Racial and Gender Wage Differentials in South Africa: What can Cohort Data tell?

Three subsequent years of the October Household Survey data are used to construct a synthetic panel. Preparing cross sectional data that way allows to better utilise individual information and to address temporal developments also in the absence of genuine panel data. This paper focuses on gender and race specific cohort wages. Average earnings of birth cohorts of African and White workers employed full-time in formal sector jobs are followed over time and wage differentials as well as the mobility of cohort wages are studied in detail. A decomposition of African cohort wages into age, cohort, and year effects gives information about the existence of cohort effects. Results suggest that especially for African women such generational trends may differ from the theoretical expectation. However, to arrive at assured results a greater number of periods is needed.Cohort data; Gender and racial wage differentials; Generational trends

Growth, Income Distribution, And well-Being In Transition Countries

In this paper we use several well-being measures that combine average income with a measure of inequality to undertake international and intertemporal well-being comparisons in transition countries. Our well-being measures drastically change the impression of levels and changes in well-being from a traditional reliance on income measures. They also significantly affect the ranking of countries, when compared to rankings based on real incomes. Due to low inequality and moderate income levels, socialist countries enjoyed relatively high levels of economic well-being. In the transition process, rising inequality and falling incomes have led to a dramatic decline in well-being in many transition countries, and a corresponding worsening in rank when compared to other countries. There is great variance in the income and inequality performance of transition countries. We find a close correlation between income losses and inequality increases suggesting the ability of appropriate policies to reduce the income losses and reduce rising inequality. While the political dimension of transformation remains largely successful, our indicators suggest that most transition countries have yet to reach the level of economic well-being enjoyed in the late 1980s.

Norden, reframed

This paper calls for Norden to be understood as a metaframe. Related formulations like “Nordic art” or “Nordic welfare” function as mesoframes. These trigger multiple framing devices. A cache of related framing devices constitutes a framing archive. Framing devices work best when operating unobtrusively such that inclusions, exclusions and inconsistencies are condoned or naturalised. Their artifice, however, becomes apparent whenever a frame is questioned. Questioning or criticising a frame gives rise to a framing dispute. The theoretical justification for these typologies is provided at the outset. This schema is then applied to a select range of empirical examples drawn largely from the disciplinary frames (Ernst 1996) of art history and museum studies. Despite this specificity it is envisaged that the general principles set out below can and will be used to address a variety of devices, disputes and archives in Norden and beyond

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries1,2. However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world3 and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health4,5. However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol�which is a marker of cardiovascular risk�changed from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95 credible interval 3.7 million�4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world. © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3�6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55 of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017�and more than 80 in some low- and middle-income regions�was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing�and in some countries reversal�of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories. © 2019, The Author(s)

A case of dynamic risk management in the subarctic region

The Barents Sea (subarctic region) is a climatically sensitive area with increasing maritime activity and scarce onshore infrastructure. The installation of Floating Production Storage and Off-loading units (FPSOs) in this region may hide the emergence of unexpected risks due to the intertwining of new technologies and extreme (but fragile) environment. An FPSO in this region would need to be equipped and built for meeting high safety standards. Specific barrier management strategy and a barrier status panel supporting the related decision-making may be employed. The purpose of the panel would be to provide an overview of the status of the barrier functions and elements in the area to protect. Indicators and modelling structures, used as baseline for the panel, may allow further analysis and aggregation of the information collected, reducing uncertainty over time

Single-cell vs. bulk activity properties of coastal bacterioplankton over an annual cycle in a temperate ecosystem

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