The Medicare program is on the verge of major change. The proof of the value of reforms will not rest in how well the program meets the needs of the healthy and wealthy, but rather in whether they preserve or improve upon protections for those who would not be well served by an unregulated private sector--persons with low incomes and/or substantial health problems. This paper examines four key ...

Throughout the industrialized world, young women outnumber young men in urban areas. This paper proposes that such a pattern may be linked to higher male incomes in urban areas. The argument is that urban areas offer skilled workers better labor markets. Assuming that there are more skilled males than females, this alone would predict a surplus of males. However, the presence of males with high...

Megacities concentrate large amounts of people, absorb a large quantity of resources and generate vast amounts of waste and sewage, thereby contributing considerably to the use of the environment as a sink. The quantity of resources consumed and urban residues produced per capita tend to rise steadily with increased per capita income. Proper management of municipal solid waste is critical to th...

Health starts outside the medical system – supportive families and communities, education, employment, proper nutrition, hygiene, and adequate housing and income are, of course, among the key determinants of health. Most chronic conditions affecting adults develop during childhood. When children and youth come in contact with the health care system, they need timely access to trained profession...

This article introduces ways to create proper IT services which can help organizations serve the emerging rural markets. The research is based on a two-year action research project which derives a framework for building IT services for the low-income consumers in the rural area of China. The framework is proposed to understand the characteristics that the consumers in the rural area use the IT ...

We test the "induced demand" model on cesarean section, relying on a natural experiment of proportional fee reduction of all delivery procedures. This fee change does not imply any substitution effect and allows a proper measure of the income effect. We extend the demand induction model and derive its testable implications by introducing a discrete class of patients towards which physicians can...

*Erasmus University Rotterdam; presently Visiting Project Associate. I have greatly benefited from the very stimulating research environment and m9-ny helpful discussions at the Institute. b ABSTRACT This paper outlines four existing theories dealing with income distribution and labor market allocation. Predictions on the proper specification of wage equations are derived and testing procedures...

The study was conducted to document farmers' livelihood aspects and agribusiness potentials in wetland areas of Bangladesh. A total of 120 farmers and 24 service providers were interviewed for data collection. Most of the farmers were small farmers having less than 1.0 ha of cultivable land. The differences in productivity of crop farming and poultry rearing between wetland area and main land w...