The pension system is an important part of social policy and public budget. Negative demographic development put pressure on the financial sustainability of the pension system therefore political establishment are forced to implement reform measures. The aim of the thesis will be to analyze the pension system of the Czech Republic between 2010 and 2016 and on the basis of this analysis to propose measures for its improvements. In the theoretical part the thesis will examine the social policy and issues of pension systems. At the same time it will pay attention to the international institutions and their proposals. In the practical part the thesis will be focused on demographic development which is a fundamental factor of the long-term stability of the pension system. It will analyze the changes in the pension system in the period under review. The conclusion of the thesis will show the possible ways to improve the stability of the pension system.

This thesis aims to illuminate, through the lens of Murphy’s interpretation of Weber’s theory of social exclusion, contemporary challenges faced by the South African accounting profession pertaining to the shortage of professional accountants. In particular, increasing the throughput of students to the profession (Paper 1), member recruitment (Paper 2) and racial transformation of the profession (Paper 3) are considered. Paper 1 provides additional validity for the technique of biodata-based selection through the use thereof to differentiate between students in a dual medium university who will, or will not, complete their accounting education programmes in a society exhibiting tacit exclusionary closure. The models development suggested that education and language remains a tacit form of social exclusion of Blacks in the South African accounting profession. Paper 2 suggests that SAICA is the students’ preferred choice of professiona l accounting association, regardless of demographic group. The students appear to hold a collective view of the accounting profession. Consequently, in an environment characterized by the significant exclusionary closure achieved by a particular association, competing associations may need to look beyond marketing the attributes of the association to students and perhaps consider challenging the colonization of higher education by the dominant association. Competing associations, with their less onerous education requirements, should additionally consider promoting the alternate pathways to the profession they may offer to the Black students tacitly excluded from the dominant association, SAICA, on the basis of their inability to access to a quality education. An ideological challenge facing professional accounting associations in post-Apartheid South Africa, is racial transformation of the profession. Paper 3 explored the success or otherwise of the transformation projects implemented by SAICA through the lens of impression management and the use of voluntary disclosure. Given the disconnect between the slow pace of racial transformation achieved and the perceived ‘success’ of the profession transformation initiatives both in South Africa and abroad, it is suggested that the projects may have served more as a tool to manage the state’s impression of transformation, rather than achieving sufficient student outputs to redress the racial imbalances in the profession. Consequently, significant expansion and / or revision of these projects are encouraged.

China has among the world’s fastest growing urban region and faced enormous environmental and social challenges that requires a forward thinking of urban planning, which integrates environmental sustainability and social equity into urban resilience. In China, national and provincial urban policies have long focused on economic and industrial developments, whereas social welfare was not account for urban planning until very recently. After decades of rapid socioeconomic development, China has now entered an urbanization stage at which social development becomes as urgent as economic and environmental transformation. Rural migrant as a lower social group is a product of China’s rigorous rural-urban household registration (Hukou) that has caused plenty of social tragedies. Although governmental authorities have vowed to elevate rural migrants’ social status, as a heterogeneous social group, rural migrants received very little research attention by far. To examine rural migrants’ demographic information and their social status, this research employs happiness as a theme to carry out a questionnaire survey. In total, 1,267 responses were collected at bus and train stations in Changsha, a second-tier city located in the middle of China. According to the survey, rural migrants’ happiness status is in close relation with some demographic characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and education. In general, men are unhappier than women; the ethnic minorities are unhappier than the ethnic majority-Han; and the highly educated are unhappier than those with lower educational attainment. By performing a stepwise regression, statistics uncover that rural migrants’ happiness status in Changsha is positively associated with a stable income, a job with insurance and a well sustained family tie. Based on the study results, I propose three suggestions for social urban planning in China’s second-tier cities: (1) to set up a commercial district that embraces diverse ethnic groups, where the minor ethnic rural migrants can work and live with their own cultures. (2) To gather rural migrants by industry and establish labour unions that can represent for rural migrants’ interests. (3) To maintain the discriminated Hukou system, but define Hukou identity based on rural migrants’ taxation conditions.     Keywords: rural migrants, demographic characteristics, happiness factors, social urban planning

Diploma thesis deals with an issue of age management and its implementation in selected company. Theoretical part specifies basic terms related to human resources management and introduces age management in connection with current demographic development. For the purpose of the thesis a particular company is chosen where a questionnaire survey is conducted. There is also an analysis of an internal environment of the company performed. Based on the data obtained the proposals for age management implementation in particular company are created.

Abstract Natural selection, mutation, recombination, demographic history and chance all have a role in evolution. In natural populations, the outcome of these forces is seen as adaptations, differences between geographic varieties, and as genetic diversity in populations—both at the phenotypic and molecular levels. In this thesis I wanted to examine the roles of the evolutionary forces shaping molecular genetic diversity in trees, with emphasis on a boreal conifer, Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). Phylogeographic history and past population size changes have a dominant role in molecular diversity of P. sylvestris. The effect of the Last Glacial Maximum (37 000–16 000) was observed in the distribution of mitochondrial DNA variation. In contrast, nuclear DNA was not much affected by the last glacial period. Instead, more ancient demographic events that took place millions of years ago can still be observed in the variation of P. sylvestris nuclear DNA. Not much evidence of positive natural selection was found in pines or trees in general. This is in contrast to strong natural selection that is observed at the phenotypic level. Positive selection is difficult to prove, especially when the genome is still affected by demographic history. Mutation–drift equilibrium may rarely be reached in tree populations.

The following thesis addresses the process of growing old in an urban environment. It concentrates on the factors, which infulence the quality of senior citizens' lives and how they do it. The main focus is put on the city disticts that are subject to dynamic changes caused by the processes of post-socialist transformations, revitalization and gentrification. The thesis explores the problems but also the benefits, which these changes can bring to elderly citizens' every day lives. Looking for the answers to these questions is based on the case study of a city district in Prague - Karlín. The qualitative research have been done by semistructured interviews with local senior citizens. It has shown possible perception of some aspects of environment of Karlin and changes of this environment.

Understanding the demography of species over recent history (e.g., < 100 years) is critical in studies of ecology and evolution, but records of population history are rarely available. Large single nucleotide polymorphism datasets generated with restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (RADseq), in combination with demographic inference methods, are improving our ability to gain insights into the population history of both model and non-model species. However, to assess the performance of genetic methods it is important to compare their estimates of population history to known demography, in both simulation and empirical settings. Here, I used a simulation approach to examine the potential for RADseq datasets to accurately estimate effective population size (Ne) in Wright-Fisher populations over the course of stable and declining population trends, and distinguish stable from steadily declining populations over a contemporary time scale (20 generations). Overall, my results reveal that demographic inference using genome-wide data can be successfully applied to estimate Ne, and the detection of population-size declines. Next, I assess these methods in an empirical study from a wetland with 37 years of amphibian mark-recapture data to study the utility of genetically-based demographic inference on salamander species with documented population declines (Ambystoma talpoideum) and expansions (A. opacum). For both species, demographic model inference supported population size changes that corroborated mark-recapture data. To further validate these findings, I used individual-based population models of the pond-breeding salamander, Ambystoma opacum, with life-history parameters estimated from a long-term dataset, over a 50 year projection. My results demonstrate that genetically estimated Ne is positively correlated with census size in isolated and subdivided A. opacum populations. Finally, I investigated metapopulation patterns of genomic diversity in A. opacum and A. talpoideum and how migration may impact Ne estimation. I found strong patterns of subpopulation structuring, signatures of migration between subpopulations, and differences in Ne at the subpopulation level in both species. Overall, my findings suggest the ability of genomic data to reconstruct recent demographic changes, which can have important applications to conservation biology, and ultimately can help us elucidate the effects of environmental disturbances in the demography of endangered or declining species.

Introduction: Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region worst affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the world. South Africa (SA) is the country with the highest population of people living with HIV/AIDS in the world and Mpumalanga province is the province with the second highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS in SA. The district of Gert Sibande has the highest prevalence in the province of Mpumalanga (38.9%) in 2006. Since many patients living with HIV/AIDS usually present to district hospitals as the first point of contact it is important to understand the implications of HIV/AIDS in a resource limited health system. Study setting: The setting for this study was Amajuba Memorial Hospital (AMH) a district hospital in the Gert Sibande district of the Mpumalanga province. Objective: To analyse direct costs of providing inpatient care to adult patients with HIV/AIDS-related illnesses at AMH from the perspective of the provider (hospital) Study methods: The population of study comprised adult patients with HIV/AIDS-related illnesses admitted to the medical wards during the period of October 2009 and March 2010 at AMH. A detailed retrospective record review of patients admitted to the adult wards at AMH with HIV/AIDS-related illnesses over a 6-month period was conducted. After the record review the costs were estimated using standard costs and utilisation. Demographic and clinical patient profiles were determined then descriptive statistics were calculated with total costs as an outcome variable. Subsequently univariate and multivariate regression analysis were performed. Results: The demographic and clinical profiles revealed that most patients admitted with HIV/AIDS-related illnesses were: between the ages of 39 & 49 years (35.3%), male (54.9%), urban residents (82.0%), unemployed (87.2%), single (80.5%), were not on HAART (70.7%), had CD4 counts between 0 & 50 x 106 /L (38.3%), had pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) (38.4%), were admitted for the first time (60.9%) and of the total admitted to hospital 79.0% survived the index admission during the study period. Descriptive statistics of the continuous data variables were determined. Minimums, maximums, inter-quartile ratios, means and modes were determined and tabulated. 5 Consultation costs followed by investigation costs were the two major contributors to total admission costs (77.7% of the median total admission cost). Univariate analysis revealed these significant associations with total admission costs: admission diagnosis, discharge diagnosis, first admission, outcome, pre-admission consults and preceding admissions. In multivariate regression, admission diagnosis and pre-admission consults were analysed. Significant associations were found between the following categories: retroviral disease versus other diseases (p=0.001), retroviral disease versus anaemia (p=0.035), no pre-admission consults versus 1 pre-admission consult (p=0.007), no pre-admission consult versus 4 pre-admission consults (p=0.039) and no pre-admission consult versus 5 or more pre-admission consults (p=0.006). Conclusion: In our study we successfully determined demographic and clinical profiles of patients admitted with HIV-related illnesses at AMH. Emerging from the results of our study were patterns of burden of HIV disease, health seeking behaviour and risky sexual behaviour that all had implications for admission costs in the hospital. Major cost drivers were consultation and investigation costs, which were increased significantly by disease categories; other diseases, anaemia and PTB. Pre-admission consults emerged as a cost reducing parameter in our study. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Clinical Epidemiology / unrestricted

My dissertation sought to expand the study of victimization by examining non-linear relationships across victim, offender, and offense characteristics within a routine activities theory framework. Moreover, my goals were to assess victimization risk using a more realistic approach through the implementation of a situational perspective approach and conjunctive analysis. Conjunctive analysis is an analytical with both quantitative and qualitative properties, which allowed for interpretations that were detail oriented and summative. Utilizing data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, several victim (e.g., demographic factors), offender (e.g., victim-offender relationship), and offense (contextual factors) characteristics were analyzed. Conjunctive analysis was estimated for incidents by victimization type and by race/ethnicity. The results indicated the presence of main (linear) effects and interaction (non-linear) effects. Main effects by victimization type provided support for prior research on victimization risk, such as the majority of victims emerging as young, white, and male. Interaction effects revealed young and female victims were vulnerable to attacks from non-stranger offenders; whereas, older and male victims were prone to stranger attacks. When estimated by race and ethnicity, whites and blacks were also more likely to be attacked by someone with whom they were familiar; whereas, victims categorized as other were more likely to be attacked by strangers. Theoretical and policy implications were discussed.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Architecture, Planning & Design / John W. Keller / Some parts of rural America are experiencing unprecedented demographic and cultural changes as immigrant settlement patterns shift from traditional gateway cities to rural regions that have enticing economic opportunities. In particular, southwest Kansas has become a magnet for immigrant workers and their families. Between 2007 and 2008, Finney County became a majority-minority county (Callebs, 2009). However, lack of affordable housing and limited housing stock has strained communities and become an obstacle for newly settling immigrants (Stull, 2011). This study aims to redress the limited research on immigrants in rural regions and focuses specifically on the cultural experiences of Finney County Hispanic immigrants regarding integration into the local housing community. This qualitative case study is designed using the housing career framework (Murdie, 2002) to capture the factors that influence the housing experience of Hispanic immigrants. The 25 participants were recruited using snowball sampling and convenience sampling techniques. Based on the participant’s language preference, the in-depth interviews were conducted in English or Spanish. This study has found that the mission of community planning has to be a multifaceted process to address the varied needs of immigrant families. Community planners and policy makers can use the information this study provides to better serve the immigrant Hispanic community, which is expected to grow over the coming years.