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The Hope Index is presented as a measure sensitive to significant cultural changes. In this set of case studies, hope was measured in 1988, the weekend of the Gulf ground invasion in 1991, and in the recession of 1992. Hope for peace increased the weekend of the invasion of Iraq during the Gulf War in comparison to hope measured in 1988. Hope for peace increased in college students, in their mothers, and in their fathers. Hope for increased national productivity increased during the 1992 recession, as well as during the Gulf invasion, but only for mothers and fathers. The increased hope and expectation of peace and increased hope and expectations for productivity are discussed in terms of a need theory of hope, the availability heuristic, and in terms of coping strategies.

This article analyzes the major trends and features of the housing market. It also reviews governmental programs and policies in light of the critical issues facing this market. Our analysis reveals that the quantity and quality of housing stock for the average Korean has improved greatly over the past four decades due partly to the government's extensive involvement in land development and price regulation. The onset of the economic crisis in November 1997 prompted the government to abolish the various forms of regulations and encourage house financing by the private sector. Since then, housing types have become more diversified and a closer linkage has been established between the capital market and the housing industry. At the same time, the stock of small houses for the poor has fallen off sharply. Accordingly, the government should consider providing more financial resources for low-income housing.

This paper proposes a new index of governance based on the Alkire-Foster methodology and compares it with the Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance. The proposed new index improves on existing measures of governance in two ways. First, it is able to incorporate both cardinal and ordinal variables without having to assign cardinal meaning to ordinal variables. The cardinalization of ordinal variables can lead to ambiguous rankings depending on the choice of the cardinal scale. Second, by borrowing the mechanism of cutoffs found in poverty measurement literature, the index can focus attention on nations deprived in terms of governance. The index is computed for the 48 countries of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s data. The groups of best-performing and worst-performing nations identified by each of the two methods are largely similar. However, there are some differences among the middle order governance nations. An additional advantage of the proposed methodology is that it involves counting each country’s achievements in the dimensions of governance, which can be presented in a report card of governance.

Heterogeneous social networks are the source of valued life outcomes, and this heterogeneity is associated with different circumstances and personal attributes. This paper analyses the size and socioeconomic diversity of social networks of people who attend sporting events. The relationship between sports participation and social networks has been widely analysed. However, the role of attending sporting events in the creation of different forms of social capital, specifically networks’ socioeconomic heterogeneity, remains unclear. A better understanding of this issue may help to clarify the social impact of sports participation. Drawing on a unique dataset collected through the administration of a questionnaire to a representative sample of the Spanish population and employing an ad hoc, class-based position generator, we show that attendance to sporting events is associated with social mixing and the creation of networks of people from different occupational classes. Indeed, the size of these effects increases with the frequency of attendance. These results suggest that attending sporting events is associated with bridging social capital and may foster social integration and life opportunities for those who are less advantaged.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union experienced an unanticipated stagnation in the process of mortality reduction that was accelerating in the west. This was followed by even starker fluctuations and overall declines in life expectancy during the 1980s and 1990s. We identify statistically the extent to which, since the 1990s, the countries of the post-communist region have converged as a group towards other regional or cross-regional geopolitical blocks, or whether there are now multiple steady-states (‘convergence clubs’) emerging among these countries. We apply a complex convergence club methodology, including a recursive analysis, to data on 30 OECD countries (including 11 post-communist countries) drawn from the Human Mortality Database and spanning the period 1959–2010. We find that, rather than converging uniformly on western life expectancy levels, the post-communist countries have diverged into multiple clubs, with the lowest seemingly stuck in low-level equilibria, while the best performers (e.g. Czech Republic) show signs of catching-up with the leading OECD countries. As the post-communist period has progressed, the group of transition countries themselves has become more heterogeneous and it is noticeable that distinctive gender and age patterns have emerged. We are the first to employ an empirical convergence club methodology to help understand the complex long-run patterns of life expectancy within the post-communist region, one of very few papers to situate such an analysis in the context of the OECD countries, and one of relatively few to interpret the dynamics over the long-term.

The paper examines job satisfaction among fishers in a tsunami-impacted area on the Andaman coast of Thailand. Following the tsunami, many predicted that fishers would be reluctant to resume their fishing activities. Observations in the fishing communities, however, indicated that as soon as fishers obtained replacements for equipment damaged by the tsunami, they began to fish again. Nevertheless, most fishers reported they would change fishing type, and that if they had the opportunity they would leave fishing altogether. Whether or not these attitudes can be attributed solely to the impacts of the tsunami is not clear at this point, but this supposition is provided some support from data collected from small scale fishers in two towns near Bangkok in the Gulf of Thailand which reflected more positive attitudes towards the occupation. While attitudes towards the occupation are more negative than those reported for many other fisheries, the scores for the job satisfaction categories indicated that the sample means for all job satisfaction categories except Self-Actualisation are above the midpoint on the scales. This, in turn, indicates general satisfaction with the occupation—perhaps the challenge and adventure of the job are perceived as being a little too much following on the heels of the Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated the area. Hence, although fishers say that they would leave the occupation for another, it is unlikely that they will unless the alternate occupation, at the very least, meets the satisfactions provided by fishing.