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8 The economics of dementia Paddy Gillespie and Sheelah Connolly Introduction Dementia describes the group of symptoms caused by the gradual death of brain cells, leading to the progressive decline of functions such as memory, orientation, understanding, judgement, calculation, learning, language and thinking (Luengo-Fernandez et al., 2010). There is no single cause of dementia, with a combination of risk factors, both known and unknown, believed to influence its onset and progression. Within this risk factor profile, increasing age is by far the strongest
This book brings together research relating to the economics of disability in Ireland. It addresses key questions of relevance to the economic circumstances of people with disabilities, with emphasis on the relationship between disability and social inclusion, poverty, the labour market, living standards and public policy. Importantly, it also incorporates a life cycle perspective on disability, considering issues of specific relevance to children, working-age adults and older people with disabilities. There is also a focus on issues relating to resource allocation and to wider society, while the book also presents a number of contributions focusing on mental health. The book examines the economics of mental health services and presents a broad overview of key economic issues facing the provision of such services in Ireland. A number of issues are addressed, including the nature and extent of mental illnesses in Ireland, the resources spent on care provided to people with mental illnesses, as well as the economic cost of mental illness in Ireland. The book also examines the socioeconomic determinants of mental stress. It focuses on socioeconomic factors which are most closely associated with mental stress, and considers the socioeconomic determinants of subjective well-being.
chap 3 13/8/04 4:14 pm Page 61 3 Quality in economics: a cognitive perspective1 Gilles Allaire Introduction The importance of food quality issues in the contemporary global context is well established. Since the early 1990s we have seen developments in nutrition, life sciences and biotech programmes; the setting up of food quality standards in Europe as well as in other OECD countries; the heightened focus of the media on food issues and a series of food safety crises. On the market side these trends have included a reconsideration of business strategy on
3 There’s more to the economics of consumption than (almost) unconstrained utility maximisation G. M. Peter Swann This chapter was written in response to the presentation given at the CRIC workshop by Warde (Chapter 2 in this book). In summarising, Warde said that the main message of his paper was, perhaps, that there is more to the sociology of consumption than Thorstein Veblen. This is an important message, and relevant for two groups. First, to his fellow sociologists, that they should not be preoccupied with the exceptional and conspicuous forms of
10 The economics of mental health services Brendan Kennelly Introduction Mental health services include a broad range of services, from home and community-based facilities such as day hospitals and out-patient facilities, to acute care units and residential care services. This chapter presents a broad overview of key economic issues facing the provision of such services in Ireland. The key issues that are addressed include: (a) the nature and extent of mental illnesses in Ireland; (b) the resources spent on care provided to people with mental illnesses; and (c
social process of establishing what constitutes valid and robust knowledge within a specific community of practice.1 The community of practice in this case pertains to the scientific field of climate economics,2 a subfield of economics that deals with the potential effects of climate change understood in economic terms and the potential costs and benefits of various measures geared to mitigating that change. It focuses on various policy measures undertaken to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), and specifically the most common (albeit not most potent) of
to ‘mainstream’ services where possible, delivering supports that allow recipients to stay in the same communities, educational establishments and workplaces as those without impairments. This has advantages over segregated provision of services, since it allows people to remain connected to natural, informal community supports and to exert more control over their lives. There are, however, challenges to implementing this approach. One is to avoid 2 The economics of disability essential services and supports becoming diluted or inaccessible to those in settings
broad conceptual overviews of ways that the sociological and economics literatures address issues of innovation, demand and consumption. Alan Warde, in Chapter 2, reviews the sociological literature on consumption, focusing in particular on research that offers alternative or complementary views to the concepts of ‘conspicuous consumption’ and individual choice, which has dominated much work in this area. From this, he proposes a research agenda for examining everyday consumption, that is, consumption that is unremarkable, bound by habit and routine, and which takes
speak authoritatively about the extent of racism in French society. In a more technocratic spirit, emphasising economic growth as the ultimate indicator of progress allows an issue like migration to be culturally and politically diffused (as New Labour sought to do), and each new arrival into the country can be viewed simply as another anonymous contributor to aggregate output. Economics is potentially the most effective tool for
. Princess's story, on the surface, appears to have little to do with economics, but this is a conceptual difficulty. In all of our obsessions with the arbitrary assignment of value to an object, based upon bundles of coloured pieces of paper or numerals on a computer screen, we forget that at the root of all trading is something more fundamental to human history: communication. Our current way of organising the financial world is less than 300 years old, and for all of its material successes, to some it has been one of humanity's weakest inventions, formalising our worst