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Most poverty research has explored monetary poverty. This chapter presents and analyzes the global multidimensional poverty index (MPI) estimations for China. Using China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we find China’s global MPI was 0.035 in 2010 and decreased significantly to 0.017 in 2014. The dimensional composition of MPI suggests that nutrition, education, safe drinking water, and cooking fuel contribute most to overall non-monetary poverty in China. Such analysis is also applied to subgroups, including geographic areas (rural/urban, east/central/west, provinces), as well as social characteristics such as gender of the household heads, age, education level, marital status, household size, migration status, ethnicity, and religion. We find the level and composition of poverty differs significantly across certain subgroups. We also find high levels of mismatch between monetary and multidimensional poverty at the household level, which highlights the importance of using both complementary measures to track progress in eradicating poverty.

The US fertility transition in the nineteenth century is unusual. Not only did it start from a very high fertility level and very early in the nation’s development, but it also took place long before the nation’s mortality transition, industrialization, and urbanization. This paper assembles new county-level, household-level, and individual-level data, including new complete-count IPUMS microdata databases of the 1830–1880 censuses, to evaluate different theories for the nineteenth-century American fertility transition. We construct cross-sectional models of net fertility for currently-married white couples in census years 1830–1880 and test the results with a subset of couples linked between the 1850–1860, 1860–1870, and 1870–1880 censuses. We find evidence of marital fertility control consistent with hypotheses as early as 1830. The results indicate support for several different but complementary theories of the early US fertility decline, including the land availability, conventional structuralist, ideational, child demand/quality-quantity tradeoff, and life cycle savings theories.

Based on the 5th wave/tomorrow age theory, we are living in the world that is in necessity to change. Rapid urbanization causes global challenges such as economic problems and recessions, environmental challenges, climate change, social instability, health diseases, biological attached, and crisis caused by technological dominations. These challenges threaten the world, humanity, and human beings. Therefore, it is vital to tackle and struggle with them in order to maintain the world and improve quality of livability and quality of life to achieve sustainability. Generally, modern Blue-Green urban areas and smart cities with high quality of livability and life are proposed to deal with urbanization challenges to maintain the world and improve quality of human life. Based on Prof. Doost's 5th wave theory, related theories, concepts and models like Doost Risk Mitigation Method (DRMM), and also his experience on sustainability as best practice such as cooperating with Danish Sustainable Platforms Company, working as an academic leader at IoE/EQ EU Erasmus Plus project in Germany during 2017–2020, cooperating with former mayor of Copenhagen, consulting the German MV State Minister of Energy, Digitalization, and Infrastructure to cooperate with Iran in 2016, more than 15 years holding lecture and research internationally about risk and risk management on mobility in different universities like (TU Berlin) Technical University of Berlin (EUREF Campus, Sustainable Mobility Management and Sustainability Building) and also achieving a honorary doctorate in sustainable development management, a practical model concerned on risk management in mobility to provide comprehensive global Blue-Green clean sustainable urban mobility risk mitigation strategic plan is given. Therefore, in this chapter, impact of risk management on mobility to provide sustainable global urban mobility plan in order to create modern Blue-Green sustainable urban area and future smart cities through the 5th wave theory are explored. Fundamentally, the main goal of the research is to have an applied study about mobility risk mitigation and utilize it as a key to create comprehensive global urban mobility risk mitigation plan toward Blue-Green sustainable clean mobility technologies to create modern sustainable smart cities through the tomorrow age theory in order to create livable urban area with high quality of livability and life. In addition, the risks in mobility through the DRMM are measured to analyze the risk and to do risk mitigation and mobility project improvement to move to sustainable mobility and high sustainability in future smart cities.

Nowadays, sustainable, clean, inclusive, innovative, and smart mobility in addition to urban transformation is required to achieve sustainable development as a path to preserve the world for future concerns and improve quality of life at the present, even to be kept up with growing citizens' needs. Mobility as an infrastructure component plays fundamental roles in urban transformation, and economic development. In this chapter, and based on the 5^th wave theory, related theories, models, and concepts, modern, clean, and inclusive mobility founded on high future of 4th technologies (which is called 5th technologies), digitalization, smartness, sustainability, and CSR 2.0 strategies is declared as proper clean mobility technologies to create sustainable and smart cities. Such smart cities are able to deal with challenges made by rapid, unplanned urbanization and globalization to achieve sustainable development. In this research, roles of inclusive and smart mobility systems as path to create modern and sustainable urban areas to make the world more sustainable and livable for living are declared. Literature reviews, case studies, interviews, and questionaries are applied as main methods to recognize inclusive and modern mobility and its roles in urban transformation to achieve sustainable development. This chapter is based on know-how and do-how of the author Prof. Hamid Doost on sustainability such as cooperating with Danish Sustainable Platforms Company, working with Erasmus Plus as an academic leader in Germany since 2017, cooperating with Copenhagen's former mayor and researching on sustainability. In this chapter, impact of sustainable mobility, sustainable buildings, and smart cities on CSR 2.0 and social responsibility, how these parameters improve sustainable development and sustainability in social responsibility, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and how social responsibility could influence humanities are explored.

In this paper, we use data from the US census to document the history of the relationship between fertility choice and key economic indicators at the individual level for women born between 1826 and 1960. We find that this data suggests several new facts that should be useful for researchers trying to model fertility. (1) The reduction in fertility known as the Demographic Transition (or the Fertility Transition) seems to be much sharper based on cohort fertility measures compared to usual measures like Total Fertility Rate; (2) The baby boom was not quite as large as is suggested by some previous work; (3) We find a strong negative relationship between income and fertility for all cohorts and estimate an overall income elasticity of about −0.38 for the period; (4) We also find systematic deviations from a time invariant, iso-elastic, relationship between income and fertility. The most interesting of these is an increase in the income elasticity of demand for children for the 1876–1880 to 1906–1910 birth cohorts. This implies an increased spread in fertility by income which was followed by a dramatic compression.

School business officials procure goods and services through a variety of methods to deliver educational services in a timely and cost-effective way. Recommended practices by professional procurement organizations have changed in recent years to include new technologies aimed at streamlining and cutting costs of traditional procurement methods. Little is known, however, about what procurement practices school districts adopt-new or old. To partially fill this gap, we describe results from a survey of procurement practices of New York State school districts. Our results reveal that despite the potential for new technologies to make certain practices common among all types of districts, competitive bidding laws and enrollment size dictate the procurement methods used most frequently by school districts.

Water pipes degrade over time for a variety of pipe-related, soil-related, operational, and environmental factors. Hence, municipalities are necessitated to implement effective maintenance and rehabilitation strategies for water pipes based on reliable deterioration models and cost-effective inspection programs. In the light of foregoing, the paramount objective of this research study is to develop condition assessment and deterioration prediction models for saltwater pipes in Hong Kong.

As a perquisite to the development of condition assessment models, spherical fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (SFAHP) is harnessed to analyze the relative importance weights of deterioration factors. Afterward, the relative importance weights of deterioration factors coupled with their effective values are leveraged using the measurement of alternatives and ranking according to the compromise solution (MARCOS) algorithm to analyze the performance condition of water pipes. A condition rating system is then designed counting on the generalized entropy-based probabilistic fuzzy C means (GEPFCM) algorithm. A set of fourth order multiple regression functions are constructed to capture the degradation trends in condition of pipelines overtime covering their disparate characteristics.

Analytical results demonstrated that the top five influential deterioration factors comprise age, material, traffic, soil corrosivity and material. In addition, it was derived that developed deterioration models accomplished correlation coefficient, mean absolute error and root mean squared error of 0.8, 1.33 and 1.39, respectively.

It can be argued that generated deterioration models can assist municipalities in formulating accurate and cost-effective maintenance, repair and rehabilitation programs.

This chapter uses a global trade model, supplemented with household survey data, to explore the potential impact of ASEAN trade liberalization on poverty in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam. Our tentative results suggest that ASEAN liberalization is likely to bring substantial gains to the region and lead to significant reductions in poverty. In a simulation of full removal of intra-ASEAN tariffs, we find 320,000 people are moved out of extreme poverty, with a further 1.4 million lifted above the $2 per day poverty line. Poverty reductions are particularly significant in the case of agricultural and rural diversified households and for Cambodia. Under broader ASEAN+3 and ASEAN+6 liberalizations, we find a similar pattern of poverty reduction and the overall reduction in poverty is much higher.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain empirical evidence on the impacts of socio-economic and demographic factors on the fertility decisions taken by a common family in developing countries like Pakistan. Also, this study contravenes the conventional orthodoxy of childbirth decisions of a family by enlarging the canvas and conjectures the fundamental nexus amongst female’s education, fertility and contraceptive use.

The study is based on micro-level data, obtained from the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (2012-2013) which is the third survey carried out in Pakistan. Demographic and socio-economic profiles of 13,558 ever-married women, aged 15-49 years, were randomly selected from Gilgit Baltistan and the four provinces of Pakistan. Three dependent variables are used in empirical analysis i.e. current use of contraceptives, total fertility and cumulative fertility. In order to estimate the probability of contraceptive use maximum likelihood, Probit technique is employed with ordinary least squares on reduced form specifications of total fertility and cumulative fertility models.

The empirical results proved the hypotheses that educated females practice more family planning through modern contraceptives which leads to a decrease in total fertility rates. Some significant links among females’ education, contraceptive use and fertility define the quantity – quality trade-off and opportunity cost of time. Evidently, female education provides maturity and awareness of family size which is necessary to take crucial economic decisions.

The empirical evidence suggests that maximum efforts should be made toward women’s education. The current standard of education in Pakistan is not enough to overcome the long-standing problem of excessive child birth. This could be done with the help of public – private partnership as the measures taken by the government alone are insufficient. The government should initiate some adequate measures such as education and awareness about contraceptive usage at the secondary school level that could be a vivacious step to support fertility reduction.

The framework used in this study provides a broader intra-household income–expenditure approach. With a smaller family size, the household’s income would be shared among fewer individuals. It is highly probable that parents would be more attentive if they need to look after a few children. That is the best way to progress their children with limited resources.

From the socioeconomic perspectives, educated parents plan the ideal family size which allows them to spend more on their children’s upbringing.

This study captures the magnitude of fertility decisions with the relevance of the wife’s education because the present practice in Pakistan does not allow higher education for married women. This is why this study could be used as a benchmark for further study in the same area.