Table Of ContentSOCIAL JUSTICE, EQUALITY AND EMPOWERMENT
S I : S ,
OCIAL NDICATORS TATISTICS
T P D
RENDS AND OLICY EVELOPMENT
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SOCIAL JUSTICE, EQUALITY AND EMPOWERMENT
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SOCIAL JUSTICE, EQUALITY AND EMPOWERMENT
S I : S ,
OCIAL NDICATORS TATISTICS
TRENDS AND POLICY DEVELOPMENT
CANDACE M. BAIRD
EDITOR
Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
New York
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Social indicators : statistics, trends and policy development / editor,
Candace M. Baird.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-62100-126-3 (eBook)
1. Social indicators. I. Baird, Candace M.
HN25.S643 2010
301.01'5118--dc22
2010042625
Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York
CONTENTS
Preface vii
Chapter 1 Social Scientific Metrology as the Mediator between Sociology and
Socionomy: A Cri De Coeur for the Systemizing of Social
Indicators 1
Jarl K. Kampen and Hilde Tobi
Chapter 2 Discretionary Time and Freely Disposable Time: Two New
Integrated Indicators of Welfare, Poverty and Freedoms 27
Marieke Hobbes and Wouter T. de Groot
Chapter 3 Introducing the Concept of Functional Time Use (FTU) as a Tool
for Measuring the ―Labour Burden‖: A Case Study from the
Bolivian Amazon 49
Lisa Ringhofer
Chapter 4 Genoa Index of Deprivation (GDI): An Index of Material
Deprivation for Geographical Areas 75
E. Ivaldi and A. Testi
Chapter 5 Social Capital Indicators and Environmental Policies
for Protected Areas 99
Nikoleta Jones, Marina Proikaki
and Panayiotis G. Dimitrakopoulos
Chapter 6 What Agro-Processing Can Do to the Social Conditions of Rural
Subsistent Farmers: The Case of Milenovisi Association in Ghana 119
Frank S. Arku, Cynthia Arku and John-Engelbert Seddoh
Chapter 7 Explaining Social Determinants and Health Risk: The Case of
Female Sex Workers in Hong Kong and China 135
Eleanor Holroyd and William W. C. Wong
vi Contents
Chapter 8 Evaluating Environmental and Regional Policies in the European
Union through the Use of Environmental Quality Indices 149
Panagiotis Evangelopoulos, Dimitrios Giannias,
Panagiotis Liargovas and Loukas Tsironis
Chapter 9 Is Generalized Trust Useful as the Indicator of Social Capital for
Small Area Analysis in Japan? 163
Yoshikazu Fujisawa, Tsuyoshi Hamano and Akio Koyabu
Index 173
PREFACE
Social indicators measure the quality of life and encompass the whole spectrum of
society, including the individual, public and private organizations, municipal, country,
regional, national and international systems. This book presents topical research in the study
of social indicators from across the globe. Some topics discussed in this compilation include
social scientific metrology as the mediator between sociology and socionomy; discretionary
time and freely disposable time as social indicators of welfare, poverty and freedoms;
socioeconomic status and the incidence of illness and social capital.
Chapter 1 - Without doubt, there is a growing interest within the political community and
society in general in both the development and application of social indicators. However, the
scientific basis that is required to construct valid social indicators is weak. Firstly, there is a
sharp divide between interpretativist and neopositivist ontological worldviews which cannot
be expected to be resolved in the near future. Secondly, the social sciences lack a general
theory of measurements, a theory of measurement error, principles for providing unified
measurements, etc.: in short, there is lack of a social scientific metrology. The latter problem
pertains to a plurality of methodological approaches (both quantitative and qualitative). An
important step towards maturizing the social sciences is for researchers to make a more
concentrated effort to explicate rigorously the various choices they made in conducting their
research. The authors therefore identify the various phases in the research process where
choices are being made, and discuss the impact of these choices on the validity of the
resulting research. Increased explication of the research choices made facilitates the
identification of differences of opinion within the social scientific community, and ultimately,
makes the developing of precise and unambiguous definitions regarding the measurement of
specific social scientific constructs possible.
Chapter 2 - The economics of life are ruled by time, money, their exchange rate and how
much of it is needed to satisfy the basic needs of the household. Discretionary Time (DT) and
Freely Disposable Time (FDT) are two newly developed conceptually equivalent but
methodologically different social indicators that integrate these time and money elements into
a single metric. Both indicators express how much time the productive members of a
household have left after fulfilling the basic needs (of food, shelter, care, sleep, consumables
etc.) of themselves and their dependents. This chapter discusses (1) the principles of DT and
FDT assessment and some outcomes in various countries, (2) the linkages of DT and FDT
with freedoms, potential income, development, poverty and happiness, (3) the caveats that
viii Candace M. Baird
may be identified in these linkages and (4) indicator choice in relation to mono-dimensional,
pure time and money indicators of welfare and poverty.
Chapter 3 - This chapter introduces the concept of functional time use (FTU). To this
end, the first part is devoted to a review of time use studies with special consideration to
labour time, followed by introducing the theoretical, conceptual and methodological
framework within which functional time use is embedded. The third part of this chapter
presents the empirical case study results in time use from Campo Bello, an indigenous
Tsimane‘ community in the Bolivian Amazon. The research findings are presented along the
following lines: first, the socially disposable time at the system level is discussed for different
age/sex groups along their life-cycle. The second research interest entails a more holistic
approach and scrutinises the number of person-hours invested in the reproduction of the four
different social subsystems: the person system, the household system, the community system
and the economic system. The third subsection looks into locally implemented strategies to
increase the productivity of time. Finally, this chapter also argues for the FTU approach to
serve a useful purpose in planning and monitoring the impact of development projects.
Chapter 4 - The existence of an inverse association between socioeconomic status and the
incidence of most diseases is well-established in literature: higher rates of morbidity and
mortality have been reported among lower socioeconomic groups in many European
countries.
The relation between socioeconomic factors and health inequality may be proved at the
individual level, or at the geographical area level. In this paper we follow the second stream
of literature, i.e studies on deprivation relating the state of disadvantage suffered by an
individual, with the living conditions of the area where the individual resides. Deprivation
underlines the characteristics of a group (that is, the population living in a defined
geographical area) by measuring similarities and dissimilarities of the individuals forming
that group.
Knowledge of deprivation indexes is, therefore, very important for resource allocation:
according to equity‘s considerations, more deprived areas should be assigned a larger amount
of resources.
The first part of the proposed chapter examines, in a historical perspective the more
commonly used deprivation indexes, i.e. the ones proposed by Jarman, Carstairs, Townsend,
MATDEP and SOCDEP the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD 2000) developed by the
U.K. Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. The second part presents an
index of material deprivation which has been applied to ―small areas‖ of the city of Genoa
(GDI).
Chapter 5 - Social capital is an important factor influencing several issues both in
individual and collective level. Various indicators have been presented in the relevant
literature for its measurement. The most commonly known are: social trust, institutional trust,
social networks and social norms. The aim of the chapter is to analyze social capital
indicators and to underline their connection with the development of environmental policies.
Specifically the influence of social capital indicators on different environmental policy
instruments will be presented. Through this analysis the importance of exploring social
capital during the formation of environmental policies and the need to develop measurement
techniques for this purpose is highlighted. The above issues will also be explored taking as an
example environmental policies for the protection of areas with high biodiversity value.
Preface ix
Chapter 6 - Many developing countries have formulated their poverty reduction strategies
taking into account their development priorities, resource base and aid from the international
community. Ghana‘s poverty reduction strategy, for example, has it to assist rural farmers to
add value to their food crops so that they can benefit from relatively better returns. With the
assistance of the government, farmers are increasingly processing raw cassava locally into
gari (i.e., cassava grains) making it a less perishable food. While agro-processing is becoming
a popular strategy to reduce poverty, an understanding of how its impact on households is
important in tweaking development initiatives for better results on poverty reduction. Thus,
we examined how the government–assisted gari processing is changing social conditions of
rural women and their households involved within the Eastern Region of Ghana. Findings
from the case study of Milenovisi gari processing Association demonstrated that, not only did
the women‘s incomes improve; they were also able to afford food and health costs, and
contributed to funerals and religious activities, although they faced difficulties with
transportation and credit facilities. Their local political leader and families significantly
influenced women‘s decision to be involved in this initiative. Consequently, we propose
increased use of families as medium for recruiting and passing along skills to potential
beneficiaries. Also, we argue that agro-processing initiatives need to be accompanied with
credit facilities, and that tackling transportation barriers which create additional workload and
health problems for the women on top of the already labor intensive task of processing gari, is
critical for achieving greater impacts.
Chapter 7 - The modern study of the social determinants of health were said to have
begun with Rudolph Virchow and Friedrich Engels whom not only made the explicit link
between living conditions and health but also explored the political and economic structures
that create inequalities in the living conditions which lead to health inequalities. (Rather 1985;
Engels 1987). Recently, international interest in the social determinants of health has led to
the World Health Organization's creating a Commission on the Social Determinants of
Health. (WHO 2008) In its final report Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity
through Action on the Social Determinants of Health the commission succinctly summarises
the current state of knowledge:
"Social justice is a matter of life and death…These inequities in health, avoidable health
inequalities, arise because of the circumstances in which people grow, live, work, and age,
and the systems put in place to deal with illness. The conditions in which people live and die
are, in turn, shaped by political, social, and economic forces.‖
Chapter 8 - This chapter uses an amenity-productivity theoretical framework to classify
European Union sub-group of countries (EU-27, Eurozone-16, EU-15) according to the extent
to which they are influenced by supply-side (producer) and demand-side (consumer)
responses to their specific bundle of economic and environmental attributes. The assessment
of the environmental quality in each state is based on the development of environmental
indices. This kind of classification is useful because it provides information about the relative
attractiveness to producers and consumers of the combination of economic and environmental
attributes indigenous to each region. It therefore has implications for the design and focus of
the regional and environmental policies of the European Union and the Eurozone.
Chapter 9 - Several studies have used generalized trust as an indicator of social capital.
However, its validity in Japan due to cultural differences is questioned. Here, the authors
emphasize the need for more sophisticated discussions underlying trust measurement for
social capital, specifically generalized and particularized trust. The aim of this study is to
