In Algeria, modern agriculture was introduced in the Saharan region through the implementation of the law n° 83–18 of August 13, 1983, relating to access to agricultural land ownership (Fr. Accession à la Propriété Foncière Agricole (APFA) in French). This law was hugely successful and sparked a real enthusiasm for this type of activity, which resulted in an expansion of agricultural areas at the M’Zab level, similar to that observed in other Saharan regions. Over the past decades, the agricultural area has declined markedly (–0.4%), which was due to multiple causes, including ecological problems, such as urban discharges and the rise in the water level. So far, little research has been done to assess the agricultural situation and irrigation in this region. The objective of this work is to analyse and discuss the constraints and impacts of water and agricultural management on sustainability of the ecosystem in the Saharan environment. This work is based on extensive research, which has been carried out in the M’Zab region on the oasis system and its evolution. It was enriched with dozens of direct surveys, performed among farmers working in agricultural areas. The results show that agricultural development and the sustainability of farms in this region face several technical and social constraints, the most important of which are the workforce-related problems and water management. Several measures have been recommended to be taken not only to preserve the ecosystem but also to give significance to the large investments made by the public authorities.

Recently, in most developed economies, the average age of the workforce has been growing rapidly. Therefore, the questions arise how will it affect the level of wages and the shape of age-productivity and age-wage profiles. The aim of the paper is to analyse the relationship between changes in the age structure of the employment and wages of individuals in minor occupational groups. Using individual data from the Structure of Earnings Survey in Poland in 2006-2014 we created an unique database of individual wages and the characteristics of employed in occupational groups at 3-digit level of classification. In our analysis we used an extended version of Mincerian wage model where both the characteristics of employees (education, work tenure, age, gender, and type of employment contract) and employers (size and ownership sector) were taken into account. The results for the whole sample indicate a significant and negative relationship between the proportion of older workers in employment in a given occupational group and individual wages. However, when the analyses were performed separately for each of the 1-digit occupational groups, the results varied significantly. In those groups where knowledge and qualifications of employees are more important than physical strength had to be updated permanently, an increase in the number of the older workers raises the average wages.

The purpose of this article is to determine what can we learn about the changing demographics of scientific personnel around the world and over time using available global bibliometric data sources. We wanted to see how useful global data could be for analyzing the scientific workforce. We tested how the demographic transformation of the global scientific profession can be measured using new data sources, thus transcending the traditional approach in which national statistics from national statistical offices are aggregated to a higher level, as in the case of the scientific workforce databases produced by the OECD, UNESCO and the European Union (Eurostat).