52,976 research outputs found

    Sexual Risk Taking among Young Adults in Cape Town - Effects of Expected Health and Income

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    This paper empirically assesses links between expectations of future health and income on sexual risk taking on a sample of young adults in Cape Town, South Africa. An important contribution of the paper lies in combining a wide range of variables measuring risky sexual behavior such that the maximum information possible is extracted from, and adequate weights are attached to each measure, as opposed to previous studies that are based on individual measures or arbitrary aggregations. The findings indicate that expected income and health and future uncertainty are significant determinants of current patterns of sexual risk taking. From a policy perspective, the results suggest that reducing poverty and improving social insurance as well as reducing the taboo related to talking about HIV may constitute important issues to be addressed.HIV/AIDS; Health risk; Risk aversion

    Are people who participate in cultural activities more satisfied with life?

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    The influence of various aspects of life on wellbeing has been extensively researched. However, despite little empirical evidence, participation in leisure activities has been assumed to increase subjective wellbeing. Leisure is important because it is more under personal control than other sources of life satisfaction. This study asked whether people who participate in cultural leisure activities have higher life satisfaction than people who do not, if different types of leisure have the same influence on life satisfaction and if satisfaction is dependent on the frequency of participation or the number of activities undertaken. It used data from UKHLS Survey to establish associations between type, number and frequency of participation in leisure activities and life satisfaction. Results showed an independent and positive association of participation in sport, heritage and active-creative leisure activities and life satisfaction but not for participation in popular entertainment, theatre hobbies and museum/galleries. The association of reading hobbies and sedentary-creative activities and life satisfaction was negative. High life satisfaction was associated with engaging in a number of different activities rather than the frequency of participation in each of them. The results have implications for policy makers and leisure services providers, in particular those associated with heritage recreation. Subjective wellbeing measures, such as life satisfaction, and not economic measures alone should be considered in the evaluation of services. The promotion of leisure activities which are active and promote social interaction should be considered in programmes aimed at improving the quality of life

    Sexual Risk Taking Among Young Adults in Cape Town: Effects of Expected Health and Income

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    The wide prevalence of HIV in Africa has long been associated with seemingly irrational levels of sexual risk taking. Hence understanding the rationale behind risky sexual behavior is critical for designing effective prevention policies. This paper empirically assesses links between expectations of future health and income on sexual risk taking. An important contribution of the paper lies in combining a wide range of variables measuring risky sexual behavior such that the maximum information possible is extracted from, and adequate weights are attached to each measure, as opposed to previous studies that are based on individual measures or arbitrary aggregations. The findings indicate that expected income and health and future uncertainty are significant determinants of current patterns of sexual risk taking. From a policy perspective, the results suggest that reducing poverty and improving social insurance as well as reducing the taboo related to talking about HIV, and further investigating the relatively low degree of condom use of women may constitute important issues to be addressed.

    Multidimensional Poverty Comparisons within Europe. Evidence from the European Community Household Panel

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    This paper is a cross-sectional study on multidimensional poverty comparisons among the European Union countries, based on data provided by the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). In addition to the empirical results and the methodological problems, the study underlines the opportunities and the difficulties met while using the ECHP. The extended concept of poverty is relative and multidimensional and it reflects not only the financial aspects, but also dimensions like family composition, leisure, subjective deprivation, social participation, durable goods, housing conditions, access to education. Hence, it requires comparative assessments through ordinal measures. In order to compare the multidimensional poverty in 1999 and in a time interval (1994-1999), we have applied the Totally Fuzzy and Relative Method (TFR) in two forms: original (Cheli and Lemmi, 1995) and alternative (Cheli, D’Agostino and Filippone, 2001). The research reveals the hierarchy of countries according to different indicators of poverty. Although the rankings given by the two methods are similar in some parts, there are differences establishing the issues which arise when different features of deprivation are aggregated into a collective index. We show that the variables taken into account, the method and its interpretability, the data and the national particularities, they all have a big influence on the relative and comparative measurement of poverty.multidimensional poverty ; fuzzy set theory ; poverty comparisons ; poverty measurement ; well-being assessment

    Perceived Diversity of Complex Environmental Systems: Multidimensional Measurement and Synthetic Indicators

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    The general attitude towards the sustainable management of environmental resources is evolving towards the implementation of ‘participatory’ (as opposed to the classical ‘command and control’) and, especially at local scale, ‘bottom up’ (as opposed to the classical ‘top down’) approaches. This progress pushes a major interest in the development and application of methodologies able to ‘discover’ and ‘measure’ how environmental systems tend to be perceived by the different Stakeholders. Due to the ‘nature’ of the investigated systems, often too ‘complex’ to be treated through a classical deterministic approach, as typical for ‘hard’ physical/mathematical sciences, any ‘measurement’ has necessarily to be multidimensional. In the present report an approach, more typical of ‘soft’ social sciences, is presented and applied to the analysis of the sustainable management of water resources in seven Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Watersheds. The methodology is based on the development and analysis (explorative factor analysis, multidimensional scaling) of a questionnaire and is aimed at the ‘discovery’ and ‘measurement’ of a latent multidimensional ‘underlying structure’ (‘conceptual map’). It is the opinion of the authors, that the identification of a set of ‘consistent’, ‘independent’, ‘bottom up’ and ‘shared’ synthetic indicators (aggregated indices) could be strongly facilitated by the interpretation of the dimensions of the emerging ‘underlying structure’.Participative Approach, Cognitive Map, Factor Analysis, Indicators of Sustainability, Sustainable Water, Management
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