How can we investigate the determinants of personal well-being in a developing country using UNICEF’s multiple indicator cluster survey data?

In the context of the current social stratification of housing wealth, a large number of researches have confirmed the positive impact of housing property rights on happiness. However, as a special commodity with both consumption and investment attributes, the impact of housing on modern urban families may not be limited to life feelings. Most of the current researches focus on the observation of overall well-being or life satisfaction, and pay little attention to workers’ working attitude.For urban families who rely on their occupational income to obtain class status and use housing investment to resist social risks, housing and employment issues are the core content of the middle class anxiety. This paper uses CLDS data to explore the impact of housing stratification on workers’ job satisfaction from many dimensions. This study shows the realistic mentality of families in various housing classes in terms of job satisfaction: For families with more than one housing property right, their “housing freedom” increases their freedom in working choices, so they maintain a high degree of satisfaction with their jobs; for families with single housing property right, the pressure of repaying the mortgage and the relative sense of deprivation that the rise of housing prices cannot be realized makes the real estate class show obvious anxiety and dissatisfaction in employment, especially in work income. The conclusion of this paper reveals a worrying fact: Although most urban workers have already achieved “Live in Peace”, high housing prices and high mortgages have restricted their ability to “Work in Contentment”, and housing differentiation has restrained and replaced the spirit of “work hard and work happy” of urban workers to a certain extent.Different from the existing research, this paper reveals the negative effect of housing property rights on the job satisfaction of people with single housing property right. There are two possible marginal contributions: First, most of the current researches focus on the overall subjective satisfaction or life satisfaction, while the research on the subjective employment attitude such as housing to workers’ job satisfaction is rarely involved. This study, from the perspectives of housing stratification and job satisfaction, depicts the anxiety problems of urban families, especially those with housing property rights, and reveals the employment anxiety that the single housing property right brings to the property families. This finding enriches the academic research on the impact of housing on subjective satisfaction and the job market from a micro perspective. Second, this paper not only conducts empirical exploration on the three psychological mechanisms of housing property rights affecting job satisfaction, but also uses subjective and objective index estimation results to compare work income, working hours and working environment to reveal the reasons for the employment anxiety of families with single housing property right. The reason is largely due to the dissatisfaction with work income. This idea is expected to enrich the related research based on purely subjective variables. The findings also help to broaden the academic community’s understanding of the anxiety of middle class, and have enlightening significance for the government to formulate housing and employment policies.

Background: The growth charts are very important for monitoring a child growth and for estimation of stunting and wasting in a country. This can be done efficiently if the references and standards for growth monitoring are correct. Aim: To devise the methodology of selection of cases from multiple indicator cluster survey (MICS) data available worldwide under UNICEF for most of the developing and non-developed countries. Methods: This methodology was devised during 1st January 30th June 2022 in College of Statistical Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore. The three rounds of MICS, i.e. the 4th, 5th and 6th, were evaluated for their eligibility to develop a standard growth chart for children under two year’s age. The criteria needed to be met were, singleton, full term birth up to 4thorder, exclusive breastfeeding for 4-6 months, continuing breastfeeding till one year age. Belonging to affluent socioeconomic status, not having any severe illness and born to non-smoking mothers. The MICS data is available in the format of SPSS data files. These files have been explored for the variables answering these questions directly or indirectly. Results: The MICS rounds 4 and 5 were discarded after having a detailed view, as they were not fulfilling the WHO criteria due to missing information for several important variables. The round 6 was found to have direct information on many of the variables, i.e., singleton, full-term, birth order, family size, mother smoking status while some other variables i.e. exclusive breast feeding, severe illness, and not belonging to deprived class were objectively created using some other variables existing in MICS data Conclusion: This methodology for selection of cases, can provide us children with height, weight, age and gender of children as per WHO criteria required to meet for development of the standard growth chart for children under two years age. Keywords: WHO criteria, Pediatric growth standards, MICS

China's housing prices have been on the rise since the 1990s. At the same time, China's urban residents' housing rate had reached 96% by 2020. Based on the above-mentioned realistic background, the rise and fall of housing prices will inevitably affect a series of behaviors such as investment, consumption and entrepreneurship of Chinese households. According to the data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2014 to 2018, this article analyzes the net value of housing and whether the ownership of housing property rights has an impact on family entrepreneurship based on the comprehensive effects of housing prices on entrepreneurship of “wealth effect”, “collateral effect” and “substitution effect”. The study results show that the increase in house prices generally promotes family entrepreneurial decision-making, and the promotion effect is more significant for families with housing property rights. Still, for families without housing property rights, the increase in housing prices has an opposite inhibitory effect on family entrepreneurship. Based on the above conclusions, this article puts forward some suggestions on related policies.

Are housing property rights important for fertility outcomes in China? Empirical evidence and policy issues

Housing property rights and subjective wellbeing in urban China

Objective: The first aim of this study was to explore expected demands of the oldest old and their determinants for different types of elderly care services. The second aim was to investigate preferred choices of living arrangements among the oldest old and the influencing factors.Methods: Data of 4,738 participants aged ≥80 years were extracted from the Chinese Longitudinal Health Longevity Survey carried out in 2014. Using the Andersen model as the analysis framework, a multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to analyze the relationship between the expected elderly care services and living arrangements and other influencing factors. The odds ratios were calculated to indicate the relationship between the influencing factors and the dependent variables.Results: From the descriptive analysis results, we found that the oldest old showed high anticipated needs for home visits (83.5%) and health education (76.4%). Further, there existed a huge imbalance between the supply and demand of care services for the aged. Living with children is still the most important way of providing for the oldest old. The regression results showed that the expected demands for elderly care services and anticipated living arrangements among the oldest old in China are influenced by age, residence, housing property rights, economic status, loneliness, and activities of daily living (ADLs). The oldest old who are older without housing property rights, childless, and have restricted ADLs were more frequently observed to live in long-term care institutions.Conclusions: There is an inequality of the supply and expected demand for elderly care services, and living with children is still a preferred choice of the Chinese oldest old. Our findings indicate that when planning how to promote elderly care services among the oldest old, it is important to consider their expectations, especially for the subgroup that is relatively disadvantaged. Related policies should be developed to offer incentives to family caregivers when they live with the oldest old.

Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), supported by UNICEF, are one of the most important global household survey programs that provide data on health and education of women and children. We analyze the Serbia 2014–2015 MICS dataset using topological data analysis which treats the data cloud as a topological space and extracts information about its intrinsic geometric properties. In particular, our analysis uses the Mapper algorithm, a dimension-reduction and clustering method which produces a graph from the data cloud. The resulting Mapper graph provides insight into various relationships between household wealth—as expressed by the wealth index, an important indicator extracted from the MICS data—and other parameters such as urban/rural setting, ownership of items, and prioritization of possessions. Among other uses, these findings can serve to inform policy by providing a hierarchy of essential amenities. They can also potentially be used to refine the wealth index or deepen our understanding of what it captures.

Although the prevalence of obesity has rapidly increased in the low‐ and middle‐income countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) regions, child undernutrition remains a public‐health challenge. We examined region‐specific sociodemographic determinants of this double burden of malnutrition, specifically, the co‐occurrence of child stunting and overweight, using Demographic and Health Survey and Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey data (2003–2016) from 11 countries in the MENA (n = 118,585) and 13 countries in the LAC (n = 77,824) regions. We used multiple logistic regressions to model region‐specific associations of maternal education and household wealth with child nutritional outcomes (6–59 months). The prevalence of stunting, overweight, and their co‐occurrence was 24%, 10%, and 4.3% in children in the MENA region, respectively, and 19%, 5%, and 0.5% in children in the LAC region, respectively. In both regions, higher maternal education and household wealth were significantly associated with lower odds of stunting and higher odds of overweight. As compared with the poorest wealth quintiles, decreased odds of co‐occurring stunting and overweight were observed among children from the second, third, and fourth wealth quintiles in the LAC region. In the MENA region, this association was only statistically significant for the second wealth quintile. In both regions, double burden was not statistically significantly associated with maternal education. The social patterning of co‐occurring stunting and overweight in children varied across the two regions, indicating potential differences in the underlying aetiology of the double burden across regions and stages of the nutrition transition.

During China’s transition towards land and housing marketization in the 1980s to 1990s, a series of legal and policy arrangements led to the separation of land ownership from land-use rights, followed by the separation of housing ownership from land-use rights. This has institutionally fragmented the housing property rights, allowing properties to be financialized as collaterals. Consequently, the fragmentation of housing property rights inflicts substantial risks on judicial auctions of foreclosed housing. As China’s real estate sector is grappling with a mounting debt crisis, it becomes imperative to enhance the efficiency of judicial auctions to address bank debts and stabilize the housing financial system. By employing the cs-QCA method with a dataset comprising 136 cases of foreclosed properties, this study reveals the critical role of various configurations of property-rights risks in determining the outcome of judicial auctions. Additionally, it identifies the importance of credible commitments offered by the courts in mitigating property-rights risks. The research expects to provide practical and theoretical insights for China’s courts and financial institutions to manage foreclosed properties effectively.

Housing property rights, collateral, and entrepreneurship: Evidence from China

This study examines whether residential satisfaction and residential preferences vary by housing property rights, an individual-level variable, beyond the household-level variable of homeownership. This study uses the data that came from the newlywed module of the 2014-16 Korea Housing Survey and linear and logistic regression as methods. The results showed that, even after controlling for relevant variables, owner-occupied households had higher residential satisfaction than renter-occupied households, and individual property owners had higher residential satisfaction than respondents without property rights (family property owners). In terms of residential preferences, owner-occupied households were more likely than renter-occupied households to consider housing tenure and house price fluctuations important, and individual property owners were more likely than family property owners to consider housing tenure and house price fluctuations as important. It is intriguing to note that individual property owners and family property owners have similar housing quality, living space, and living environment at the household level, but the outcome variables differ due to the difference in property rights. The study also found that the effect of property rights varied depending on whether the household lived in a region, gender, and whether they lived independently of their parents.

Residential green spaces are one of the most frequently used urban green space types. Aiming at filling a gap in the existing greening indicators with considerations on the spatial differences of residential green spaces, as well as to inform the improvement of urban green space service, three greening indicators, i.e. residential unit’s green coverage rate, green view index, and park ratio within a 500 m service radius, are proposed in this paper. This study selects 14,196 residential units in built area of Shenzhen City in 2017 to measure the greening rate and the geographic spatial factors of the units upon multi-sourced geographic databases such as land cover maps and street view images. The research reveals that: 1) the three indicators can all independently measure the greening rate within or around residential units; 2) the studied residential units are low in residential unit’s green coverage rate and park ratio within a 500 m service radius, but high in green view index; 3) there are significant disparities of the greening rate and the surrounding parks in 500 m service radius among the studied units, and among different housing property rights, showing a disequilibrium in green space service; and 4) the greening rate of residential units is mainly impacted by factors such as development intensity, types of housing property right, altitude, and location. In conclusion, it is suggested that urban green space layout should prioritize improving the spatial distribution and layout of residential green spaces, especially for the socially vulnerable population. Finally, the study points out that the park ratio within a 500 m service radius can be adopted as a supplement to existing greening indicators for residential areas.

“Reverse mortgage loan of housing" refers to the mortgage of housing property rights to financial institutions by the elderly with housing property rights. After comprehensive evaluation of borrower’s age, expected life, the present value of house, future appreciation and depreciation and other situations, the value of the house is divided into parts, and the cash is paid to the borrower on a monthly or annual basis until the borrower’s death.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has one of the highest levels of child undernutrition globally; however, little information exists on the underlying socio-economic inequalities resulting in undernutrition. This study aims to examine the differences in the nutritional statuses of children across different wealth quintiles and explores the association between malnutrition in children and related factors. We utilised the 2018 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey data. We estimated the prevalence of malnutrition across all twenty-six provinces. The study used the WHO 2006 child growth standards to measure stunting, underweight and wasting. We employed a mixed-effect linear model to analyse the association between nutritional status and healthcare accessibility, domestic sanitation, and socio-demographic factors. Twenty-six provinces in the DRC. 21 477 children under 5 years of age and 21 828 women of childbearing age in the DRC. The national prevalence of underweight, stunting and wasting was found to be 23·33 %, 42·05 % and 5·66 %, respectively. Household wealth and mother's education level were significantly positively associated with the nutritional statuses of children. Among households in the lowest wealth quintile, residence in urban areas was a protective factor against undernutrition. The findings of this study indicate considerable socio-economic inequalities in the nutritional statuses of children under 5 years of age in the DRC, highlighting the need for nutrition promotion as part of maternal and child healthcare. Interventions and policies should include improving nutrition education for less-educated mothers, in particular, in the central provinces of the DRC.

Child discipline in low- and middle-income countries: Socioeconomic disparities at the household- and country-level