Employment and sociodemographic characteristics: a study of increasing precarity in the health districts of Belo Horizonte, Brazil

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The fundamental importance of human resources for the development of health care systems is recognized the world over. Health districts, which constitute the middle level of the municipal health care system in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, deal with demands from all parts of the system. This research seeks to provide the essential features required in order to understand the phenomenon of increase in precarity of employment in these health districts.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The legal and human resource management documents used by the Municipal Health Secretariat of the City of Belo Horizonte were adopted as the corpus for this research. In order to analyse the changes in employment (2002–2006), the data were collected from ArteRH, a computerized database dealing specifically with data related to human resources, which began operating in 2001. The workers were classified into permanent and non-permanent groups, and their contractual rights were described. Employment dynamics and changes were examined, concentrating on the incorporation of workers and on their social and employment rights during the period under study. The comparative data for the two groups obtained were presented in frequency distribution tables according to type of employment, sex, age group, level of education and wages from 2002 to 2006.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There was a clear difference between the permanent worker and non-permanent worker groups as regards existing guaranteed employment rights and social security. The increase in the number of non-permanent workers in the workforce, the growing proportion of older workers among the permanently employed and the real wage reductions during the period from 2002 to 2006 are indicative of the process of growing precarity of employment in the group studied.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>It is a plausible supposition that the demand for health reforms, along with the legal limits imposed on financial expenditure, gave rise to the new types of contract and the present employment situation in the health districts in Belo Horizonte.</p

Youth Cohorts and the Risk of Conflict Recurrence: A Global Quantitative Analysis

While the role of youth in post-conflict settings has increasingly gained policy attention, systematic academic studies on this topic remain scarce. This research adds to existing literature by the youth bulge theory of conflict onset to a post-conflict setting. It hypothesizes that large youth bulges at the time conflict episodes end increase the feasibility for rebel groups to relaunch their insurgence and are therefore associated with a higher risk of conflict recurrence. A global quantitative analysis revealed a statistically significant positive correlation between youth bulges and conflict recurrence. Three conditional hypotheses which focus on elements of economic, political and social exclusion that are argued to interact with youth bulges to influence the risk of conflict recurrence found no empirical support. However, the combination of findings for Hypothesis 1 and non-findings for Hypotheses 2 may indicate that the underlying cause for the relationship between youth bulges and conflict recurrence may not be based on young people’s individual grievances and motives to join a rebel group. Instead, other factors may be at play which could not be tested within the scope of this study. Despite its shortcomings, this study therefore confirms the necessity of continuing to investigate the relationship between the age distribution of a population and the risk of conflict recurrence

Youth Cohorts and the Risk of Conflict Recurrence: A Global Quantitative Analysis

While the role of youth in post-conflict settings has increasingly gained policy attention, systematic academic studies on this topic remain scarce. This research adds to existing literature by the youth bulge theory of conflict onset to a post-conflict setting. It hypothesizes that large youth bulges at the time conflict episodes end increase the feasibility for rebel groups to relaunch their insurgence and are therefore associated with a higher risk of conflict recurrence. A global quantitative analysis revealed a statistically significant positive correlation between youth bulges and conflict recurrence. Three conditional hypotheses which focus on elements of economic, political and social exclusion that are argued to interact with youth bulges to influence the risk of conflict recurrence found no empirical support. However, the combination of findings for Hypothesis 1 and non-findings for Hypotheses 2 may indicate that the underlying cause for the relationship between youth bulges and conflict recurrence may not be based on young people’s individual grievances and motives to join a rebel group. Instead, other factors may be at play which could not be tested within the scope of this study. Despite its shortcomings, this study therefore confirms the necessity of continuing to investigate the relationship between the age distribution of a population and the risk of conflict recurrence

Occupational Health Care in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises—Introduction of Services to Craftsmen by Using Their Professional Networks

In order to ensure equality of occupational health care among employees of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and of larger companies, amendments in the regulations of the numerous German accident insurance funds had to be made to provide for full availability of services, as requested by German and European law. According to these amendments, sectors formerly exempted due to small size and due to lack of an adequate number of qualified personnel, had to be covered by occupational health care. In order to reach this target group new strategies of care delivery had to be developed, making use of pre-existing infrastructure and networks. In Germany, district trade association (Kreishandwerkerschaften) have proved to be very effective for introducing occupational safety and health care into SMEs by either hiring external multidisciplinary services or by establishing a common service to be used by all associated crafts establishments. In a study conducted by the Federal Office for Health and Safety at Work in 1996 (Boldt, Gille, &Grahl, 1997), 7 district trade association were looked at in detail for their strategies. The results were discussed and supplemented in a 2-day workshop

Occupational Health Care in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises - Introduction of Services to Craftsmen by Using Their Professional Networks

In order to ensure equality of occupational health care among employees of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and of larger companies, amendments in the regulations of the numerous German accident insurance funds had to be made to provide for full availability of services, as requested by German and European law. According to these amendments, sectors formerly exempted due to small size and due to lack of an adequate number of qualified personnel, had to be covered by occupational health care. In order to reach this target group new strategies of care delivery had to be developed, making use of pre-existing infrastructure and networks. In Germany, district trade association (Kreishandwerkerschaften) have proved to be very effective for introducing occupational safety and health care into SMEs by either hiring external multidisciplinary services or by establishing a common service to be used by all associated crafts establishments. In a study conducted by the Federal Office for Health and Safety at Work in 1996 (Boldt, Gille, &Grahl, 1997), 7 district trade association were looked at in detail for their strategies. The results were discussed and supplemented in a 2-day workshop

Impact of supervisory board members’ professional background on banks’ risk-taking

This paper examines the impact of financial expertise of supervisory board members on the risk-return profile of 200 German regional cooperative banks during the period 2004–2009. The results show that with more financial expertise the bank performance does not improve, but bank risk increases. These findings induce concerns that mandating financial expertise on boards is not necessarily beneficial for the risk-return profile of regional banks. We suggest that overconfidence of entrepreneurs in the supervisory boards leads to this unfavorable development since they represent the largest fraction of professionals within the sample.</jats:p