Cash benefits for short-term sickness, 1948-81

At least three-fifths of all workers are under some kind of formal plan offering income replacement during temporary periods of illness, even though there is no national sick-pay program. In 1981, income loss due to short-term non-work-related disabilities totaled +41.3 billion. Sick-pay benefits were +15.6 billion, representing 38 percent of the income that otherwise would have been lost. The replacement rate has been fairly stable since 1974, following earlier periods of uneven increases from the 17 percent recorded for 1948, the first year of this series. This article includes estimates for 1980 and 1981 and revisions for 1978 and 1979 of the income loss and benefits arising from short-term sickness. Also included are the losses and benefits for the first 6 months of long-term disability.     

Population-territory: 100 years of evolution, 1895-1990

The authors "describe population distribution trends [in Mexico] from 1895 to 1990 as they relate to a division of political and administrative factors. The study provides an estimate of population dispersion throughout time by analyzing the behavior of state populations with respect to the distance between state capitals and the Federal District. It also provides 100-year curves describing time variations of population dispersion and explaining the process of decentralization of displacement from the country's main population center to its peripheral areas." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

Purchasing power of U.S. Social Security benefits abroad, 1970-82

This article examines whether the small number of Social Security beneficiaries living abroad enjoy a higher standard of living than they would with the same benefits if they lived in the United States. The article addresses this question using two methods. First, absolute comparisons of U.S. dollar purchasing power abroad are made using "purchasing power parities," a method recently developed to allow international comparisons of real standards of living. Second, the effects of changes in Social Security benefit levels, exchange rates, and rates of inflation on the relative value of benefits abroad are measured. Both methods show considerable instability in purchasing power of Social Security benefits in the 1970's. Although beneficiaries in 1970 generally could live better abroad than in the United States, this advantage eroded considerably during the 1970's, followed by some improvement in 1981-82.     

Win,lose, or withdraw: A categorical analysis of career patterns in the House of Representatives, 1948–1978

The literature on incumbency advantage has focused on margin as an indicator for electoral security. But while electoral margin is a goodex ante measure, it is a poorex post measure of security. Further, existing work has not integrated the choice of retirement with changes in the level of security. To improve the specification and definition of “marginality”, a multinomial LOGIT model is proposed where the dependent variable is categorical. Account is therefore taken of all the ways a Representative's term in office can end, including reelection, defeat, retirement, or pursuit of other office. The sample includes all U.S. Representatives elected for the first time between 1948 and 1978. The results indicate that (1) margin in the previous election is a significantex ante proxy for the probability of electoral defeat, and (2) while the electoral safety of all incumbents in the House has been increased, the increases are greater for members elected for the first time in the period since 1965.     

Assessment and adjustment of census population data:1930-1990

"This article assesses and corrects total population data by age and sex from the 1930-1990 [censuses], for nine regions in Mexico. The assessment is based on the Whipple, Myers and United Nations indexes, and the corrections were carried out with the United Nations 1/16 techniques." (EXCERPT)     

The mobilization of the Swedish vote: An ecological analysis of the general elections of 1928, 1948 and 1968

Abstract. This paper focuses on the floating vote and the floating voter at three critical junctures in modern Swedish political history: the general elections of 1928, 1948, and 1968. The topic is in the mainstream of electoral research, but with one important proviso: it is a study of floating without the benefit of survey data. The analysis is based on Thomsen's (1987) method of ecological inference. The ecological estimates confirm the conventional wisdom that the Swedish elections of 1928, 1948 and 1968 were mobilizing elections, bringing large numbers of new voters to the polls, and marked by considerable mobility between the parties. They were also realigning in that they held out the possibility of a new status quo. In 1928 and 1948 the parties of the right were on the offensive; in 1968 the Social Democrats held the initiative. But the new coalitions were potentially unstable; it was the floating voters, particularly those with a previous history of non-voting, who spelled the difference between defeat and victory. The paper makes an important contribution to the validation of Thomsen's method.     

Intelligence Requirements at the Crossroads: The 1948 French Plan de Renseignement,Intelligence Requirements and the Role of Intelligence History

Very often intelligence history concentrates on the knowledge produced by a country's intelligence service and its impact on national decision-making, or – in the case of intelligence failures – the lack thereof. Using a previously unexplored document from the archives of the French Foreign Ministry, this research note proposes another contribution of intelligence history to diplomatic history: By analysing national intelligence requirements – the ‘top secret diaries’ of governments – intelligence history can provide a window into the minds of decision-makers. The 1948 French plan de renseignement illustrates this case. Written shortly after the Cold War started in earnest in 1947, the plan de renseignement shows a French government deeply worried about the danger of global conflict and of internal upheaval in its empire, but also a government not fully committed to the western cause and particularly sceptical about American intentions. French foreign policy was at a crossroads in 1947/48 and, quite sensibly, French policy-makers wanted to know exactly what lay on all the possible roads ahead. While these findings do not contradict existing scholarship, they may help to encourage a re-weighing of existing arguments.     

Justifying grounds for multicultural policies in Korea: universal human rights versus benefits of diversity

Multicultural policies often deviate from the principle of equal opportunity since it assumes exclusive policy target groups with extra budget and appropriate organization. If this is so, by what rationale can multicultural policies be justified? Why should we accept such unequal treatment as a procedural method to achieve a more equal society as the final goal? This paper examines justifying logic for multicultural policies that inevitably have an arbitrary aspect of state intervention. This paper first differentiates two kinds of logic, namely universal human rights and the benefits of diversity, which provide supporting rationale for the implementation of multicultural policies. We can witness from the US history that the benefits of diversity have increasingly become the main logic justifying affirmative action instead of liberal discussions on social justice and universal human rights of the 1960s. Korea also shows such a shift towards a utilitarian justification which has focused heavily on the benefits of diversity. However, the utilitarian rationalization for multicultural transition can be easily withdrawn when the benefits of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity disappear, suddenly leading to unexpected discriminatory situations. In this context, this paper argues that discussion of normative justification is required, and such discussions need to be internalized among the citizens of a political community.     

The erosion of retiree health benefits and retirement behavior: implications for the disability insurance program

The effects of retiree health insurance on the decision to retire have not been examined until recently. It is an area of increasing significance because of rising health care costs for retirees, the uncertain future of Medicare, and increased life expectancy. In general, studies suggest that individual retirement decisions are strongly responsive to the availability of retiree health insurance. Early retiree benefits and retirement behavior are also important because they may affect the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) program. It is not apparent that if a person loses retiree health benefits, or if fewer people are eligible for retiree health benefits in general, claims for DI will increase. The potential 2-year loss of health benefits may be a deterrent to leaving the labor force and claiming DI, although persons who are unable to work would leave the labor force even without health benefits. In order to understand how the decline in retiree health benefits may affect enrollment in DI, analysts must at least incorporate the role of coverage under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA). That act provides many people with access to health insurance during the 2-year gap between eligibility for DI and Medicare. In fact, persons with sufficient means to retire early could use the income from Disability Insurance to buy COBRA coverage during the first 2 years of DI coverage. Determining the effect of the erosion of retiree health benefits on DI must account properly for the role of other factors that affect DI eligibility and participation. The financial incentives of Social Security, pension plans, retirement savings programs, health status, the availability of health insurance, and other factors influencing retirement decisions must be taken fully into account in order to isolate the precise effect of retiree health benefits.     

Maintaining registration and tax benefits: Consequences for professionalisation of voluntary membership organisations in Norway and the UK

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how regulation related to maintaining state registration and tax beneficial status affects professionalisation, covering paid staff and volunteers with specialist skills, of political parties, advocacy groups and service providing organisations. The article fills a gap in the literature which until now has been mainly concerned with the influence of state funding on professionalisation. To study the consequences of first-time exposure to reporting requirements, eight organisations in two contrasting regulatory regimes, UK and Norway are analysed, on the basis of extensive documents and a series of semi-structured interviews with different organisational actors. The study finds that organisations – irrespective of type - exposed to constraining regulation adjust to reporting requirements through recruitment of specialised personnel. Organisations’ financial capacity determines whether the organisation professionalises by taking on specialist volunteers or by taking on paid staff. The study demonstrates the pervasive impact of regulation on organisational maintenance of voluntary membership organisations in contemporary democracies.     

The birth,life, and death of policy instruments: 35 years of EU gender equality policy programmes

Policy instruments research is an essential part of studying European Union governance. A growing interest in processes of (de-)legalisation and patterns of instrument choice requires a more process- and context-oriented analysis of the EU’s instrument selection. Using a political sociology approach, the article analyses patterns of instrument choice in soft law policy programmes, by examining the life cycle of EU gender equality policy programmes from 1982 to the present day. Gender equality policy programmes offer an in-depth understanding of how the Commission upgrades and downgrades policy instruments. The analysis indicates that patterns of policy instrument choice are not necessarily inflexible once a policy instrument is selected. Instead, patterns vary while the instrument is (de-)legalised. Investigating gender equality policy programmes provides explanations for the shifts in the use of legislative instruments and their limitations.