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This study is based on the earlier work of Iannaccone and Lutz, Kirkendall and Le Doux and Burlingame and uses socio‐economic data obtained from 77 school districts in Massachusetts through the period 1963–1972. The study examines a series of hypotheses related to the “gap” that may develop between community demand and school board response. Some of the findings are (i) the Iannaccone‐Lutz model of school board member incumbent defeat is valid and the “gap” between community demands and the school board's response is an important factor in the operational model; (ii) the school board's response to community's demands (tax rate) is an important variable in determining the “gap” resulting in incumbent defeat and in predicting the variance in this political phenomenon in school districts; (iii) socio‐economic‐political indicators of school district change selected by Kirkendall are related to school board member incumbent defeat.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of a post hoc predictive segmentation procedure to find out the variables that are the most important predictors of investor's preference for specific financial investment products.

The study considers various demographic, socio‐economic and psychographic variables for the purpose of understanding the investor's preferences. Using a sample of individual investors (n=377), a classification and regression tree (CART) methodology was used to determine whether psychographic variables were better predictors than demographic and socio‐economic variables for understanding an individual investor's preference for the investment alternatives.

The results showed that psychographic variables emerged as the most important predictors in the case of investment products with greater degree of risk, and the demographic and socio‐economic variables emerged as the most important for the investment instruments with lesser degree of risk. However, when the sample was divided based on occupation profile (government and non‐government), for both the fixed returns based instruments and the non‐fixed instruments, psychographic variables emerged as the most important predictors.

These results show the need for financial service providers to consider the psychographic variables along with demographic and socio‐economic variables, so as to better understand and advise the financial consumers. This would enable the financial service institutions to target their audience more sharply, so as to develop appropriate marketing strategies and further build the investor's trust.

This paper is a first of its kind to empirically identify the most important variable that determines the financial consumer's preference for investment products in India, using CART technique. This study contributes to furthering the understanding of investor behavior.

Several studies have examined the relationship between service quality and willingness to pay in many industries. However, this relationship has not been explored through the lens of customer perceived value and their willingness to pay for improving and sustaining water service. This study aims to examine the impact of technical and functional service quality dimensions on customer perceived value and assess the influence of customer perceived value and socio-economic factors on customers' willingness to pay for improving and sustaining the water service.

Technical service quality includes core water service such as water delivery and maintenance, while functional service quality refers to the appearance of facilities, employees’ dress, and communication. SERVQUAL questionnaire responses were collected from 333 Palestinian household customers. Cronbach’s alpha was conducted to measure internal consistency and convergent validity. Path analysis was utilized to evaluate a causal diagram by examining the relationships among the constructs.

The results showed that technical and functional service quality and relative price explain 52% of the customer perceived value variation. Additionally, the results revealed that customer perceived value, technical service quality, and relative price significantly impact the customer’s willingness to pay for improving and sustaining service. In contrast, the functional service quality and socio-economic factors have insignificant effects. These predictors explain 60% of the customer’s willingness to pay for improving and sustaining service.

The study suggests that water providers should prioritize improving and sustaining technical service quality to increase customer willingness to pay. Furthermore, they should be aware that other factors, such as employee appearance and politeness, are less influential in driving customers’ willingness to pay.

The study presents a water service improvement model that utilizes data from a developing country to assess the influence of perceived customer value, along with its dimensions, on the willingness to pay for improving and sustaining water service quality.

This study aims to examine how Chinese rural-urban migrant workers' socio-economic status was associated with their decent work.

Grounded in the psychology of working theory (PWT), this study tested the path from rural-urban migrant workers' socio-economic status to decent work via work volition, with this path moderated by environmental uncertainty and trade union support. 470 rural-urban migrant workers from four manufacturing enterprises were investigated.

Results indicated that rural-urban migrant workers' socio-economic status was positively associated with rural-urban migrant workers' decent work through work volition. In addition, environmental uncertainty weakened the impact of socio-economic status on work volition while trade union support strengthened the relationship between socio-economic status and work volition.

The study contributes to the growing research on the PWT by testing its utility among rural-urban migrant workers in the Chinese context. The study also identifies the crucial effects of environmental uncertainty and trade union support, which are distinctive characters of contemporary China, in the formation process of rural-urban migrant workers' decent work. A detailed explanation of the results and implications is discussed in the end.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the linkages of employment, chronic disease prevalence and medical care of the older population in India.

This study used the India Human Development Survey data for the analysis. Bivariate, multinomial logit regression and multiple classification analysis are used as methods for the study.

The findings suggest a bi-directional relationship between employment and chronic diseases: the older population who are engaged in regular paid work has lower likelihood to the risk of chronic diseases compared to those who are not working. Conversely, the older population with chronic diseases may be unable to work in regular paid jobs. The greater proportions of not-working older population with savings and retirement pensions are more likely to seek modern treatment for the chronic diseases. Overall, the results foster that employment determines and is determined by chronic disease prevalence among the older population in India.

This paper for the first time presents evidence on the linkages of employment, chronic disease prevalence and medical care of the older population in India by using a unique and comprehensive data source.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the dynamics of women labor considering their unpaid work status. The intention is to understand the precise meaning of unpaid work and its magnitudes and trends in India. This study explores the causes of women to be engaged in unpaid work and the reason behind the non-reduction of unpaid labor as prophesied by the standard theories of economic development. Furthermore, this study aims to examine the nexus of the work status of women and its impact on poverty to give possible recommendations for promoting faster and more inclusive growth of the Indian economy.

For addressing the above-mentioned issues, this study has used the data of 50th, 55th, 61st and 68th surveys conducted from 1993–1994 to 2011–2012 by National Sample Survey Office. In the first stage of analysis, the magnitude of unpaid work by women has been estimated. Subsequently, the relative contributions of socio-economic and demographics on the work status of women (paid and unpaid) in India have been assessed by using logistic regression model. In the second stage, the level of poverty among paid and unpaid women has been measured by using poverty estimation methodology. Furthermore, the incidence of poverty among unpaid women has been decomposed, and the contribution of socio-economic predictors has been measured.

The study reveals that the participation of women in paid activities has been consistently declined. During the study period, it is observed that the amount of unpaid work activities of women has significantly increased. Moreover, the increase of unpaid activities is more intense for those women who are less educated, marginalized and belong to the poorer household.

The key contributions of this study are to underpin the issue of low and declining participation of female labor force in India as well as to understand the dynamics of changing work status (paid to unpaid) of females in the neo-liberal development framework. Furthermore, this study explores the consequences of the increase in unpaid work on poverty, which has not been the focus of previous studies.

This article reviews individual risk factors for bullying, especially gender, age, aggressiveness, low intelligence and achievement, hyperactivity‐impulsiveness, low empathy, low self‐esteem, depression, unpopularity, and physical and biological features. It also reports individual, family and socio‐economic predictors and correlates of bullying discovered in a longitudinal survey of 411 London boys. The most important individual risk factors are low impulsiveness and low empathy, and they could be targeted in cognitive‐behavioural skills training programmes.

The entrepreneurial process is a result of an interaction between an individual entrepreneur and the surrounding entrepreneurial ecosystem. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether US metropolitan areas with disproportionately high shares of entrepreneurs are systematically linked to particular attributes of the entrepreneurial support system?

In this paper, non-farm proprietorship (NFP) employment data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis is used as a dependent variable proxy for entrepreneurship. NFP data are widely used in the entrepreneurship literature. Data on all independent variables were obtained from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the Bureau of Labor Statistics by metropolitan area and subject to a stepwise linear regression analysis.

The relative share of NFP employment by metropolitan area exhibited a strong positive relationship with percentage of employment in finance, insurance and real estate, median age, percentage of Hispanic population and median home value. It is argued that the combination of significant predictors captures both out-of-necessity self-employment (e.g. low-skilled Hispanic and aging populations) and a self-employment of opportunity (e.g. access to capital).

Public policies focused on nurturing entrepreneurial ecosystems must account for these divergent explanatory frameworks when attempting to encourage NFP employment.

The paper has an explicit spatial context that tends to be overlooked in the traditional entrepreneurship literature. The focus on out-of-necessity versus opportunity-based entrepreneurship, and how it is shaped by some key predictors at the metropolitan scale, is a relatively new angle.

Some US counties are more likely to generate entrepreneurial opportunities than others. This paper aims to determine the linkages between US counties with disproportionately high shares of entrepreneurs and specific attributes of the entrepreneurial support system.

Non-farm proprietorship (NFP) has been used as a proxy for entrepreneurship and self-employment. NFP employment data were collected from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis by county. Data on all independent variables were obtained from the US Census and Bureau of Economic Analysis by county and subject to stepwise linear regression analysis.

Results revealed a strong positive relationship between the percent of NFP employment by county and the percent real estate, rental and leasing employment and construction employment as well as percent Hispanic and median age.

In attempting to encourage NFP employment, policymakers should be more aware of the key predictors that shape county-wide entrepreneurial ecosystems to enhance competitive advantage. Better understanding of the needs and experiences of different types of entrepreneurs and ecosystems can enhance overall quality of life and economic opportunity levels in a community.

The explicit spatial context of this paper has sometimes been overlooked in the traditional entrepreneurship literature, as such, this paper helps fill that gap. The findings provide a disaggregated analysis that can help better understand the key predictors that can drive the local choices of entrepreneurs and help local policymakers to build more competitive communities.

A plethora of studies have documented evidence on morbidity patterns and treatment-seeking behaviour among older persons in India. However, so far no attempt has been made to understand differences in the morbidity prevalence rates and utilization of health care services among older adults between religion groups in India. The purpose of this paper is to make an effort in this direction.

Multivariate logistic regression models were fitted to examine the association between socio-demographic conditions and morbidity prevalence and health care-seeking behaviours among the two religion groups: Hindu and Muslim. Data from the 60th round of the National Sample Survey in 2004 were used.

This study provided interesting evidence that, overall, the morbidity prevalence rate was higher among Muslim older persons than their Hindu counterparts by seven percentage points and Hindu scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) counterpart population (compared to SCs eight percentage points, and STs 20 percentage points); income had no association with the burden of disease among Muslim older population – an older person belonging to the first income quintile was equally likely to report ill-health as an older person of the fifth income quintile. However, despite the low socio-economic status, Muslim older persons were more likely to seek treatment for ill-health compared to Hindu older persons but spent less money for treatment. Also, loss of household income due to sickness was greater among Muslim compared to Hindu older adults.

The findings of this study are important to support the policy makers and health care providers in identifying individuals “at risk” and could be integrated into the current programs of social, economic and health security for the older persons.