Disparities in access to clean water and sanitation: institutional causes

Water Policy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (S1) ◽  
pp. 155-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew B. Whitford ◽  
Helen Smith ◽  
Anant Mandawat
Keyword(s):  
National Data ◽  
Water And Sanitation ◽  
Institutional Variables ◽  
Development Path ◽  
Quality Regulation ◽  
Access To Water ◽  
Key Variables ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

This paper uses cross-national data from 2002 and 2004 to assess the effects of key institutional variables on the improvement of access to safe water and sanitation. Two key variables of specific interest are a country's commitment to ‘quality regulation’ and the country's long-term development path. The evidence for the impact of those factors on expanding or contracting access to water and sanitation is mixed.

scholarly journals Modeling Building Stock Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 723
Author(s):  
Antti Kurvinen ◽  
Arto Saari ◽  
Juhani Heljo ◽  
Eero Nippala
Keyword(s):  
Model Development ◽  
Housing Demand ◽  
Quality Data ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Test Arena ◽  
Climate Targets ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Key Variables ◽  
The Impact

It is widely agreed that dynamics of building stocks are relatively poorly known even if it is recognized to be an important research topic. Better understanding of building stock dynamics and future development is crucial, e.g., for sustainable management of the built environment as various analyses require long-term projections of building stock development. Recognizing the uncertainty in relation to long-term modeling, we propose a transparent calculation-based QuantiSTOCK model for modeling building stock development. Our approach not only provides a tangible tool for understanding development when selected assumptions are valid but also, most importantly, allows for studying the sensitivity of results to alternative developments of the key variables. Therefore, this relatively simple modeling approach provides fruitful grounds for understanding the impact of different key variables, which is needed to facilitate meaningful debate on different housing, land use, and environment-related policies. The QuantiSTOCK model may be extended in numerous ways and lays the groundwork for modeling the future developments of building stocks. The presented model may be used in a wide range of analyses ranging from assessing housing demand at the regional level to providing input for defining sustainable pathways towards climate targets. Due to the availability of high-quality data, the Finnish building stock provided a great test arena for the model development.

scholarly journals Lockdown Lives: A longitudinal study of inter-relationships amongst feelings of loneliness, social contacts and solidarity during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jolien van Breen ◽  
Maja Kutlaca ◽  
Yasin Koc ◽  
Bertus F. Jeronimus ◽  
Anne Margit Reitsema ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
National Data ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Public ◽  
Time Points ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

In this work, we study how social contacts and feelings of solidarity shape experiences of loneliness during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020. We draw on cross-national data, collected across four time points between mid-March until early May 2020. We situate our work within the public debate on these issues and discuss to what extent the public understanding of the impact of lockdown is borne out in the data. Results show, first, that although online contacts are beneficial in combating feelings of loneliness, people who feel more lonely are less likely to make use of this strategy. Second, online contacts do not function as a substitute to face-to-face contacts - in fact, more frequent online contacts in earlier weeks predicted an increase in face-to-face contacts in later weeks. Finally, solidarity played only a small role in shaping people’s feelings of loneliness during lockdown. In sum, our findings suggest that we must look beyond the current focus on online contact and solidarity, if we want to help people address their feelings of loneliness. We hope that this work will be instrumental not only in understanding the impact of the lockdown in early 2020, but also in preparing for possible future lockdown periods.

scholarly journals Changes in historical typhoid transmission across 16 U.S. cities, 1889-1931: Quantifying the impact of investments in water and sewer infrastructures

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maile T. Phillips ◽  
Katharine A. Owers ◽  
Bryan T. Grenfell ◽  
Virginia E. Pitzer
Keyword(s):  
Late Summer ◽  
Water Source ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Water And Sanitation ◽  
Sewer Systems ◽  
Early Fall ◽  
Sanitation Systems ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTBackgroundInvestments in water and sanitation systems are believed to have led to the decline in typhoid fever in developed countries, such that most cases now occur in regions lacking adequate clean water and sanitation. Exploring seasonal and long-term patterns in historical typhoid mortality in the United States can offer deeper understanding of disease drivers.MethodsWe fit modified Time-series Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered models to city-level weekly mortality counts to estimate seasonal and long-term typhoid transmission. We examined seasonal transmission separately by city and aggregated by water source. We fit regression models to measure associations between long-term transmission and financial investments in water and sewer systems.ResultsTyphoid transmission peaked in late summer/early fall. Seasonality varied by water source, with the greatest variation occurring in cities with reservoirs. Historical $1 per capita ($25.80 in 2017) investments in construction and operation of water and sewer systems were associated with 8-53% decreases in typhoid transmission, while $1 increases in total value or debt accrued to maintain them were associated with 4-7% decreases.ConclusionOur findings aid in the understanding of typhoid transmission dynamics and potential impacts of water and sanitation improvements, and can inform cost-effectiveness analyses of interventions to reduce the typhoid burden.

Introducing xSub: A new portal for cross-national data on subnational violence

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 604-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuri M Zhukov ◽  
Christian Davenport ◽  
Nadiya Kostyuk
Keyword(s):  
Grid Cell ◽  
Large Data ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
National Data ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Disaggregated Data ◽  
Data Collections ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

Researchers today have access to an unprecedented amount of geo-referenced, disaggregated data on political conflict. Because these new data sources use disparate event typologies and units of analysis, findings are rarely comparable across studies. As a result, we are unable to answer basic questions like ‘what does conflict A tell us about conflict B?’ This article introduces xSub – a ‘database of databases’ for disaggregated research on political conflict ( www.x-sub.org ). xSub reduces barriers to comparative subnational research, by empowering researchers to quickly construct custom, analysis-ready datasets. xSub currently features subnational data on conflict in 156 countries, from 21 sources, including large data collections and data from individual scholars. To facilitate comparisons across countries and sources, xSub organizes these data into consistent event categories, actors, spatial units (country, province, district, grid cell, electoral constituency), and time units (year, month, week, and day). This article introduces xSub and illustrates its potential, by investigating the impact of repression on dissent across thousands of subnational datasets.

scholarly journals The populist politics of Euroscepticism in times of crisis: Comparative conclusions

Politics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea LP Pirro ◽  
Paul Taggart ◽  
Stijn van Kessel
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
National Data ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Face ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

This article offers comparative findings of the nature of populist Euroscepticism in political parties in contemporary Europe in the face of the Great Recession, migrant crisis, and Brexit. Drawing on case studies included in the Special Issue on France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, the article presents summary cross-national data on the positions of parties, the relative importance of the crisis, the framing of Euroscepticism, and the impact of Euroscepticism in different country cases. We use this data to conclude that there are important differences between left- and right-wing variants of populist Euroscepticism, and that although there is diversity across the cases, there is an overall picture of resilience against populist Euroscepticism.

scholarly journals Framing the Narrative: Female Fighters, External Audience Attitudes, and Transnational Support for Armed Rebellions

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (9) ◽  
pp. 1638-1665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devorah Manekin ◽  
Reed M. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
National Data ◽  
State Support ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Female Fighters ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

Female combatants play a central role in rebel efforts to cultivate and disseminate positive narratives regarding the movement and its political goals. Yet, the effectiveness of such strategies in shaping audience attitudes or generating tangible benefits for the group remains unclear. We propose and test a theory regarding the channels through which female fighters advance rebel goals. We argue that female fighters positively influence audience attitudes toward rebel groups by strengthening observers’ beliefs about their legitimacy and their decision to use armed tactics. We further contend that these effects directly help them secure support from transnational nonstate actors and indirectly promote state support. We assess our arguments by combining a novel survey experiment in two countries with analyses of new cross-national data on female combatants and information about transnational support for rebels. The empirical results support our arguments and demonstrate the impact of gender framing on rebel efforts to secure support.

scholarly journals Human resource management: the promise, the performance, the consequences

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brewster ◽  
Paul N. Gooderham ◽  
Wolfgang Mayrhofer
Keyword(s):  
Firm Performance ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Cross National

Purpose – The dominant focus of HRM research has been that of “strategic HRM”, that is a focus on the impact of HRM on firm performance. The authors argue that not only are the cumulative results of this “dominant research orthodoxy” disappointing in terms of their external validity, but also they are of limited practical value. Further, it has failed not only in terms of its narrow firm performance-oriented agenda, but also the tenets of its agenda have contributed to serious levels of employee dissatisfaction and to the failure to deal with pressing global issues. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – In order to assess the contribution of the dominant research orthodoxy the authors analyse the 16 most cited journal articles in the field of HRM. Findings – The authors find a predominance of US-centric studies and therefore a questionable cross-national generalizability of the dominant research orthodoxy. The use of cross-sectional data means that long-term effects cannot be gauged. The authors observe a lack of consensus on how to operationalize HRM and firm performance. National context is generally absent. Practical implications – The authors show that for HRM to realize its potential for governments, media, or philanthropic agencies, HRM must abandon its restricted scope and mono-dimensional sources of inspiration. Originality/value – The authors not only point to the shortcomings of the dominant research orthodoxy within HRM, but the authors point to how HRM could become significantly more “centre-staged” by addressing the actors searching for contributions to the big questions of the world – the governments, media, and philanthropic agencies.

Responding to Catastrophe

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (8) ◽  
pp. 1446-1472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reed M. Wood ◽  
Thorin M. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
State Control ◽  
National Data ◽  
General Argument ◽  
Windows Of Opportunity ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Post Disaster ◽  
Cross National

Natural disasters often cause significant human suffering. They may also provide incentives for states to escalate repression against their citizens. We argue that state authorities escalate repression in the wake of natural disasters because the combination of increased grievances and declining state control produced by disasters creates windows of opportunity for dissident mobilization and challenges to state authority. We also investigate the impact of the post-disaster humanitarian aid on this relationship. Specifically, we argue that inflows of aid in the immediate aftermath of disasters are likely to dampen the impact of disasters on repression. However, we expect that this effect is greater when aid flows to more democratic states. We examine these interrelated hypotheses using cross-national data on immediate-onset natural disasters and state violations of physical integrity rights between 1977 and 2009 as well as newly collected foreign aid data disaggregated by sector. The results provide support for both our general argument and the corollary hypotheses.

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