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Far from presenting a univocal face, in Latin America, the public aspect of social policies and support for reproduction and care has been characterized by its ambivalence. Sometimes absent, sometimes present; operating remotely, marginally or arbitrarily; generating assistance support, focused or administered by intermediaries; with a benefactor but also criminalizing, authoritarian and patriarchal countenance. Reproduction in the State appears through agencies and agents that often operate in the same period under different and even contradictory logics. It is accompanied by private social work and other actors. The emergence of the community in the family, the neighborhood, the commune or the organization, as form of pressure on the public and simultaneously as an (relatively) autonomous construction of conditions of survival, reveals complex and changing resource articulations for the popular sectors. This text explores the applied logics of the public, the private and the common in the life of a street waste picker and her son with a health problem from birth. Through biographical interviews, I explore the multiple appearances and meanings that these areas acquire for the reproduction of health in relation to a life punctuated by precariousness and adversity. Inspired by the concept of expanded reproduction and the perspective on the margins of the State, I analyze the journey of class, gender and race of Mrs. Beatriz and her son.

This research explores the impact of armed violence and corruption on the economic growth of Colombia’s departments from 1991 to 2017. Using models of spatial panels, statics and dynamics, we detect positive space-time indirect effects on departmental growth, including evidence of beta-convergence. Specifically, fiscal corruption exhibited a significant negative impact on short-term economic growth. Moreover, corruption primarily affected growth at the local level, with limited spillover effects observed from neighboring regions. Interestingly, our analysis did not yield statistically significant evidence regarding the impact of armed violence on economic growth.

This article aims to investigate the effects and potential that the creation of community and the promotion of bridging social capital can have on the adherence of the elderly population to projects aimed at improving their quality of life. To this end, it is based on the analysis of two practical projects carried out in the city of Zamora and which form part of the research on a model of quality of life in old age: the promotion of physical capacity and the tackling of unwanted loneliness through volunteering. The results are based on information from each of the experimental programmes and testimonies obtained from the researchers of each of these projects, fieldwork teams and participants (beneficiaries). the results show that activities that involve people in the pursuit of a common goal are effective ways of fostering social bonds and the idea of community.

The restructuring process of the Spanish banking sector initiated after the Great Recession of 2008 has led to a dramatic reduction in the number of bank branches. This paper analyzes the impact of branch closures on GDP per capita, labor productivity and employment per capita of the Spanish provinces in the period 2008–2018. The results show that bank branches have only a weak impact on employment, and no effect on productivity and GDP per capita. Therefore, if consumption and investment decisions of families and firms are affected by branch closures, the impact is not transferred to aggregate regional performance.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive description of the evolution of public investment by the Autonomous Communities in Spain from 1984 to 2021, to identify patterns in investment policies and explain their underlying causes. Additionally, the paper evaluates the impact of savings, transfers, and deficits on public investment. The findings reveal distinct patterns in the level and dynamics of these variables across regions. Priority was given to essential welfare expenditures during the Great Recession, while the post-recession recovery displayed varied regional behaviors. The positive impact of European and national funds, such as the Interterritorial Compensation Fund, effectively revitalized investment and savings, which emerged as a key differentiating factor in chartered communities.

Spatial trend concept was proved to be useful to depict the systematic variations of the phenomenon concerned over a region based on geographical locations. We use three different geographical datasets to check if there exist potential leading deterministic spatial components and whether we can econometrically model spatial economic relations that might contain unobserved spatial structure of unknown form. Hypothesis testing is conducted with a symbolic-entropy based non-parametric statistical procedure, proposed in Garcia-Cordoba et al. (2019), which does not rely on prior weight matrices assumptions. Geographically restricted semiparametric spatial models are taken to perform a modeling strategy for cross-sectional data sets. The main question to be responded is whether the models that merely incorporate space coordinates might be sufficient to capture space dependence when applied to different types of data. Moreover, it is important to study what intrinsic characteristics of the economic problem or the dependent variable itself make feasible (and optimal) to use the specific methodological approach.

This paper uses un-truncated city population data from three countries—the United States, Spain and Italy—to empirically test Proposition 1 put forth by Eeckhout (2004 American Economic Review, 94: 1429–1451). Eeckhout’s hypothesis was that the estimate of the Pareto exponent in a standard Zipf regression decreases with sample size, if the underlying city size distribution is lognormal. Using rolling sample regressions, we find that this proposition is only valid once we enter the lognormal body of the distribution; for the Pareto-distributed upper-tail, the estimated exponent does not vary with sample size.

This paper investigates the relationship between informality and job quality in Ecuador, emphasizing the role of education as a mediating factor. Utilizing data from the National Survey of Employment, Unemployment, and Underemployment from 2014 to 2019, the study employs an Employment Quality Index to assess job quality. Through a detailed empirical strategy incorporating pooled ordinary least squares regressions, panel data analyses, and spatial models, the research unveils a negative impact of informality in employment quality. However, the findings indicate that education does not significantly influence this relationship at the regional level. These results highlight the necessity for targeted policy interventions that address the structural issues in the labor market.

This article proposes an approach to the imaginary that is constructed in the social understanding of a city that is cared for and cares for its citizenship, exploring whether the conceptual commitment to community care in the city can be understood within the hegemonic social representations that the population holds in this regard. Through a qualitative approach, we have explored the ways in which coexistence in the city is understood and the role that care and community play in it. The analysis of the discourses reveals a widespread understanding of a broken social bond that encourages the demand for institutional mediation between individuals and suspends the possibility of building community networks in an urban setting that fosters a shared perception of threat and distrust. These results suggest the need to address the reflection on the obstacle that hegemonic ideological frameworks pose for community initiatives that give meaning to urban coexistence in our culture.

The ability of local territories to create and attract human capital is key in generating progress at the local level. However, skilled workers not only tend to stem from certain regions, but to be attracted to them. This study analyzes interregional migratory movements in Chile, identifying differentials in local economic development as a factor that promotes selective migration of workers. The results indicate that regions with high levels of relative development attract more qualified migrants and expel the less qualified, thus reinforcing the initial concentration of human capital.

The Pacific is the region of Colombia with the greatest economic lag and the lowest living standards of its population. The objective of this study is to investigate poverty in the Colombian Pacific, taking as a reference the multidimensional approach, applying different identification methodologies and aggregation indicators. The main result is that despite the reduction in poverty between 2010 and 2018, it has not been systematic and has presented much more moderate levels than the situation in the rest of the country; in particular, the region has great deficiencies in education levels and access to health.

Cross-section and longitudinal spatial statistics and econometric models rely on spatially and temporally referenced data. Administrative units like cities, counties, and provinces provide stable data sources, enabling models to combine statistics collected at different times. In Spain, census sections serve as the smallest territorial units in which official statistics are delivered. These areas offer valuable statistics, such as population and housing censuses. Providing these statistics at the postcode level is also pertinent for conducting local analyses and surveys. The issue is that boundaries of census sections undergo regular updates, sometimes involving significant reorganization. The R-package sc2sc automates the transfer of variables between different census sections and postal codes. This paper introduces the package and outlines its methodology, which employs areal weighting to transfer counts and rates.

The paper investigates the ability of Cohesion Policy programmes to define accurate policy outputs and to reliably monitor their own performance through accurate indicators. Specifically, the analysis explores the extent to which indicators and output targets set by ERDF programmes for monitoring and evaluation purposes are revised over time, seeking to identify specific patterns related to different areas such as spending categories, typology of regions, etc. Our findings highlight significant challenges faced by programmes in establishing realistic targets, as frequent and substantial changes are introduced to a vast majority of them. However, we also observe that only a small proportion of indicators is modified over time, suggesting relative stability in the overall objectives of programmes. The paper provides useful evidence for the ongoing debate on whether adopting a fully-performance based model, where access to funds is contingent upon achieving results/outputs, would enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of Cohesion Policy.

Urban growth has led to the unforeseen development of peripheral urbanization. The case of the city of Tijuana represents, in a peculiar way, the concern about the acquisition and investment in housing. The rugged topography has caused excessive costs of urbanization and the introduction of services that have limited urban development. The objective of this research is to describe the urban environment based on its resources and housing location, as well as to demonstrate its implications on urban spatial inequality. Through a hedonic price model with data from the Sistema Nacional de Información e Indicadores de Vivienda (SNIIV) from 2015 to 2021. Among the main findings is that the price per square meter of new homes purchased by national residents rises as one moves to the outskirts of the city. In addition, the highest and lowest income deciles are living in peripheral areas.

Slums are a global concern due to their impact on urban health and urban planning. Although Latin America and the Caribbean is one of the most urbanized developing regions, slums are still a significant concern. However, most studies have concentrated on a single city, using a sample of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries or treating the region as one unit to analyze income inequality and urban primacy. Here, we present an analysis of the relationship between slums and urban primacy for LAC countries for the 1990–2020 period, controlling for GDP per capita and public spending on housing. In addition, we model the relationship between slums and demographic variables such as the fertility rate, migration rate, and urbanization. The analysis is based on panel data from the World Bank and The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). During the period of study, a clear positive relationship is evident between urban primacy in the largest city and the slum rate in each LAC country. However, a high level of heterogeneity is observed in this relationship and our model explains the variation in the slum rate within countries better than the variation between countries.

The 2008 economic crisis in Spain triggered a significant correction in housing prices, and signs of recovery did not manifest until early 2014. This article delves into the Spanish context, examining how various types of crimes influenced the housing price recovery between 2015 and 2019. A fixed-effects panel data analysis was conducted across 119 Spanish cities. The findings demonstrate that housing values depreciate in response to an increase in criminal activity, with noticeable effects emerging within one to two years (-0.2%). Furthermore, it is confirmed that crime against property have a more pronounced negative impact on housing prices, especially robbery with violence (-1.3%) and burglary with forced entry (0.8%).

In recent decades, land use changes have experienced a rapid increase due to various environmental,

demographic, economic, and sociocultural factors. These changes have led to significant environmental transformations on a global scale, affecting landscape stability and carrying significant implications for global change, habitat loss, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and the productive capacity of ecosystems. The aim of this study is to identify the relationships reported in the scientific literature between land use, biodiversity, and climate change. A dataset of over 20,000 bibliographic records published between 2001

and 2022 was analyzed using bibliometric techniques and specialized software. The results reveal that land use change is one of the main factors associated with global change, disrupting biogeochemical and hydrological cycles. Additionally, it is a leading cause of global biodiversity loss, impacting society’s relationship with the environment. The bibliometric analysis demonstrates a rapid increase in scientific publications on this subject in the last 20 years. This reflects the growing interest and concern of the scientific community in understanding the implications of land use change on biodiversity and climate change. In conclusion, this study underscores the importance of comprehending and addressing the effects of land use change on biodiversity and climate change to promote sustainable management practices and the use of appropriate technologies that contribute to understanding phenomena related to global change.

While migrants pursue better incomes, they might be driven by differences in amenities between the place of origin and destination. This study aims to determine the effect of differences in health, educational amenities, and the operational capacity between the place of origin and destination on the life satisfaction of internal migrants. To do so, a generalized ordered logit model is estimated using data from the Survey of Employment, Unemployment and Underemployment of Ecuador for the editions from 2015 to 2017. Our results show that income and amenities are not competing reasons for life satisfaction, they go hand in hand. Differences in health and educational amenities, as well as variations in the operational capacity of local governments between the places of origin and destination, have an influence on the life satisfaction of internal migrants. These effects vary depending on the age of the migrant, the size of the city of origin and destination, the reason for migration, and the duration of residence.

This paper analyzes the evolution of the aggregate production in the Spanish regional economic system between 2000Q1 and 2023Q4 proposing a spatiotemporal growth model for the Autonomous Communities in Spain that simultaneously accounts for the presence of time-series dynamics, cross-sectional spatial dependence, common factors, and regional heterogeneity. The econometric specification used in the empirical application includes time-lagged variables, spatial and spatiotemporal lagged variables, a dynamic common factor (the national growth), and some parameters varying regionally, so we consider all the key stylized facts that complex regional economic growth processes exhibit over time.

The paper analyzes the changes in poverty (both monetary and non-monetary) in the Spanish Autonomous Communities in the period 2008-2021. Through statistical methodologies, it identifies the existence of absolute divergence in poverty and conditional divergence in per capita income and inequality. The research finds statistical significance with poverty, the unemployment rate, minimum income transfers from the Autonomous Communities and the number of pensions per inhabitant. Neither of the educational variables considered were found to be statistically significant.

The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of Covid-19 on business behavior and its spatial effect among companies. Four specifications have been developed to analyze the pandemic’s influence on key variables determining business behavior: liquidity, indebtedness, profitability, and efficiency. This study has focused on the province of Barcelona, Spain, from which a database of failed and non-failed companies has been compiled, both before and after the pandemic. The models have been estimated using the spatial Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR) methodology, and each equation was estimated following a spatial Differences-in-Differences model. The results confirm that the emergence of Covid-19 has had a significant impact on companies’ financial ratios, worsening their positions in terms of liquidity, indebtedness, and efficiency, with the existence of a spatial contagion pattern.

This study analyzes the impact of all-inclusive offerings on a destination’s competitiveness. When the rise in all-inclusive offerings causes a negative externality on complementary services, it creates a market-size effect. This results in an excessive supply of all-inclusive offerings in the market. Imposing different taxes on all-inclusive and non-all-inclusive offerings is more effective than a cap on the supply of all-inclusive offerings. Taxes can implement the optimal allocation. We expect the market-size effect to be harmful to competitiveness in mature destinations.

In this study we aim at estimating the economic return to education with a territorial perspective. Furthermore, we aim at identifying the effect of the family’s social capital, proxied by language of parents, on the economic returns to education. Results show that education provides different returns to individuals that differ by their family backgrounds, with a significant disadvantage on children whose parents speak an indigenous language. We observe that the territory can contribute to these disparities by up to 7%.

This research estimates local employment multipliers for Mexican cities. To classify tradable and non-tradable sectors, the study employs both the traditional manufacturing/non-manufacturing classification and an alternative classification based on an employment concentration index that includes services. The findings indicate that manufacturing generates significant multipliers, at the upper bound of those estimated in other regions. However, the alternative classification yields much lower, and more reliable, multipliers. Additionally, the study reveals that creative and technological employment sectors produce larger multipliers compared to the average trade/manufacturing sector.

Demographic change and aging are general trends that have led to an increase in the demand for long-term care. The covid-19 pandemic bought this need for care to the forefront of the political agenda. In response, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and the Basque Government have begun to support innovative public-community initiatives called Local Care Ecosystems. This article describes the design of an evaluation process guided by Theory of Change, which was developed by the pioneering initiative Pasaia Zaintza HerriLab [Pasaia Care Local Laboratory] for the development of a Local Care Ecosystem in the local municipality of Pasaia, Gipuzkoa. The paper provides useful insights for evaluating other public-community care initiatives and contributes to promoting a culture of evaluation within the institutions.

This article analyses the market dynamics of long-term care provision in households. Specifically, it focuses on exploring the rise of three new business actors in the sector, namely brokering agencies, digital platforms and care workers’ cooperatives. Through a qualitative methodology based on semi-structured in-depth interviews and participatory workshops with key informants, the business models of these commercial actors and their impact on working conditions in the sector are analysed, given the contrasting philosophies with which each of them manages the services provided. The document studies the impact of these actors on the care market and on the processes of formalisation and professionalisation of the sector.

This article explores the rise of collaborative housing among older adults in Spain. These initiatives, emerging from social movements, reflect a grassroots model of living that aims to redefine the aging process through collective self-management of this life cycle. Using a qualitative methodology, five cohousing communities in different regions, including rural areas facing demographic challenges, are studied. The article addresses the relationship between the concept of “commons” and feminist theories of social reproduction. These housing arrangements will be examined in terms of their dynamics, demands, limitations, and interactions with both public and private sectors.

The decline of the real value of the minimum wage amid trade liberalization in Mexico has raised concerns about its policy effectiveness and unintended consequences. The literature has examined the impact of minimum wage adjustments on employment levels, worker earnings, poverty, and inequality. However, findings from different sample periods and regions still need to be reconciled. It is necessary to understand the mechanisms connecting minimum wage to other market components. This research note first explores Mexico’s minimum wage data from 1980 to 2023 to grasp its spatial and temporal trends. We then discuss several future research directions to explore mechanisms through which minimum wage potentially works, including the welfare effect of the policy, the informal sector, and interactions between different policy tools.

This study assesses the effect of internal migration on regional growth in Italy at the NUTS-3 level over the period 2002-2019. The composition of the internal migration flows of the working-age population in Italy during the sample period appears substantially heterogeneous in nationality and labor skills. The analysis considers this heterogeneity, estimating various specifications of the dynamic spatial model and controlling for the endogeneity of migration variables through a control function approach. The evidence suggests that the internal migration of Italian citizens has a positive direct and spillover impact on regional growth, slowing down the convergence process. On the contrary, there is no evidence of a significant effect of internal migration of foreign citizens. Taking the skill composition of internal movements of Italian citizens into account, the adverse impact on convergence is magnified, thus corroborating the skill-selective hypothesis. Finally, the diverging impact of internal migration increases with the distance of migration flows.

Migration brings significant challenges to health and quality of life when acculturation exceeds migrants’ personal resources, causing acculturative stress. Despite its high prevalence, there are few instruments to assess it in Latin America. The aim of this study was to develop an instrument to measure acculturative stress based on a sample of 283 migrants in Chile. Twenty-five items were developed and grouped into three factors. Findings show excellent psychometric properties of reliability, validity, and cultural relevance. The instrument is appropriate for intraregional migrant populations in Latin America.

The aim of the article is to analysis the VilaVeïna project promoted by the Barcelona City Council to develop neighbourhood care communities. Specifically, the manuscript analyses to what extent VilaVeïna fits into the proposals for the transformation of public care policies and services from the perspective of the commons. On the one hand, it analyses the initial conceptualisation of the community in the design of VilaVeïna and its materialisation in the practices involved in its implementation. On the other hand, this analysis puts in dialogue the elements that characterise the project within the framework of the community with the conceptual proposal of the commons (Zuriña, 2020; Blanco et al., 2017). To reach these objectives, we present a case study based on interviews with political and technical profiles, as well as interviews and focus groups with users of the service. The results show up the progress made by this public policy in building communities of care and the limitations in achieving a radically communitarian resource defined from the perspective of the commons.

Latin American cities show accelerated processes of expanding growth with direct consequences on the quality of life of their inhabitants. In this context, the article analyzes the uses of public green spaces and the preferences of the population in an intermediate Argentine city and its periurban area, based on data from a survey conducted among visitors of these spaces. The results indicate that the evaluated aspects are associated with the natural and sociocultural attributes of these spaces and the characteristics of the respondents, highlighting the interaction and differences between objective and subjective variables of quality of life, especially in the urban-rural gradient.

The care that involves older people in vulnerable Madrid neighborhoods is favored by the prolonged permanence of this age group in these spaces and by the existence in them of broader networks of this activity, both in terms of concern, reception and care provision. The circulation of care includes their homes and also other neighborhood supports. Through qualitative analysis, it is confirmed that family care is more present in the narratives referring to the most peripheral and aging neighborhoods, with more permanence and home ownership.

Contemporary society is older and more diverse than ever before. In the face of increasing demand for care provision, there is an urgent need for new social responses. Intergenerational projects represent a step in this direction, through the construction of community spaces that strengthen both the relational dimension of care and promote social cohesion. The particular case study addressed in this paper is an intergenerational public-community project in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. This project facilitates the generation of networks of mutual care between at risk children and elderly people. Using a qualitative methodology, this paper analyses some of the achievements and limitations. The conclusions suggest a need to further support and sustain projects of this type, which promote a more inclusive society for people of all ages.

The main objective of this article is to analyze the different care ecosystems developed in the Territory of Gipuzkoa, emphasizing the leadership, relationships and distribution of functions that occurs among the different agents that participate in their implementation. The methodology has been eminently qualitative, developed through a total of 12 in-depth semi-directed interviews with professionals from the public sphere (politicians and technicians) and Third Sector entities. The results show that, although the development of care ecosystems is recognized as a succesful political strategy in the territory, and a clear space of social and political consensus, its extension and consolidation may be in question.

This article analyzes the relationship between public policy and the management of the common in the city of Córdoba, Argentina. Based on a qualitative methodology that combines in-depth interviews and documentary analysis, it reflects on the community “know-how” that supports the management of the common in urban peripheries. It shows that, in the context of the Covid-19 health emergency, this “know-how” was mobilized by women from popular sectors to respond to new challenges, while at the same time it was “incorporated” by different public policies to support the strategies of sustainability of life.