Sofia N. Andreou

Higher Education and Equality of Opportunity

Amartya Sen (1992), in the prologue of his well appreciated book “Inequality Reexamined,” sets forth the most fundamental question in the study of inequality: “equality of what?” Irrespectively of someone’s ideological predispositions, we can expect that most people will condemn inequality on the grounds of unfairness. Yet, trying to figure out the “proper” concept of inequality is far more elusive.

An Ultimatum Wage Bargaining Experiment on Trade Union Efficiency

We present an ultimatum wage bargaining experiment showing that a trade union facilitating non-binding communication among workers, raises wages by simultaneously increasing employers’ posted offers and toughening the bargaining position of employees, without reducing overall market efficiency.

Consumers’ valuation of academic and deprivation-compensating aspects of school performance in England

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the willingness of households to pay for academic and deprivation-compensating components of the Contextual Value Added (CVA) indicator of school quality used in England in order to locate themselves in the catchment area of state schools. Deprivation-compensating school performance, defined as the difference in the disadvantaged intake between two schools with the same academic performance. Design/methodology/approach The empirical analysis, based on data drawn from three independent UK data sources, used parametric and non-parametric analysis approaches. The analysis conducted separately for primary and secondary schools, because household behaviour can differ between these two levels of education. Findings Consumers are willing to pay for houses in the catchment area of primary and secondary schools with high academic achievement, as measured by the mean score; whereas, the component of the CVA indicating deprivation-compensating aspects of school performance is found to have a positive effect only on the price of houses in the catchment area of primary schools in London; its impact on the price of houses elsewhere is mostly negative. Practical implications The analysis in this study suggested that the recently adopted practice of using CVA as a measure of school quality in England can encourage government and Local Authorities to pay more attention to raising the deprivation-compensating aspects of school performance of their schools. Originality/value This is the first study to explore the value which households attach to deprivation-compensating outcomes, at a given level of academic performance using the CVA indicator.

Do low‐income Cypriots experience food stress? The cost of a healthy food basket relative to guaranteed minimum income in Nicosia, Cyprus

AIM The aim of the present study was to assess the cost, acceptability and affordability of the healthy food basket (HFB) among low-income families in Cyprus. METHODS HFBs were constructed based on the National Guidelines for Nutrition and Exercise for six different types of households. Acceptability was tested through focus groups. Affordability was defined as the cost of the HFB as a percentage of the guaranteed minimum income (GMI). The value of the GMI is set to be equal to €480 for a single individual and increases with the size of the recipient unit in accordance with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development equivalence scales. The Ministry of Labour estimates that, on average, nearly 50% of the GMI is required for food. RESULTS The total monthly budget for HFB is 0.80, 1.11, 1.27, 1.28, 1.44 and 1.48 times higher than the GMI budget for food among different types of households in Cyprus (a single woman, a single man, a couple, a single woman with two children, a single man with two children and a couple with two children, respectively). In particular, a family with two children on GMI would need to spend a large proportion of their income on the HFB (71.68%). CONCLUSIONS The GMI scheme appears not to consider the cost of healthy food, and thus, families on welfare payments in Cyprus are at a high risk of experiencing food stress. Therefore, additional research is required to measure the cost of the six HFBs in various settings.

The value of state education to consumers in the UK

Abstract This paper considers the value of state schooling, as perceived by consumers, taking into account that many households supplement the minimum education provided free of charge with out-of-pocket payments through acquiring accommodation in the catchment area of a high-quality state school. It suggests ways to circumvent difficulties in modelling household behaviour arising from joint housing-education consumption in the context of a two-stage demand system, where the proposed money metric of state schooling can be estimated from data readily available in household expenditure surveys. The empirical analysis, based on UK data, estimates this money metric as the amount households with school-age children would be willing to accept in order to opt out of the state education system. The efficiency and distributional implications of the empirical findings are discussed.

Developing a food basket for fulfilling physical and non-physical needs in Cyprus. Is it affordable?

Background An acceptable and affordable food basket (FB) is necessary to meet not only physical (healthy) needs but also the non-physical needs of individuals and communities. FBs were developed based on the Cypriot national food-based dietary guidelines for six types of household: single woman (±40 years), single man (±40 years), a couple (±40 years) without children, single woman (±40 years) with two children (10-year-old boy and 14-year-old girl), single man (±40 years) with two children and a couple (±40 years) with two children. Non-physical needs (kitchen equipment, physical activity and other related functions of food) were added to the baskets. The cost, acceptability and feasibility of FB were examined through the focus group discussions. Affordability was defined as the cost of the each basket as a percentage of household income (Guaranteed Minimum Income [GMI]). The budget for healthy food has the highest proportion in the total food budget (83-89%) compared with the other components. The part of the budget required for other functions of food is small compared with that of healthy food and ranged between 4.7 and 6.7% of the total monthly budget. For low-income families, the proportion of income that needs to be spent on the FB for physical needs and FB for physical and non-physical needs ranged from around 39 to 72% and 47 to 81%, respectively. The FB fulfilling physical and non-physical needs is not affordable among the low-income families (mainly with children) receiving the GMI scheme in Cyprus.

The Cypriot food basket for health and adequate social participation

Introduction: In many countries, grandparents as care-takers provide food to children or not. The influence of parents on the dietary habits of children and/or adolescents has been studied enough. However, not so for grandparents. Aim: To investigate the possible relationship between foods offered by their grandparents and consumption of that food by teenagers. Method and materials: Data was analyzed from 246 adolescents (aged 12-17.5 years), who had responded in self-administered questionnaires evaluating dietary habits that grandparents offered them food. For analytic purposes adolescents were split into two groups, different for each analysis based on the type of food grandparents brought: a) group A, my grandparents offer me “this type of food” and group B, my grandparents do not offer me “this type of food”. The food choices offered were salty snacks, sweets, fruits, sodas and other foods. Results: Statistical analysis revealed that group A consumed more often the food offered by grandparents compared to group B, only for fruits (p1⁄40.027) and sweets (p 0.001). Conclusions: Preliminary results revealed a positive relationship between food offered by grandparents and consumption of that food by adolescents, stimulating interest in possible participation of grandparents in health promotion programs for adolescents. However, since the sample was not representative of the population and that the study was cross-sectional, it is necessary to carry out larger and better designed study in order to confirm our findings.

A consumer demand approach to estimating the education quality component of housing cost

A consumer demand-based approach is proposed for estimating the shadow price of education relative to housing for households with children in state schools. This approach can be used together with or in place of a hedonic approach in countries in which the location of households is not disclosed in publicly available data. An empirical illustration is provided using UK data from the family expenditure surveys.