Social Rights and Deontological Constraints

Assuming that there is not terminological or conceptual impediment to call social and economic rights “human rights”, this paper argues that social and economic human rights are normatively different from classical civil and political human rights, and that this may have some significant institutional implications. Following mainstream opinion, I presuppose that both classical liberal rights and socioeconomic human rights are bundles of negative and positive “incidents” (concrete rights). My first claim is that in both cases negative incidents can plausibly be constructed as “deontological constraints.” That means that such constraints must be observed even if infringing them could maximize the satisfaction of the interests those rights seek to preserve. My second claim is that, contrary to classical human rights, the fulfillment of the negative incidents of socioeconomic rights, albeit necessary, does not represent a significant contribution to their fulfillment. Since in the case of socioeconomic human rights positive incidents play such crucial role, there is a relevant asymmetry between classical and socioeconomic human rights. The paper concludes by showing some institutional implications of this asymmetry.Fil: Rivera López, Eduardo Enrique. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Long-run and short-run constraints in the access to private health care services: evidence from selected european countries

This paper aims at distinguishing long-run and short-run constraints in the access to private health care services. To this end, we apply the methodology proposed by Carneiro and Heckman (2003) to the SHARE database, a survey conducted in a number of European countries, involving some 22,000 individuals over the age of 50. Micro-data includes information on health and health consumption, and socioeconomic variables (like income and wealth). Our results show that the problem of short-run constraints in the access to private health care services could be real, especially in Italy, Greece, and to some extent Spain. Moreover, there appear to be differences in the role of credit constraints, both considering more specific services, and gender differences.health inequalities, private health care services, credit constraints, family background

The Search for the American Dream:Interpersonal, Cultural, and Structural Constraints on Immigrants

The American Dream is a goal sought out by many people from around the globe. But immigrants must overcome many barriers that may inhibit that dream. This study attempted to understand, how structural (community distress and institutional prejudice), interpersonal, and bilingual constraints negatively impacted immigrant socioeconomic achievements and wealth accumulation. The study used a mixed methods approach; findings from a secondary quantitative survey data (Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles) were elaborated on with qualitative interviews with six professionals who work with immigrants. Findings supported Feagin’s systemic racism, viewed as a fundamental cause, which set up structural, interpersonal, and cultural constraints that hindered immigrant progress towards the American Dream. Suggestions for future research included oral history interviews, both with immigrants who have successfully achieved the American Dream as well as with those at varying stages of progress towards the dream

Introducing new diagnostics into STI control programmes: the importance of programme science.

Many innovative diagnostic technologies will become commercially available over the next 5-10 years. These tests can potentially transform the diagnosis of sexually transmitted infections but their introduction into control programmes can be hampered by health system constraints, and political, cultural, socioeconomic and behavioural factors. We used the introduction of syphilis rapid tests to illustrate the importance of programme science to address the gap between accruing evidence of acceptable test performance and the complexity of programme design, implementation and evaluation of test deployment to address public health needs and improve patient-important outcomes

Liquidity Constraints and Housing Prices: Theory and Evidence from the VA Mortgage

This paper employs a simple intertemporal model to show that presence of liquidity constraints can depress the price of a durable good below its net present rental value, regardless of the overall supply elasticity. The existence of price effects implies that the relaxation of liquidity constraints is not Pareto improving, and may in fact be regressive. Historical evidence, which exploits the fact that a clearly identifiable group, war veterans, enjoyed the most favored access to mortgage credit in the postwar era, supports the model. The results suggest that more recent mortgage market innovations have served primarily to increase prices rather than home ownership rates, and that such innovations have the potential to exacerbate socioeconomic disparities in ownership rates.

Unnatural Selection: A new formal approach to punctuated equilibrium in economic systems

Generalized Darwinian evolutionary theory has emerged as central to the description of economic process (e.g., Aldrich et. al., 2008). Here we demonstrate that, just as Darwinian principles provide necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for understanding the dynamics of social entities, in a similar manner the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory provide another set of necessary conditions that constrain the evolution of socioeconomic process. These latter constraints can, however, easily be formulated as a statistics-like analytic toolbox for the study of empirical data that is consistent with a generalized Darwinism, and this is no small thing

Socioeconomic Aspects of International Agricultural Research

Document discussing the requirements for socioeconomic research at IARCs and how they might be fulfilled; identification of constraints to the adoption of the results of this research and how they may be addressed; criteria for priority setting and identification of existing research gaps; the possibility of establishing an international service to complement and coordinate socioeconomic research across institutions. Annex summarizing FAO's existing socioeconomic research activities. Agenda item presented at TAC Fifth Meeting, January - February 1973

What causes the word gap? Financial concerns may systematically suppress child-directed speech

Parents with fewer educational and economic resources (low socioeconomic-status, SES) tend to speak less to their children, with consequences for children’s later life outcomes. Despite this well-established and highly popularized link, surprisingly little research addresses why the SES “word gap” exists. Moreover, existing research focuses on individual-level explanations with little attention to structural constraints with which parents must contend. In two pre-registered studies, we test whether experiencing financial scarcity itself can suppress caregivers’ speech to their children. Study 1 suggests that caregivers who are prompted to reflect on scarcity—particularly those who reflect on financial scarcity—speak to their 3-year-olds less than a control group in a subsequent play session. Study 2 finds that caregivers speak less to their children at the end of the month—when they are more likely to be experiencing financial hardship—than the rest of the month. Thus, above and beyond the individual characteristics of parents, structural constraints may affect how much parents speak to their children

Accounting for socioeconomic constraints in sustainable irrigation expansion assessments

Sustainable irrigation expansion over water limited croplands is an important measure to enhance agricultural yields and increase the resilience of crop production to global warming. While existing global assessments of irrigation expansion mainly illustrate the biophysical potential for irrigation, socioeconomic factors such as weak governance or low income, that demonstrably impede the successful implementation of sustainable irrigation, remain largely underexplored. Here we provide five scenarios of sustainable irrigation deployment in the 21st century integrated into the framework of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, which account for biophysical irrigation limits and socioeconomic constraints. We find that the potential for sustainable irrigation expansion implied by biophysical limits alone is considerably reduced when socioeconomic factors are considered. Even under an optimistic scenario of socio-economic development, we find that additional calories produced via sustainable irrigation by 2100 might reach only half of the maximum biophysical potential. Regions with currently modest socioeconomic development such as Sub-Saharan Africa are found to have the highest potential for improvements. In a scenario of sustainable development, Sub-Saharan Africa would be able to almost double irrigated food production and feed an additional 70 million people compared to 2020, whereas in a scenario where regional rivalry prevails, this potential would be halved. Increasing sustainable irrigation will be key for countries to meet the projected food demands, tackle malnutrition and rural poverty in the context of increasing impacts of anthropogenic climate change on food systems. Our results suggest that improving governance levels for example through enhancing the effectiveness of institutions will constitute an important leverage to increase adaptive capacity in the agricultural sector.Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschunghttp://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002347H2020Peer Reviewe

Talented and living on the wrong side of the tracks

Gifted young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds are underrepresented in gifted and talented programs in New Zealand schools (Ministry of Education, 2000) and in recent years this has been highlighted as an area of concern. The aim of this paper is to indicate the extent to which giftedness and financially challenging circumstances influence the identities of young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds. This study investigates the lived experiences of 93 survey participants and eight interviewees aged between 17 and 27 years, who grew up in financially challenging situations in New Zealand. The research indicates that socioeconomic adversity can actually contribute significantly to adaptive outcomes for gifted young people from financially disadvantaged backgrounds. Moreover, socioeconomic adversity is intrinsically valuable in relation to aspects of identity. This study also suggests that the limitations of giftedness can have more detrimental effects on an individual’s sense of identity than limitations associated with their socioeconomic circumstances