29 research outputs found
Sustainability and the capability approach: from theory to practice?
YesThe capability approach and sustainability can be connected in numerous ways. One could
think of sustainability as a self-contained domain of human analysis – thus there could be
theories of sustainability and there may be difficulties in this domain as elsewhere in moving
from theory to policy or practice. Thus, capability approach could be considered as an
additional lens that can facilitate the transition from sustainability theory to practice;
alternatively one could think of the capability approach as offering an alternative paradigm
and thus build on both theories and then find ways to move from theory to practice. In this
chapter, both of these approaches are recognised and discussed. The capability approach is
mainly about enhancing substantive freedoms- we examine the conjectures whether an
approach of increasing freedoms is compatible with sustainability and whether freedoms
are sufficient for sustainability. We use the case of Mongolia to explore some of these issues
of application
Future low fertility prospects in Mongolia? An evaluation of the factors that support having a child
Associations between diet quality and depressed mood in adolescents : results from the Australian healthy neighbourhoods study
Background: The influence of religion on demographic behaviors has been extensively studied mainly for Abrahamic religions. Although Buddhism is the world´s fourth largest religion and is dominant in several Asian nations experiencing very low fertility, the impact of Buddhism on childbearing has received comparatively little research attention.
Objective: This paper draws upon a variety of data sources in different countries in Asia in order to test our hypothesis that Buddhism is related to low fertility.
Methods: Religious differentials in terms of period fertility in three nations (India, Cambodia and Nepal) and cohort fertility in three case studies (Mongolia, Thailand and Japan) are analyzed. The analyses are divided into two parts: descriptive and multivariate analyses.
Results: Our results suggest that Buddhist affiliation tends to be negatively or not associated with childbearing outcomes, controlling for education, region of residence, age and marital status. Although the results vary between the highly diverse contextual and institutional settings investigated, we find evidence that Buddhist affiliation or devotion is not related to elevated fertility across these very different cultural settings.
Conclusions: Across the highly diverse cultural and developmental contexts under which the different strains of Buddhism dominate, the effect of Buddhism is consistently negatively or insignificantly related to fertility. These findings stand in contrast to studies of Abrahamic religions that tend to identify a positive link between religiosity and fertility