A Scenario-based Parametric Analysis of the Army Personnel-to-assignment Matching Problem

This study aims to compare linear programming and stable marriage approaches to the personnel assignment problem under conditions of uncertainty. Robust solutions should exhibit reduced variability of solutions in the presence of one or more additional constraints or problem perturbations added to some baseline problems.Several variations of each approach are compared with respect to solution speed, solution quality as measured by officer-to-assignment preferences and solution robustness as measured by the number of assignment changes required after inducing a set of representative perturbations or constraints to an assignment instance. These side constraints represent the realistic assignment categorical priorities and limitations encountered by army assignment managers who solve this problem semiannually, and thus the synthetic instances considered herein emulate typical problem instances

A Scenario-Based Parametric Analysis of Stable Marriage Approaches to the Army Officer Assignment Problem

This paper compares linear programming and stable marriage approaches to the assignment problem under conditions of uncertainty. Robust solutions should exhibit reduced variability in the presence of one or more additional constraints. Several variations of each approach are compared with respect to solution quality, as measured by the overall social welfare among Officers and Assignments, and robustness as measured by the number of changes after a number of randomized perturbations. We examine the contrasts between these methods in the context of assigning Army Officers among a set of identified assignments. Additional constraints are modeled after realistic scenarios faced by Army assignment managers, with parameters randomized. The Pareto efficient approaches, relative to these measures of quality and robustness, are identified and subjected to a regression analysis. The coefficients of these models provide insight into the impact the different scenarios under study, as well as inform any trade-off decisions between Pareto-optimal approaches

Building up wealth hand in hand? Gendered life course interdependencies of personal wealth within older couples

Angesichts von Rentenkürzungen hat Vermögen als Alternative zu gesetzlichen Renten zur Alterssicherung an Bedeutung zugenommen. Vermögen ist jedoch ungleicher zwischen Frauen und Männern verteilt als Einkommen, wobei Frauen ein durchschnittlich niedrigeres Vermögen haben. Diese Ungleichheit existiert auch innerhalb von Paarbeziehungen. Diese Dissertation untersucht, wie Erwerbs- und Ehebiografien mit dem persönlichen Vermögen von verheirateten Frauen und Männern ab 50 Jahren zusammenhängen. Basierend auf der Lebensverlaufsperspektive entwickelt Kapitel 1 ein Modell zum Vermögensaufbau innerhalb von Paaren. Kapitel 2 untersucht Geschlechterunterschiede im individuellen Vermögensaufbau durch Erwerbstätigkeit in Ost- und Westdeutschland. Die Studie zeigt geschlechtsspezifische Wege des Vermögensaufbaus auf, welche sich besonders im traditionellen Wohlfahrtsstaatskontext von Westdeutschland zeigen. Kapitel 3 untersucht, wie Erwerbs- und Ehebiografien von Frauen mit der Verteilung von individuellem und gemeinsamem Vermögen innerhalb von älteren Ehepaaren in Westdeutschland zusammenhängen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass früh verheiratete Paare starke wirtschaftliche Einheiten bilden. Jedoch kann die Ehe Frauen mit geringer Arbeitsmarktbeteiligung nicht vor ökonomischer Abhängigkeit von ihrem Partner im Alter schützen. Kapitel 4 analysiert den Zusammenhang zwischen den Erwerbsbiografien beider Partner und der Vermögensungleichheit innerhalb von älteren Ehepaaren in Großbritannien und Westdeutschland. Die Studie zeigt, dass eine ähnliche Arbeitsteilung zu unterschiedlicher Vermögensungleichheit innerhalb der Paare in beiden Ländern führt, was insbesondere durch die Rolle des Immobilienmarktes erklärt wird. Diese Dissertation verdeutlicht, dass das Zusammenwirken von Geschlecht, Partnerschaft und institutionellem Kontext während des Lebensverlaufs wichtig ist, um die Determinanten von persönlichem Vermögen und der resultierenden Vermögensungleichheit im Alter zu verstehen.In light of pension reductions, the importance to accumulate wealth as an alternative to pensions for old-age provision has increased. However, wealth is more unequally distributed between genders than income, with women having lower average wealth levels than men. This is also the case in married couples. This dissertation examines how gendered life course experiences of employment and marriage are associated with the personal wealth of married women and men aged 50 and older. Building on the life course framework, Chapter 1 develops a model of personal wealth accumulation within couples. Chapter 2 examines gender differences in individual wealth accumulation through employment in Eastern and Western Germany. The results reveal gendered ways of wealth accumulation, indicating that similar career paths result in different personal wealth outcomes for women and men in the gender-unequal welfare state context of Western Germany. Chapter 3 examines how the interplay of women’s employment and marriage biographies is associated with the ownership structure of sole and joint assets within married couples in later life in Western Germany. The results indicate that early and stably married couples build strong economic units that hold most wealth jointly. However, marriage does not protect women with a low labour market attachment from economic dependency on the partner in old age. Chapter 4 examines the association between married partners’ employment biographies and the within-couple gender wealth gap in later life in Britain and Western Germany. The results indicate that a similar division of labour throughout the life course can result in different levels of within-couple gender wealth inequality in later life across country contexts, particularly depending on the housing system. Overall, this dissertation concludes that the interplay of gender, partnership, and institutional context is important to understand the outcomes of personal wealth accumulation processes

Exploring time diaries using semi-automated activity pattern extraction

Identifying patterns of activities in time diaries in order to understand the variety of daily life in terms of combinations of activities performed by individuals in different groups is of interest in time use research. So far, activity patterns have mostly been identified by visually inspecting representations of activity data or by using sequence comparison methods, such as sequence alignment, in order to cluster similar data and then extract representative patterns from these clusters. Both these methods are sensitive to data size, pure visual methods become too cluttered and sequence comparison methods become too time consuming. Furthermore, the patterns identified by both methods represent mostly general trends of activity in a population, while detail and unexpected features hidden in the data are often never revealed. We have implemented an algorithm that searches the time diaries and automatically extracts all activity patterns meeting user-defined criteria of what constitutes a valid pattern of interest for the user’s research question. Amongst the many criteria which can be applied are a time window containing the pattern, minimum and maximum occurrences of the pattern, and number of people that perform it. The extracted activity patterns can then be interactively filtered, visualized and analyzed to reveal interesting insights. Exploration of the results of each pattern search may result in new hypotheses which can be subsequently explored by altering the search criteria. To demonstrate the value of the presented approach we consider and discuss sequential activity patterns at a population level, from a single day perspective.Time-geography, diaries, everyday life, activity patterns, visualization, data mining, sequential pattern mining

Harmonising extended measures of parental childcare in the time-diary surveys of four countries – Proximity versus responsibility

Measures of childcare drawn from time-diary data are commonly based on the specific childcare activities a parent engages in throughout the day. This emphasis on activities has been criticised as it ignores the large quantity of time parents spend supervising their children. In order to provide more accurate estimates of childcare that incorporate supervisory childcare, researchers have turned to extended measures of care based on being i) in proximity to children or ii) responsible for children. There has been debate about the extent to which these approaches each measure the same aspect of childcare. In addition, it is thought they may be sensitive to the way surveys have been designed, which can affect the extent to which they can be compared crossnationally. We argue that measures of proximity and responsibility are conceptually interchangeable, and demonstrate that they can be harmonised and compared cross-nationally. Finally, we suggest ways in which these extended measures of childcare can be made increasingly comparable cross-nationally.Time-diary data, measurement of parental childcare, cross-national harmonisation of measures of childcare, time geography

Inclusive Growth: basics, indicators and development priorities

У монографії викладено теоретичні положення реалізації концепцію інклюзивного зростання, проаналізовано основні методичні підходи до оцінювання рівня інклюзивності економіки країни, розроблено методичні положення до оцінювання рівня соціального, економічного та політичного розвитку країни, досліджено закордонний досвід участі держави у підтримці соціального підприємництва, а також визначено основні напрямки удосконалення національної економіки в контексті імплементації концепції інклюзивного зростання. Досліджено тіньові процеси та легалізацію кримінальних доходів як основні перешкоди на шляху до переходу на модель інклюзивного розвитку країни. Проаналізовано роль екологічних податків у забезпеченні стабільного економічного розвитку з урахуванням принципів інклюзивності.The monograph outlines the theoretical provisions for implementing the concept of inclusive growth, analyzes the main methodological approaches to assessing the level of inclusiveness of the country's economy, develops guidelines for assessing the level of social, economic and political development, explores foreign experience of state participation in supporting social entrepreneurship. improving the national economy in the context of implementing the concept of inclusive growth. Shadow processes and legalization of criminal proceeds as the main obstacles on the way to the transition to the model of inclusive development of the country are studied. The role of environmental taxes in ensuring stable economic development taking into account the principles of inclusiveness is analyzed

Keeping in touch – A benefit of public holidays using time use diary data

This paper argues that public holidays facilitate the co-ordination of leisure time but do not constrain the annual amount of leisure. Public holidays therefore have benefits both in the utility of leisure on holidays and (by enabling people to maintain social contacts more easily) in increasing the utility of leisure on normal weekdays and weekends. The paper uses the variation in public holidays across German Länder based on more than 37.000 individual diary data of the actual German Time Use Survey of 2001-02 to illustrate the positive association between more public holidays and social life on normal weekdays and weekends. These benefits are additional to the other, direct benefits of public holidays.Public holidays, social contacts, social leisure time, time allocation, time use diaries, German Time Budget Survey 2001/02

Terms of marriage and time-use patterns of young wives – Evidence from rural Bangladesh

This paper explores the relationship between marriage arrangements and daily activities of young married women, using detailed time-use data from an adolescent study in rural Bangladesh. Measures of marriage arrangement are payment of dowry and the relative wealth status of natal and marital families. The data were collected in three rural districts in 2001 and 2003. Using multivariate regression analysis, the results show that women’s time spent in domestic work, socializing, and self-care is significantly associated with marriage arrangement variables. Those who paid dowry spent more time in domestic work and less time in self-care relative to those who did not pay dowry. These patterns of association are similar to those the authors found in an earlier study between marriage arrangements and domestic violence, where paying dowry and marrying up are associated with greater violence. This paper contributes evidence regarding the non-market determinants of women’s time use patterns and highlights the contribution of marriage-related decisions to women’s well-being.Marriage, time use, Bangladesh, gender, leisure, work

Predictors of time famine among Finnish employees – Work, family or leisure?

The recent survey data indicates that the time famine is a common experience among employees, while the data of time use indicates increased leisure time. Similarly, there are different views on the causes of time famine. Firstly, in working life research time famine is usually explained by increasing requirements of work life. Secondly, in gender studies time famine is considered to be a product of family obligations. Thirdly, some authors interpret time famine as a phenomenon relating to the intensification of leisure. The aim of the study was to examine the extent and causes of time famine among Finnish employees. The analysis was based on the Finnish Use of Time data (1999–2000) and focused on 15-64-year old employees (n=4866). The first aim of the study was to compare different measures of time famine. The descriptive analysis indicated that time famine was overrepresented among women and those who were aged between 25-54 years, who were well-educated, and had children at home. The second aim was to examine predictors of time famine. The predictors of time famine were classified in three groups: work, family, and leisure factors. The logistic regression analyses were conducted separately for men and women. The analysis focused on two indicators of time famine representing different dimensions. Lack of time indicated general time famine and being busy during the diary day indicated more dayspecific situation. The two approaches to time famine – general and day-specific – raised different explanations. The general feeling of the lack of time was predicted all three predictor groups. Daily busyness was related strongly to work factors and only weakly to family obligations or leisure activities. Thus, time famine can be examined with different ways, which produce similar picture on the overrepresentation of it among women, well-educated and families with children. However, the predictors of time famine do vary depending on gender and how time famine is measured.Time famine, time pressure, time-use diaries