Two kinds of social cooperation?

Collective pension schemes are the dominant form of saving for retirement in the Netherlands. We investigate the introduction of individual choices into a collective pension system without affecting the generally accepted advantages of a collective agreement. Increasing individual choices can be beneficial, as it prevents pension plans from making decisions for the average plan participant that may not be optimal for individual participants. We argue for a system in which individuals choose from a set of low-cost balanced index funds, together with a level of intergenerational guarantees that are exchange-traded. This system maintains the two primary advantages of collective agreements: risk sharing and low implementation costs, while facilitating different risk taking behavior at the individual level. To facilitate individual choices within collective pension schemes, it is important to enhance the transparency associated with intergenerational guarantees to all participants in the scheme, both in terms of their price and quantity. We argue that the current system, in which long-term guarantees are given by the young to the old within a specific fund but not across pension funds, is not transparent and we argue that it can be suboptimal. We propose a system ofPension Guarantee Exchanges(PGEs) that increase transparency and allow pension funds with different age distributions to trade with each other. Knowing the price of such guarantees facilitates the introduction of individual portfolio choices within collective pension schemes.

The Allocation of Financial Risks During the Life Cycle in Individual and Collective DC Pension Contracts

The statements from the Prime Minister and Secretary of State is exactly what we wanted to hear. We have all been feeling in the last two days that it may be a trick of the light, but the world looks to be a slightly more hopeful place than it did before. Hearing the Prime Minister and Secretary of State, adds to my sense of hopefulness. I want to give you a brief overview of what we were trying to do. I think that the messages in our report have been well summarised by the Prime Minister and Secretary of State. Let me say right at the beginning, we were pushed in the CSDH to take an economic view. We were pushed to make the argument that closing the gap, reducing health inequities, would only be listened to by politicians if we made the economic case. We resisted that argument. We said that the reason for taking action on health inequity is a matter of social justice; the reason for doing it is because it is the right thing to do. People value having health, not because having health gets them a better job or they can live in a better neighbourhood, but because they value health. Where, in our judgement, these differences in health, these systematic inequalities in health are avoidable and are not avoided, then they are unfair. Hence, putting them right is a matter of social justice. At the centre of what we are trying to achieve is empowerment of individuals, of communities and indeed of whole countries. We think of empowerment as material, psycho-social and political. Material means having the resources to feed your children. John Humphrys said that it is the business of journalists to simplify. It is the business of academics to say it is more complicated. It is not material, but having control of your life. That’s the psychosocial aspect; also having voice. We want to create the conditions for people to lead flourishing lives. The Commission was set up by Dr J. W. Lee, the former Director General of WHO, and was launched in Chile. President Lagos hosted the launch and later joined the Commission. Dr Lee said the goal of the Commission is not an academic exercise, but to marshal scientific evidence as a lever for policy change aiming towards practical uptake among policy makers and stakeholders in countries. That was very much our orientation. Dr Lee, at the launch, emphasised the issue of health inequities within and between countries, and this was indeed part of our brief. To come back to the question posed at the beginning – isn’t it simply that poor people have poor health because of their poverty? Why, I would ask

GeoCapabilities offers an approach for unlocking powerful disciplinary knowledge (PDK) for children. In phase three of the project, we are exploring how far GeoCapabilities ‘works’ for teachers serving communities in challenging socio-economic circumstances. We connect GeoCapabilities to social justice in education, theoretically. Then, using the topic of migration, we discuss initial empirical findings of how teachers understand PDK and their challenges for teaching PDK. Collaborative work between teachers and academics suggests that the social justice dimension of GeoCapabilities could be realised, with appropriate support for teachers. We conclude with a set of principles to inform the future work of GeoCapabilities.

Sustainability of participation in collective pension schemes: An option pricing approach

This opening contribution to the book Costs and Benefits of Collective Pension Systems, an initiative of the Association of Industry-Wide Pension Funds and the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, first discusses a number of general solidarity aspects. Next it deals with more specific issues that have an important bearing on the pension sector.

This chapter explores how teachers in three secondary schools construct creativity, individually and within the context of shared practice in their own institutions. The particular focus is on how constructions of creativity are shaped by national frameworks of curriculum, assessment and accountability, and how these vary from school to school. This is situated in a period of political transition in the English school curriculum (2010–2015), during which the National Curriculum (which had previously contained ‘creativity’ as one of its four key concepts) was replaced by a curriculum that made no mention of creativity. The chapter examines the role of policy in the construction of creativity in classrooms, analysing how teachers might resist official policy in the interests of their vision for their subject, and questioning the role policy can play in the implementation of ‘exhortative’ policies about difficult to measure concepts such as creativity, compared to ‘imperative’ policies that relate directly to accountability in schools. The chapter constructs creativity itself as a material resource central to the teaching of language and literature, with its relative levels of distribution within different schools and to different students a matter of social justice and equity.

The goal of physical education (PE) is to increase student confidence, competence, and motivation to lead physically active lifestyles. Research has shown that physical education teacher education (PETE) students tend to be sexist, elitist and unsympathetic towards social issues. Currently, a gap in culturally responsive and socially just forms of PE that bring attention to racism, colonialism, sexism, heteronormativity, and other social issues requires greater acknowledgement from researchers. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study is to (1) better understand how PETE students might be engaged to take on a critical agenda that would increase their willingness to teach in culturally responsive ways, and (2) engage in more socially just forms of PE. METHODS: Using autobiographical narrative inquiry, three students confront and explain their reactions to dominant discourses that have shaped their identities and think critically about how their own experiences may be different than the students who will be in their future classes. The study uses narrative inquiry methodology to engage with the individual and shared experiences of participants. Drawing on three preservice teachers’ narratives, the author illustrates how a different starting point in teacher education may enrich and shape beginning PE teachers’ capacity to teach in socially just ways. RESULTS: The participant accounts challenge the work of those critics who have long assumed that critical pedagogies are most appropriate for teaching preservice teachers about matters of social justice. The finding that these preservice teachers are capable of understanding and engaging in social justice issues despite social privilege should be of interest to teacher educators because it constitutes a call for change. CONCLUSION: This method of inquiry allows for the examination of tensions and shifting identities that are lived by preservice teachers impacting their conceptions of teaching and learning.

Historically the primary role of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) has been "to assure, both in advance and by periodic review, that appropriate steps are taken to protect the rights and welfare of humans participating as subjects in research" (U.S. FDA, 1996). However, there is much to suggest that IRBs have been unable to fulfil this mandate, particularly in regard to the matter of informed consent. Part of the problem in this regard is that the competing interests of other stakeholders often undermine the IRB's capacity to serve the best interests of research subjects. This paper proposes an alternative view of the role of the IRB. It begins by treating the interests of other stakeholders as legitimate matters of concern for IRBs. Hence the process established to review and monitor human research should be treated as an exercise in social justice in which the interests of all legitimate stakeholders must be represented and considered. A variation of Rawls' (1971) heuristic "the veil of ignorance" is employed to explore the dynamic relationship between knowledge and interests that ensues when the role of the IRB is characterized in this manner. Inadequacies in the informed consent process are taken as illustrative of the inability of IRBs as they are presently construed to attend to the interests of research subjects. The major normative implication of the analysis offered here is that the role of the IRB must be expanded to include the granting of a provisional proxy consent on behalf of prospective research subjects. This provision is necessary, it is argued, if the interests of research subjects are to be fairly assessed by IRBs as a matter of social justice. It is necessary as well to ensure that an adequate standard of informed consent is attained. Somewhat paradoxically it is argued that the interests of research subjects are better served when treated as one among a number of competing sets of interests the IRB must serve, rather than as the primary concern of the IRB.

Having labored myself over the concept of justice (McKee, 1987, pp. 52-56, 74-80), I read Ed. O'Boyle's article in the RSE (Winter 1991) with much fellow feeling. Unfortunately, he has relied on Bernard Dempsey's categorization (1958), so that a difficulty within the latter reappears. (1) As Aristotle remarked (Nichomachean Ethics, V, I) and Aquinas repeated (Summa Theologica II-IIae, Q. 58, as. 5 and 7), justice may be taken in a general and in a narrow sense. General justice is a way of referring to the whole of virtue -- which is true, provided God is included in the ad alterum recipients, making what is right and due to others extend to such personal virtues as faith, fortitude, etc. In this way, too, it covers the same ground as Biblical justice or righteousness, so admired today (as in Economic Justice for All, 1986, 39). Many authors have used justice in this wide sense of right relations throughout society (going beyond economics), and Aquinas also termed it justice. By the latter, he presumably meant observance of the natural law (our human participation in Divine law), itself translated into civil law to the extent appropriate (in line with Isidore's definition, S.T. I-IIae, Q. 95, a. 3). Now Fr. Dempsey (1958, pp. 165, 219) collapsed general = legal justice into contributive (meaning partly what civil law requires and partly what is obligatory beyond that), drawing on H. Pesch and Divini Redemptoris (O'Boyle, p. 583). J. Pieper has the same approach (1966, pp. 72-73). But the difficulty is that both general and Aquinas's legal justice are wider concepts and realities than the narrower man-to-community relation requiring a certain equivalence between what is due, and contributed, certainly so in today's society. Day care centers, safety regulations, the electoral process and goodness knows what else are affirmed to be matters of social justice by academe, the media and popular opinion, and, after due qualification, they are correct enough. Much more than narrow contributive justice is involved. My own solution to the problem has been to use justice in a wide sense as equivalent to general justice, taking in the whole of virtue -- including what is due God -- and in a narrow sense as contributive justice. Such an approach harmonizes widespread usage, Biblical concepts and the neo-scholastic tradition. If anybody has a better solution, please let us have it along with sufficient clarification. (2) Next, justice is also properly used in a strict/particular/special sense of giving each his due (Ulpian's definition). I agree with O'Boyle's classification into commutative, distributive and contributive, but he must defend this against the Biblical simplifiers who want to minimize talk of a natural law and do not understand that the neo-scholastic approach is much better to confront the institutions and working of the modern economy and rigorous economic science. All three call, as far as may be determinable, for exact equivalence in what is due from each party. After the easier case of exchange justice, distributive requires an equal in the sense of proportional allocation to recipients, where sharing out the tax burden (cf. Dempsey, 1958, p. 219) and public goods seem the most important matter as far as government-to-individuals is concerned. A similar problem arises for contributive justice. At this point, something must be said about the difficulties of getting from principles of justice to their applications; charts showing common expressions and unjust practices scarcely suffice.(1) Something should be said as well about the slovenly way so many identify distributive justice with justice in distribution (not that I accuse Mgr. Ryan, 1942 of other than bulling the matter through for the sake of his practical message) and equate social justice with one or both. (See Beauchamp and Donaldson, 1982, plus McKee, 1984.) (3) Coming to charity, a distinction will assist O'Boyle's pertinent remarks. …

In Nepal, education is legally recognized as a fundamental human right, yet for millions of children, it remains an unrealized promise. The country’s rights-based approach (RBA), rooted in the 2015 Constitution and international conventions, envisions education as a catalyst for social justice. However, despite this progressive legal architecture, a profound gap persists between policy and practice. Employing a qualitative narrative review of secondary sources, this paper utilizes the Participation, Accountability, Non-discrimination, Empowerment, and Linkage (PANEL) (and Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, Adaptability (AAAQ) (frameworks as analytical lenses. The study investigates how the RBA's implementation is crippled by systemic obstacles, including chronic underfunding, entrenched socio-economic and caste-based discrimination, geographic isolation, and weak institutional capacity. These deep-seated barriers perpetuate a system where education, intended as a great equalizer, functions instead as a mechanism of exclusion, particularly for marginalized communities. This analysis argues that bridging this gap is a matter of social justice that transcends mere legal commitments. Fulfilling the right to education in Nepal requires unwavering political will to implement comprehensive reforms—including decentralized governance, robust accountability systems, and the integration of inclusive pedagogies. Ultimately, ensuring education as a fundamental right is an ethical obligation to unlock the full potential of every child in Nepal.

The paper argues that criminal justice scholarship disseminated through the traditional journal subscription model is not consistent with social justice. Adoption of “open access” principles in publishing benefits both authors and readers through broader and more egalitarian dissemination of criminal justice literature. Moreover, when viewed in light of social justice theory, open access is a more just method of scholarly communication. After providing a brief outline of the history and basic aspects of open access, the paper uses the framework of the social justice theories of John Rawls and David Miller to argue why open access is more just than traditional subscription models of publishing and why criminal justice scholars and their associations must consider the importance of supporting open access initiatives and promoting the dissemination of scholarship as widely as possible if they are concerned about attaining justice for criminal justice scholarly literature.

Post-Covid, upon returning to the classroom, many students, but most especially those from among our more vulnerable populations, have difficulty collaborating and communicating with each other and reconnecting with their learning. We describe how a learning exploration that positioned struggling rising sixth-graders as cricket explorers, who would become cricket experts by observing the habits and behaviors of crickets in their care, nurtured their capacities for collaboration and communication and created a community of deeper learning, for both the students and teacher. That all students have opportunities for deeper learning is a matter of social justice. The exploration took place as a co-curricular activity in a four-week summer scholars program and involved nine students, five boys and four girls.

Ensuring universal access to skilled, mo-tivated and supported health workers, especially in remote and rural communi-ties, is a necessary condition for realizing the human right to health, a matter of social justice. It is also at the core of each and every global health goal – the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, primary health care, immunization, and control of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuber-culosis. For none of these goals is attainable if significant population groups are denied access to health workers.Despite recent increased rhetoric, human resources remain a sorely neglected and grossly under-financed engine for health improvement. That is why 1500 global health leaders issued the Kampala Declaration in 2008: “to assure adequate incentives and an enabling and safe envi-ronment for effective retention and equi-table distribution of the health workforce”.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food security as "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life." The food justice movement is oriented around community-based solutions to food security issues. Through an empirical examination, this chapter studies how public librarians in a rural county in the U.S. state of North Carolina work with community partners to change food systems and address food justice as a matter of social justice. Based on an in-depth case study, featuring interviews with multiple stakeholders in this county, this chapter explores some of the themes that characterize public library involvement in food justice movements, particularly in rural America. A major finding is that librarians transform their communities by working with others. They weave together local resources with external resources and customize useful ideas from the outside to the particularities of the local environment. Through this, sustainability is achieved. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some of the implications of these findings, including the critical importance of building and sustaining cross-sector coalitions that encompass both local communities and national efforts.