Revisiting the Income-Health Nexus: The Importance of Choosing the "Right" Indicator

We show that the choice of the welfare measure has a substantial impact on the degree of welfare-related health inequality. Combining various income and wealth measures with different health measures, we calculate 80 health concentration indices. The influence of the welfare measure is more pronounced when using subjective health measures than when using objective health measures.income measurement, concentration index, health inequality, SOEP

Revisiting the Income-Health Nexus: The Importance of Choosing the "Right" Indicator

We show that the choice of the welfare measure has a substantial impact on the degree of welfare-related health inequality. Combining various income and wealth measures with different health measures, we calculate 80 health concentration indices. The influence of the welfare measure is more pronounced when using subjective health measures than when using objective health measures.health inequality, concentration index, income measurement, SOEP

Comparing two work-engagement scales: Relationships with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and workaholism

Although research on work engagement has made great progress over the past 10 years, how best to measure work engagement is still an open question. The aim of the present study was to compare two multidimensional scales measuring work engagement: the popular and widely used Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2003) capturing vigor, dedication and absorption and the newly developed ISA Engagement Scale (ISAES; Soane, Truss, Alfes, Shantz, Rees, & Gatenby, 2012) capturing intellectual, affective, and social engagement. When examining the intercorrelations of the scales’ total and subscale scores and their relationships with job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and workaholism in a sample of 130 employees, results showed that—even though UWES and ISAES total and subscale scores showed considerable overlap—they captured unique variance in the outcome variables, indicating that the two scales tap different aspects of engagement. Based on the present and previous findings (Soane et al., 2012), we recommend to use both scales when measuring work engagement to capture all aspects of the construct and gain a better understanding of how different aspects of work engagement contribute to outcomes that are of key interest to organizational and occupational psychology

Regional Income Stratification in Unified Germany Using a Gini Decomposition Approach

This paper delivers new insights into the development of income inequality and regional stratification in Germany after unification using a new method for detecting social stratification by a decomposition of the GINI index which yields the obligatory between- and withingroup components as well as an "overlapping" index for the different sup-populations. We apply this method together with a jackknife estimation of standard errors. We find that East Germany is still a stratum on its own when using post-government income, but since 2001 no longer is when using pre-government income. These results remain stable when using alternatively defined regional classifications. However, there are also indications of some regional variation within West Germany. Overall, these findings are important for the political discussion with respect to a potential regional concentration of future transfers from East to West Germany.Inequality decomposition; Gini; Stratification; German unification; Regional disparities; SOEP

Chevalley's restriction theorem for reductive symmetric superpairs

Let (g,k) be a reductive symmetric superpair of even type, i.e. so that there exists an even Cartan subspace a in p. The restriction map S(p^*)^k->S(a^*)^W where W=W(g_0:a) is the Weyl group, is injective. We determine its image explicitly. In particular, our theorem applies to the case of a symmetric superpair of group type, i.e. (k+k,k) with the flip involution where k is a classical Lie superalgebra with a non-degenerate invariant even form (equivalently, a finite-dimensional contragredient Lie superalgebra). Thus, we obtain a new proof of the generalisation of Chevalley's restriction theorem due to Sergeev and Kac, Gorelik. For general symmetric superpairs, the invariants exhibit a new and surprising behaviour. We illustrate this phenomenon by a detailed discussion in the example g=C(q+1)=osp(2|2q,C), endowed with a special involution. In this case, the invariant algebra defines a singular algebraic curve.Comment: 35 pages; v4: revised submission to J.Alg., accepted for publication under the proviso of revisio

Solvent fluctuations induce non-Markovian kinetics in hydrophobic pocket-ligand binding

We investigate the impact of water fluctuations on the key-lock association kinetics of a hydrophobic ligand (key) binding to a hydrophobic pocket (lock) by means of a minimalistic stochastic model system. It describes the collective hydration behavior of the pocket by bimodal fluctuations of a water-pocket interface that dynamically couples to the diffusive motion of the approaching ligand via the hydrophobic interaction. This leads to a set of overdamped Langevin equations in 2D-coordinate-space, that is Markovian in each dimension. Numerical simulations demonstrate locally increased friction of the ligand, decelerated binding kinetics, and local non-Markovian (memory) effects in the ligand's reaction coordinate as found previously in explicit-water molecular dynamics studies of model hydrophobic pocket-ligand binding [1,2]. Our minimalistic model elucidates the origin of effectively enhanced friction in the process that can be traced back to long-time decays in the force-autocorrelation function induced by the effective, spatially fluctuating pocket-ligand interaction. Furthermore, we construct a generalized 1D-Langevin description including a spatially local memory function that enables further interpretation and a semi-analytical quantification of the results of the coupled 2D-system

Measuring Income in Household Panel Surveys for Germany: A Comparison of EU-SILC and SOEP

Empirical analyses of economic inequality, poverty, and mobility in Germany are, to an increas-ing extent, using microdata from the German Federal Statistical Office's contribution to the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) as well as data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). In addition to their significance for national reporting, the EU-SILC data are of great international significance for comparative EU-wide measurement, description, and analysis in support of the European Commission's stated objective of fighting poverty and reducing social inequality through the European social cohesion process. It is therefore crucial to assess the quality of the German contribution to EU-SILC, particularly in view of evidence in the literature of methodological problems in this still relatively young survey with respect to the representation of specific social groups and the distri-bution of key educational characteristics that can have a considerable impact on the degree and structure of inequality and poverty (see Hauser 2008, Causa et al. 2009, Nolan et al. 2009). While previous papers have critically examined the German EU-SILC contribution in comparison to the cross-sectional data from the German Survey of Income and Expenditure (EVS), the present paper compares EU-SILC-based results about income trends, inequality, and mobility with results based on SOEP, a widely used alternate panel survey of private households in Germany. The - in some cases severe - differences identified are discussed in the context of the surveying and interviewing methods, post-data-collection treatment of the micro-data as well as sample characteristics of the two studies, all of which exert a major influence on the substantive results and thus on the core findings regarding the social situation of Germany in EU-wide comparison.Inequality, poverty, mobility, household panel, EU-SILC, SOEP