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A wide-ranging comparative analysis of the effects of pension reforms on health outcomes among retirees.

Pension reforms enacted in many developed economies since the late 1990s have raised statutory retirement ages and reduced benefit generosity, prompting concerns that working longer, especially in physically demanding jobs, could widen health disparities among retirees. Social Security Programs and Retirement Around the World: Pension Reforms and the Health Distribution of Retirees examines whether these reforms have altered the distribution of health outcomes in nine countries—Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States. Drawing on harmonized longitudinal data spanning roughly two decades and measuring health along five dimensions—functional, diagnosed, comprehensive, mental, and cognitive—the country studies find a remarkably consistent picture: in every country but the United States, health inequality among retirees has not increased significantly over the period in which benefits fell and retirement ages rose. The United States, in contrast to the other nations, shows rising inequality in functional and comprehensive health, particularly among women. The findings suggest that in most countries, pension reforms have not so far come at the cost of a widening health gap between richer and poorer retirees, although noisy data and the still-short observation window admit the possibility of effects that have yet to fully emerge.

A wide-ranging comparative analysis of the effects of pension reforms on the income distribution among retirees.

Pension reforms enacted in many developed economies since the late 1990s increased labor force participation among older workers. Did they also generate greater inequality in retirement income? Social Security Programs and Retirement Around the World: The Effects of Pension Reforms on the Income Distribution of Retirees examines whether these reforms redistributed social security wealth in ways that disproportionately benefited or harmed retirees at different points in the income distribution. The chapters present country-specific analyses for Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Using microdata and counterfactual simulations, they find a quite varied picture: in six of the ten countries studied, pension reform reduced income inequality among retirees, while in three countries the reforms expanded it. Across countries, benefit-level changes, rather than behavioral responses to altered retirement incentives, account for most of the redistributive impact. In countries that cut benefits uniformly, lower-income retirees suffered more than higher-income retirees due to shorter life expectancies. When new programs supplemented across-the-board cuts with support for lower earners, however, inequality declined.

A global analysis of the effects of social security reforms on the retirement incentives and labor force trends of older workers.

Employment among older men and women has increased dramatically in recent years, reversing a downward trend in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World examines how changing retirement incentives have reshaped labor force participation trends among older workers. The chapters feature country-specific analyses for Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They find that while there is significant heterogeneity across countries, the reforms of recent decades have generally reduced the implicit tax on work at older ages. These changes correlate positively with labor force participation. The studies exploit the variation in the timing and extent of reforms of retirement incentives and employ microeconometric methods to investigate whether this correlation reflects a causal relationship. Policy changes appear to have contributed to rising labor force activity, but other factors like the role of women in the labor force, improved health, and changes in private pensions likely also play important roles.

In Aztec and colonial Central Mexico, every individual was destined for lifelong placement in a legally defined social stratum or estate. Social mobility became possible after independence from Spain in 1821 and increased after the 1910–1920 Revolution. By 2000, the landed aristocracy that was for long Mexico's ruling class had been replaced by a plutocracy whose wealth derives from manufacturing, commerce, and finance—but rapid growth of the urban lower classes reveals the failure of the Mexican Revolution and subsequent agrarian reform to produce a middle-class majority. These evolutionary changes in Mexico's class system form the subject of Social Stratification in Central Mexico, 1500–2000, the first long-term, comprehensive overview of social stratification from the eve of the Spanish Conquest to the end of the twentieth century.

The book is divided into two parts. Part One concerns the period from the Spanish Conquest of 1521 to the Revolution of 1910. The authors depict the main features of the estate system that existed both before and after the Spanish Conquest, the nature of stratification on the haciendas that dominated the countryside for roughly four centuries, and the importance of race and ethnicity in both the estate system and the class structures that accompanied and followed it. Part Two portrays the class structure of the post-revolutionary period (1920 onward), emphasizing the demise of the landed aristocracy, the formation of new upper and middle classes, the explosive growth of the urban lower classes, and the final phase of the Indian-mestizo transition in the countryside.

Humorous, frank, and insightful, this book challenges the reader to step in and take hold of what is right and to cast away what is wrong. Topics covered included such varied subjects as private property, the individual, the Three Philosophies of Man, women, individualism, and more. A wonderful introduction to philosophy for the neophyte, and a joy for the experienced student of thought.

     “Imagine two of the most influential thinkers of all time, and two of the most diametrically opposed, thrust together in a no holds barred debate about some of the most important questions: Does man move the world or is he only a puppet of forces beyond his control? Is there a human nature or only market forces? Is Communism the liberator of mankind or a deadly scourge? In Peter Kreeft’s Socrates Meets Marx, the father of philosophy cross examines the founder of communism using the Communist Manifesto, details from the life of Marx himself, and the witnesses of history as evidence to be considered for judgment. If only every edition of the Communist Manifesto would have been bound together with a copy of this book, the world would be a much saner place.” – Christopher Kaczor, author of Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition

By landmass, Russia is the world’s largest country, due largely to centuries of military expansion, imperial rule, and colonization. As a result, it contains people of many ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and languages. Yet Russia’s non-Russian, Indigenous, and minority communities have often been marginalized by state policy and underrepresented in scholarship. Soil and Soul explores how these communities sustain distinct forms of identity and belonging not only through discourse or state institutions but also through embodied relations with land, nature, and animals. These local practices complicate and unsettle state-centered narratives of Russian cultural superiority by showing how meaning and identity are created through relationships with the nonhuman world. Drawing on decolonial, anthropological, environmental, sociological, linguistic, and geographic approaches, this volume reframes minority agency as ecosocial practice embedded in local ecologies, everyday life, and postimperial power asymmetries.

Contributors: Megan Dixon, Yana Hashamova, Kristina Kovalskaya, Jesko Schmoller, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Laura Siragusa, Zoia Tarasova, Baasanjav Terbish

Offers an innovative model for understanding how social movements occur in repressive societies

After a series of failed attempts at mobilizing society, Poland’s opposition sprang to surprising—and newly effective—life with the formation of the Solidarity trade union in 1980. If not for those past failures, this book suggests, Solidarity might never have succeeded. Solidarity and Contention deftly reconstructs the networks of protest in Communist Poland to show how waves of dissent during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s left an organizational residue that both instructed and enabled Solidarity and, ultimately, the Polish revolution.

 In Solidarity and Survival, three generations of Iowa workers tell of their unrelenting efforts to create a labor movement in the coal mines and on the rails, in packinghouses and farm equipment plants, on construction sites and in hospital wards. Drawing on nearly one thousand interviews collected over more than a decade by oral historians working for the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Shelton Stromquist presents the resonant voices of the men and women who defined a new, prominent place for themselves in the lives of their communities and in the politics of their state.

The Solutions Manual to Elements of Econometrics, Second Edition provides chapter solutions to the exercises in the college textbook: Elements of Econometrics, Second Edition by Jan Kmenta.

A pioneering exploration of the unexamined roots and effect of racial sympathy within American politics.

There is racial inequality in America, and some people are distressed over it while others are not. This is a book about white people who feel that distress. For decades, political scientists have studied the effects of white racial prejudice, but Jennifer Chudy shows that white racial sympathy for Black Americans’ suffering is also a potent force in modern American politics. Grounded in the history of Black-white relations in America, racial sympathy is unique. It is not equivalent to a low level of racial prejudice or sympathy for other marginalized groups. Some White Folks reveals how racial sympathy shapes a significant number of white Americans’ opinions on policy areas ranging from the social welfare state to the criminal justice system. Under certain circumstances, it can also spur action—although effects on political behavior are weaker and less consistent, for reasons Chudy examines.

Drawing on diverse quantitative and qualitative evidence and integrating insights from multiple disciplines, Chudy explores the origins, importance, and complexity of racial sympathy, as well as the practical implications for political and movement leaders. A companion to the rich literature on prejudice, Some White Folks demonstrates the multifaceted role of race in American politics and public opinion.

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In "Some of the People Who Ate My Barbecue Didn't Vote for Me," Scott Buchanan portrays Marvin Griffin as a Yellow Dog Democrat struggling against inevitable change. Griffin was viewed by many as a charismatic voice of resistance in the Georgia and the South in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. He combined a staunch segregationist approach with economically progressive policies, assisting in Georgia's transformation from an agrarian economy to a more industrialized one.

Ironically, it was these efforts and the larger shift in politics that doomed Griffin's career, ensuring his administration would last only one term. In many ways, Griffin stands as a clear dividing line between the Old South and the New.