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The review of food consumption elsewhere in this issue shows the broad pattern of food supplies in this country; what and how much we eat. Dietary habits are different to what they were before the last War, but there have been few real changes since the end of that War. Because of supplies and prices, shifts within commodity groups have occurred, e.g. carcase meat, bread, milk, but overall, the range of foods commonly eaten has remained stable. The rise of “convenience foods” in the twenty‐five year since the War is seen as a change in household needs and the increasing employment of women in industry and commerce, rather than a change in foods eaten or in consumer preference. Supplies available for consumption have remained fairly steady throughout the period, but if the main food sources, energy and nutrient content of the diet have not changed, changes in detail have begun to appear and the broad pattern of food is not quite so markedly stable as of yore.

This is the age of research. What was once a highly selective privilege in just a few professions that could be counted on one's fingers has since the last war become a feature of every conceivable branch of science and trade, to which millions in money are devoted. The connection often seems remote, if not a little spurious. Perhaps it may be due to the enormous emphasis on the teaching of science and technology in recent years, but we see what Sir William Dale calls “these turnspits of modern science” ready to undertake, and various official bodies to finance by grants, research into almost anything. The amount spent, for example, on cancer research through the years and all over the world, which incidentally has produced very little in the way of real advancement towards a cure, must be phenomenal, but it is now probably dwarfed by the colossal sums available for trade and market research. We even see research by opposing groups, one endeavouring to prove, the other to refute some particular hypothesis. Much of it appears to lack realism or to be of any great practical value and at too high a theoretical level, including masses of statistics, without which the younger generation of scientists appears to think research valueless, if not impossible.

This study investigates how older women linguists' careers developed and led to self-employment, and this not necessarily in a linear career stage fashion. The focus is on understanding the factors that influence older women to become or continue into an entrepreneurship lifestyle, beyond economic reasons.

The research questions that guided this research are: (1) How have women linguists' careers developed at older or older old age? and (2) Which factors influenced women linguists' decision to become or continue as self-employed at older or older old age? This study is based on semi-structure interviews and short narratives written by ten informants about their late-career motivations and decisions. To get a holistic view of career development of women linguistics at an older age, the approach adopted in this study is explorative and interpretive, where the theoretical perspective supporting this approach derives mainly from career and wellbeing theories.

The authors’ findings signal that these self-employed older women's careers develop along parallel, explorative or expertise directions. The factors which appear to influence these women's decision to continue their careers as entrepreneurs include economic reasons (having), clearly. They also importantly point to other themes surrounding wellbeing including social relations (loving), self-realization and lifelong learning (being), entrepreneurship as a life style (acting) and meaningful extension of one's career (belonging).

This paper discusses how older women entrepreneurs may experience wellbeing and careers integrated together. It challenges the common notion of “career” as a one-time, linear “choice”, and instead shows how older women's entrepreneurship is a complex phenomenon.

Twenty-first century has dawned with substantial achievements in population health outcome indicators in India. However, very little is known on patterns in causes of death in India. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In this paper, data was drawn from two sources namely, National Family Health Survey (NFHS-1, 1992-1993 and NFHS-2, 1998-1999) and published reports of Survey of Cause of Death (Rural). Three-years moving average causes-of-death estimates were calculated based on World Health Organization classification of causes of death. Negative binomial regression models were fitted to capture the effect of socio-demographic and behavioural determinants of patterns in causes of death.

The leading causes of death were heart diseases, tuberculosis, asthma, paralysis, prematurity and cancer. Three-fifth of the deaths to children under the age of ten was from communicable, maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions. On the other hand, about two-third persons aged 45 years and above were dying from non-communicable diseases. Female were at greater risk of dying from non-communicable diseases (IRR: 1.22, 95 per cent CI: 1.11-1.34, p < 0.001).

The epidemiologic transition in India has produced a shift in mortality from communicable, maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions to non-communicable diseases, with little or no role played by injuries regardless of the level of all-cause mortality. Coupled with the effects of population age structures, other factors were also responsible for the bulk of the inter-regional disparities. These factors include differences in the populations’ health risks associated with the natural or built environments, prevalence of behavioural risk factors, or gaps in the capacities of health systems to respond to specific disease challenges, social stratification and others.

This paper described the trends, patterns and geographic variability in India’s causes-of-death profile in terms of communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases and injuries, and socio-economic and demographic determinants of patterns in the profile.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct an in-depth analysis of the literature and provide new insights on skill development research in India. Objectives in the study are twofold. First is to conduct descriptive analysis in terms of structural dimensions such as geographical context, focus on skill development, research methods, economic sector, type of training and origin of the study. The second objective is to conduct thematic analysis on importance of skill development, institutional and regulatory mechanisms, skill development as an antecedent for technology adoption, role of skill development in women empowerment, integrating skill development with secondary education and labour market reforms for skill development.

Systematic literature review method is employed to review 45 articles on skill development research in India conducted between 2004 and 2017.

The review discusses about the importance of skill development, the role of institutions such as NSDA and PMKVJ, skill development as a necessity in the advent of technological changes, an effective measure to empower women in the country and the need of integrating skill development with secondary education. Labour market reforms are required to overcome challenges such as mismatch between theory and practice, low quality of skills assimilated, the mismatch between demand and supply of skilled labour force, low level of in-house training, low cooperation from students and employees due to lack of incentives and lack of qualified teachers.

This study is the first to offer a systematic literature review on skill development. The study provides insights into the concept of skill development, specifically for academicians to carry out research in a niche area and for government authorities in policy formulation.

Malaysia and Singapore had parted more than five decades ago. Much of the existing literature concerned about the bilateral ties between two economies focusing on the political economy perspective. This paper aims to provide insights on the economic development and prospects of Malaysia and Singapore at the national level. In addition, this paper also makes a pioneering attempt at conducting a comprehensive comparative analysis between Malaysia and Singapore at the city level.

This paper offers a case study of Malaysia and Singapore by assessing their national economic competitiveness, urban standards of living and quality of life. The paper leverages on a series of indices such as the competitiveness index for ASEAN-10, the cost of living, wages and purchasing power of ordinary residents, as well as the liveable cities index to perform the analysis.

In terms of national competitiveness, the analysis shows that Singapore and Malaysia have been leading the ASEAN region from 2000 onwards, being the top- and second-ranked, respectively. Malaysia still lags Singapore in several aspects such as attractiveness to foreign investors and standard of living, education and social stability despite insignificant differences in the ranking. City-level analysis shows that the cost of living in Singapore is almost double of that in Kuala Lumpur, although living in Singapore is more affordable owing to the higher wage rate received by the ordinary citizens.

This paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, this paper assesses economic development in Singapore and Malaysia instead of focusing on cross-straits relations. Second, the study reflects the view that the improvement of standards of living and quality of life for ordinary residents is paramount to economic development. The competitiveness index and city-level benchmarks used in the paper reflect the standards of living and the quality-of-life dimensions. Third, the focus on city-level analysis in addition to conventional national-level analysis helps to provide policymakers with practical policy implications against the backdrop of rapid urbanisation.

Cost of living is an important consideration for the decision-making of expatriates and investment decisions of businesses. As competition between cities for talent and capital becomes global instead of national, the need for timely and internationally comparable information on global cities’ cost of living increases. While commercial research houses frequently publish cost of living surveys, these reports can be lacking in terms of scientific rigour. In this context, this paper aims to contribute to the literature by formulating a comprehensive and rigorous methodology to compare the cost of living for expatriates in 103 world’s major cities.

A cost of living index for expatriates composed of the ten consumption categories is constructed. The results from the study covers a study period from 2005 to 2014 in 103 cities. More than 280 individual prices of 165 goods and services have been compiled for each city in the calculation of the cost of living index for expatriates. New York has been chosen as the base city for the study, with other cities being benchmarked against it. A larger cost of living index for expatriates implies that the city is more expensive for expatriates to live in and vice versa.

While the authors generate the cost of living rankings for expatriates for 103 cities worldwide, in this paper, the authors focus on five key cities, namely, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Zurich, as they are global financial centres. In 2013, the latest year for which data are available, Zurich was the most expensive for expatriates among the five cities, followed by Singapore, Tokyo, London and Hong Kong. These results pertain to the cost of living for expatriates, and cities compare very differently in terms of cost of living for ordinary residents, as ordinary residents follow different consumption patterns from expatriates.

Cost of living in the destination city is a major consideration for professionals who look to relocate, and organisations factor such calculations in their decisions to post employees overseas and design commensurate compensation packages. This paper develops a comprehensive and rigorous methodology for measuring and comparing cost of living for expatriates around the world. The value-addition lies in the fact that the authors are able to differentiate between expatriates and ordinary residents, which has not been done in the existing literature. They use higher quality data and generate an index that is not sensitive to the choice of base city.