A Vaccination for Education: Early Childhood Development Programme and the Education of Older Girls in Rural India

Girls lag behind boys in education in India and relatively more provide childcare at home. This paper investigates whether provision of childcare services by India’s largest child development programme narrows the gender education gap by reducing childcare costs. Using logit, village fixed effects and mother fixed effects, I find that girls 6–14 years old, whose younger sibling 0–5 years old is receiving any of the programme services intensely, are at least three percentage points more likely to be in school than similar boys. Further, I find that these girls are also more likely to complete early primary grades than boys.     

The Impact of Microcredit on Child Education: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Rural China

Abstract

This article assesses causal effects of formal microcredit on children’s educational outcomes by using household panel data (2000 and 2004) in north-west rural China. The unobservables between borrowers and non-borrowers are controlled in static and dynamic regression-discontinuity designs. The static analysis reveals significant positive impact of microcredit on schooling years in 2000 only, and no influence on academic performance for either wave. The dynamic analysis shows progressive treatment effects on both longer schooling years and higher average scores. Formal microcredit improves education in the longer term compared to the short term, and hence may help relaxing the grip of educational poverty traps.     

Spousal Bargaining Over Care for Elderly Parents in China: Imbalances in Sex Ratios Influence the Allocation of Support

Using a unique Chinese survey of parents and adult children, this paper examines how married children negotiate with their spouses for time devoted to caring for their own parents. Applying a collective bargaining framework, I show that the sex ratio at marriage shifts household bargaining in favour of the husband’s parents when women are less scarce, or against his parents when women are scarcer. Such changing dynamics in the family may potentially reverse the current preference for sons in China, implying that those with sons, rather than daughters, may be increasingly in need of state support.     

Health Care Versus Border Care: Justification and Hypocrisy in the Multilevel Negotiation of Irregular Migrants’ Access to Fundamental Rights and Services

Abstract

Providing—and also not providing—public services to unlawful residents implies a certain cost for host societies, and both inclusion and exclusion involve localized renegotiations of fundamental rights, legitimate needs, and social membership. Based on original qualitative research data, this article compares how, why, and under which conditions irregular migrants are granted or denied access to healthcare services provided in London and Barcelona. From a multi-level perspective and by drawing on organization theory, I highlight key differences in how the responsible governments deal with the underlying contradictions and thereby either help or hinder effective policy implementation.     

试论“全球卫生外交”对中国的影响与挑战

全球卫生外交是近年来在国际上日益受到关注的一个词汇。在国际学术界,对其理论和实践的研究已经成为一个跨学科的热点研究领域。作为该领域中的重要角色,中国正发挥越来越重要的作用。自新中国成立以来,中国参与卫生外交的历程大致可以分为四个阶段,每个阶段都有显著特征。2003年的非典事件是一个重要的分水岭。卫生外交虽属低级政治领域,但已经并正在对中国产生多方面的重要影响。作为一个拥有13亿人口的发展中大国,中国在参与全球卫生外交的过程中所面临的问题和挑战也是多方面的,需要调动各方面的智慧来积极应对。     

中德职业教育之比较

中国和德国职业教育的发展历程 中国的职业教育经历了漫长的发展过程，学徒制是古代职业教育的遗产。明代中叶，资本主义萌芽在江南各地陆续出现，产生了实业教育。20世纪50年代，曾经有过“双元制”的影子，许多国有大中型企业都办有职业技术学校，     

Health strategy and development planning: Lessons from the people's republic of China

In Section I of this paper we present an analytical paradigm by which to evaluate health and medical care services in underdeveloped countries. In Section II, we apply this framework to an analysis of the health policies of one developing country, China. In Section III, we evaluate the Chinese health and medical care policies within the framework of a cost‐benefit analysis and argue that these policies are appropriate to China's factor proportions and health needs. Finally, in Section IV, we raise a number of questions to be considered in any more detailed studies on the transferring of the Chinese services to other developing countries.     

Local Council Development Areas and Local Service Delivery: How a Fourth-tier Government Unit is Improving Access to Primary Health Care and Education Services in Lagos,Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Emerging accidentally from an array of political and legal contestations is a fourth-tier government unit in Lagos state – Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs). The LCDAs have survived almost two decades of existence without the ’traditional’ monthly federal allocation, which has been the mainstay of the existing 774 LGAs in Nigeria. This study attempts an explanation of this apparent survival by examining the institutional structure of the LCDAs vis-à-vis their service delivery performance. Different from earlier studies that have examined service delivery using final outcomes, the study examines accessibility as an intermediate output; dimensioned as availability, adequacy and affordability. Using a mixed-methods research design, the study shows that Lagos LCDAs’ inclusive operational structure is significantly improving access to primary health care and education services. Thus, the study finds evidence within the operational structure of Lagos LCDAs for Acemoglu and Robinson’s theory of inclusive and extractive institutions.     

Institutionalizing from the Middle: the Impacts of Provincial Legislation on Rural Grassroots Democracy in China

Nominal democratic institutions under non-democratic regimes vary across countries. This study intends to advance our understanding of such institutions by exploring the relevance of one aspect of the authoritarian regimes, government hierarchy. Focusing on village-level democratization in China, we investigate the intermediary role of the provincial level governments in shaping the variant outcomes of grassroots democracy across the country. Through an analysis of a national sample, we find that divergent provincial legislative interpretation of central policies is a key determinant of public access to power and democratic governance of village-level governments. Our finding suggests that authoritarian states can employ various institutions to gather information, accommodate local variations, and thus contain potential intra-government disagreement.     

Sources of Income,Mental Health and Quality of Life in Rural Russia

This article reports on a survey examining sources of income and their effects on the mental health and subjective quality of life of residents in nine rural Russian regions. Using conventional measures of depressed mood and respondents' assessments of the quality of their lives in different domains, the authors find that the emergence of a mixed economy, that generates income from salary and wages and household enterprises, as well as government transfers, has produced differentiation in the subjective psychological as well as material quality of rural residents' lives.     

Uninsured Health Shocks and Agricultural Productivity among Rural Households: The Mitigating Role of Micro-credit

This article investigates how health shocks affect farm productivity in the presence of microcredit. It is expected that microcredit increases agricultural productivity by enhancing allocative and technical efficiency and by overcoming financial constraints that reduce purchase of inputs. However, microcredit will have competing uses in the event of uninsured health shocks to the household. Using an endogenous switching regression model and after accounting for self-selection, the results reveal that microcredit has a significant mitigating effect on farm productivity losses. Thus, microcredit generates a double dividend among smallholders serving as insurance against health shocks in rural areas and improving agricultural productivity.     

发达国家农民工社会保障经验及对中国的启示

人权保障是当今国际社会的重要话题,受到国际社会的普遍关注。实践反复证明,资本主义市场经济条件下的广大劳工,不是市场经济的局外人,而是市场经济的重要主体;不是无足轻重的雇佣奴隶,而是对市场经济发展有重大影响的“利害攸关者”。     

Labour Migration and Health of Left-Behind Children in China

With rapid urbanisation, millions of people from rural areas have migrated to major cities for employment, leaving their young children at home. This labour migration creates substantial mental and physical challenges for these left-behind children. This study establishes two empirical models for comparing the health status of left-behind children with that of children in rural areas without migrant parents and with that of migrant children in urban areas. Our empirical findings reveal that parental migration negatively affects the height and weight indices of left-behind children. The effects are particularly prominent for younger children, when both parents migrate or when parents migrate out of province.     

The Impact of Drinking Water Quality and Sanitation on Child Health: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

This paper examines the association between stored drinking water quality and sanitation on diarrhoea incidence among under-five children in Ethiopia. Using primary household survey data and microbiological water quality testing for Escherichia coli, our results show that uncontaminated stored drinking water and safe child stool disposal are associated with decreased child diarrhoea incidences of 18 and 20 percentage points, respectively. In contrast, neighbourhood concentration of pit latrine shows an increased incidence of child diarrhoea of 16 percentage points. To protect rural children from the risk of contracting diarrhoea, improving household drinking water quality and changing people’s behaviour towards safe sanitation practices is needed.     

对我国流浪儿童教育问题的探讨

本文主要采用定性研究的方法,以作者在各地进行的实地走访、考察为基础,并借鉴有关文献资料,提出以下观点:流浪儿童教育是一个系统工程,需要针对流浪儿童所处的具体情境制订不同的教育方案;从目前我国流浪儿童救助保护机构的现状来看,由于只是在短期内对流浪儿童提供保护教育服务,教育的重点应该是德育,即正确的人生观和价值观的教育;教育的目的应该是在短时期内对被教育者进行正确观点的灌输,以期对流浪儿童发生最有震撼力的影响;为了达到这样的目的,从事流浪儿童教育的教育工作者应该也接受过社会工作的训练。     

The Bang for the Birr: Public Expenditures and Rural Welfare in Ethiopia

This article explores the impact of different types of public spending on rural household welfare in Ethiopia. The analysis reveals that public spending on road infrastructure is characterised by relatively high, but regionally strongly concentrated, returns in terms of rural household welfare. This is quite in contrast to the returns to public expenditures in education, which have attributes of much wider reach but less intensity. Public investments in agriculture show results that are low in magnitude and in statistical significance, mostly due to a poor link between public expenditures in agriculture and productivity in the sector.     

论我国社区居民健康档案的研究意义

建设社区居民健康档案是社区卫生服务的重要组成部分,社区卫生服务发展又是我国卫生事业改革的重要组成。因此社区居民健康档案建设是国家基本公共卫生服务项目的重要组成部分,是其他社区卫生服务的基础性和关键性工作,它是掌握居民健康状况,变化趋势和决策制度的重要资料。