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The intergenerational effects of low parental socio‐economic position on cardiometabolic and inflammatory outcomes: a systematic review and meta‐analysis
No full textBackground: Evidence on the impacts of parental and early life socio‐economic position (SEP) on health outcomes in adulthood remains mixed. This systematic review and meta‐analysis investigated the association between low parental SEP and adult cardiometabolic and inflammatory markers in individuals aged 18 years and older. Methods: A systematic search across five databases (EMBASE, Ovid MEDLINE, Cinahl, Global Health and Maternity and Infant Care until January 01, 2022) identified observational studies linking parental SEP with adult cardiometabolic and inflammatory markers. Pooled Standardized Mean Differences (SMD) were estimated using random‐effects models. Risk of bias, heterogeneity and publication bias were assessed using the Cochrane tool, subgroup analysis and Egger's test, respectively. Results: The review included 38 studies (12 in meta‐analysis, n = 388,674). Findings showed that lower parental SEP was significantly associated with elevated blood pressure (SMD = .30 mmHg; 95% CI: .10, .50; I2 94%; n = 5), increased adiposity (SMD = .56; 95% CI: .05, 1.07: I2 98%; n = 6), higher C‐reactive protein levels (SMD = 1.45 mg/dL; 95% CI: .06, 2.85; I2 80%; n = 9), elevated IL‐6 (SMD = 2.12 pg./mL; 95% CI: −.72, 4.97; I2 100%; n = 4) and higher allostatic load (SMD = .85; 95% CI: .30, 1.40; I2 99%; n = 4). No consistent associations were found for glucose or lipid markers. Gender‐specific variations were observed. Conclusions: Low parental socio‐economic position negatively impacts adult offspring health, manifesting as higher blood pressure, elevated C‐reactive protein, increased interleukin‐6, greater adiposity and higher allostatic load. Future research should prioritise three critical areas: mechanistic specificity, intersectional pathways and life‐course timing and critical period detection
Order routing and market quality: who benefits from internalization?
No full textDoes retail order internalization benefit (via price improvement) or harm (via reduced liquidity) retail traders? To answer this question, we compare two market designs that differ in their mode of liquidity provision: In the setting capturing retail order internalization, liquidity is provided by market makers (wholesalers) competing for the retail order flow in a Bertrand fashion. Instead, in the open exchange setting, price-taking competitive agents act as liquidity providers. We discover that, when liquidity providers are risk averse, routing of marketable orders to wholesalers is preferred by all retail traders: informed, uninformed, and noise. Furthermore, most measures of liquidity are unaffected by the market design. We also identify a universal parameter that allows comparison of market liquidity, profit and value of information across different markets
Organizational forms and welfare coalitions: corporate law and the movement for social insurance in the US and UK
No full textScholars of the welfare state have long argued that, in liberal democracies, welfare state expansion depends on successful coalitions in its favour. Under what circumstances do these coalitions form? Party systems, economic interest, and political mobilisation have all been thought to influence the emergence of coalitions for welfare state expansion. In this article, I argue that law plays a critical role in facilitating the last of these factors. Drawing on a growing body of literature that sees law as constitutive of, rather than merely reflective of, social relations, I demonstrate that available legal forms meaningfully inform opportunities for welfare coalitions. In particular, I examine how debates over what a trade union is—a voluntary association of individuals, or a corporate body deserving of a state statute—shaped coalitions for welfare reform in the US and the UK at the turn of the twentieth century
Is it really too late? on recent debates about the climate crisis, capitalism, and the question of transition
No full textHow We Sold Our Future: The Failure to Fight climate Change by J. Beckert, Polity Press, 2025. Overshoot: How the World surrendered to Climate Breakdown by A. Malm and W. Carton, Verso, 202
Hyperscaling housing: venture capital, real estate start-ups and the race to build a global residential brand
No full textWhat happens when venture capitalists try to reinvent housing in their own image? Synonymous with the rise of Big Tech, venture capitalists (VCs) are asset managers that invest in early‐stage companies, pursuing aggressive growth and market domination. Since the 2008 financial crisis, VCs have poured huge sums into real estate start‐ups. Yet these actors are largely overlooked in the housing financialization and platform real estate literature. Attending to this gap, this article traces VC‐fuelled attempts to build a globally scaled residential operator. It closely follows investment, acquisition and consolidation activity in the co‐living sector over the past decade, where companies seek expansion via parasitic landlordism: exploiting urban rent‐gaps as intermediaries between landlords and tenants. I show how venture capitalists have pushed these start‐ups to rapidly increase the number of beds under operation and cities covered. But, faced with the complex, costly and variegated reality of housing systems, they invariably incur spiraling losses. It is tenants who pay the price, suffering emotionally and financially from the hazards of hyperscaling—from negligence to dispossession. In all, the article interrogates a key set of actors underlying the housing‐tech‐finance nexus, and the consequences of their experimentation for households and cities. It calls for closer attention to how investors are reshaping housing markets beyond asset ownership, and to who is financing ʻproptech’ and why this matters
Towards a coherent global health architecture: perspectives on integrating global health security and universal health coverage through diplomacy and governance reforms
No full textWithin the global health landscape exists a complex interplay between global health security (GHS) and universal health coverage (UHC)—two influential agendas with profound influence on health system strengthening initiatives. There is a need to understand why and how coherence between GHS and UHC is being pursued in health policy and planning, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic which profoundly reshaped the field of global health and significant cuts to global health assistance. This paper presents one of the first detailed analyses of contemporary efforts to conceptualize and operationalize GHS–UHC coherence—through the perspectives of key actors responsible for its implementation. The study employed thirty-one interviews with senior officials across four major types of global health actor: multilateral and global health organizations, country governments, donors and international finance institutions, and civil society organizations. It reveals important insights into the way specific actor and geopolitical groups varied in terms of shifting perceptions of GHS and UHC, as well as major factors influencing GHS–UHC coherence (e.g. strategic considerations including motivations and concerns, and structural considerations including enablers and barriers). The analysis suggests that an emerging ‘hybrid norm’ linking GHS and UHC appears to be well underway. It further contends that strengthening coherence between GHS and UHC not only depends on, but also enhances, three key imperatives: (i) overcoming geopolitical power asymmetries, (ii) leveraging strategic collaboration across actor types, and (iii) pursuing integrative health diplomacy amid overlapping crises. While this study centres on GHS–UHC alignment, its broader objective is to foster a more equitable and resilient global health architecture by tackling the interconnected causes of fragmentation through hybrid normative frameworks. By focusing on the politics of norms underpinning GHS and UHC integration, this work contributes to rethinking how global health institutions collaborate, ultimately helping to build more sustainable global health governance fit to withstand future political, economic, and social challenges
Governing desalination in Spain and Israel (1990–2020) lessons on institutional coherence and infrastructure performance
No full textThis article compares Spain and Israel (1990–2020) to explain why similar legal reforms and investments in seawater desalination yielded divergent outcomes. Israel consolidated a centrally coordinated model with near cost-recovery and broad uptake, whereas Spain’s installed capacity has experienced lower and more uneven utilization alongside recurrent debate. Using a most-similar systems design, the analysis explores four policy dimensions: tariff design, social acceptance, governance arrangements and legal coordination. Findings show that durable performance depends less on structural pressures than on coherent tariffs, availability-based contracts, integrated network operations and sustained outreach, with post-2020 developments discussed qualitatively to assess external validity
The business of protection: insuring urban violence risks in contemporary Brazil
No full textIn Brazil’s major urban centres, auto and cargo theft constitute a vibrant illicit economy. Many of these assets are insured, and a vast array of private security providers operate to recover stolen goods on behalf of insurance companies. Drawing on ethnographic research with both major insurers and small players in this protection market, this paper examines how financial institutions navigate high-risk urban environments and sheds light on the effects of the financialization of security. It argues that, beyond actuarial rationality, the everyday practices of insurance governance also rely on the outsourcing of violence and on the entrepreneurialization of the public forces of order. In addition to offering advertised services such as risk analysis, armed escort, investigation and asset recovery, these entrepreneurs of violence specialize in operating within the grey areas between legality and illegality, and between public and private authority
Unequal care, unequal health care? Gender differences in health care use after adult care access
Full text linkAccess to care among older adults can help identify unmet health needs and increase the use of health care, though in some cases it may substitute some forms of health care. We argue that the balance between these two effects is largely gender dependent: female spouses are more likely to act as informal caregivers and, as a result, are more likely to have neglected their own health needs. To examine this hypothesis, we exploit the variation introduced by Scotland’s Free Personal Care (FPC) programme, a government initiative implemented in 2002 that provides free personal care access to all eligible individuals regardless of their income. Using a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) framework comparing Scotland with the rest of the United Kingdom and a rich longitudinal dataset of men and women aged 65 and over, we first find that FPC significantly increased the uptake of home help services among women, with little change among men. Among women, adult care expansion led to a 3.5–percentage-point rise in inpatient admissions, whereas among men, we find evidence suggesting a modest substitution effect of care for health care. The effects are stronger among older adults who live alone, and those facing socioeconomic disadvantage, or high care needs
The pasts of law. Koselleck, Didi-Huberman and Sanmartino's Cristo velato in Naples
Full text linkThe German conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck and the French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman provide two engaging if opposite ways into the fascinating world of the visual objects we live by and their relations with certain forms of justice, authority or law from the past. In this essay, I propose to explore some of their insights through the prism offered by a celebrated marble sculpture found in a small private museum in Italy and known as the Cristo velato (“Veiled Christ”). What does this artwork ‘give us to see’? I argue that the real pull of visual objects such as the Sanmartino sculpture lies in their complex temporality lending to their visible form and content an additional if decisive dimension that makes it difficult to dismiss them as simply things from a past that is now “forever gone”. All to the contrary, such objects can be traversed by multiple layers of time or, alternatively, conceal unsuspected marks that can quietly “legislate” over those who encounter them in unexpected and persistent ways. In some cases, the “images of law” we live by may even paradoxically reveal something of a striking visual prognosis from the past that is still waiting to be remembered