This paper describes a computer model for running individual retirement portfolios over different historical periods to see the actual retirement incomes they would have provided. Such an approach is much more sophisticated and insightful than simply applying an annuity formula to retirement assets and assuming a real arbitrary rate of return.

No description available.

The purpose of this project is to gain a better understanding of the different market opportunities available to credit unions. The project differentiates the markets by age: Net Generation 2 to 22, Generation X 23 to 34 and the Baby Boomers 35 to 53. Each of these groups are important to the ongoing health of credit unions.

No description available.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2006. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Open-source software (055) refers to software collaboratively developed by developers across the globe, which embraces the philosophy of sharing. The fundamental idea behind open-source is that when programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. The Internet plays an extremely important role in the distribution of the software and today, many 055 products are downloadable free from the Internet. Despite the inherent challenges, the research organisation Gartner predicts that the majority of mainstream IT organisations will successfully adopt formal open-source management strategies as core IT disciplines. What more, IT organisations and technology vendors who ignore the potential threats and opportunities of 055 will increasingly find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. However, organisations are not always clear on the appropriate strategy, direction, and approach to take when deciding on the role of 055 in their organisations. There is so much hype surrounding the use and the risks of open-source that it can be difficult for organisations to know what is real and what is not. Furthermore, organisations are intrigued but also stymied by the myths of the costs, support, and risks of 055. Also in South Africa, organisations and the South African Government are asking themselves how relevant the benefits and risks of the software are to them. Consequently, the aim of the study is to broaden the existing knowledge of 055 in South Africa by investigating a South African organisation's approach and decisions regarding the use of 055 in the organisation. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: "Open-Source" sagteware (OSS) verwys na sagteware wat gesamentlik ontwikkel word deur programmeerders regoor die wêreld en die filosofie van "deel met mekaar" omvat. Die wesenlike idee agter "open-source" is dat wanneer programmeerders in staat is om die die bronkode van 'n program te kan lees, versprei en wysig, die sagteware verder en beter kan ontwikkel. Die Internet speel 'n belangrike rol in die verspreiding van die sagteware, en baie OSS- produkte is vandag gratis beskikbaar vir aflaai van die Internet af. Ongeag die inherente uitdagings, voorspel die navorsingsorganisasie Gartner, dat die meerderheid hoofstroom IT -organisasies formele "open-source" bestuurstrategieë suksesvol as kern IT-dissiplines sal aanneem. Wat meer is : IT-organisasies en verskaffers van tegnologie (harde en sagteware) wat die potensiële bedreigings en geleenthede van OSS ignoreer, sal hulself toenemend in 'n nadelig-kompeterende situasie bevind. Organisasies is dikwels nuuskierig, maar ook skepties ten opsigte van die mites rondom kostes, ondersteuningstelsels en risiko's verbonde aan OSS. Sommige organisasies het nie altyd helderheid rondom die toepaslike strategie, rigting en aanslag wat gevolg moet word, wanneer 'n besluit rondom die rol van OSS binne hul organisasies geneem moet word nie. Verder is soveel verkeerde persepsies en onsekerheid rondom die gebruik van, en risiko's verbonde aan "open-source", dat dit vir sommige organisasies moeilik raak om te onderskei tussen die feite en fiksie. Ook in Suid-Afrika vra organisasies en die Suid-Afrikaanse Regering hulself die vraag af hoe relevant die voordele en risiko's van die sagteware werklik is, en hoe dit hul raak. Die doel van hierdie studie is om die bestaande kennis rondom OSS in Suid-Afrika te verbreed, deur ondersoek in te stel na 'n Suid-Afrikaanse organisasie se benadering en besluite rondom die gebruik van OSS in hul organisasie.

<p>In South Africa, as in many developing countries, most households are poor and do not save, as a result of which they do not acquire any positive net worth and which also constrains access to formal means of finance. South Africa is a consuming nation, with increasing ratios of household consumption resulting in dissaving and often unsustainable levels of household debt, which is also stimulated by the current lower level of interest rates. This situation is worse amongst poorhouseholds who also often experience financial shocks, for instance because of the death of family membersas a result of HIV/AIDS. This report provided an overview of household saving in South Africa for the period 1983 to 2003. It identified the main factors responsible for the lack of a commitment to saving which are particularly relevant in the case of poor households.</p>

Human capital formation is a fundamental requirement for countries' long term economic development and societal prosperity. This process can be enhanced or disrupted by internal factors such as migration and remittances, or external ones like wars. This thesis is interested in investigating both phenomena. The following questions are addressed: what is the impact of migrant remittances on human capital formation, do these private inflows induce any changes in the behavior of remittance-receivers towards education expenditure, and finally what is the short term micro-economic effect of armed conflicts on education in post war countries. In investigating these issues, focus is made on two perspectives: first youth, an active group in the society whose age matches up higher education levels and labor force entry simultaneously; second gender differentials both in terms of impact and behavior. The research explores new surveys from the Middle East, datasets that have not been analyzed previously from an education angle and that are not generally available to researchers. These datasets come from Jordan and Lebanon, two middle income non-oil producer countries. The thesis is composed of three independent essays. The first examines the impact of migrant remittances on human capital accumulation among youth in Jordan and highlights the various ways in which remittances influence education outcomes. The analysis takes a gender dimension and examines whether the effects and magnitude of such impact is different between males and females. The second essay considers remittances receipt, from both domestic and international sources, and examines their impact on Jordanian households' education spending patterns. Following the literature on intra-household bargaining and gender expenditure preferences, the analysis examines whether such impact is potentially different between male and female headed households. The third essay tackles the impact of the 2006 war on education attendance of youth in Lebanon. The chapter captures households' schooling responses in the aftermath of the war. By looking at the implications of a diversified array of damages sustained; reflecting physical, human, income and employment losses; the chapter examines possible linkages between the nature of the damage incurred and the manner and magnitude in which such damage affects education.

The purpose of the research conducted for this thesis was to investigate perceptions of responsibility and blame for rising levels of consumer debt in the UK, focusing on two key stakeholder groups often associated with the issues relating to consumer debt: individual borrowers and consumer credit lenders. Research was conducted with these stakeholders; debtors represented the individual borrowers and debt collectors from a large multi national credit card company represented lenders. Three central research questions lay at the heart of the research: what are the respondents' perceptions of why and how debtors use consumer credit; how are debtors perceived and treated by their creditors (i.e. through contact with debt collectors); what are the respondents' perceptions of who is to blame for consumer debt? A mixed method approach was adopted, using primarily qualitative research methods in accordance with the interpretivist approach of the research. An online survey and in-depth interviews were adopted for the debtor respondents and focus groups and in-depth interviews were adopted for the debt collector respondents. The debtor respondents were recruited from the National Debt Line website, the biggest online money advice website in the UK, by posting an online survey on the site. The debt collector respondents were recruited from the shared employer of the respondents and the researcher, a large multi national credit card company. In answer to the research questions, the research revealed that, firstly, the majority of debtor respondents perceived that their consumer credit use was to supplement their low income, which contradicted previous stereotypes of debtors as reckless spendthrifts and, instead, proposed they are agentic rational decision makers. Secondly, debtors were negatively perceived and treated by their creditors (debt collectors) in that they were stigmatised and labelled as deviant. This occurred during the debtors' social interaction with debt collectors during the debt collection process. In line with the labelling theory of deviance, this societal reaction then led to self-labelling by the debtors, who expressed feelings of shame. Thirdly, therefore, both the debtors and debt collectors primarily blamed the debtor stakeholder group as responsible for increasing levels of consumer debt, although the debtors also placed some of the blame on the creditors for acting unethically in their lending practices, namely by lending irresponsibly to debtors without an accurate assessment of the affordability of the loan. This thesis makes an original contribution to sociological knowledge of the ways in which blame and responsibility for increasing levels of debt is perceived by different societal groups. A key part of the thesis' originality exists in its utilisation of concepts drawn from different strands of sociological theory to explore perceptions of debt, in particular the sociology of deviance and symbolic interactionism, such as labeling, stigma and shame.

The objective of this thesis is to study the impacts of Bolivia's non-contributory pension, the Renta Dignidad, on the wellbeing of older peasants and their families. Literature on social protection has had a tendency to propose social protection policies as contributing to a broad range of objectives, and non-contributory pensions are no exception. Studies have found them to contribute not only to ‘obvious' needs such as increased consumption and income security but also to investments in productivity, social relationships, health, increased access to credit and savings, while it has become common to claim that they contribute to intangible goals such as dignity and citizenship. Moreover, because they do not impose conditionalities on recipients and are often relatively broader in their coverage than other social protection policies, social pensions have generally avoided critiques that have been aimed at conditional cash transfers and public works programmes. The danger of this literature is that it assumes that wellbeing is heavily responsive to monetary wealth, rather than other areas. To study this, an ethnographic methodology, based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews was employed in two rural communities located in the La Paz department in the highland Altiplano region of Bolivia close to Lake Titicaca. My analysis shows that older persons' wellbeing depends heavily on a combination of elements, going beyond material wellbeing into areas such as their relationships with their spouses, children, grandchildren, and the other people in the rural communities in which they live, their ability to contribute their labour and maintain their daily (agricultural) work, to participate in collective social political and religious activities, and to maintain good health. For example, older people work hard for as late in life as possible largely because it is meaningful for them to work the land and produce food. This means that health problems, which are often exacerbated by hard work, are particularly damaging to wellbeing because they inhibit older persons' ability to do this. Meanwhile, ideas and values about how older people should live are continually being negotiated and contested between older people and with their younger family members, often leading to disputes. These are not driven solely by material interests, but concern the ways in which people should live and seek cultural, social and spiritual fulfilment. This is not due to a particular conception of wellbeing held by these people because they are indigenous, as might be inferred through the romantic lens of the vivir bien concept, but because human wellbeing more generally needs to be understood in relational terms, rather than exclusively in terms of peoples' capacity to satisfy their basic needs. While the Renta Dignidad increases older persons' ability to consume, maintain livelihood security, and in some case to participate in exchanges of food and gifts with other family members, it does not respond significantly to these other areas of wellbeing, contributing little to healthcare for example. The policy implications of this are that a more integral approach needs to be adopted to older persons' wellbeing, going beyond cash transfers to greater efforts to bring healthcare services to older people in remote rural areas.

This thesis conducts empirical analysis on the determinants of migration and remittance sending decisions in Kenya and the impact on the expenditure patterns of households using cross-sectional household survey data. The first empirical chapter explores the factors that influence the subsequent migration decisions of Kenyan siblings using binary logit models. The findings reveal that preceding sibling migrants have a strong negative effect on the probability of migration for other siblings. Evidence in support of migration as a joint household level decision is obtained as preceding sibling and non-sibling migrants are found to exhibit similar effects. Conditional on migrating, siblings are shown to utilize existing sibling networks by moving to the same internal or external destination as preceding migrants. Discrete failure time models are also employed so as to account for any neglected heterogeneity at the household level. Controlling for neglected heterogeneity, the overall effect of preceding sibling migrants is found to be statistically insignificant. However, non-sibling migrants are found to decrease the probability of migrating. The second empirical chapter examines the remittance behaviour of multiple compared to sole sibling migrants, and the motivations of Kenyan siblings in sending remittances to their household of origin. No evidence of selection bias in the decision to remit is detected when a Heckman selection model is estimated. Using probit and OLS models, the presence of other siblings is found to decrease the probability of remitting but to have no effect on the amount of remittances sent. The amount of remittances sent by other siblings is also found to have no statistically significant effect on the remittances sent by a sibling using IV regression methods. In the third empirical chapter, the expenditure patterns of Kenyan households are investigated according to whether the household is a migrant or non-migrant household, and whether a migrant household is in receipt of remittances or not using an Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) approach. The analysis reveals that remitters who are spouses and siblings of the household have higher bargaining power towards the allocation of remittances to physical investments and durable goods, respectively. The expenditure patterns also show that remittances are not pooled together with general income when allocating the household budget towards durable goods and physical investments. In addition, the findings reveal that the reported uses of remittances by Kenyan households contrast with their actual uses. In the fourth chapter, the uses of remittances for the acquisition of physical investments and durable goods are analysed in more detail using IV and bivariate probit models. Remittances are found to be exogenous for the durable goods category but endogenous for physical investments. The evidence obtained is supportive of remittances being used by households to purchase these categories of commodities.