Context: Literature suggests that prenatal care and prenatal supplement use improves pregnancy outcomes. However, we do not know the factors associated with prenatal care and supplement use in Honduras.Objective: To identify characteristics of Honduran women who are the least and most likely to use prenatal care and supplements.Methods: Data from a 2001 Honduras cross-sectional survey of women was used to assess their use of prenatal care and supplements. All data was weighted, resulting in a sample size of n = 5647 women who had a live birth since January 1996. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to examine factors associated with prenatal care and supplement use.Results: Current education level was highly positively related to prenatal care and supplement use. Women who were 35 years or older at the time of their most recent birth, currently unmarried, of non-Catholic religious affiliation, and of low SES were significantly less likely to have used prenatal care and supplements. Women who reported the intentionality of their most recent birth as unwanted also were significantly less likely to have used prenatal care and supplements. Prenatal care was the most significant determinant of prenatal supplement use.Conclusion: There are significant differences between Honduran women who use prenatal care and supplements and women who do not. Efforts to increase prenatal health services among underserved women, especially women who are older, unmarried, with no formal education, of low SES, of a non-Catholic religious affiliation, and at risk for an unwanted pregnancy, may significantly improve pregnancy outcomes in Honduras.

This thesis uses data of more than 180 banks from CEE region to identify the main determinants of long term credit ratings assigned to these banks in period between 2010 - 2012. This is done by employing two frequently used classification methods - Multiple Discriminant Analysis and Ordered Logit Model. The main contribution lies in including explanatory variables from various areas which have impact on financial health of examined banks. Apart from standard spheres of banks' performance such as capital adequacy, asset quality or profitability we investigate relevance of macroeconomic and qualitative factors as well. Although our results suggest that all mentioned areas are relevant for credit risk and hence rating assignment process the bank specific variables, both quantitative and qualitative, still play the key role.

Effects of human capital in developing countries Bc. Jan Mouček Abstract Improving education and health of people living in developing countries is an often discussed topic. We however know relatively little about the effects that investments into schooling and improving the nutrition and hygiene of people in those countries have on their productivity at work. This thesis investigates the effects of four variables representing investment into human capital on income of individuals from Bangladesh and Indonesia. The four studied variables are education, migration, height and Body Mass Index. The thesis aims at comparing results of estimation using instrumental variables estimator with previous similar research. It tries to observe possible differences in size of effects the human capital variables have. It finds however that the instrumental variables used are of insufficient quality for the estimation to yield reliable results. Because the instruments used were almost the same as in underlying works and their quality has not been previously tested the conclusion of this thesis is that further search for correct instrumental variables describing the human capital variables in various countries around the globe is necessary.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the firm-specific determinants of the demand for tax haven operations by Czech firms. Our objective is to better understand the firms' incentives for tax haven use, and furthermore whether there exists cross-haven heterogeneity in those incentives. The thesis examines the firms' tax haven investment behaviour by analysing firm-level data for 15,530 Czech firms for year 2013. To the extent of our knowledge, this has been the first research of its kind devoted to Czech firms. The evidence suggests that larger, more profitable firms with larger international presence are most likely to use tax havens. The analysis also indicates that higher firm indebtedness is associated with greater likelihood of establishing tax haven operations. This would suggest Czech firms engage in profit shifting through the use of debt financing. Furthermore, service firms were found to be more likely to use tax havens than manufacturing firms. This contrasts with previous research where R&D intensity was a leading indicator of tax haven use. Additionally, we found significant cross-haven heterogeneity in the determinants, particularly in the sector-specific characteristics. In our sample, service firms favoured Cyprus and the Netherlands, while manufacturing firms preferred Luxembourg...

En Côte d’Ivoire, la problématique de l’accessibilité aux soins reste entière en raison de l’insuffisance des infrastructures sanitaires et du manque de ressources financières. Aussi, la population a t-elle souvent recours à l’odontologie traditionnelle pour répondre à ses besoins prioritaires de santé. Cependant, l’absence de données factuelles dans un contexte de pluralité de soins constitue un handicap pour la définition d’une politique de santé bucco-dentaire efficiente. L’objectif de la présente étude a été de décrire l’activité des tradipraticiens, puis de déterminer les facteurs influençant le recours et le renoncement aux soins bucco-dentaires des populations. L’étude de type transversale pilote a portée sur un échantillon de 28 tradipraticiens et 927 adultes. Les résultats ont montré que les consultations bucco-dentaires répresentaient le 1/5 de l’ensemble des activités des tradipraticiens. La majorité des tradipraticiens a déclaré prendre en charge les douleurs bucco-dentaires et était disposé à collaborer avec la médecine conventionnelle. Les tradipraticiens ont déclaré être satisfaits des honoraires perçus. Les ressources végétales et minérales étaient principalement utilisées pour la confection des remèdes. S’agissant de l’étude menée auprès des usagers, alors que les adultes non scolarisés avaient recours en majorité aux tradipraticiens, ceux qui disposaient d’une assurance de santé ou qui avaient le niveau d’étude du secondaire ou plus ont consulté préférentiellement le chirurgien-dentiste. Les adultes ayant un niveau d’étude secondaire ou plus ont eu recours à un tradipraticien en raison de sa proximité. Le recours au tradipraticien en raison de l’efficacité des soins a été plus évoqué par les adultes ayant un âge compris entre 30 et 44 ans, par ceux résidant en milieu urbain et par ceux situés à plus de 15 km du cabinet dentaire. Quant au recours au chirurgien-dentiste en raison de la confiance faite aux soins modernes et la propreté des cabinets dentaires, il a été majoritairement le fait d’adultes vivant dans des habitats modernes. Le renoncement aux soins traditionnels en raison de l’automédication a été le plus évoqué par les femmes. Les adultes situés entre 5 et 15 km du cabinet dentaire ont majoritairement renoncé aux soins traditionnels en raison de la non perception de leur nécessité. Le manque de ressources financières a été le plus évoqué par les adultes vivant en milieu urbain pour justifier leur renoncement aux soins modernes. La non perception de la nécessité des soins a été plus évoquée par les adultes situés entre 5 et 15 km du cabinet dentaire pour justifier le renoncement aux soins modernes. Cette étude a mis en évidence la relation entre l’accessibilité aux soins bucco-dentaires et la pauvreté. Ainsi l’amélioration de l’accès aux soins bucco-dentaires doit s’inscrire dans le cadre global de la lutte contre les inégalités sociales, de l’alphabétisation et de l’aménagement du territoire. En outre, l’odontologie traditionnelle doit être valorisée pour venir en aide au système de santé dans un contexte marqué par l’insuffisance des ressources financières / In Côte d'Ivoire, the issue of access to care remains unanswered due to the lack of good public health infrastructure and very limited financial resources. As a result, poor and disadvantage people often prefer to address their priority health needs to traditional healers. However, the lack of evidence data in a context of plurality of care is a handicap for the definition an efficient oral health strategy. The main objectives of this study were to describe the activities of traditional healers practicing in the department of Dabou and determine the various factors influencing the populations in using them or not in oral. The cross-sectional pilot study focused on 28 traditional healers and 927 adults. The results showed that the consultations represented 1/5 of all the activities of the traditional healers. The majority of traditional healers reported that they were called to heal oral pain of patients and were ready to work with conventional medicine. Traditional healers declared to be satisfied by the level of fees. However 15 traditional healers reported to have another job. Vegetable and mineral resources were mainly used for making medicines. Regarding the survey of users, the main determinant of seeking care was the educational level of respondents. While no schooling adults visited in priority traditional healers, those who had health insurance and those who had secondary educational level or more preferably consulted the dentist. Adults with secondary educational level or more claimed to have been to a traditional healer because of its proximity. The effectiveness of care as a reason for attending a traditional healer was more often mentioned by adults within 30 and 44 years, by adults living in urban areas and those living at a distance of more than 15 km from the dental office. Seeking modern treatment because of the confidence and the cleanliness in dental offices was more the fact of adults living in a modern home. The renunciation of traditional care because of self-medication was more often reported by women. Abandoning the traditional treatments because of failure to perceive the need of care was mentioned by adults ranged between 5 and 15 km from the dental practice. Lack of financial resources was cited by most adults living in urban areas to justify the renunciation to modern health care. Failure to perceive needs for care was mentioned by adults ranged between 5 and 15 km from office dental to justify their abandonment of modern oral health care. This study gave evidence of the complex relationship between access to oral health care and the level of poverty. Thus, improving access to oral health care must fit into the overall framework of the fight against social inequality, illiteracy and the territory development. In addition, traditional odontology should be valued and integrated in any strategy the health system given the low level of current financial resources to the public health sector in Côte d’Ivoire

The question of free will, determinants of free action and responsibility is one of the most thrilling questions of the mankind. Moreover, the free will problem is closely connected to regulation and hindsight judgement of man behaviour so the law is concerned with the problem as well. However, a legal concept of free will is missing in the Czech law or legal theory. The author is therefore concerned with the fact that there is no satisfactory legal definition of free will even though legal responsibility is impliedly based on free action and free will. The Czech law defines just the freedom of action in negative terms, i.e. as an action of will free from circumstances limiting or precluding legal responsibility. The aim of the thesis is to summarize knowledge of social psychology regarding free will and assess whether the Czech law does impose the right standard of freedom of will in comparison to scientific experiments and findings. Furthermore, there are philosophical theories of free will introduced in the thesis and consequently these theories are questioned and examined for the purpose of defining legal concept of free will. At the end of the psychological part of the thesis one comes to the conclusion that the social determinants such as peer pressure, conformity and obedience to authority...

DETERMINANTS OF POVERTY IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC Abstract In this thesis we present the determinants and the current state of poverty in the Czech Republic in 2014. We clearly set out the definition of poverty and delimit various concepts of poverty, that is the old and the new concept of poverty, the subjective versus the objective one, the absolute versus the relative concept, as well as the direct and the indirect plus the prescriptive and the consensual poverty. We also introduce various ways to measure poverty. A substantial part of the theoretical section focuses on the introduced methods and definitions of particular indicators (the at risk of poverty rate, the relative median at risk of poverty gap, the Gini coefficient, the income quintile share ratio, the material deprivation rate). We have used the method of logistic regression and the processed data which were gained from the project Životní podmínky 2014 (The Living Conditions 2014) and EU-SILC 2014. At the same time, still in the theoretical part of the thesis, we also dealt with the causes of poverty and the attitudes towards the poor as sociology, psychology and ethics view them. The analysis has proved that, based on equivalised household income, persons living in households in villages with 2 000-4 999 inhabitants are susceptible to poverty...

The thesis investigates determinants of participation in the supplementary pension savings scheme in the Czech Republic and estimates their change with respect to the policy intervention realized in 2013. Using the time series of cross-sectional microeconomic data provided by the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, the probability of participation and the level of contributions are estimated separately by probit and multiple linear regressions, respectively. The estimated coefficients of both models are tested for structural differences caused by the policy change, employing the pooled dataset of multiple years with additional coefficients to treat the compared period. The analysis confirms that income, age, education and economic activity have a positive effect on both the probability of participation and expected level of contributions. Whereas gender differences for the level of contributions have not been detected, single women on average show, ceteris paribus, 4.6 percentage points higher probability of participation than single men. Unexpectedly high level of activity was observed in case of retired individuals, who in 2014 represented approximately 15% of all participants and collected 20% of the credited direct state subsidy. With respect to the 2013 policy change, no evidence of a...

This study was a population-based retrospective cohort of all singleton births in British Columbia for the years 2001 to 2006. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how social and physical environment factors influence the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes and whether they interact with each other or with maternal characteristics to modify disease risk. The main environmental factors examined include ambient particulate air pollution (PM2.5), neighbourhood socioeconomic status (SES), neighbourhood immigrant density, neighbourhood level of post-secondary education level and the urban-rural context. Census dissemination areas (DAs) were used as the neighbourhood spatial unit. The data (N=242,472) was extracted from the BC Perinatal Data Registry (BCPDR) from Perinatal Services BC (PSBC). The main perinatal outcomes investigated include birth weight and indicators of fetal growth restriction such as small-for-gestational age (SGA), term low birth weight (tLBW), and intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR), preterm birth (PTB) and gestational age, gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and gestational hypertension (GH). Collectively, this dissertation contributes to the perinatal epidemiological literature linking particulate air pollution and neighbourhood SES context to adverse pregnancy outcomes. Assumptions about the linear effect of PM2.5 and smoking on birth weight are challenged showing that the effects are most pronounced between low and average exposures and that the magnitude of their effect is modified by neighbourhood and individual-level characteristics. These results suggest that focusing exclusively on individual risk factors may have limited success in improving outcomes without addressing the contextual influences at the neighbourhood-level. This dissertation therefore also contributes to the public health, sociological and community-urban development literature demonstrating that context and place matters. / Graduate / 0766 / 0573 / 0768 / anderse@uvic.ca

O Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (PNAE) é uma importante ferramenta de política pública brasileira de combate à fome, de alcance da segurança alimentar e nutricional, de garantia do direito humano à alimentação adequada e de promoção do desenvolvimento rural. A partir da Lei no 11.947/ 2009, o PNAE passou a estar associado à abertura de mercado para os produtos da agricultura familiar. Esta lei determina que no mínimo 30% (trinta por cento) do total de recursos financeiros repassados pelo Fundo Nacional de Desenvolvimento da Educação (FNDE) aos estados e municípios deverão ser utilizados na aquisição de gêneros alimentícios diretamente da agricultura familiar, com a dispensa do processo licitatório. Deste encontro, da alimentação escolar com a agricultura familiar, emerge uma ótica favorável ao reconhecimento de que o agricultor familiar pode assumir responsabilidades sociais, ambientais e culturais, muito além da responsabilidade produtiva em torno da oferta de produtos alimentícios às escolas. A partir desta perspectiva, nossa hipótese admite que o agricultor familiar reconhece, em particular em razão de sua participação no PNAE, sua atuação enquanto agente social promotor de saúde. O objetivo da pesquisa foi analisar agriculturas familiares que abastecem escolas graças ao PNAE de modo a verificar em que medida se trata de uma atividade promotora de saúde, a partir da perspectiva de agricultores/as de duas cooperativas. O desenvolvimento da pesquisa se fundou em metodologia qualitativa em saúde. As duas cooperativas de agricultura familiar focalizadas foram, a Cooperacra, localizada no município de Americana/SP e a Coopamsp, localizada no município de São Pedro/SP. Foram realizadas entrevistas semiestruturadas com membros de suas diretorias e com agricultoras e agricultores cooperados. No total foram realizadas dezoito entrevistas, que foram gravadas, transcritas na integra e analisadas com base na metodologia de análise de conteúdo, sob o olhar dos referenciais da multifuncionalidade da agricultura e da promoção da saúde. A pesquisa evidenciou a importância do PNAE para a estruturação e fortalecimento das duas cooperativas, bem como para a reprodução socioeconômica das famílias cooperadas. O papel de promotores de saúde desempenhado pelos agricultores esteve especialmente vinculado à oferta de alimentos saudáveis aos escolares. Por alimentos saudáveis são compreendidos aqueles produzidos sem ou com o mínimo possível de agrotóxicos, frescos e produzidos localmente. Os agricultores também reconheceram o papel que desempenham na promoção da segurança alimentar e nutricional dos escolares e da sociedade de forma geral. Ademais, uma relação harmoniosa com a natureza e o cuidado com o meio ambiente também estiveram vinculados a maneiras de promover saúde, sendo identificados como funções sociais desempenhadas pelos agricultores. Concluímos que, para que o agricultor possa ser reconhecido enquanto agente promotor de saúde, é preciso primeiramente fortalecê-lo em sua atuação no meio rural. O reconhecimento político pelo PNAE favorece então uma atuação multifuncional de agricultores familiares. Portanto, o investimento em programas e políticas públicas voltadas às questões como a reforma agrária, o acesso ao crédito rural, a comercialização dos produtos agrícolas oriundos da agricultura familiar e a produção de alimentos ambiental, social e economicamente mais sustentáveis (como no caso da perspectiva agroecológica) constituem meios de melhorar a saúde da população brasileira. / The Brazilian School Feeding Program (Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar/ PNAE) is an important Brazilian public policy tool in the fight against hunger, ensuring food security, the human right to adequate food, and promoting rural development. Since the Law no. 11.947/2009, PNAE started to be associated with the opening of the market for family agriculture products. This law establishes that at least 30% (thirty percent) of the total financial resources from the National Education Development Fund should be used to purchase food directly from family agriculture, without the bidding process. From the combination of school feeding and family agriculture, a favorable view emerged - the understanding that family farmers can assume social, environmental and cultural responsibilities which go beyond the productive responsibility and the supply of food products to schools. From this perspective, our hypothesis admits that the family farmer recognizes, in particular because of his participation in this Program, his role as a social agent promoting health. The objective of the research was to analyze the family farming practiced to supply the Program in order to verify if it is a health promoting activity, from the perspective of the farmers of two cooperatives. The elaboration and development of the work were based on the methodology of qualitative research in health. Two cooperatives of family agriculture, Cooperacra, located in the city of Americana / SP and Coopamsp, located in the city of São Pedro / SP, were studied. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with board members and with cooperative farmers, totaling eighteen interviews. All the interviews were recorded, transcribed in full and analyzed based on the content analysis methodology, under the perspective of the multifunctionality in agriculture and health promotion. The research demonstrated the importance of PNAE for the structuring and strengthening of the two cooperatives, as well as for the socioeconomic reproduction of cooperated families The role of health promoters played by the farmers was especially linked to the provision of healthy food to schoolchildren, and healthy foods were understood as those produced with or without the least possible agrochemicals, fresh and locally produced. Farmers also recognized the role they play in promoting food and nutritional security for schoolchildren and society in general. Furthermore, the relationship with nature and care for the environment have also been linked to ways of promoting health, being identified as social functions performed by farmers. We conclude that, in order for farmers to be recognized as promoters of health, they must first be strengthened in their work in rural areas. It is necessary to politically recognize the importance of the multifunctional role of family farmers with the investment in programs and public policies focused on issues such as agrarian reform, access to rural credit, commercialization of agricultural and non-agricultural products, and food production which are economically, socially and environmentally more sustainable, such as agroecology.