Literatura académica sobre el tema "Populations marginales"

The folk category has often been used to highlight the vibrant religious cultures of marginal communities in the United States. To Know the Soul of a People, though sympathetic to this perspective, shows how the category in the study of religion contributed to shaping the perceptions of Black and lower-class communities in American social and political thought. After World War I, a cadre of social scientists used the category in their field studies of Black rural populations in the poor South. Charles Johnson, Guy Johnson, Lewis Jones, Allison Davis, Gunnar Myrdal, and other second-generation male social scientists deployed the category to jettison biological views of racial inferiority in order to amplify prejudice and the “stagnant” economy that they felt contributed to the social status of Black (and white) rural communities in the Jim Crow South. But the reformist agenda of the social scientists took a detour away from prejudice and socioeconomic conditions to concentrate on the cultural and behavioral deficits of America’s folk population. Perusing field notes, correspondence, proposals, and monographs, this book argues that these liberal-minded social scientists had a hand in the making of a folk population on the basis of their perceived antiquated and underdeveloped religious behaviors. Jamil W. Drake demonstrates how the religion of rural Black communities in the social sciences laid the seeds to the ideas of the culture of poverty after World War II.

The epilogue traces Kiowa history from 1903 to the present, focusing on communal efforts to stay connected to land and kin. It also follows Protestant and Catholic “friends of the Indian,” who eventually lost interest in Indian missions and turned their attention to marginal populations in sites of American overseas activity, such as the Philippines and Afghanistan. The epilogue ends with Kiowa efforts to carry on their cultural practices, including their religious practices, through their tribal museum, churches, and in celebrations such as those sponsored by the Kiowa Black Leggings Society. This work involves Kiowa elders passing on these practices to children.

Carotid stenosis may be treated by carotid endarterectomy (CEA) or carotid artery stenting (CAS). Moderate asymptomatic carotid stenosis (50%-70%) is associated with a low risk of ischemic stroke and does not warrant treatment. The severe stenosis (>70%) population sees a marginal benefit in seen with CEA. In the Asymptomatic Carotid Atherosclerosis Study, authors concluded that for patients with less than 60% stenosis, a 5.9% absolute risk reduction was obtained over 5 years with CEA compared with maximum medical management (11 vs. 5.1%).

The public and scholarly fascination with Rapa Nui or Easter Island has stimulated research on this isolated island since the late nineteenth century. In the last twenty years such research has contributed greatly to knowledge of the archaeological record, as well as prehistoric agriculture, community structure, settlement patterns, and the carving and transport of roughly 1,000 anthropomorphic statues or moai. Although the popularized story of Rapa Nui is one of self-inflicted population devastation through destruction of the environment—ecocide—this research suggests that decentralized social systems, including those related to moai carving, and innovative subsistence practices within a marginal environment contributed to the ultimate survival of the Rapa Nui people.

The development of welfare and penal policies are inextricably linked and interrelated social and political phenonema. They, therefore need to be analysed in unison. The reduction of the social state and the expansion in the rates of imprisonment are joint strategies by governments. The punitive shifts that led to the increase in prison populations from the late 1970s onwards in England and Wales have had a much broader influence than simply in the area of Criminal Justice. They have helped to entrench views about the nature of marignalised groups or populations. The work will examine the genealogy of the penal state or the various explanations for its development. Penal policy and social provision are used to provide or give the illusion of social stability. Developments in these areas are often a response to a crisis of legitimacy. This work will argue that the late 1970s crisis that led to the advent of neo liberalism led to not only new economic policies but also that these are linked to new social policies which stigmatise marginal groups. The supporters of these policies argued that the retrenchment of the welfare state was necessary because of a state fiscal crisis. The spectacle of punitivism also served to convince voters that social investment was counterproductive as the management of the “underclass” could only be achieved through coercion - in the areas of welfare and penal policy

Compared to most other countries, Denmark was only marginally affected by the two world wars. However, this does not mean that war had no impact on the historical development of the Danish welfare state. First, the formation of the nation state is directly linked to war and military defeats. As a result, Denmark gradually went from being a medium-sized European power to a small nation state with a very homogeneous population. Second, being a small state, the overall Danish security strategy was a passive one from 1870 to the end of the Cold War with a focus on domestic issues. The welfare state is part of this story. Third, as a consequence of this, the voice of the military was marginalized in politics and almost completely absent in debates on social issues. Still, war was a reality and both world wars affected the Danish social security system in various ways.

An Archaeology of Abundance focuses on the archaeology and historical ecology of a series of islands located off the Pacific Coast of Alta and Baja California, from the Channel Islands to Cedros Island. Compared to the adjacent mainland, these islands have long been considered marginal habitats for ancient hunter-gatherers, beginning with accounts of early Spanish explorers and by later naturalists, scientists, and government agents, as well as the anthropologists and archaeologists who followed. This perception of marginality has greatly influenced our interpretation of a variety of archaeological issues including the antiquity of first settlement; the productivity of island floras, freshwater, and mineral resources; human population density; and the nature of regional exchange, wealth, and power networks. Recent advances in archaeological and historical ecological research, combined with field observations of recovering ecosystems suggest that the California Islands may not have been the marginal habitats they once appeared to be. Severe overgrazing and overfishing during historic times heavily impacted local ecosystems, which are now recovering under modern management, conservation, and restoration practices. While older models developed through the perspective of island marginality may hold true for certain resources or islands, it is important to reconsider our interpretations of past and present archaeological data, and reevaluate long-held assumptions, given these new insights. Ultimately, a reexamination of the effects of perceived marginality on the history of archaeological interpretations on California's islands may have broad implications for other island archipelagos worldwide.

This chapter examines the role played by African and Indian slaves in early St. Louis. Indians had practiced slavery long before European explorers, traders, and colonizers arrived on North American shores. Profitable, market-oriented agriculture developed in the Illinois Country as early as the 1720s, and slaves (especially Africans) were used as field hands. In French Illinois, Indian as well as African slaves had been present since the early eighteenth century, and especially at the founding of St. Louis in 1764. Slaves appear only marginally in most studies of colonial St. Louis, which tend to dwell on the fur trade and commercial relations with Missouri Valley Indians. This chapter looks at the village's slave population during the first decade of the settlement's existence. In particular, it considers how slaves became integrated into the life of the growing village. It also describes public auctions of slaves in the Illinois Country and the lives of early St. Louis slaves. Finally, it discusses the Grotton–St. Ange family's firsthand experience with the Indian slave trade.

Public health has been described as the organized activities of society to improve and protect the health of the population. Health economics applied to public health is the study of how we allocate our scarce societal resources to meet our public health wants and needs in the best way possible. This book presents current thinking on health economics methodology and application to the evaluation of public health interventions (PHIs). It is for health economists working in higher education and public healthcare systems, challenged with the economic evaluation of PHIs, when they have been used to applying health economics and the methods of economic evaluation to narrower clinical interventions in primary or secondary care settings. This book will also be of interest to public health practitioners wanting to incorporate health economics into their daily work. This book covers the history of economics of public health and the economic rationale for government investment in prevention; principles of health economics including scarcity, choice, and opportunity cost; evidence synthesis; key methods of economic evaluation with accompanying case studies; economic modelling of public health interventions; return on investment analysis with national and international case studies; and application of programme budgeting and marginal analysis (PBMA) to the prioritization of PHIs. It concludes with priorities for research in the field of public health economics, spanning an acknowledgement of the role played by the natural environment in promoting better health, through to precision public health, recognizing the role of genetics, the environment, and socioeconomic status in determining population health.

AbstractHow different wave modes are driven, is a central issue in space plasma physics. A practical problem is that often only indirect evidence of the driver can be identified in observations. The plasma environment is complex and variable and already a small difference in background or initial conditions may lead to widely different observable outcomes. In this chapter we discuss drivers of waves causing acceleration, transport and loss of radiation belt particles, whereas Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-82167-8_6 discusses these effects in detail. We note that while this division is motivated in a textbook, it is somewhat artificial and the growth of the waves and their consequences often need to be studied together. For example, a whistler-mode wave can grow from thermal fluctuations due to gyro-resonant interactions until a marginally stable state is reached or nonlinear growth takes over. The growing wave starts to interact with different particle populations leading to damping or further growth of the wave. The fluxes of the higher-energy radiation belt particles are, however, small compared to the lower-energy background population, which supports the wave. Thus their effects on the overall wave activity usually remain small, although the waves can have drastic effect on higher-energy populations. Consequently, these two chapters should be studied together.

The Gulf of Pozzuoli (GoP) is a marginal sub-basin of Tyrrhenian Sea, characterized by a strong anthropogenic impact, due to high population density and intense commercial and tourist traffic. Historically, the GoP is dedicated to the farming of bivalve mollusks which are constantly subject to chemical and microbiological monitoring to protect the health of consumers. In the winter season, high levels of PAHs were found in mussels from the Lucrino area. This study reports the environmental analyses and the activities carried out in order to investigate the levels and sources of contamination by PAHs.

AbstractIn New Caledonia, national independence is still on the agenda, but the “Indigenous strategy” – which relates to the global Indigenous movement and UN norms regarding Indigenous rights – is also being explored with a view to furthering decolonisation. The latter is, however, relatively new in the struggle to regain sovereignty and occupies a marginal place in the political field of this French territory. This chapter seeks to explain why arguing for the particular colonial situation of the territory and the demography of the Indigenous population has led them to pursue dual strategies towards self-determination.

Durante esta investigación se analiza comparativamente el proceso de formación y gestión llevado a cabo
 para la implementación de dos programas de vivienda social; el programa de realojamiento de población
 marginada - Barrios de tipología especial- implementado en Madrid, España (1986) y el programa nuevos
 barrios – “Mi casa mi vida” en Córdoba, Argentina (2001). Ambos programas fueron ejecutados para
 resolver la problemática habitacional de grupos marginales, a través del traslado y realojo a nuevos barrios
 construidos especialmente para estos sectores. Se procura estudiar el proceso de formulación e
 implementación de dichos programas, intentando descubrir si era posible predecir desde la formulación de
 dichos programas las problemáticas actuales de exclusión urbana como un agravante a las problemáticas
 de exclusión social. Será objeto de este artículo reflexionar sobre la capacidad del estado para incidir en los
 modos de hacer ciudad incorporando o no las necesidades de integración socio-urbanas de las poblaciones
 afectadas. During this research are analyzed and compared the structure and management process carried out for the implementation of two social housing programs, the re-housing program for marginal population- Suburbs of 
 special typology (BTE)– in Madrid - Spain (1986) and new neighborhoods program –“My house my life”- in Córdoba Argentina (2001). Both programs were made to solve the housing problems of marginalized groups, 
 through relocation and re-housing of the affected people to new neighborhoods built especially for them. The purpose of this comparative analysis is to study the process of design and implementation of the two housing programs, trying to find out if it was possible to predict from the formulation of such programs, issues of urban 
 exclusion as an aggravating factor of the social exclusion. The object of this article will reflect the state’s ability to influence in urban development, incorporated or not social-urban integration needs of the affected populations.

A Synthetic Population is first part of creating travel demand model by using activity-based approach. Population synthesis is application of algorithms that expanded representative samples of people or household with characterises (such as gender, car ownership, age or ethnicity etc.) to entire area of researching. Because of complexity of people decisions before or during travel, one attribute is not enough to fully describe what factors have impact on them. Population synthesis iterate a set of attributes for each person in the sample and after expansion and assigning weights create simulated people or household with their characteristic. Basic components are marginal distribution targets of household and person attributes, household and person samples and algorithm for selecting the sample records into a synthetic population such that the attributes of that population match the marginal targets. Goal of this paper is to present population synthesis and her importance for activity-based approach in travel demand modelling. The paper will consist of introduction, literature overview, presenting benefits and complexity of population synthesis, discussion and conclusion.

Climate change and disasters are fast emerging as the most defining challenge of the 21st century as global risk. Changes in many extreme weather and climate events have been observed and linked with human influences, including an increase in extreme high sea levels and an increase in the number of heavy precipitation events. About 70 percent of the coastlines worldwide are projected to experience sea level change within 20 percent of the global mean. India, a developing country of global south and a major global contributor, is among the first ten countries in climate risk index. The country is witnessing average sea level rise of 1.7 mm/ year with rising sea projections in coastal cities. Further, India host a large percentage of urban population living in slums. Dharavi slum, Asia's biggest slum, located in the centre of Mumbai along the coast, host a population of more than a million in just 2.1 square kilometre. Slums are located at land which is usually unsuitable for formal development, being the low lying marshy areas along the river basins or coastal mangroves. As a direct cause, the physical location of the slums in developing world, makes them at a greater risk of flooding. Urban slums of metropolitan Mumbai, Kolkata and Surat in India, along with many others, are vulnerable to flooding. The present policy framework lack in providing for climate resilience and has thus compelled the slum dwellers to adapt to the risk of flooding with local community based measures involving public space retrofits.
 The paper assess these adaptation measures and strategies from different coastal urban slums in India and aims to create a theoretical framework of measures and elements. Case study analysis approach is used to generate for adaptation strategies and presented in the parameters (type – time – role – intent and scale of adaptation). Results showcases a framework of adaptive and mitigation measures pertinent to local participation and public space retrofits for coastal urban slums. It enables the generation of a typology, lexicon of measures and elements, a toolkit to face extreme floods. Community mobilization with public space retrofits open new possibilities for addressing future floods and in gaining resilience.
 Keywords: Adaptation, coping strategies, flood resilience in slums, public space retrofits. El cambio climático y las catástrofes se están convirtiendo rápidamente en el reto más definitorio del siglo XXI como riesgo global. Se han observado cambios en muchos fenómenos meteorológicos y climáticos extremos y se han relacionado con la influencia humana, como el aumento del nivel del mar extremadamente alto y el incremento del número de precipitaciones intensas. Se prevé que alrededor del 70% de las costas de todo el mundo experimenten un cambio en el nivel del mar dentro del 20% de la media mundial. India, un país en desarrollo del sur global y uno de los principales contribuyentes mundiales, se encuentra entre los diez primeros países en el índice de riesgo climático. El país está experimentando una subida media del nivel del mar de 1,7 mm/año con proyecciones de aumento del mar en las ciudades costeras. Además, India alberga un gran porcentaje de población urbana que vive en barrios marginales. El barrio marginal de Dharavi, el más grande de Asia, situado en el centro de Bombay a lo largo de la costa, alberga una población de más de un millón de personas en sólo 2,1 kilómetros cuadrados. Los barrios marginales están situados en terrenos que suelen ser inadecuados para el desarrollo formal, ya que son zonas pantanosas bajas a lo largo de las cuencas de los ríos o de los manglares costeros. Como causa directa, la ubicación física de los barrios marginales en el mundo en desarrollo hace que corran un mayor riesgo de inundación. Los barrios marginales del área metropolitana de Mumbai, Calcuta y Surat en India, junto con muchos otros, son vulnerables a las inundaciones. El marco político actual carece de resiliencia climática y, por tanto, ha obligado a los habitantes de los barrios marginales a adaptarse al riesgo de inundaciones con medidas locales basadas en la comunidad que implican la readaptación del espacio público.
 El documento evalúa estas medidas y estrategias de adaptación de diferentes barrios marginales costeros de la India y pretende crear un marco teórico de medidas y elementos. Se utiliza un enfoque de análisis de casos para generar estrategias de adaptación y se presentan los parámetros (tipo - tiempo - función - intención y escala de la adaptación). Los resultados muestran un marco de medidas de adaptación y mitigación pertinentes para la participación local y la reconversión del espacio público para los barrios marginales urbanos de la costa. Permite generar una tipología, un léxico de medidas y elementos, una caja de herramientas para hacer frente a las inundaciones extremas. La movilización de la comunidad con la readaptación del espacio público abre nuevas posibilidades para hacer frente a futuras inundaciones y para ganar resiliencia.
 Palabras clave: Adaptación, estrategias de afrontamiento, resiliencia a las inundaciones en barrios marginales, readaptación del espacio público.
 

The organization of territory and cities is a structuring element for the management of epidemic crises. The existence of basic sanitary structures is, nowadays, an acquired and determined factor for the healthiness of territories, as well as for the structural contribution to the well-being of the populations. Since the 19th century epidemic crises established health parameters for Architecture and Urbanism, which are still a reference today. Almost after one hundred years, where the questions of salubrity were supposed to be consolidated, we find that, suddenly, without advice, new alarm bells rings: we found that the world was not prepared to be closed in its “housing units”. Assuming Portimão as an urban laboratory and as a waterfront city, we will present the process developed for studies, searching for proposals witch solutions look for a contemporary assignment, which imposes to Architecture a principle settled on options of sustainability, impermanence, reuse and recycling.

In relatively marginal and isolated settings, changes in socio-cultural contexts and population reduction have contributed to the decay, abandonment and gradual disappearance of traditional ways of living and vernacular heritage. Associations and foundations often play a key mediating and facilitating role in countering these phenomena, supporting the survival of local communities and tangible and intangible expressions of heritage.In the context of the seminar cycle “Rehabilitation of traditional heritage and local development”, ten international case studies of unconventional practices of community-rooted rehabilitation from North and West Africa, South-East Asia, Latin America, and Southern Europe were selected.The cases were analysed through a multi-criteria approach to interpret common features and links in three dimensions: 1) organization and structure of associations and foundations; 2) technical methodology of recovery interventions, emphasizing the mobilization and transmission of traditional knowledge and skills; 3) generative potential for self-sustaining initiatives and community empowerment. Qualitative and quantitative data have been gathered based on a literature review of publications and reports, international seminars, meetings, and semi-structured interviews.The results highlighted the strong relationship between the external actors' success in rooty themselves in the local context and the empowerment of communities as well as the settling of their practices over time. The greatest opportunities for economic and cultural development are those in which a holistic vision in the care of the community and its cultural landscape was adopted. The reinforcement of the role of local craftspeople and inhabitants also proved to be crucial.The study showed that caring for a living heritage and its community implies a sensitivity for the past but also an updating and a creative reinterpretation of heritage in response to present and future demands.

Abstract While the uncertainties associated with actual pipeline asset condition demand the use of probabilistic methodologies to assess the integrity of pipelines, a realistic and validated probabilistic method to demonstrate post-hydrostatic test (PHT) integrity has eluded the pipeline industry. Traditionally, deterministic methods grow a “just-surviving flaw” (JSF) under worst-case pressure cycling to predict the remaining life of the most severe imperfection which could have survived a high-pressure event, such as hydrostatic test. The deterministic analysis results in a JSF fatigue life but does not identify the likelihood that the flaw exists. Furthermore, identifying the most severe flaw is not intuitive and attempts to probabilistically model material variabilities have failed to match known historical PHT reliability. A pipeline operator has now developed a novel approach to the task of quantifying marginal pipeline reliability after hydrostatic tests. Rather than limiting random values to only material properties, potential defects are assigned sizes and pressure cycling values, randomly sampled from validated distributions of defect size and pressure cycling severity (equivalent to downstream location). The number of generated defects is determined by a validated defect density, and defect size remains limited to what could have physically survived the hydrostatic test. The question posed is no longer “what are possible sizes of JSF close to discharge pressure surviving to a specific time under known load conditions?”, but rather “what proportion of the pipeline segments with similar defect populations would survive to a specific time under known load conditions?”. This represents a fundamental paradigm shift away from considering only a worst-case scenario to the quantification of plausible pipeline health conditions. Monte Carlo simulation time is kept practical by using an equivalent load integral method to project crack growth. This proposed methodology was validated by applying it to a selection of pipeline segments with known historical fatigue failures following hydrostatic tests in order to quantify the predictability of each section’s reliability at the failure time. The initial validation of the method was found to reasonably predict the past incidents. This paper will discuss the methodology, input parameters including their distributions, methods for assigning defect size distributions and densities based on extrapolations of field nondestructive examination (NDE) and in-line inspection (ILI) data, and a minimum defect density floor established based on the PHT fatigue failure of a newly constructed pipeline. While this method originally targets PHT pipeline segments, the development of a similar method for pipelines managed exclusively by ILI data is under development. The largest potential flaw for ILI-managed assets is then dictated by what could have evaded ILI tool detection rather than what could have survived a hydrostatic test. Herein, the progress on this development and future suggested research will be provided.

Abstract This paper examines an optimized strategy and approach for executing a marginal field re-entry in the face of harsh global economic realities in the oil and gas sector. With dwindling and depressing oil prices driven by demand & supply volatility with root causes traceable to some factors such as the prevalent health pandemic, clamor for green energy, climate change discussions, geopolitics etc, the operating model for oil companies will need to drastically change to reflect current realities. Due to rapid global urbanization and increasing population amongst other factors, there is a corresponding huge appetite for oil to meet energy demands. This has led to exploration in unconventional terrains, utilization of the full extent of primary and secondary recovery mechanisms to attain high RFs in already producing fields and in some extreme cases, the development of marginal fields. In the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, marginal fields usually given up by Oil majors or abandoned following production exigencies and government laws are acquired and operated by indeginous companies. These indigenous players look for the most cost-effective means to produce these assets as it becomes the only way to make profit. A case study for field re-entry in the Niger Delta, which emphasized relatively/comparatively reduced capital outlay dependent on the technical approach is examined. Lessons learnt are drawn to aid enlightened go-forward actions and that will ensure a go-to template for similar future marginal field re-entry projects.

Data for training Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems are often expensive or infeasible to obtain. Population-based SHM, which considers data across a population of structures, presents a potential solution to this issue. However, as differences between structures can lead to differing training and testing distributions, conventional machine learning methods may not generalise between structures. To address this issue, transfer learning (TL) can be used to leverage information across related domains. An important consideration when applying TL is how to asses similarity to identify and extract shared information. In unsupervised TL, a major challenge is that previous data-based metrics are limited to quantifying marginal distribution similarity in the unsupervised setting. This paper proposes utilising the Modal Assurance Criterion (MAC) between modes of healthy structures as a measure of data similarity to identify features that minimise conditional distribution shift. The MAC is incorporated into a feature selection criterion and a TL methodology is proposed. Moreover, the proposed methodology is shown to facilitate label sharing within a heterogeneous population of helicopter blades

This research exposes the need for more user experience and usability research on speech recognition software for users with apraxia, a speech disability. It provides feedback about common speech recognition devices from users with apraxia and speech impediments. The relatively high prevalence of apraxia and other speech disorders suggests that a large population may need technology to help improve quality of life and socialization. Speech and audio processing software might help improve both. Voice-controlled software and personal assistants can only improve this community’s lives if they provide parity of user experience. The article provides an overview of research insights and public feedback to help designers create more user-centered speech recognition software for this population. First, the article offers an integrative review of article findings from 2009 to 2020. Only 9 of 120 provided sufficient detail about the 20% of the users diagnosed with apraxia. The studies covered therapeutic rather than mundane settings. Only about a fifth of the users and participants recruited for the studies were diagnosed with apraxia of speech, a particular disorder that directly impacts speech recognition accuracy and precision. The samples were often heterogeneous in speech diagnosis, gender, and age. Others were homogeneous in terms of race and ethnicity. These factors are important because they may impact tone, texture, intonation, and other speech detection variables. Study methods were primarily orthodox user testing involving task scenarios. Second, the research gathers user feedback from users with speech impediments on Twitter. Most of the 143 tweets were negative about the performance of speech recognition technologies. There was far more negative feedback about the technologies and their inability to understand users with apraxia and speech impediments. The tweets did not reveal a wide range of activities, suggesting that the technology is only marginally useful to users with apraxia or speech impediments. Future studies should include more homogeneous samples in terms of speech conditions and more heterogeneous samples in terms of demographics. Future studies should also gather more direct feedback from users and compare technologies, which might require modifying user experience and usability research methods. Furthermore, more research studies reporting product design for this community should detail the user experience and usability testing involved. Finally, product designers should not only test products with diverse populations, including those with disabilities, but they should also test in mundane and therapeutic settings and applications and develop personae to help them keep in mind their particular needs. While recruiting and retaining these users might be difficult, any extra effort will pay dividends in product quality and marketability.

Can societies be nudged to adopt beneficial behaviors? Publicizing how people behave on average descriptive-norms nudging has emerged as a key tool for increasing the adoption of desirable behaviors. While nudging, by describing social norms, has proven effective in one-shot interventions in small samples (marginal-effect designs), nudging on an ongoing basis at the population level may not necessarily lead to higher compliance and can give rise to major challenges. We use a simple model to show that social adjustment dynamics can drive a populations behavior in unanticipated directions. We propose a general approach to estimating equilibrium behavior and apply it to a study of mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our empirical findings align with the analytical approach and indicate that publicizing mask-wearing rates on an ongoing basis could have backfired, as initially high rates would have settled into substantially lower equilibrium rates of the behavior. In other words, if scaled up, positive marginal-effect designs do not necessarily translate into full compliance with the intervention.

This work builds on previous research to develop a methodology that simplifies the identification of the best policy options for poverty alleviation in a given country. When a population can be divided into subgroups according to an easily identifiable characteristic, the problem of alleviating poverty through a targeted mechanism can be viewed as one of choosing of three options: (i) provoking a marginal change in the average income of certain subgroups; (ii) changing the resource distribution within marginal subgroups; and (iii) generating a marginal change in the differences between the subgroups. Recent data from Mexico is applied. Note: This paper is published as Chapter 6 in Székely, M. "The Economics of Poverty, Inequality and Wealth Accumulation in Mexico", MacMillan, London, 1998.

The Laberge Group was deposited during the Early to Middle Jurassic in a marginal marine environment, in the northern Canadian Cordillera. It occurs as a narrow, elongated siliciclastic unit along more than 600 km of strike length, overlapping the Intermontane terranes of southern Yukon and northwestern British Columbia. The Laberge Group was deposited on the Late Triassic Stuhini and Lewes River groups, a volcano-plutonic complex of the Stikine terrane (Stikinia), and, locally, the Kutcho Arc. It is overlain by Middle Jurassic to Cretaceous clastic units. The variations in clast composition and detrital zircon populations among these units indicate major changes in depositional environment, basin extent, and sources during the latest Triassic to Middle Jurassic. Detrital zircon populations are dominated by near contemporary Stuhini-Lewes River arc grains, consistent with dissection of an active arc. Detrital rutile and muscovite data show rapid cooling and exhumation of metamorphic rocks during the Early Jurassic. Thermochronological data indicate that basin thermal evolution was domainal, with at least five regional temperature-time histories.

This paper studies the question of how place of birth affects the design of effective tax policies. Using Swedish population-wide register data, I investigate the relationship between regional origin and economic outcomes. Using a numerical simulation approach, I explore the implications of tagging individuals based on their place of birth for optimal tax policy and income redistribution. The numerical simulations show that under optimal tax policy, individuals from more populous regions are consistently assigned higher marginal and average tax rates, implying that the government redistributes from these regions to less populous ones. Moreover, I find that such policies can lead to significant welfare improvements.

This paper reviews developments in Europe from the eve of the introduction of the euro through the euro crisis. The paper begins with a discussion of the tax reform agenda. Although there are differences in the literature on specific taxes, and while European countries vary in their preferred levels of taxation, there is general consensus on the shape reforms should take. The paper then discusses the evolution of tax systems with the overall agenda in mind. It is found that overall revenue levels were broadly stable until just before the crisis, but marginal rates in corporate and top personal income declined almost continuously. During the crisis, however, this trend ended, with countries in the greatest fiscal difficulties raising tax rates and tax burdens. The last section provides a short analysis of why there were reforms in some countries but not others. Key variables include tax competition among member states, partisanship, underlying preferences in the population for redistribution, and the number of partisan veto players.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and lockdown measures taken to control its spread brought economies to a halt, turning the public health crisis into an economic one. Though government responses, such as labor and social welfare protection programs, were similar to recent economic crises like the Global and Asian Financial Crises, the origin of the current situation being public health rather than financial markets, put the spotlight on the health sector and the need for its strengthening both to manage COVID-19 and ensure sustainable economic recovery. This study examines the relationship between health spending and labor productivity. Will the COVID-19 pandemic crisis trigger more meaningful public investments in health? How can we build back better health policy for labor productivity? Answering these questions requires establishing that health policy and indicators are associated with labor productivity measures. If there is such evidence, there is a need to examine pre-pandemic public health expenditures and policies and compare these to health policies of comparable countries with better health outcomes. This would guide policymakers in improving health sector outcomes and overall productivity. This sought evidence of the association of health policy and indicators with labor productivity on two levels across (1) comparable ASEAN countries and (2) Philippine regions. The results showed that public health expenditures were robust and significant for GDP per capita (across ASEAN countries) and regional GDP per worker (RGDP, Philippine regional estimations). This suggests that increased public health spending is associated with increased labor productivity. For the cross-country results, life expectancy and gross capital investments were also positively significant, indicating increased productivity with longer life (i.e., a healthier population) and physical capital/tools and infrastructure (consistent with neoclassical growth theory or NGT). For Philippine regional regressions, only the proportion of the working-age population was significant but negative, possibly suggesting that a bigger work force is associated with lower productivity (ceteris paribus, which is consistent with NGT and the law of diminishing marginal product).

During the Summer and Autumn of 2023, Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland was affected by a cyanobacterial bloom. Testing of water from within the bloom reported high concentrations of one type of cyanobacterial toxin, microcystins. Samples were taken from the Lough of eels, roach, perch, pollan and bream and tested for a range of cyanobacterial toxins, including microcystins, nodularins, anatoxin, cylindrospermopsin and saxitoxin. Each sample comprised 10 fish, and five samples were taken of each species, except for bream for which a single sample was collected. The fish were dissected and the edible flesh, intestine, liver, roe, gonad and/or gills analysed separately. Microcystins were detected at a range of concentrations in the various parts of the fish that were sampled - intestine, liver, roe and/or gills, but were not detected in the edible flesh of any of the fish samples. Averaged across the samples, the highest concentrations of microcystins were quantified in the intestine samples, followed by the liver samples, with low concentrations were detected in the gills and a small number of the samples of gonads and roe. None of the other toxins were detected in any fish sample. The initial analysis for microcystins was of free toxins only. However, there is evidence that microcystins which are covalently bound to proteins are also bioavailable and therefore 22 fish tissue samples, including nine fish flesh samples, were also sent to another laboratory where they were analysed by a method which measures the total concentrations of microcystins, free and protein-bound. The viscera tissue samples chosen for the further analysis were those with the highest concentrations of the free toxins, while the fish flesh samples included 2-3 samples each of eels, roach, pollan and perch. The concentrations of total microcystins found in viscera samples were around one order of magnitude higher than the concentrations of free microcystins that had been measured. However, microcystins were still not detected in the edible fish flesh samples. It is possible that microcystins were not present at any level in any of the fish flesh samples. However, the presence of microcystins in the edible flesh of fish has been reported in the scientific literature, albeit at lower levels than those in the gastrointestinal tract or other parts of the viscera such as liver (Testai et al., 2016). Since microcystins were detected in other parts of the fish sampled from Lough Neagh it is also possible that they were also present in the fish flesh but at levels below the limits of detection of the analytical methods. The limit of detection of the analytical method for total (free + bound) microcystins was 10 µg/kg wet weight. An upper bound dietary exposure assessment was conducted. While a lower bound exposure assessment would assume the microcystins were not present in the edible flesh, i.e. a concentration of 0 µg/kg, the upper bound approach assumed they were present at the limit of detection of 10 µg/kg. The true concentrations may be between these levels. The exposure assessments consider high consumers of fish (97.5th percentile). For eels, consumption data were used from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS). For roach, perch, pollan and bream. No consumption data were available from the NDNS and consumption data for trout were used instead as a proxy. The main target organ for toxicity of the microcystins is the liver, though other organs may also be affected. The microcystin most studied toxicologically is microcystin-LR, which is one of the most common microcystins. A WHO review established a provisional tolerable daily intake (TDI) for microcystin-LR of 0.04 µg per kg bodyweight (bw). WHO recommended that exposures to total microcystins should be compared to this provisional TDI, though there is uncertainty with this as individual microcystins are likely to differ significantly in their toxic potencies. Estimated dietary exposures of total microcystins were all within the provisional TDI, indicating no health concern from consuming the edible flesh of these species. Since fish may be caught and prepared for consumption not only by food business operators but by recreational anglers, concern has been raised that evisceration may be incomplete or the edible flesh may become contaminated in the process, and therefore this was also considered in the risk assessment. This was based on the sample of fish which contained the highest concentration of total microcystins in a viscera component, which was a sample of roach with a particularly high concentration of microcystins in intestine. It was assumed that 10% of the relative proportion of intestine to flesh in the fish would be inadvertently consumed with the flesh. In this scenario, dietary exposures would be within the provisional TDI in most age groups or would marginally exceed the TDI, but this would not be toxicologically significant. In addition, since this exposure scenario used an upper bound approach to the concentration in flesh, and used the highest concentration in any viscera sample, it is not clear that there would be any exceedance of the provisional TDI in practice. Overall, it appears unlikely that consumers will substantially exceed the provisional TDI on a long-term basis due to incomplete evisceration of fish. Overall, exposure to microcystins from eating the edible flesh of the tested fish species would not be expected to cause adverse effects in consumers, including if the fish is inadequately eviscerated. Therefore, we consider the frequency of adverse reactions in the general population to be negligible, so rare that it does not merit to be included. Based on the possible levels of exposure to microcystins from fish from Lough Neagh, it is considered that any liver injury, were it to occur in consumers of fish, would result from long term exposure and be mild. Overall, we consider the severity of illness that could potentially occur as a result of exposure to microcystins from consuming edible fish flesh from Lough Neagh to be medium (i.e. moderate illness, incapacitating but not usually life-threatening and of moderate duration). We consider the level of uncertainty to be medium (i.e. there are some but no complete data available), but that this does not affect the conclusion of the risk assessment since many of the key uncertainties are addressed within the risk assessment. However, future monitoring would be useful to assess whether microcystin concentrations in the fish change over time.

Banco de la República is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2023. This is a very significant anniversary and one that provides an opportunity to highlight the contribution the Bank has made to the country’s development. Its track record as guarantor of monetary stability has established it as the one independent state institution that generates the greatest confidence among Colombians due to its transparency, management capabilities, and effective compliance with the central banking and cultural responsibilities entrusted to it by the Constitution and the Law. On a date as important as this, the Board of Directors of Banco de la República (BDBR) pays tribute to the generations of governors and officers whose commitment and dedication have contributed to the growth of this institution.1 Banco de la República’s mandate was confirmed in the National Constitutional Assembly of 1991 where the citizens had the opportunity to elect the seventy people who would have the task of drafting a new constitution. The leaders of the three political movements with the most votes were elected as chairs to the Assembly, and this tripartite presidency reflected the plurality and the need for consensus among the different political groups to move the reform forward. Among the issues considered, the National Constitutional Assembly gave special importance to monetary stability. That is why they decided to include central banking and to provide Banco de la República with the necessary autonomy to use the instruments for which they are responsible without interference from other authorities. The constituent members understood that ensuring price stability is a state duty and that the entity responsible for this task must be enshrined in the Constitution and have the technical capability and institutional autonomy necessary to adopt the decisions they deem appropriate to achieve this fundamental objective in coordination with the general economic policy. In particular, Article 373 established that “the State, through Banco de la República, shall ensure the maintenance of the purchasing power of the currency,” a provision that coincided with the central banking system adopted by countries that have been successful in controlling inflation. In 1999, in Ruling 481, the Constitutional Court stated that “the duty to maintain the purchasing power of the currency applies to not only the monetary, credit, and exchange authority, i.e., the Board of Banco de la República, but also those who have responsibilities in the formulation and implementation of the general economic policy of the country” and that “the basic constitutional purpose of Banco de la República is the protection of a sound currency. However, this authority must take the other economic objectives of state intervention such as full employment into consideration in their decisions since these functions must be coordinated with the general economic policy.” The reforms to Banco de la República agreed upon in the Constitutional Assembly of 1991 and in Act 31/1992 can be summarized in the following aspects: i) the Bank was assigned a specific mandate: to maintain the purchasing power of the currency in coordination with the general economic policy; ii) the BDBR was designatedas the monetary, foreign exchange, and credit authority; iii) the Bank and its Board of Directors were granted a significant degree of independence from the government; iv) the Bank was prohibited from granting credit to the private sector except in the case of the financial sector; v) established that in order to grant credit to the government, the unanimous vote of its Board of Directors was required except in the case of open market transactions; vi) determined that the legislature may, in no case, order credit quotas in favor of the State or individuals; vii) Congress was appointed, on behalf of society, as the main addressee of the Bank’s reporting exercise; and viii) the responsibility for inspection, surveillance, and control over Banco de la República was delegated to the President of the Republic. The members of the National Constitutional Assembly clearly understood that the benefits of low and stable inflation extend to the whole of society and contribute mto the smooth functioning of the economic system. Among the most important of these is that low inflation promotes the efficient use of productive resources by allowing relative prices to better guide the allocation of resources since this promotes economic growth and increases the welfare of the population. Likewise, low inflation reduces uncertainty about the expected return on investment and future asset prices. This increases the confidence of economic agents, facilitates long-term financing, and stimulates investment. Since the low-income population is unable to protect itself from inflation by diversifying its assets, and a high proportion of its income is concentrated in the purchase of food and other basic goods that are generally the most affected by inflationary shocks, low inflation avoids arbitrary redistribution of income and wealth.2 Moreover, low inflation facilitates wage negotiations, creates a good labor climate, and reduces the volatility of employment levels. Finally, low inflation helps to make the tax system more transparent and equitable by avoiding the distortions that inflation introduces into the value of assets and income that make up the tax base. From the monetary authority’s point of view, one of the most relevant benefits of low inflation is the credibility that economic agents acquire in inflation targeting, which turns it into an effective nominal anchor on price levels. Upon receiving its mandate, and using its autonomy, Banco de la República began to announce specific annual inflation targets as of 1992. Although the proposed inflation targets were not met precisely during this first stage, a downward trend in inflation was achieved that took it from 32.4% in 1990 to 16.7% in 1998. At that time, the exchange rate was kept within a band. This limited the effectiveness of monetary policy, which simultaneously sought to meet an inflation target and an exchange rate target. The Asian crisis spread to emerging economies and significantly affected the Colombian economy. The exchange rate came under strong pressure to depreciate as access to foreign financing was cut off under conditions of a high foreign imbalance. This, together with the lack of exchange rate flexibility, prevented a countercyclical monetary policy and led to a 4.2% contraction in GDP that year. In this context of economic slowdown, annual inflation fell to 9.2% at the end of 1999, thus falling below the 15% target set for that year. This episode fully revealed how costly it could be, in terms of economic activity, to have inflation and exchange rate targets simultaneously. Towards the end of 1999, Banco de la República announced the adoption of a new monetary policy regime called the Inflation Targeting Plan. This regime, known internationally as ‘Inflation Targeting,’ has been gaining increasing acceptance in developed countries, having been adopted in 1991 by New Zealand, Canada, and England, among others, and has achieved significant advances in the management of inflation without incurring costs in terms of economic activity. In Latin America, Brazil and Chile also adopted it in 1999. In the case of Colombia, the last remaining requirement to be fulfilled in order to adopt said policy was exchange rate flexibility. This was realized around September 1999, when the BDBR decided to abandon the exchange-rate bands to allow the exchange rate to be freely determined in the market.Consistent with the constitutional mandate, the fundamental objective of this new policy approach was “the achievement of an inflation target that contributes to maintaining output growth around its potential.”3 This potential capacity was understood as the GDP growth that the economy can obtain if it fully utilizes its productive resources. To meet this objective, monetary policy must of necessity play a countercyclical role in the economy. This is because when economic activity is below its potential and there are idle resources, the monetary authority can reduce the interest rate in the absence of inflationary pressure to stimulate the economy and, when output exceeds its potential capacity, raise it. This policy principle, which is immersed in the models for guiding the monetary policy stance, makes the following two objectives fully compatible in the medium term: meeting the inflation target and achieving a level of economic activity that is consistent with its productive capacity. To achieve this purpose, the inflation targeting system uses the money market interest rate (at which the central bank supplies primary liquidity to commercial banks) as the primary policy instrument. This replaced the quantity of money as an intermediate monetary policy target that Banco de la República, like several other central banks, had used for a long time. In the case of Colombia, the objective of the new monetary policy approach implied, in practical terms, that the recovery of the economy after the 1999 contraction should be achieved while complying with the decreasing inflation targets established by the BDBR. The accomplishment of this purpose was remarkable. In the first half of the first decade of the 2000s, economic activity recovered significantly and reached a growth rate of 6.8% in 2006. Meanwhile, inflation gradually declined in line with inflation targets. That was how the inflation rate went from 9.2% in 1999 to 4.5% in 2006, thus meeting the inflation target established for that year while GDP reached its potential level. After this balance was achieved in 2006, inflation rebounded to 5.7% in 2007, above the 4.0% target for that year due to the fact that the 7.5% GDP growth exceeded the potential capacity of the economy.4 After proving the effectiveness of the inflation targeting system in its first years of operation, this policy regime continued to consolidate as the BDBR and the technical staff gained experience in its management and state-of-the-art economic models were incorporated to diagnose the present and future state of the economy and to assess the persistence of inflation deviations and expectations with respect to the inflation target. Beginning in 2010, the BDBR established the long-term 3.0% annual inflation target, which remains in effect today. Lower inflation has contributed to making the macroeconomic environment more stable, and this has favored sustained economic growth, financial stability, capital market development, and the functioning of payment systems. As a result, reductions in the inflationary risk premia and lower TES and credit interest rates were achieved. At the same time, the duration of public domestic debt increased significantly going from 2.27 years in December 2002 to 5.86 years in December 2022, and financial deepening, measured as the level of the portfolio as a percentage of GDP, went from around 20% in the mid-1990s to values above 45% in recent years in a healthy context for credit institutions.Having been granted autonomy by the Constitution to fulfill the mandate of preserving the purchasing power of the currency, the tangible achievements made by Banco de la República in managing inflation together with the significant benefits derived from the process of bringing inflation to its long-term target, make the BDBR’s current challenge to return inflation to the 3.0% target even more demanding and pressing. As is well known, starting in 2021, and especially in 2022, inflation in Colombia once again became a serious economic problem with high welfare costs. The inflationary phenomenon has not been exclusive to Colombia and many other developed and emerging countries have seen their inflation rates move away from the targets proposed by their central banks.5 The reasons for this phenomenon have been analyzed in recent Reports to Congress, and this new edition delves deeper into the subject with updated information. The solid institutional and technical base that supports the inflation targeting approach under which the monetary policy strategy operates gives the BDBR the necessary elements to face this difficult challenge with confidence. In this regard, the BDBR reiterated its commitment to the 3.0% inflation target in its November 25 communiqué and expects it to be reached by the end of 2024.6 Monetary policy will continue to focus on meeting this objective while ensuring the sustainability of economic activity, as mandated by the Constitution. Analyst surveys done in March showed a significant increase (from 32.3% in January to 48.5% in March) in the percentage of responses placing inflation expectations two years or more ahead in a range between 3.0% and 4.0%. This is a clear indication of the recovery of credibility in the medium-term inflation target and is consistent with the BDBR’s announcement made in November 2022. The moderation of the upward trend in inflation seen in January, and especially in February, will help to reinforce this revision of inflation expectations and will help to meet the proposed targets. After reaching 5.6% at the end of 2021, inflation maintained an upward trend throughout 2022 due to inflationary pressures from both external sources, associated with the aftermath of the pandemic and the consequences of the war in Ukraine, and domestic sources, resulting from: strengthening of local demand; price indexation processes stimulated by the increase in inflation expectations; the impact on food production caused by the mid-2021 strike; and the pass-through of depreciation to prices. The 10% increase in the minimum wage in 2021 and the 16% increase in 2022, both of which exceeded the actual inflation and the increase in productivity, accentuated the indexation processes by establishing a high nominal adjustment benchmark. Thus, total inflation went to 13.1% by the end of 2022. The annual change in food prices, which went from 17.2% to 27.8% between those two years, was the most influential factor in the surge in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Another segment that contributed significantly to price increases was regulated products, which saw the annual change go from 7.1% in December 2021 to 11.8% by the end of 2022. The measure of core inflation excluding food and regulated items, in turn, went from 2.5% to 9.5% between the end of 2021 and the end of 2022. The substantial increase in core inflation shows that inflationary pressure has spread to most of the items in the household basket, which is characteristic of inflationary processes with generalized price indexation as is the case in Colombia. Monetary policy began to react early to this inflationary pressure. Thus, starting with its September 2021 session, the BDBR began a progressive change in the monetary policy stance moving away from the historical low of a 1.75% policy rate that had intended to stimulate the recovery of the economy. This adjustment process continued without interruption throughout 2022 and into the beginning of 2023 when the monetary policy rate reached 12.75% last January, thus accumulating an increase of 11 percentage points (pp). The public and the markets have been surprised that inflation continued to rise despite significant interest rate increases. However, as the BDBR has explained in its various communiqués, monetary policy works with a lag. Just as in 2022 economic activity recovered to a level above the pre-pandemic level, driven, along with other factors, by the monetary stimulus granted during the pandemic period and subsequent months, so too the effects of the current restrictive monetary policy will gradually take effect. This will allow us to expect the inflation rate to converge to 3.0% by the end of 2024 as is the BDBR’s purpose.Inflation results for January and February of this year showed declining marginal increases (13 bp and 3 bp respectively) compared to the change seen in December (59 bp). This suggests that a turning point in the inflation trend is approaching. In other Latin American countries such as Chile, Brazil, Perú, and Mexico, inflation has peaked and has begun to decline slowly, albeit with some ups and downs. It is to be expected that a similar process will take place in Colombia in the coming months. The expected decline in inflation in 2023 will be due, along with other factors, to lower cost pressure from abroad as a result of the gradual normalization of supply chains, the overcoming of supply shocks caused by the weather, and road blockades in previous years. This will be reflected in lower adjustments in food prices, as has already been seen in the first two months of the year and, of course, the lagged effect of monetary policy. The process of inflation convergence to the target will be gradual and will extend beyond 2023. This process will be facilitated if devaluation pressure is reversed. To this end, it is essential to continue consolidating fiscal sustainability and avoid messages on different public policy fronts that generate uncertainty and distrust. 1 This Report to Congress includes Box 1, which summarizes the trajectory of Banco de la República over the past 100 years. In addition, under the Bank’s auspices, several books that delve into various aspects of the history of this institution have been published in recent years. See, for example: Historia del Banco de la República 1923-2015; Tres banqueros centrales; Junta Directiva del Banco de la República: grandes episodios en 30 años de historia; Banco de la República: 90 años de la banca central en Colombia. 2 This is why lower inflation has been reflected in a reduction of income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient that went from 58.7 in 1998 to 51.3 in the year prior to the pandemic. 3 See Gómez Javier, Uribe José Darío, Vargas Hernando (2002). “The Implementation of Inflation Targeting in Colombia”. Borradores de Economía, No. 202, March, available at: https://repositorio.banrep.gov.co/handle/20.500.12134/5220 4 See López-Enciso Enrique A.; Vargas-Herrera Hernando and Rodríguez-Niño Norberto (2016). “The inflation targeting strategy in Colombia. An historical view.” Borradores de Economía, No. 952. https://repositorio.banrep.gov.co/handle/20.500.12134/6263 5 According to the IMF, the percentage change in consumer prices between 2021 and 2022 went from 3.1% to 7.3% for advanced economies, and from 5.9% to 9.9% for emerging market and developing economies. 6 https://www.banrep.gov.co/es/noticias/junta-directiva-banco-republica-reitera-meta-inflacion-3

Estimates from the United Nations Population Fund indicate that the costs of family planning (FP) and other reproductive health (RH) services are increasing and that it will be difficult for donors and countries to meet these costs. Many institutions delivering RH services operate significantly below their physical capacity to see clients, and much of the equipment required for expanding RH services may already be available for use. The marginal costs of adding infrastructure could be low. Many institutions have staff that are not fully occupied, and thus the staff necessary to expand RH services may also be in place. In this paper, we examine the cost implications for labor of expanding the provision of syndromic management services in FP clinics in Zimbabwe. Syndromic management of sexually transmitted infections allows health care workers to make a diagnosis without sophisticated laboratory tests because it is based on clinical syndromes and, in some cases, assessments of an individual patient’s risk for STI infection.