Improving work incentives in a means-tested welfare system: The 1994 Australian social security reforms

Shortly after its re-election in March 1993, the Australian government established an expert committee to advise it on how best to respond to the unemployment crisis. Between May 1990 and May 1993, the total number of unemployed people in Australia rose from 549,000 to 924,000. Over the same period, the number of long- term unemployed people (defined as those out of work for a year or more) trebled, rising from 121,000 to 362,000. The deteriorating unemployment situation seemed worse when set against Australia’s impressive employment achievement over the 1980s (Saunders, 1994) and was more severe than that experienced by most other OECD countries in the early 1990s (OECD, 1994).

Academic Sociology and Social Policy Think Tanks in Britain and Australia: A Personal Reflection

[No abstract][No keywords]

A sceptic looks at "housing theory"

A sceptic looks at "housing theory

Nurse-friendly nutritional screening for patient benefit

Screening for undernutrition is highly important and may reduce morbidity and mortality. The Minimal Eating Observation and Nutrition Form – Version II (MEONF-II) is a nutritional screening tool specifically developed for use by nurses. Here, we describe the translation, performance and appropriateness of the MEONF-II for the UK. Following translation from Swedish to British English, the user-friendliness and appropriateness of the British MEONF-II was tested by 29 registered nurses and final year student nurses on 266 hospital inpatients. The new British MEONF-II was perceived as highly user-friendly and appropriate. They found the MEONF-II to compare favourably to other similar tools in terms of preference, usefulness and helpfulness in providing good nutritional care. Dependency in activities and poorer subjective health were associated with a higher undernutrition risk. These findings support the appropriateness of the British MEONF-II version and suggest it may act as a user-friendly facilitator towards good nutritional nursing care

EKOLOŠKA POLJOPRIVREDA MOŽE HRANITI SVIJET

Conventional high-input farming is unsustainable because of its effects on the soil and on the rural economy and because of its heavy reliance on oil both as fuel and as the source of fertilizer. Genetic modification is claimed in some quarters to have the potential to increase yields and decrease the dependence on oil, but so far it has singularly failed to deliver and there is very little to suggest that it ever will. What is more, the present technology involves many hazards to human health and to the environment and these are being deliberately ignored rather than addressed. The alternative to high-input and GM is to use organic agriculture and farming methods that require little or no external inputs. Many people, however, argue that attractive though this idea may be, and despite the growing evidence that organically produced crops are superior, it simply cannot provide the amount of food that ten billion people are going to need. Until recently, there were no large scale direct comparisons of organic and conventional agriculture to support or refute this claim. In 1997, however, the government of Ethiopia, which had previously tried to promote a version of the so-called Green Revolution, introduced a new Environmental Policy. Part of the implementation of this policy involved the growing of a number of crops on many farms using either no fertilizer, chemical fertilizer, or compost. Over the six years from 2000 to 2006, data were collected for almost a thousand farmers’ fields. In particular, there is a large amount of data for five crops that are especially important in Ethiopia: barley, durum wheat, faba beans, maize and teff. For all five crops, higher yields were achieved with compost than with chemical fertilizers. When combined with other practices such as the anaerobic digestion of waste, organic agriculture is capable of feeding the world sustainably.Konvencionalna poljoprivreda velikih ulaganja je neodrživa zbog utjecaja na tlo i na ekonomiju sela. Ona je ovisna o nafti i mineralnim gnojivima. Premda je korištenje genetičke modifikacije najavljeno kao metoda koja će uvećati urode i smanjiti ovisnost o nafti, do sada se ta obećanja nisu ispunila, a mala je vjerojatnost da ikada hoće. Što više, moderna poljoprivredna tehnologija uključuje mnoge rizike po ljudsko zdravlje i po okoliš. Ovi su rizici, umjesto da budu naglašeni, svjesno zanemarivani. Ekološka poljoprivreda s malo vanjskih ulaganja alternative je konvencionalnoj industrijskoj poljoprivredi i GM. Međutim, mnogi prigovori su da iako atraktivna, ova metoda nije u stanju osigurati hranu za 10 milijardi stanovnika. Do nedavno nije bilo podataka o usporedbi ove dvije metode. Međutim, 1997. vlada Etiopije, koja je prije zastupala ideju tzv. Zelene revolucije, uvodi novu ekološku politiku. Dio te politike bio je komparativni uzgoj usjeva: bez gnojiva, s kemijskim gnojivima i s kompostom. Tijekom 6 godina (2000 -2006.), na gotovo tisuću farmi sakupljani su podaci za pet usjeva (ječam, durum pšenica, bob, kukuruz i tef.). Kod svih pet usjeva postignuti su značajno viši urodi uz primjenu komposta. U kombinaciji s drugim ekološkim metodama kao što je npr. Proizvodnja metana i komposta anaerobnim vrenjem organskog otpada, ekološka poljoprivreda je održiva i može hraniti Svijet

An Empirical Investigation of the Effects of Monetary Changes on the U.K. Economy

Theoretical discussions involving the relationship between the money supply and an economy\u27s output has dominated the field of monetary economics for many years. Theoretically, the resolution of two separate issues is crucial - (1) the question of causality in the money-income relationship and (2) the effects of monetary changes on the two components of nominal output; i. e., the price level and real output. Two major opposing views can readily be identified: the monetarist view and the keynesian view. The monetarists\u27 view is based on the postulates of the Quantity Theory of Money. In their view, the money supply is exogenously determined. Furthermore, according to the monetarists, there exists a direct causal flow from money to nominal output. 3 Consequently, changes in the money supply dominate movements in nominal output. Some monetarists allow for a feedback from nominal output to the money supply, but even then, monetary changes are considered the major factors determining nominal Qutput

Circulation in the eastern North Atlantic

Basin-wide geostrophic shear profiles have been computed for several latitudes in the eastern Atlantic between 32 and 53N. The absolute velocity on each section has been chosen so that the transport satisfies the Sverdrup relation. It is concluded that the wind-driven currents are not confined to the upper thermocline but extend to great depth...

Bricks without straw: Darwinism in the social sciences

The so-called evolutionary social sciences are based on the belief that Darwinism can explain the living world and that it therefore should be able to explain other complex systems such as minds and societies. In fact, Darwinism cannot explain biological evolution. It does make an important contribution, but this is towards understanding adaptation, which is a major problem in biology but not in the social sciences. Darwinism has much less to offer to the social sciences than to biology and the shortcomings it brings with it are much greater