutritious foods even though it played an important role in increasing women's agency.

Who would rescue the dilemma of Chinese elderly care? An evolutionary game analysis and simulation research on the formalization of the domestic service industry with subsidy policy.

Since China entered the aging society, the surging demand for elderly care and the industrial upgrading of "silver economy" has forced the domestic service industry to face endogenous challenges. Among them, the formalization of the domestic service industry can effectively reduce the transaction costs and risks of actors, innovate the endogenous vitality of the industry, and promote the improvement of elderly care quality through a triangular employment relationship. By constructing a tripartite asymmetric evolutionary game model of clients, domestic enterprises and governmental departments, this study uses the stability theorem of differential equations to explore the influencing factors and action paths of the system's evolutionary stable strategies (ESS), and uses the research data collected from China to assign values to models for simulation analysis. This study finds that the ratio of the initial ideal strategy, the difference between profits and costs, subsidies to clients, and subsidies or punishments for breach of contract to domestic enterprises are the key factors affecting the formalization of the domestic service industry. Subsidy policy programs can be divided into long-term and periodic programs, and there are differences in the influence paths and effects of the key factors in different situations. Increasing domestic enterprises' market share with employee management systems, formulating subsidy programs for clients, and setting up evaluation and supervision mechanisms are efficient ways through which to promote the formalization of the domestic service industry in China. Subsidy policy of governmental departments should focus on improving the professional skills and quality of elderly care domestic workers, and also encourage domestic enterprises with employee management systems at the same time, to expand the scope of service beneficiaries by running nutrition restaurants in communities, cooperating with elderly care institutions, etc.

[Costs of non-specific low back pain in Austria]. / Kosten des chronischen unspezifischen Kreuzschmerzes in Österreich - eine Untersuchung an Patienten in aktueller Behandlung.

The objective of this pilot study was to evaluate the annual direct costs of chronic non-specific low back pain in Austria in patients currently undergoing in-patient rehabilitation or out-patient treatment. 48 patients participated in the study. Average direct medical costs per patient year as paid by the sick funds were € 1443,-, in-patient rehabilitation was the single most expensive direct cost factor. Non-medical costs, that is, mainly household assistance and home adaptations, were € 394,-; deductibles and non-reimbursable medical costs were € 329. On average, patients had 2.7 co-morbidities (men: 2.2; women: 2.9).

A life-course approach to studying transitions among Canadian seniors in couple-only households.

This study tracked the occurrence of death, widowhood, institutionalization, and coresidence with others between 1994 and 2002 for a nationally representative sample of 1,580 Canadian respondents who, at initial interview, were aged 55 and older and living in a couple-only household. Although the majority of seniors remained in a couple-only household throughout the duration of the survey, nearly one in four who experienced a first transition underwent one or more subsequent transitions. Age, economic resources, and health were significant predictors of a specific first transition and multiple transitions. More work is needed to understand the dynamics of the aging process.

The effect of ethnicity and economy upon intergenerational coresidence: northern Norway during the last part of the nineteenth century.

During the last part of the nineteenth century, Finnmark province and the northern part of Troms experienced a decline in intergenerational coresidence. This article discusses what impact ethnic affiliation and economic activity had on the living arrangements of the elderly, and what contributed to the change. Logistic regression shows that ethnicity played a role but its effect disappears after controlling for economic activity. Intergenerational coresidence was positively associated with being a married Sámi male with an occupation in farming or combined fishing and farming. As such a person grew older, he was increasingly likely to live separately from an own adult child. This pattern changed toward the end of nineteenth century. By the close of the century, ethnic differences had disappeared, and headship position, irrespective of marital status, was strongly related to coresidence.

The cosmos of the Paris apartment: working-class family life in the nineteenth century.

Drawing on Bachelard's notion of "cosmicity" this article investigates the living conditions of Parisian working-class families in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century social critics claimed that the lack of privacy in urban apartments made decent family life impossible. However, evidence from judicial dossiers concerning attentat à la pudeur (intimate assault against children) illuminates the lived experience of children and their families in Paris apartments. Rather than a sharp divide between public and private, children experienced their apartment homes as the core of a social and spatial world under the surveillance of parents, neighbors, and other children.

"Now if you have only sons you are dead": migration, gender, and family economy in twentieth century northwestern Ghana.

This article explores the interconnectedness between labor migration, gender, and the family economy in northwestern Ghana in the 20th century. It focuses specifically on the Dagaaba of the Nadowli and Jirapa administrative districts of what is now the Upper West Region (UWR). It examines how the relationships between men and women in terms of roles, status, access to productive resources and inheritance, changed in tandem with broader changes in society in the 20th century; changes that over time produced enhanced value and elevated status for women in the family. These changes in gender relations are reflected increasingly in the belief among elderly men that 'now if you have only sons, you are dead'. By focusing on the lived experiences of ordinary women and men in the migration process, it argues that even though indigenous social structures privileged men over women in almost all spheres of life, Dagaaba women were nonetheless significantly active in shaping the history of their communities and that gender relations in Dagaaba communities were not static ­ they changed over time and generation. This article contributes to the ongoing discussion of the internal migration phenomenon in West Africa, which has so far attracted scant historical analysis.

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Allowing Additional Time in Cleaning Hospital Contact Precautions Rooms.

Increasing cleaning time may reduce hospital-acquired transmission of Clostridioides difficile, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE). We constructed a cost-benefit model to estimate the impact of implementing an enhanced cleaning protocol, allowing hospital housekeepers an additional 15 minutes to terminally clean contact precautions rooms. The enhanced cleaning protocol saved the hospital $758 per terminally-cleaned room when accounting for only C. difficile. Scaling up to a hospital with 100 cases of C. difficile/year, and the US annual C. difficile incidence, cost savings were $75,832/year and $169.8 million/year, respectively. These results may inform infection control strategic decision-making and resource allocation.

Do changes in the labour market take families out of poverty? Determinants of exiting poverty in Brazilian metropolitan regions.

Using survival models, we test whether short-term changes in the labour market affect poverty duration. Data are from the Brazilian Monthly Employment Survey. Such a monthly dataset permits more accurate estimations of events than using annual data, but its panel follows households for a short period. Then methods that control for both right- and left-censoring should be used. The results are as follows: households with zero income are not those with the lowest chances of exiting; changes in aggregate unemployment do not affect poverty duration; and increasing wages in the informal sector has a negative effect on poverty duration.

The decision to exclude agricultural and domestic workers from the 1935 Social Security Act.

The Social Security Act of 1935 excluded from coverage about half the workers in the American economy. Among the excluded groups were agricultural and domestic workers-a large percentage of whom were African Americans. This has led some scholars to conclude that policymakers in 1935 deliberately excluded African Americans from the Social Security system because of prevailing racial biases during that period. This article examines both the logic of this thesis and the available empirical evidence on the origins of the coverage exclusions. The author concludes that the racial-bias thesis is both conceptually flawed and unsupported by the existing empirical evidence. The exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers from the early program was due to considerations of administrative feasibility involving tax-collection procedures. The author finds no evidence of any other policy motive involving racial bias.

Economic productivity by age and sex: 2007 estimates for the United States.

BACKGROUND: Human capital estimates of labor productivity are often used to estimate the economic impact of diseases and injuries that cause incapacitation or death. OBJECTIVES: Estimates of average hourly, annual, and lifetime economic productivity, both market and household, were calculated in 2007 US dollars for 5-year age groups for men, women, and both sexes in the United States. RESEARCH DESIGN: Data from the American Time Use Survey were used to estimate hours of paid work and household services and hourly and annual earnings and household productivity. Present values of discounted lifetime earnings were calculated for each age group using the 2004 US life tables and a discount rate of 3% per year and assuming future productivity growth of 1% per year. SUBJECTS: The estimates of hours and productivity were calculated using the time diaries of 72,922 persons included in the American Time Use Survey for the years 2003 to 2007. RESULTS: The present value of lifetime productivity is approximately $1.2 million in 2007 dollars for children under 5 years of age. For adults in their 20s and 30s, it is approximately $1.6 million and then it declines with increasing age. Productivity estimates are higher for males than for females, more for market productivity than for total productivity. CONCLUSIONS: Changes in hours of paid employment and household services can affect economic productivity by age and sex. This is the first publication to include estimates of household services based on contemporary time use data for the US population.

Prophecy, patriarchy, and violence in the early modern household: the revelations of Anne Wentworth.

In 1676 the apostate Baptist prophet Anne Wentworth (1629/30-1693?) published "A True Account of Anne Wentworths Being Cruelly, Unjustly, and Unchristianly Dealt with by Some of Those People called Anabaptists," the first in a series of pamphlets that would continue to the end of the decade. Orignially a member of a London Baptist church, Wentworth left the congregation and eventually her own home after her husband used physical force to stop her writing and prophesying. Yet Wentworth persisted in her "revelations." These prophecies increasingly focused on her response to those who were trying to stop her efforts, especially within her own household. This article examines Wentworth's writings as an effort by an early modern woman, using arguments of spiritual agency, to assert ideas about proper gender roles and household responsibilities to denounce her husband and rebut those who criticized and attempted to suppress her.

The intellectual legacy of Mary Neth's work on farm women and rural communities.

Mary Neth's 1995 book, "Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900-1940," made a major contribution to the analysis of the connections between gender and the political economy that shaped farm women's lives and fueled farmers' resistance to the transformation of rural life wrought by agribusiness. Focusing on the processes of negotiation between women and men in farming families and rural communities, Neth illuminated the relationship between women's work and their power. Tracing the dense networks that connected farm families, she also showed how cooperation in work generated and sustained radical farm movements.

Telling stories: keeping secrets.

This article addresses the reticence of some farm women to share their experiences with historians and how that desire to keep secrets collides with the desire by scholars to tell the stories of these women. It argues that scholars must continue to struggle with the issue of which stories to tell publicly and which to keep private. The author discusses her own experience telling stories about rural women in the 1970s and the need to give voice to the heritage of rural women, especially of groups that have feared revealing their experiences. She offers examples of historians of rural women who have successfully worked with formerly silenced populations and urges historians to continue to tell stories about these lives, to reevaluate what has been already learned, to ask new questions, and to discuss which secrets need to be shared.

Gendered perceptions of fairness in housework and shared expenses: Implications for relationship satisfaction and sex frequency.

There is a demonstrated relationship between couples' division of household chores-and, to a lesser extent, the division of shared expenses-and their relationship quality. Less is known, however, about whether and how individuals' perceived fairness of these arrangements is associated with couples' relationships in different ways. Using a gendered equity framework, and drawing on 10,236 responses collected via an online national news website, this study examines how equity evaluations of housework and shared expenses are related to relationship satisfaction and sex frequency among different-gender household partners. Consistent with previous findings, the results indicate that evaluations of unfairness to oneself are a stronger predictor of relationship quality than perceived unfairness to one's partner. Additionally, fairness evaluations over shared expenses are a stronger predictor of relationship quality than perceived equity in housework. Incorporating notions about traditional gender norms and expectations into the justice framework, the results point to some variation in relationship outcomes based on men's and women's differential equity evaluations.

Diversification of de-agrarianization? Income diversification, labor, and processes of agrarian change in southern and northern Malawi, mid-1930s to mid-1950s.

This article investigates the links between market-oriented activities and subsistence production among peasant farmers in the Thyolo and Mzimba districts in Malawi from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. The two districts were chosen because of their differences in terms of land-labor ratios, quality of soils, and structure of market engagement. Exploring the different paths of agrarian change in these two districts demonstrates that they were dependent on the structure of market engagement and its effects on the supply and flexibility of labor. African agricultural history is best understood when agricultural systems are viewed in connection to the overall economic activities of rural households. More simply put, the dynamics of agrarian change in rural Africa cannot be understood without linking such changes to the wider economy and their impact on local labor processes.

Gender differences in work-home interplay and symptom perception among Swedish white-collar employees.

OBJECTIVE: To analyse gender differences in paid and unpaid workload and symptoms in matched groups of Swedish white-collar workers with children. DESIGN AND SETTING: Paid and unpaid workload and perceived stress from paid work, conflict between demands and control over household work were measured by a total workload (TWL) questionnaire. Some symptoms were rated with regard to frequency and severity as a measure of health. Cross-sectional analyses were performed. PARTICIPANTS: Matched groups of male (n = 440) and female (n = 529) well-educated white-collar workers in full-time employment, aged 32-58 years and living with children in the home. RESULTS: Women in higher positions in Sweden are healthier than the average population of women, but report more symptoms than men in the same position as well as more stress from paid work, more conflict between demands and a greater TWL. However, women also reported more control over household duties and TWL was not associated with more symptoms. The men were mainly focused on their paid work role and perhaps even more so than men in the general population as they were fairly resistant to feelings of conflicting demands. CONCLUSION: Even among matched groups of full-time employed, well-educated men and women, traditional gender differences in division of responsibilities and time allocation were found. Even though the women were healthy at this stage, they might risk future ill health, owing to high workload, stress and feelings of conflicting demands.

Economic valuation of informal care: lessons from the application of the opportunity costs and proxy good methods.

This paper reports the results of the application of the opportunity costs and proxy good methods to determine a monetary value of informal care. We developed a survey in which we asked informal caregivers in The Netherlands to indicate the different types of time forgone (paid work, unpaid work and leisure) in order to be able to provide care. Moreover, we asked informal caregivers how much time they spent on a list of 16 informal care tasks during the week before the interview. Data were obtained from surveys in two different populations: informal caregivers and their care recipients with stroke and with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). A total of 218 care recipients with stroke and their primary informal caregivers completed a survey as well as 147 caregivers and their care recipients with RA. The measurement of care according to both methods is more problematic compared to the valuation. This is especially the case for the opportunity costs method and for the housework part in the proxy good method. More precise guidelines are necessary for the consistent application of both methods in order to ensure comparability of results and of economic evaluations of health care.