Transforming aquatic agricultural systems towards gender equality: a five country review

Aquatic agricultural systems (AAS) are systems in which the annual production dynamics of freshwater and/or coastal ecosystems contribute significantly to total household income. Improving the livelihood security and wellbeing of the estimated 250 million poor people dependent on AAS in Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Zambia is the goal of the Worldfish Center-led Consortium Research Program (CRP), “Harnessing the development potential of aquatic agricultural systems for development.” One component expected to contribute to sustainably achieving this goal is enhancing the gender and wider social equity of the social, economic and political systems within which the AAS function. The CRP’s focus on social equity, and particularly gender equity, responds to the limited progress to date in enhancing the inclusiveness of development outcomes through interventions that offer improved availability of resources and technologies without addressing the wider social constraints that marginalized populations face in making use of them. The CRP aims to both offer improved availability and address the wider social constraints in order to determine whether a multi-level approach that engages with individuals, households and communities, as well as the wider social, economic and political contexts in which they function, is more successful in extending development’s benefits to women and other excluded groups. Designing the research in development initiatives to test this hypothesis requires a solid understanding of each CRP country’s social, cultural and economic contexts and of the variations across them. This paper provides an initial input into developing this knowledge, based on a review of literature on agriculture, aquaculture and gender relations within the five focal countries. Before delving into the findings of the literature review, the paper first justifies the expectation that successfully achieving lasting wellbeing improvements for poor women and men dependent on AAS rests in part on advances in gender equity, and in light of this justification, presents the AAS CRP’s conceptual frame

Rights, social policy and reproductive wellbeing: the Vietnam situation

Wellbeing Rights and Reproduction Research Paper I

Mental health: future challenges

The aim of the Foresight Project on Mental Capital and Wellbeing(www.foresight.gov.uk) is to advise the Government on how to achieve the best possible mental development and mental wellbeing for everyone in the UK in the future. The starting point of the Project was to generate an understanding of the science of mental capital and wellbeing (MCW) and to develop a vision for how the size and nature of the challenges exposed by the Project could evolve over the next 20 years. To make this analysis tractable, the work was divided into five broad areas: ● Mental capital through life ● Learning through life ● Mental health ● Wellbeing and work, and ● Learning difficulties. This report presents the findings for “Mental health” and draws upon a comprehensive assessment of the scientific state-of-the art: overall, around 80 reviews have been commissioned across the five areas. Mental health is a term which is used in a number of different ways and which has unfortunately acquired a substantial stigma in all layers of society. While the main focus of this report is on mental ill-health, positive mental health is also vitally important and is also discussed. However, a more comprehensive consideration of positive mental health has been performed in other parts of the Project (as commissioned reviews and in the context of the future of work. This report starts by looking at the situation today, examining the prevalence of important categories of mental disorder. It then considers the risk and protective factors which influence mental ill health, and determines how its prevalence and impact could change in the future, if existing policies and expenditure remain broadly unchanged. An assessment of strategic choices and interventions to meet the future challenges of mental health (and the challenges associated with the other four areas listed above) will be documented in the final Project report which is due for publication in the autumn of 2008

Relationship between blood pressure values, depressive symptoms and cardiovascular outcomes in patients with cardiometabolic disease

We studied joint effect of blood pressure-BP and depression on risk of major adverse cardiovascular outcome in patients with existing cardiometabolic disease. A cohort of 35537 patients with coronary heart disease, diabetes or stroke underwent depression screening and BP was recorded concurrently. We used Cox’s proportional hazards to calculate risk of major adverse cardiovascular event-MACE (myocardial infarction/heart failure/stroke or cardiovascular death) over 4 years associated with baseline BP and depression. 11% (3939) had experienced MACE within 4 years. Patients with very high systolic BP-SBP (160-240) hazard ratio-HR 1.28 and with depression (HR 1.22) at baseline had significantly higher adjusted risk. Depression had significant interaction with SBP in risk prediction (p=0.03). Patients with combination of SBP and depression at baseline had 83% higher adjusted risk of MACE, as compared to patients with reference SBP and without depression. Patients with cardiometabolic disease and comorbid depression may benefit from closer monitoring of SBP

Girls Count: A Global Investment & Action Agenda

Explains how girls' welfare affects overall economic and social outcomes. Outlines steps to disaggregate health, education, and other data by age and gender; invest strategically in girls' programs; and ensure equitable benefits for girls in all sectors

Swinger Economics

Swinging is a sexual behavior of increasing relevance but substantially ignored in theoretical economic investigation. This paper has two major goals. The first is to describe what swinging is, discuss its economic relevance and single out the main characteristics of swinger behavior. To this end, the Italian situation has been considered as a type of case study. The second goal is to use standard and less-standard tools from economic theory to propose some preliminary assessments of the causes and consequences of swinger couples’ behavior. In this respect, some contributions on two-sided markets, hedonic adaptation approaches and equilibrium matching models have proved particularly useful.Swinging, swingers, hedonic adaptation, sex, sexual customs

Labour force participation and well-being among older New Zealanders

The population of New Zealand, along with those of other developed countries, is ageing rapidly. The rate of population ageing is unprecedented, with the number of New Zealanders aged 65 years and over projected to increase from 553,000 in 2009 to 1.07 million in 2031, and to 1.44 million in 2061. Importantly, the ratio of those aged 65 years and over to those aged 15–64 is projected to increase from 0.19 (older people per person aged 15–64) in 2009 to 0.34 in 2031 and to 0.43 in 2061. This more than doubling of the ratio of older people to those in the prime working and income-earning ages represents a dramatic demographic shift which has implications for New Zealand, particularly in terms of the ability to support New Zealand Superannuation (NZS) at current levels. • Michael P. Cameron teaches in the Department of Economics at the University of Waikato. Matthew Roskruge is with the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis, University of Waikato