High-end amenities like rock climbing walls on college campuses have become an easy target for those attempting to explain rising tuitions. This Delta Perspective looks beyond the media attention surrounding these "frills" to examine more serious questions about spending on campus facilities, college spending in general, and the real drivers of…

Although most people in the United States believe, at least theoretically, in educational equality, fewer and fewer appear to care about the resource gaps between affluent and poor schools, says Weissbourd. He illustrates these gaps with vivid descriptions of what he calls an "opulence arms race" among affluent independent schools, but…

Background: Early childhood malnutrition is associated with cognitive and behavioral impairment during childhood and adolescence, but studies in adulthood are limited. Methods: Using the NEO-PI-R personality inventory, we compared personality profiles at 37-43 years of age ("M" 40.3 years, "SD" 1.9) of Barbadian adults who had…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among lifestyles, personal relationship (friendship and romantic relationship), and living behaviors shared with closed friends and romantic friends. The study undertook a quantitative research of university students' living behaviors in the private residence. A survey questionnaire was…

Back in 1975, the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers defined the poor as "individuals or families whose resources are so small as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life of the Member State in which they live". This widely quoted definition leaves room for discussion about what can be considered a "minimum…

The manner in which the built environment is constructed has a tremendous effect on the degree to which health, wealth and social outcomes are distributed within a society. This is particularly evident when a crisis of the natural environment affects the built environment, as was the case after the Haitian earthquake of 2010. Understanding the…

This study was designed to examine whether the Olympic Games was a catalyst for changes to Beijing residents' quality of life based on social-economic perspectives and how these changes affected their continuous support for the Games. Residents who lived in Beijing 18 months or longer were invited to participate in this survey research (N = 412)…

This paper estimates multidimensional poverty in China by applying the Alkire-Foster methodology to the China Health and Nutrition Survey 2000-2009 data. Five dimensions are included: income, living standard, education, health and social security. Results suggest that rapid economic growth has resulted not only in a reduction in income poverty but…

Bernheim's ACSA, a less conventional measure of subjective well-being originally developed for use in a clinical setting, was applied to a sample of black South African township dwellers (n = 1,020) in the Eastern Cape Province. The Anamnestic Comparative Self Assessment is an experiential self-anchoring scale with concrete anchors (Bernheim in…

In an increasingly knowledge-based globalized world, higher education, advanced training and skill development are critical priorities for Vietnam. This paper aims to estimate the participation in higher education and its regional distribution in Vietnam, and to identify its determinants at the individual and contextual levels. Data used were from…

There is no doubt that the labor markets and economies of modern societies have been confronted by a marked intensification of cross-border exchange between modern states that has attained a new and previously unattained quality over the past thirty years. In the economic and sociological literature, this development is usually labeled…

Objective: To determine the availability and affordability of a healthy food basket and to model how those on low-incomes might manage. Design and methodology: After determining access and availability of key items from shops in two localities, called Deepdale and Ingol, a healthy food basket was developed. From this a week's healthy menu was…

A comparative study was made on the education systems of Turkey, a developing country, and Canada, a developed country with a comparatively high living standard and successful education systems. While education is governed at the national level in Turkey, it is the individual responsibility of the governments of the ten provinces and the…

United Nation's conventions exist to help facilitate and protect vulnerable people's human rights: including people with disabilities (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2006) and children (Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). However, for some families where a family member has a disability, there may be inherent…

In this study, life satisfaction and its correlates were explored through analysis of the experiences and psychological traits of highly gifted students who were accelerated into an early college-entrance program. Happiness, fulfillment in life, assuredness, and good dispositions are constructs that point toward positive character development and…