Chenyue Liu, Yingzhi Xu

This paper carried out an empirical study on the coupling and coordination relationships and the spatial distribution features between urbanization quality and ecological capability by applying coupling degree and coordination degree method based on Chinese 30 large-medium cities. The results indicated that (i) from 2003 to 2014, the coupling degree across the 30 large-medium cities showed an increase trend from 0.3 to 0.5, which showed that the systematic coupling between China urbanization quality and ecological environment carrying capacity was in antagonistic stage and the index was gradually rising and close to 0.5. It tended to develop towards the running-in stage. The coordination degree also showed the same increase trend from 0.246 in 2003 to 0.430 in 2014. The overall coordination gradually evolved from medium imbalance to endangered imbalance, which indicated that urbanization quality and ecological environment carrying capacity in China has not coordinated effectively yet. Furthermore, the fact that Chinese urbanization quality lagged behind ecological environment carrying capacity explained its low coordination. The results indicated that China’s urbanization quality requires to raise in a faster way than ecological environmental carrying capacity and more efforts should be made on economic and social development and progress.(ii)In the terms of temporal-spatial dynamic perspective, this paper found that the coupling degree between urbanization quality and ecological carrying capacity of 30 large-medium cities in China is in antagonistic, running-in and high-coupling stage on three time nodes respectively. From the features of evolving quantity of cities in the very stage, we found that the coupling condition between urbanization quality and ecological carrying capacity was turning better generally and the overall coupling degree was evolving towards the turning-in stage. However, China was still lack of cities in high-coupling stage and the overall coupling degree was not good enough. In addition, the coordination between urbanization quality and ecological capacity was mainly imbalanced on three time nodes, including medium imbalance, slight imbalance and endangered imbalance. Whereas, cities that overcoming imbalanced status were merely in reluctant coordination and initial coordination, which indicated that China’s urbanization quality and ecological carrying capacity had not reached a good coordination status. To sum up, the overall levels of coupling coordination in major cities were rising slowly. Meanwhile, the spatial distribution pattern and structure of the coupling and coordination in these cities were gradually optimized, but no city had reached the ideal condition, China was lack of high coupling degree and quality coordination cities.

Adam Okulicz-kozaryn (p)

BACKGROUND: Population aging will be the key issue in the third millennium and
there are growing concerns about sustainability of social transfer programs. How
important are social transfers to subjective well-being (SWB) of elderly? We
propose to contribute to the literature by investigating the interplay between
economic capital (social transfers) and social capital (volunteering).

METHODS: We use the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)
containing over 30,000 persons aged 50+. We use Wave 4 with largest number of
countries in a cross-sectional analysis--many countries do not overlap over
time and there are too few waves for panel analysis. We use OLS estimation--it
has been shown that OLS performs well with SWB as outcome variable. Social
transfers are measured as pensions, unemployment, disability and insurance
benefits. Volunteering is measured as self-reported voluntary or charity work.

FINDINGS: Preliminary results indicate great variability in volunteering across
countries: Eastern Europe volunteers much less than Western Europe, and we also
find that volunteering increase SWB. We continue working on modelling social
transfers and hypothesized interactions with volunteering. We suspect that older
people can remain happy despite limited economic capital if they are socially
engaged.

DISCUSSION: We expect to better understand importance of social transfers in
relation to other predictors of SWB among the elderly. Our results will not only
add to our understanding, but will also aim to improve policy-making: SWB,
aging, social transfers, and volunteering are all key policy issues but they
have never been studied simultaneously.

Anna Norin (p), Per Wikberg (p)

The Swedish regional authorities have in joint cooperation with the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth developed a system of statistical indicators for quality of life and sustainability. The system is based on the conceptual model developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, in their Better Life and How’s Life in Your Region indices for wellbeing. The conceptual model includes indicators measuring the present quality of life in Swedish municipalities as well as measuring the caretaking today of the four capitals for the benefit of future generations, i e sustainability. The quality of life is summarized in twelve different themes with 26 indicators and sustainability is summarized in four themes with 33 indicators corresponding to the four forms of capital (natural, economic, human and social). The model has been applied to a Swedish context with spatial focus being on the municipal level. The present paper uses an explorative approach to identify regional typologies based on the scores for all municipalities in Sweden on the indicators in the BRP+ system in year 2015. The aim was to identify regional typologies in order to further the understanding of similarities and disparities of Swedish municipalities extending beyond administrative regional divisions. First, the BRP+ system data matrix was transposed in order to treat the municipalities as variables. A Principal Components Analysis was applied to identify latent structures in terms of “municipal typologies”. Data for some of the indicators was not available on the municipal level. Instead the respective county’s score had been imputed to all municipalities. Consequently, the analysis was executed in two steps. The initial analysis included all data and the second focused on the indicators with unique municipal scores. The obtained results indicated four different latent structures in terms of municipal typologies. Within each of these structures, a MANOVA indicated a significant difference between the typologies on a majority of the indicators. The differences between the different latent structures and between typologies are then further explored in order to formulate hypotheses regarding regional impacts of changes due to globalization or urbanization and how this relates to strategies for regional development. The approach also allows testing against other municipal typologies to further the understanding of these regional impacts.

Markus Groth (p), Steffen Bender, Jörg Cortekar

Dimitris Ballas

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