Size Of Municipality Research Articles

FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH THE PREVALENCE AND INTENSITY OF DENTAL PAIN IN CHILDREN IN THE MUNICIPALITIES OF THE CAMPINAS REGION, SÃO PAULO.

ABSTRACTObjective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and intensity of dental pain in children according to size of municipality, associated factors and absenteeism. Methods: The sample consisted of children aged 12 years old from public and private schools drawn from eight cities in the region of Campinas (SP). A questionnaire was applied to obtain dental pain, demographic, socioeconomic data, and a clinical examination was carried out to evaluate the experience of having a cavity. The outcome for the logistic regression analysis was having pain and the outcome for the negative log-binomial regression was the intensity of pain. The significance level was 5%. Results: The sample consisted of 1,233 children, and 16.7% reported pain in the last six months. Dental pain was the cause of 46.4% of school absenteeism during this period. The prevalence of pain was lower among households with high income (p=0.023) and higher among nonwhites (p=0.027). Pain intensity was lower in medium-sized cities (p=0.02) and small cities (p=0.004), and higher in children whose parents had a lower educational level (p=0.003), children who sought out a dentist for the pain (p=0.04) and who had untreated cavities (p=0.04).Conclusions: The prevalence and intensity of dental pain in children aged under 12 are related to socioeconomic aspects of the family, such as low-income and parents with a low level of education, which impact daily activities as seen through school absenteeism. Pain intensity was lower in medium and small cities. Oral health promotion strategies in this age group should be encouraged to avoid dental pain.

Obesity and physical activity patterns among Balearic Islands children and adolescents: a cross-sectional study

Childhood and adolescents’ obesity remains a public health concern. In addition, it has been reported that youth population do not reach the international recommendations for physical activity. The aims of the present study were to determine the prevalence and risk factors of overweight and obesity, and to investigate the lifestyle determinants of physical activity practice in children and adolescents of the Balearic Islands (Spain). A cross-sectional survey (n = 3164; 44.2% girls; 10-16 years old) was carried out. Weight and height were assessed to estimate obesity prevalence according to the International Obesity Task Force cut-offs for body mass index. Physical activity patterns, sedentary behaviours, lifestyles determinants and parental characteristics were surveyed. The prevalence of overweight and obesity among Balearic Islands youth aged 10 to 16 years was 22.3% and 19.2%, respectively. Low parental educational level was associated with higher levels of children’s and adolescent’s body mass index, in both genders. The probability of being an overweight children and adolescent was increased significantly with a mother who never practice physical activity. Physically inactive children and adolescents had one and half (boys) and two (girls) times higher odds of being obese than physically active. Girls who exceeded 2 h per day of media screen time had a significantly higher body mass index. Parental educational level, mother’s physical activity practice, size of municipality of school, media screen time and physical activity are important factors of obesity among Balearic Islands children and adolescent.

Why do some municipalities apply accrual-based rules more than others? Evidence from Turkey

In the last decades, public sector has been influenced by New Public Management emphasizing incentives, competition, and performance. With the effect of New Public Management, implementation of accrual accounting based rules in the local government level has been studied from different aspects and within different contexts. In this study, we seek to further delineate factors affecting the level of compliance to accrual based accounting rules in the local government level in an emerging country - Turkey. We shed lights on two new emerging country-like variables: implementation of European Union funded projects and newly founded municipalities with six control variables including municipal size, municipal wealth, citizen education level, staff education level, debt ratio and external audit. Data, to be analyzed, is gathered from 102 Turkish municipalities. We use compliance index, consisting of 39 items, in order to assess the level of compliance of the municipalities. Institutional theory and resource dependence theory have been employed in order to increase our understanding on the factors affecting the level of compliance to the accrual based rules. The results show moderate compliance, 61.2%, with the accrual based rules. Predictors that have clearly significant effect on the level of compliance are respectively, the external audit (b = .123, beta = .450, p = .000), implementation of EU funded projects (b = .074, beta = .267, p = .002) and being a newly founded municipality (b = .071, beta = .155, p = .031). Moreover, we found that coercive institutional pressure to implement accrual-based rules may become a potent force when a supreme audit institution has control and there is resource dependence on an international body.

Financial aspects of community pharmacies in Slovakia (2009-2014) Finančné aspekty verejných lekární na Slovensku v rokoch 2009-2014

Abstract Community pharmacies play an important role in the process of ensuring public health. Pharmacists provide pharmaceutical care that includes acquiring, storing, preparing, reviewing and dispensing medicines, medical devices and dietary food to the inhabitants; providing them with information and advice; acquiring, storing and dispensing additional assortment; carrying out physical and biochemical testing for primary prevention and monitoring of drug efficacy and safety. At present, there are constant changes which have direct or potential and often negative impact on community pharmacies. For providing affordable and good quality pharmaceutical care, it is important to continuously monitor and analyse the developments in the financial data in community pharmacy business management. The data file from 2009-2014 on financial performance of selected community pharmacies were obtained from the Register of Financial Statements at Ministry of Finance Slovak Republic. A group of 194 community pharmacies were selected that represented more than 10 percent of all pharmacies. The selection criteria respected the territorial division of the Slovak Republic on districts, the size of municipalities (cities and villages) and location (at or near health centres, shopping centres, housing estates, etc.). The evaluation parameters were gross profit, net profit, revenue from sales of goods and services, operating expenses, total assets, inventory, short-term receivables, total receivables, financial assets, owner’s equity, total liabilities, current liabilities and their characteristics (25th, 50th, 75th percentile, minimum, maximum, mean). The financial parameters obtained and their characteristics presented the basic information on the management of community pharmacies. The data also provided information for further assessment on factors that might have an impact on their value and direction of evolution.

Does Local Democracy Perform Better in Smaller Jurisdictions? Survey Evidence from Poland

The article investigates the relationship between the size of municipality and the functioning of local democracy in Poland. It discusses advantages and disadvantages of scale observable in local democratic institutions, and citizens’ political attitudes and behaviour. The empirical evidence is based on a survey of citizens conducted in 2015. A set of multi-level regression models is presented in order to account for individual- and municipality-level effects. The results generally support the argument that local democracy performs better in smaller municipalities. The negative effects of scale are visible in the case of political interest, citizens’ efficacy, and civic engagement, but no relation between size and local attachment was found in Poland.

The influence of residents' behaviour on waste electrical and electronic equipment collection effectiveness.

Government agencies have implemented regulations to reduce the volume of waste electrical and electronic equipment to protect the environment and encourage recycling. The effectiveness of systems through which waste electrical and electronic equipment is collected and recycled depends on (a) the development and operation of new programmes to process this material and (b) on information dissemination programmes aimed at manufacturers, retail sellers, and the consuming public. This study analyses these two elements. The main focus is to better understand household residents' behaviour in regards to the proper methods of handling waste electrical and electronic equipment and possible storage of the obsolete equipment that brings disturbances with collection of the waste equipment. The study explores these issues depending on size of municipality and the household residents' knowledge about legal methods of post-consumer management of waste electrical and electronic equipment in Poland, where the collection rate of that type of waste is about 40% of the total mass of waste electrical and electronic equipment appearing in the market.The research was informed by various sources of information, including non-government organisations, Inspectorate of Environmental Protection and Central Statistics Office in Poland, questionnaires, and interviews with the household residents. The questionnaires were distributed to daytime and vocational students from different universities and the customers of an electronic equipment superstore. The results show that a resident's behaviour in regards to the handling of obsolete waste electrical and electronic equipment can significantly reduce the collection rate, especially when the waste is discarded improperly - mixed with municipal waste or sold in scrapyards. It is possible to identify points that are necessary to be improved to achieve a higher collection rate.

GHG emissions in daily travel and long-distance travel in Germany – Social and spatial correlates

There is considerable research on the climate effects of daily travel, including research on the spatio-temporal and socioeconomic impact factors of daily travel and associated climate change effects. However, this is less true with respect to long-distance trips. This paper uses national transport survey data from Germany to point out differences in GHG emissions related to demographic, socioeconomic and spatial characteristics for daily and long-distance travel. Daily travel and long-distance travel are investigated simultaneously and separately using Logit and OLS regressions. The results show that transport-related GHG emissions from long-distance trips and daily trips are affected by sociodemographics in largely the same direction. In contrast, spatial attributes, like municipality size or density grade of the region, show a different picture. Per capita emissions in rural and suburban areas are higher for daily trips, but lower for long-distance trips than emissions caused by urban residents. While we cannot rule out the possibility of residential self-selection, our findings challenge the idea that compact urban development may help reduce CO2 emissions once long-distance trips are taken into account.

Cost savings or real efficiency gains? Heterogeneous effects of involving the private market in public service delivery

Governments’ endeavours to improve the efficiency of public service delivery often involve contracting out to external providers, which, allegedly, provides the possibility of exploiting the innovative capacity and expertise of the private market. However, most previous studies have focused on economic effects, thereby leaving open the question of whether contracting out results in mere cost savings or in real efficiency gains. This article offers some insights to advance the debate. Using municipal road maintenance in Denmark as an empirical test bed, we find that contracting out has on average reduced costs. Furthermore, we include a control for service quality, and show that the cost savings are still significant, thus indicating that a genuine efficiency gain has been realized. Nevertheless, while some municipalities have benefitted from contracting out, others have not. We conclude that cost effects are heterogeneous and contingent on municipal size and prior level of contracting out.

Description of duplicate records held on the Notifiable Diseases Information System, Brazil, 2008-2009

to describe the proportion of duplicate records held on the Brazilian Notifiable Diseases Information System, 2008-2009. identification of duplicate records of dengue, leprosy, visceral leishmaniasis and cutaneous leishmaniasis, meningitis and tuberculosis was conducted using Reclink III(r); the proportion of duplicate records was calculated by geographical region, state and municipal population size categories. visceral leishmaniasis (VL) and meningitis had higher proportions of duplicate notification (5.3% and 3.6%, respectively) whilst leprosy had the lowest (0.7%); the states with highest repetitions were Rio Grande do Norte (VL 6.8% and leprosy 5.1%), Rio de Janeiro (tuberculosis 2.5% and meningitis 4.9%) and Goiás (dengue 2.0% and meningitis 7.2%). the Northeast region had the highest proportion of duplicate records for four of the six diseases analyzed; with the exception of dengue, percentage repetition was lower in municipalities with larger population size.

Pkw-Nutzung im Wandel des Geschlechterverhältnisses – Trends über drei Jahrzehnte

This paper aims at answering the question, how the usage of cars both of men and women has changed in Germany in the context of changing gender relations during the last decades. Moreover, gender-specific differences in car usage are pointed out and their root causes are analysed based on German Travel Survey data. This is achieved by tracing the development of gender-specific car usage between 1976 and 2008 and interpreting the trends identified in a wider context of societal changes. The analyses conducted give results on whether gender-specific car usage results from social roles (e. g. labour participation), restrictions (e. g. lower car availability of women), economically rational household decisions on the car as a restricted resource, or gender-specific preferences. Beyond that it is shown how car usage has changed with respect to men and women with different characteristics (e. g. household motorization, labour participation, household type, municipality size). The results given in the paper show that convergence of men’s and women’s car usage predominantly results from an increasing women’s car usage. Regarding households where the number of drivers exceeds the number of available cars, i. e. the available cars are shared, we find a re-allocation of the scarce resource car between men and women. Yet, this trend varies: For example, women’s car usage increases stronger in small and in medium municipalities than in big cities. Furthermore, the results hint at gender-specific preferences: Even under very similar conditions such as full-time employment and unrestricted car availability, women use the car less often than men.

Promoting health by addressing living conditions in Norwegian municipalities.

Worldwide, inequalities in health are increasing, even in well-developed welfare states such as Norway, which in 2012, saw a new public health act take effect that enshrined equity in health as national policy and devolved to municipalities' responsibility to act on the social determinants of health. The act deems governance structures and "Health in All Policies" approaches as important steering mechanisms for local health promotion. The aim of this study is to investigate whether Norway's municipalities address living conditions - economic circumstances, housing, employment and educational factors - in local health promotion, and what factors are associated with doing so. All Norway's municipalities (n= 428) were included in this cross-sectional study, and both register and survey data were used and were subjected to descriptive and bi- and multivariate regression analyses. Eighty-two percent of the municipalities reported that they were capable of reducing inequalities in health. Forty percent of the municipalities defined living conditions as a main challenge in their local public health promotion, while 48% cited it as a main health promotion priority. Our study shows that defining living conditions as a main challenge is positively associated with size of municipality, and also its assessment of its own capability in reducing inequalities in health. The latter factor was also associated with actually prioritizing living conditions in health promotion, as was having established cross-sectorial working groups or inter-municipal collaboration related to local health promotion. This study underlines the importance of inter-sectoral collaboration to promote health and well-being.

The Council of Europe and Control System in Local Self-Government of the Slovak Republic

Summary The control system of the public administration of the Slovak Republic is regulated by several laws, on top of which stands the very Constitution of the Slovak Republic. The control activity is carried out by the authorities that are delegated to carry out checks directly from the Act, whose objective is to determine the objective status of the facts, and the management of financial management and other means of public investment. The main objective of the article was to analyze and present effectivity and function of internal control system in the individual municipality size categories in the Slovak Republic

Hvordan gik det med lokaldemokratiet?

The article reviews studies that have examined the local democratic consequences of the Danish Structural Reform, with focus on studies that have used the municipal amalgamations (which were part of the aforementioned reform) to study the relationship between the size of political systems and the quality of democracy in those systems. The reviewed studies tend to find negative effects of municipal size on the quality of local democracy, although the effects are weak to moderate in size. These results are consistent with the existing local government literature on the relationship between size and democracy, which also has shown that size does not matter much for the quality of democracy. If there indeed are differences between local democracies of different sizes then this has more to do with the characteristics of those who choose to live in these communities, than it has to do with size.

What is the Best Outsourcing Strategy? Nonlinear Association between the Outsourcing Degree of Institutional Care and the Costs of Substitute Care in Child Welfare within Finnish Municipalities

ABSTRACTThe main aim of the study was to explore the association of outsourcing degree to the cost of institutional care in child welfare. There was no essential difference in cost when the municipalities had outsourced either almost none or all of their services. The highest costs were associated with the situation wherein about half of services were outsourced. However, the association depended on the sizes of municipalities. Among the big municipalities the highest costs were associated with the situation wherein about a quarter of services were outsourced. Among the small municipalities the association was similar to the whole data.

Factors Driving the Credit Card Ownership in Italy

<p>The aim of this paper is to explore the main determinants of credit card ownership by analyzing the variables that may affect the decision to hold a credit card. Using the 2012 Survey on Household Income and Wealth provided by the Bank of Italy as main source, we estimated count data models in order to identify the socio-economic, demographic and territorial variables affecting the credit card accounts held by households. Our estimates give evidence of the significance of the considered factors. In particular, we find that geographical location is an important determinant of families behavior in line with the socio-economic gap between the North and the South of Italy. Other relevant variables acting on the number of credit cards held are age, income, municipality size, gender, education and marital status. The reached results are interesting in depicting the main characteristics of cardholders and in helping the implementation of a segment-specific marketing program in the banking services industry.</p>

Mgr. Pavel Maškarinec, Ph.D., Determinants of Women’s Descriptive Representation on the City Boards of the Czech Statutory Cities after the Local Elections of 2014

Abstract This paper focuses on question why is descriptive (or numerical) representation of women as local political leaders higher in some cities than in others? The paper focuses on the analysis of the determinants of women’s political representation on city boards of the Czech statutory cities after the last local elections of 2014. We test some hypothesis, concerning two groups of factors that can potentially affect the success of women (socioeconomic and demographic, and political contextual), thus aiming to expand theoretical and empirical research which is in the case of determinants of women’s representation at the local level underdeveloped. Overall, the analysis reveals that regression models explaining presence of women on the city boards were not generally too successful, with slightly better performance of the model using socioeconomic and demographic factors. Specifically, Moravia and municipality size proved as very strong predictors of presence of women on the city boards in negative, or positive direction, respectively (although in full model municipality size variable lost its significance), supplementing by the proportion of female councillors in same elections, which increased successfulness of women as well. In contrast, the share of women in local councils and on city boards in the previous electoral term was not proven as statistical significant, similarly as party affiliations’ of city boards.

Scale economies in local public administration

ABSTRACTA renewed interest in decentralisation has profoundly affected local public governance around the world. Faced with an increasing number of tasks, Dutch municipalities have recently sought physical centralisation, merging into larger jurisdictions in order to target new policy areas more effectively and cost efficiently. Is such a policy of physical centralisation wise? We study economies of scale in local public administration, and find – given transfer payments from central government and current cooperation between municipalities and after controlling for geographical, demographic and socioeconomic variables – substantial unused scale economies of 17% for the average municipality. Between 2005 and 2014 the optimum size of municipalities increases from around 49,000 to 66,260 inhabitants, pointing at an increased importance of fixed costs relative to variable costs in local public administration.

Political Business Cycle in the Czech Republic: Case of Municipalities

The study analyses expenditures of all municipalities of the Czech Republic over the period 2003-2013. It aims to examine whether changes in municipal spending get affected by the electoral cycle. The analysis has proven that expenditures of municipalities of the Czech Republic are influenced by the political cycle. However, the political business cycle has at the level of municipalities (compared to the macroeconomic level) its peculiarities. These arise mainly from limited options of municipal politicians to use economic instruments to win electoral votes in elections. To receive electoral votes, municipal politicians use mainly public investments and projects that are at the level of municipalities so apparent that they may influence voters in their electoral decision-making. Prior to elections, expenditures on investments significantly increase for all municipal size groups. For municipal size groups of over 50,000 residents, however, they are (per capita) higher compared to smaller municipal size groups. This may be explained by the fact that these municipalities have higher disposable resources (higher per capita own budgetary revenues, higher potential to acquire resources to co-finance municipal projects and broader portfolio of debt financing). Expenditures on transfers do not significantly change prior to municipal elections. We interpret this finding in a way that politicians prefer such investment projects that are visible. Transfers are used to pay for certain current expenses for which municipalities may (in accordance with the established rules) apply through grants.

The Assessment of the Character Profile of Wood-based House Users in the Czech Republic

In the years 2012–2014 the authors carried out an extensive marketing research among users of wood-based buildings in the Czech Republic. The questionnaire survey had 1,000 respondents – Czech households using a wood-based house. The survey was conducted separately in each region of the Czech Republic (40–100 questionnaires per region). The results were evaluated separately for each region and for the Czech Republic as a whole. Questionnaires consisted of four thematic groups of questions. This paper deals with processing and evaluation of results of the first group of questions. This group addresses characteristics of people using wood-based family houses. The results are evaluated for individual regions and for the whole Czech Republic. The evaluation covers seven characteristics of adults using the surveyed buildings: age of users, type of the buildings’ ownership, educational attainment, sector of employment, profession, type of previous housing, and the size of municipality of the previous housing. The aim of the paper is to create profile of a “common user” of wood-based buildings. The results of the marketing research can be used to enhance competitiveness of companies in the woodworking and construction sector.

Performance Information Use in Local Government: Monitoring Relationships with Emergency Medical Services Agencies

ABSTRACTEvaluating service effectiveness and ensuring accountability of third-party public service providers is important in collaborative relationships. Emergency medical services (EMS), a function in many cases provided by community-based organizations with long-standing relationships, constitutes one such case. This article examines the central concern of performance information use by municipal officials as they engage in monitoring and decision-making regarding relationships with third-party EMS agencies. Findings indicate that information availability, length of the relationship, ease of negotiations, and municipal size all influence performance information use, suggesting that the palpable nature of these relationships and the comprehensiveness of the agreements are key in shaping attitudes about performance information use.