The purpose of this paper is to perform a diachronical cross-national analysis of health care services and raise questions of decline and convergence of European health care systems. Contrary to previ

Urbanisation, education, mobility and communication technology were all supposed to weaken people’s identification with “primordial” ethnic or religious groups. This has not occurred. Why this is and w

Hydrogeology Journal 25(4) pp. 1077-1091, doi: 10.1007/s10040-016-1504-x Abstract This study developed methodology for statistically assessing groundwater contamination mechanisms. It focused on microbiahumanitarian aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières in 2010. The factors included hydrogeological settings, land use and socio-economic characteristics. The results showed that the residuals of a conventional probit regression model had a significant positive spatial autocorrelation (Moran’s I =3.05, I-stat = 9.28); therefore, a spatial model was developed that had better goodness-of-fit to the observations. The mostsignificant factor in this model (p-value 0.005) was the distance from a water source to the nearest Tukul area, an area with informal settlements that lack sanitation services. It is thus recommended that future remediation and monitoring efforts in the city be concentrated in such low-income regions. The spatial model differed from the conventional approach: in contrast with the latter case, lowland topography was not significant at the 5% level, as the p-value was 0.074 in the spatial model and 0.040 in the traditional model. This study showed that statistical risk-factor assessments of groundwater contamination need to consider spatial interactions when the water sources are located close to each other. Future studies might further investigate the cut-off distance that reflects spatial autocorrelation. Particularly, these results advise research on urban groundwater quality.

Completed: How do human norms form and change?

Many societies are dominated by norms that are, in the long run, harmful to their members. How can these norms change?

Postdoc to do research on social norm change

Norms can be a driver for change, so in order to understand how our societies will develop over time it is important to understand how norms form and change. We are now searching for a postdoc with extra interest in studying this with us at the Institute for Futures Studies!

International Journal of Sociology Abstract The study aims to explore whether gendered family roles in the country of origin and the country of destination explain labor market outcomes for immigrants i

Economics and Philosophy 37 Abstract Economic ordeals are allocation mechanisms that impose non-financial ‘deadweight costs to qualify for a transfer’ (Nichols and Zeckhauser 1982: 372). Examples include

Vienna Institute of Demography and Institute for Futures Studies, 2007: Research Report No. 32 The future economic growth in the EU will determine the opportunities of implementing age-related expenses

Statistics from Web of Scienceshow that researchers at the Institute for Futures Studies have considerable international impact. During 2010, 6250 articles were published in sociology journals worldwid

Working  Paper 2009 no. 21 The chance of meeting a potential partner from abroad has expanded through international partnering websites, increasing international marriage migration. This paper explores