Social Science sites of the week

Only 25% of the public have confidence in MPs’ handling of Brexit
According to the latest issue of Democratic Audit which also has the results of questions with over 1198 adults ace to face ipso Mori 30 November -12 December 2018This is the 16th such survey and the report allows mappings of trends in confidence in politicians, political engagement and activity level of satisfaction with the British government. The full report and methodology can be downloaded from the website.View more of this week’s reports on brexit including the video broadcasts from Theresa May on our blog. We are also adding reaction to the Brexit extension.
London’s new Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ)- what is it? what is it for?


This week London’s new Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) was put into force.
A good blog posting for understanding its aims and background is on the Conversation.
The Transport for London website - has a postcode and vehicle checker which enables users to find out who is effected and where.
Its supporting evidence pages has the consultation documents, proposals and medical facts and assessments on air pollution in London
Pollution in London- reports and projects

use these sites to find examples of useful research
London Assembly Committee reports on health and the environment
City of London reports on air quality. Includes a strategy and monitoring reports.
London Councils has reports on projects in individual London boroughs. they also have this useful report on demystifying air pollution in London
Londonair is the website of the London Air Quality Network (LAQN), and shows air pollution in London and south east England. It is run the Environmental Research Group of King's College London. It has a live update of air quality in London now as well as data and cumulative reports.

Has vehicle charging had an impact on air quality?
London air quality has links to a number of academic journal articles.
Beevers 2004 found that ' . The evidence presented shows that the congestion charging schemes could assist in attaining both the UK government’s targets on air pollution as well as those relating to climate change and other international obligations.'
Colin P. Green, John. S. Heywood and Maria Navarro in a Lancaster university Working paper from 2018 found.
' significant reductions in a number of pollutants relative to controls' '. 'Yet, we find a robust countervailing increase in harmful NO2 likely reflecting the disproportionate share of diesel vehicles exempt from the congestion charge. This unintended consequence informs on-going concern about pollution from diesel based vehicles'
For more articles on air pollution and health see the WHO website which has special factsheets.and search Pubmed for abstracts and some free online scientific and medical articles


World Health Day - Universal Health Coverage- is it possible?
World Health Day is held on the 7th April
This year the theme was promoting Universal Health Coverage.
UHC means that all individuals and communities can access health services It includes all sectors from health promotion, to in patient and out patient care. A key factor is access, cost and affordability for all
View the WHO resolution on this
and statement by the WHO director in 2019

What progress is being made?

In 2017 a joint monitoring report from the World Bank and the World Health Organization found that despite some progress on UHC, at least half of the world’s population still cannot obtain essential health services
In a more recent Lancet article Mark Moses et al
reviewed 'Funding and services needed to achieve universal health coverage: applications of global, regional, and national estimates of utilisation of outpatient visits and inpatient admissions from 1990 to 2016, and unit costs from 1995 to 2016' . Globally, they estimated the gap to UHC to be I$1177·69 billion (international dollars; 95% uncertainty interval 896·05–1456·56)
A recent blog posting on the World Economic Forum website highlights challenges and changes that may need to be made.

African Civil Society organisations stated in December 2018 'Many international agencies and NGOs do not understand the African context' and put forward a set of proposals for reform.

In 2018 Oxfam highlighted problems in implementing UHC due to inequality

In July 2017, the IDS hosted a workshop in collaboration with Future Health Systems, the Impact Initiative, the Open Society Foundations, Unequal Voices, and Health Systems Global, to develop new thinking and practical approaches to improving accountability relationships and processes in favour of greater health equity. Access papers relating to this.

In 2018 Health Systems Global has reports on the role of the private sector in Health services provision.

Further research
Good places to look include:
Pubmed is always good for abstracts of recent high quality academic articles. With the emphasis on medical

UHC2030 is a global movement of countries and organisations which seeks to implement UHC provision. Its website has plans and progress reports

The World Bank website provides access to further reports and news covering UHC
Likewise the main WHO website also has updates
the IOM outlines its efforts in this recent posting

Management Sciences For Health, a nonprofit health organization has a section on its website which aims to gather together publications and reports on UTC and global health security

The Save the Children Resource Library also has copies of its own reports, plus those from other aid agencies and some international organisations on this topic.


Has the Gender pay gap worsened?

The media has reported that gap in wages between men and women is widening despite the regulations for reporting. An urgent question was asked in parliament last week on this topic.

Which emphasised that the most recent deadline was in April 2019, The EHRC has data from the first round and progress reports. A blog post on 28th March gives early predictions and some discussion of impact.

The CIPD found , that most organisations are taking their responsibility for reporting seriously. But some are struggling to provide an accurate picture of their gender pay gap and not enough are providing a meaningful narrative to explain their gap, or developing an action plan to close it

IEA also found significant problems with the way the data is reported

The House of Commons Library produced a briefing in November 2018


Citing Africa podcast series.

This is a useful resource for those interested in decolonising the university. Citing Africa is funded by the LSE Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fund, the LSE Department of International Development and the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) journal. It seeks to address a worrying decline in African based contributions to journals by considering why this happens and offering practical suggestions on publication for would be writers. All the editions are available on the special website.
The Citing Africa podcast .

Gender, race and money in politics database

The Center for Responsive Politics has just released a new database which enables researchers to explore the interaction between gender and race in US campaign funding. Typical questions it hopes to answer include:

Do a candidate's race and gender affect the challenges of fundraising? How do the sources and amounts of funding differ by gender and race of candidates? Methodology on the racial categories used (which were self reporting ) is also provided. Based on open access FEC data filing

The Open Apparel Registry (OAR)
A super Crowdsourced map developed by supply chain transparency platform Sourcemap, and funded by the C&A Foundation, sourcing data from organisations like the Fair Factories Clearinghouse and dozens of brands such as Gap and Nike. which aims to track the actual location of clothing factories and brands worldwide. It uses Google's Geo-coding to identify yarn and fabric mills, textile dye-houses and finishers as well as garment manufacturing facilities. Currently, over 65,000 suppliers are already listed. So for instance if you search for contributors you can highlight a store name such as clarks shoes or next and see lists of suppliers mapped and names of factories. These can be downloaded in csv files. More detail on the project supplied by the blog

Finally on an Easter theme

Listen to the Easter Bunny Song. It is part of the enormous
Boston public library 78 collection which is now online comprising over 50,000 titles all with catalogue records
 Browse by artist or era. Also available is the Easter Parade.