Search Results (318)

As a multi-functional systemic carrier, rural tourism integrates diverse rural resources and serves as a key endogenous driver for sustainable rural development and the enhancement of rural residents’ livelihoods. However, excessive tourism development may lead to environmental pressures and exacerbate inequities in benefit distribution, rendering well-being gains uncertain. This study aims to explore the multidimensional mechanisms through which rural tourism influences rural residents’ well-being by utilizing national data from the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS). The results indicate that village-level tourism development exerts a positive effect on material and psychological well-being. Effects are particularly strong in eastern and hilly regions and in villages where the party secretary also serves as committee director. Further analysis identifies four channels through which rural tourism enhances well-being: fostering digital financial inclusion, advancing empowerment reforms, reallocating resources, and optimizing governance frameworks. Additionally, tourism development leads to improvements in indicators such as road quality, living environment, and satisfaction with village committee performance—while highlighting policy attention to social security, housing, and income satisfaction. Full article

Pneumocystis jirovecii is an opportunistic fungal pathogen responsible for Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP), a severe infection that remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality among immunocompromised patients, particularly in non-HIV immunosuppressed populations. Despite its recognized clinical relevance and inclusion in the World Health Organization’s Fungal Priority Pathogens List, important gaps persist in its diagnosis, epidemiology, and therapeutic management. This study provides a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of global scientific production on P. jirovecii using Scopus as the primary data source. Publications were evaluated for temporal trends, document types, authorship patterns, institutional productivity, collaboration networks, funding sources, thematic evolution, and journal distribution, with additional comparison against other major pneumonia-associated pathogens. A total of 27,396 articles published between 1916 and 2025 were identified. Over the last 50 years, scientific output increased from 10,382 publications in 1975–2000 to 16,496 in 2001–2025, representing an overall growth of 58.9%. Early research expansion was strongly shaped by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, whereas the post-2000 period reflected advances in molecular diagnostics, taxonomic clarification, and broader attention to non-HIV immunosuppressed populations. Although the field has become more diversified and clinically integrated, persistent structural inequities and underinvestment continue to limit progress, particularly in low- and middle-income settings. Full article

The accelerated advancement of artificial intelligence has triggered new discussions concerning the link between technological progress and the distribution of income. This study frames China’s National New Generation Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Development Pilot Zone (AIIDPZ) policy as a quasi-natural experiment, enabling us to identify the causal effect of AI promotion strategies on the urban–rural income inequality. Drawing on panel data from 257 Chinese cities over the period 2012–2023, we estimate the impacts using a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) approach. The results demonstrate that the pilot zone policy significantly lowers the urban–rural income inequality index, by roughly 8.41%. The mechanism analysis reveals two primary pathways. First, the policy stimulates innovation in agricultural science and technology, which in turn boosts rural productivity. Second, it deepens the attention that the government directs toward artificial intelligence, contributing to a more balanced allocation of technological dividends between urban and rural areas. Heterogeneity tests further indicate that the inequality-reducing effects are especially notable in eastern regions, as well as in cities characterized by well-developed digital infrastructure and relatively weaker endowments of human capital. By offering empirical insight into how developing countries can reconcile distributional equity with the application of artificial intelligence, this study contributes to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Full article

This study aims to estimate the effect of disability on household income in Thailand using different econometric approaches and to examine heterogeneity across the income distribution. We analyze data from Thailand’s 2021 Socioeconomic Survey covering 46,775 households, of which 4255 (9.1%) report having at least one disabled member. Employing three complementary methods—ordinary least squares regression, propensity score matching, and quantile regression—we find that households with disabled members experience significant income penalties. The OLS estimate with full controls shows a 10.0% income penalty, while propensity score matching yields 17.4%, suggesting that standard regression underestimates the true effect. Quantile regression reveals striking heterogeneity: the disability effect ranges from 4.8% at the 10th percentile to 30.5% at the 90th percentile. This pattern suggests that among Thailand’s poorest households, both disabled and non-disabled families face universal constraints; leaving minimal scope for disability is strongly associated with reduced household income, while at higher income levels disability creates barriers to advancement. Decomposition analysis indicates disability affects income through both reduced hourly wages (8.2% lower) and fewer work hours (12.4% reduction). These findings reveal that Thailand’s disability allowance of 800 baht per month—representing only 29% of the poverty line—is grossly inadequate, covering merely 17% of the observed income gap. The results highlight urgent needs for allowance increases with inflation indexation, differentiated support across the income distribution, improved employment quota enforcement, and streamlined registration to address the 46% unregistered rate. Policymakers should prioritize raising the monthly allowance to a level commensurate with the national poverty line, implementing tiered benefit structures based on disability severity, and strengthening employment quota enforcement mechanisms to reduce disability-related income inequality. Full article

While agricultural modernization improves productivity, it may worsen rural inequality. Without systematic guidance and institutional rules, it harms inclusive and sustainable rural development. To examine the income distribution effects of two distinct modernization pathways, this study uses an innovative dual-mode framework integrating resource endowment, mechanism, and distribution to compare Land Transfer and Non-farm Employment. Based on a survey of 963 farm households in modern agricultural parks of Sichuan Province, we apply regression, endogeneity correction, mechanism and heterogeneity analysis. The study found that Land Transfer exhibits a significant positive correlation with income growth through economies of scale and labor release effects, yet its benefits primarily flow to local elite groups with superior resource endowments, demonstrating an “elite capture” tendency; Non-farm Employment is closely linked to income growth by raising wage levels, enhancing skill levels, and improving employment stability. Its benefits are more likely to reach ordinary, low-income, and less-educated farmers, reflecting the characteristic of “inclusive growth.” The framework reveals divergent equity outcomes of efficiency-oriented reforms, providing new insights for building fair and sustainable agricultural systems. It also provides micro-level policy references for SDG 10 (reduced inequalities) and SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth). Full article

This paper explores how financial development and income inequality interact across different country income groups and what this means for business environments and market participation in both emerging and advanced economies. Using an Unobserved Components Model (UCM) with time-series data covering 1990–2023, the analysis shows that the link between finance and inequality varies markedly with the level of economic development. An inverted U-shaped relationship appears only in high-income and upper-middle-income countries, suggesting that once financial systems reach a certain level of maturity, further deepening tends to support more inclusive outcomes. By contrast, in lower-middle-income countries, financial development is associated with a positive and monotonic increase in inequality, while in low-income countries, the relationship remains weak, unstable, and statistically insignificant. A closer breakdown indicates that financial markets, rather than financial institutions, play a stronger role in influencing inequality in higher-income economies. Overall, the findings highlight that the distributional impact of financial development—and its implications for business conditions, market access, and investment incentives—is strongly income-dependent, reinforcing the need for financial frameworks that align with countries’ stages of development. Full article

Transportation asset management (TAM) has traditionally centered on technical performance and economic efficiency. In recent years, however, there has been increasing recognition of the environmental and social impacts of maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) activities. This paper presents a systematic review of how Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics are being incorporated into TAM. Using PRISMA 2020, four major databases were searched, identifying 75 studies since 2010. Environmental metrics were the most developed, especially those measuring emissions, energy use, and material consumption. Social metrics appeared less frequently and are typically used descriptively, including indicators of income inequality, user costs, and equity-focused metrics such as the Benefit Distribution Ratio and Social Return on Investment. Governance was the least explored pillar and is generally addressed through fiscal transparency, risk management, or institutional practices rather than explicit measurable indicators. Overall, the review shows growing interest in integrating ESG into TAM, but the adoption of social and governance metrics remains limited. In particular, governance indicators are rarely operationalized as measurable variables within TAM decision-making, highlighting a critical gap in the literature. This study synthesizes ESG-related indicators used in TAM and provides a structured foundation for future research and more comprehensive sustainability-oriented decision frameworks. Full article

Economic inequities in healthcare access persist globally, yet the impact of income on palliative care (PC) utilization in Middle Eastern contexts remains empirically understudied. This cross-sectional study of 200 cancer patients in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, employed a socioeconomic stratification analysis to examine income-stratified differences in PC awareness and access. Using chi-square and linear-by-linear association tests, results revealed pronounced income gradients; awareness increased from 41.9% in the low-income group to 71.9% in the high-income group (p = 0.001), demonstrating a significant dose–response trend. Access disparities were even more striking, with only 35.5% of low-income patients utilizing services compared to 76.1% of high-income patients (p < 0.001), representing a 40.6 percentage-point gap. After multivariable adjustment, after controlling for age, gender, education, and geographic living region, the results of logistic regression analysis showed that cancer patients with high income were more than three times as likely to access PC services compared with lower-income cancer patients (OR = 3.32; 95% CI: 1.83–6.02; p < 0.001). Geographic stratification further indicated that income disparities were significantly amplified in peripheral regions compared to the Central region (p = 0.072 for interaction), where service scarcity exacerbates economic barriers. These findings underscore that economic barriers operate through awareness gaps and structural obstacles like transportation and opportunity costs. Addressing these inequities requires multifaceted strategies, including financial support and geographic service expansion, to ensure equitable PC distribution under the Vision 2030 framework. Full article

Contemporary European societies face overlapping societal challenges—ecological degradation, immigration pressures, and widening economic inequality—which generate a pervasive climate of uncertainty affecting citizens’ perceptions of their own life conditions. This study investigates how social pessimism, conceptualised as a multidimensional orientation reflecting perceived threats across environmental, migratory, and distributive domains, relates to subjective financial insecurity at the individual level. Drawing on harmonised cross-national data from the CRONOS-II panel (N = 8993), covering eleven European countries, we construct a composite pessimism index and analyse its association with perceived financial strain using multivariate and multilevel regression models. Results demonstrate that individuals who express greater societal pessimism report significantly higher levels of financial insecurity, even after controlling for income, education, employment status, and country-level heterogeneity. This relationship is moderated by socioeconomic position; specifically, the pessimism–insecurity link is strongest among lower-income and less-educated groups, suggesting that material precarity and anticipatory anxiety compound one another. Cross-national analysis reveals substantial variation in effect magnitude, with the strongest associations observed in Hungary, Portugal, and the Czech Republic, and the weakest in Slovenia and Iceland. These findings contribute to the interdisciplinary understanding of how macro-level societal concerns permeate individual wellbeing, demonstrating that subjective economic vulnerability is shaped not only by objective circumstances but also by the broader socio-political climate in which citizens interpret their life situations. The results underscore the need for policies that address both material conditions and the affective dimensions of societal uncertainty in order to strengthen social cohesion and reduce perceived economic risk. Theoretically, we frame social pessimism as a formative composite capturing perceived threat to societal stability, offering an integrative perspective on how structurally distinct societal concerns converge to shape economic subjectivities. Full article

This study examines the impact of financial inclusion on income inequality across 33 provinces in Indonesia from 2015 to 2023, while controlling for human development and investment-related factors. Specifically, it investigates the effects of the Financial Inclusion Index (FII), Human Development Index (HDI), foreign investment (FI), and domestic investment (DI) on provincial income inequality. This study used balanced-panel data for each province and year. Employing a dynamic panel data approach, this study utilizes the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to address potential endogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and dynamic persistence in income inequality. The empirical findings indicate that financial inclusion, as measured by the Financial Inclusion Index, has a statistically significant negative effect on income inequality, suggesting that greater access to formal financial services contributes to a more equitable income distribution. Similarly, the Human Development Index is found to reduce income inequality, highlighting the importance of human capital development in mitigating income disparities. In contrast, foreign investment and domestic investment exhibit positive and significant effects on income inequality, implying that investment inflows may disproportionately benefit higher-income groups. Overall, the results underscore a high degree of inequality in Indonesia, consistent with the lagged coefficient reaching 0.97. Therefore, inclusive policy frameworks are required to ensure that investment-driven growth is more evenly distributed across provinces. Full article

To advance the Sustainable Development Goals, it is essential to correct imbalances in how the benefits of urban trees are distributed across different demographic and socioeconomic groups. Environmental justice studies have frequently overlooked assumptions regarding the data-generating process and have not considered spatial confounding. This oversight potentially misestimates patterns of inequity. This study evaluates the sensitivity of inequity to model assumptions using urban tree inventories from Málaga and Sevilla and Bayesian hierarchical models. City-level differences dominated the inequity patterns, and model specification influenced the magnitude, precision, and credibility of estimated effects, though directionality remained consistent. Patterns were highly consistent across the four ecosystem services, indicating that model assumptions affected all services equivalently. Málaga and Seville exhibited divergent inequity patterns, indicating that local urban context mediates these relationships. In Seville, inequity patterns were inconsistent with the luxury hypothesis and occurred primarily across age-based demographic strata, whereas in Málaga they manifested predominantly along ethnicity, with weaker evidence of income inequities. We advocate for explicitly modeling spatial data-generating processes and comparing conventional versus confounding-mitigated approaches. This city-specific rigor is essential for urban planners to prevent resource misallocation, ensuring that tree-planting strategies address genuine inequities rather than methodological biases. Full article

The rapid expansion of digitalization is reshaping factor mobility and income distribution between urban and rural areas, with important implications for inclusive and sustainable development. Using panel data for 277 prefecture-level cities in China from 2012 to 2022, this study examines how DE affects urban–rural income disparity from the perspectives of nonlinear effects, factor allocation, and spatial interdependence. Compared with existing studies based mainly on provincial data, this paper provides a more fine-grained analysis at the prefecture level and combines mediation, double-threshold, and spatial analysis within a unified framework. The results show that DE has a significant U-shaped effect on urban–rural income disparity, suggesting that digital development may initially narrow the gap but widen it after a certain stage. Urban–rural factor allocation acts as an important transmission channel, and its role exhibits a double-threshold characteristic. The effect of DE also varies across urban agglomeration types and stages of urbanization, with stronger impacts in more developed and urbanized regions. In addition, the direct effect of DE follows a U-shaped pattern, whereas its spatial spillover effect shows an inverted U-shape. These findings indicate that digitalization is not automatically equalizing and that its distributional consequences depend on factor allocation conditions, regional development stages, and spatial linkages. The study provides evidence for policies aimed at reducing urban–rural inequality and promoting more balanced and sustainable development. Full article

This study evaluates the incidence of food and non-food social programs in function of income inequality in households in Peru during 2022–2024 in a context of persistent distributive gaps, despite social interventions aimed at promoting equity. Data from the National Household Survey (ENAHO) were used, with 93,148 observations corresponding to beneficiary and non-beneficiary households, and Recentered Influence Function (RIF) regressions were estimated to decompose the marginal effect of both types of programs on the Gini and Atkinson indices (ε = 0.5; 1.0 and 1.5). Food programs reduced inequality by 2.14% according to the RIF of the Gini and by −1.23%, −2.84% and −4.82% according to the RIF of the Atkinson. Non-food programs generated a greater reduction in the RIF of the Gini (−4.06%) and decreases of −2.52%, −3.51% and −3.06% in the Atkinson. Both types of programs positively influenced the decrease in inequality, highlighting the importance of incorporating structural determinants and household characteristics in redistributive policies. Social programs have positive redistributive effects, although insufficient in the face of structural and territorial inequalities. Strengthening their targeting and territorial articulation is recommended, especially in Andean and Amazon regions. Full article

Against the backdrop of rapid development in megacities, urban park green spaces serve as essential public resources whose accessibility and equity directly affect residents’ quality of life and broader social justice. This study addresses the imbalance between the spatial distribution of green space resources and the socio-demographic characteristics of different population groups in megacities. It takes the six central districts of Beijing as the study area and integrates data from 457 urban parks. The research applies the Gaussian two-step floating catchment area (G2SFCA) method and bivariate spatial autocorrelation analysis (Moran’s I) to systematically evaluate the equity of urban park green space provision across multiple social dimensions, including economic status, educational attainment, and vulnerable groups. The results indicate that urban park green spaces in Beijing’s six central districts exhibit a pronounced central and northern advantage, with significant deficits in southern and peripheral areas. High accessibility and greater per capita green space are concentrated in core and high-housing-price districts, overlapping with high-income and highly educated populations. In contrast, vulnerable groups and migrant workers are more likely to reside in green-space-deficient areas, facing a structural “high population density–low green space provision” disadvantage, reflecting clear social inequities. In addition, inequity is more pronounced at the walking scale than at the cycling scale. The study reveals a dual mismatch in green space provision across both spatial and social dimensions within a megacity context. The findings suggest that future urban planning should shift from quantitative expansion to the optimization of existing green space resources. Planning strategies should prioritize vulnerable groups and adopt a people-oriented approach. Policymakers should allocate greater support to southern and peripheral areas, increase the provision of pocket parks, and improve slow-mobility systems. These measures can more precisely safeguard equitable access to green space for disadvantaged populations and promote the realization of spatial justice. Full article

Environmental pressure in Nigeria persistently escalates despite several development efforts, prompting questions about the structural factors contributing to the nation’s ecological vulnerability. Considering this, the study employs a time-series research design that synthesizes collective theoretical perspectives to elucidate the interplay between income inequality (GINI), institutional quality (INST), trade in services (TO), and population density (POPd) in shaping Nigeria’s ecological footprint (ECF), utilizing data for the aforementioned variables from 1960 to 2024. The analysis shows time-varying dynamics across pollution regimes using Quantile-on-Quantile Regression (QQR) and Wavelet Quantile Correlation (WQC). The result reveals notable asymmetries across the ECF distribution. GINI and POPd intensify ecological pressure mainly at higher ECF quantiles. While INST serves as a key mitigating factor of ECF, particularly in a long-term pollution scenario. TO exhibits a regime-dependent effect, aligning with the Pollution Haven expectation in poor environments. These findings suggest that environmental outcomes in emerging economies are shaped by structural inequality and institutional strength. Highlighting the necessity of building institutional capacity to decouple inequality that drives ecological degradation. Thus, connecting national strategies with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, and 17. These provide actionable insights into an inclusive and resilient environment. Full article