Kashmir: all tactics,no strategy

Despite a recent deescalation of military tensions and the fairest election in more than two decades, Kashmiris do not express much optimism about their future. If this skepticism is justified, perhaps it is due to a near-universal emphasis on short-term tactics at the expense of long-term strategy. Virtually all parties to the conflict in Kashmir – whether based in New Delhi, Islamabad, Srinagar or Muzaffarabad, seem to be thinking tactically rather than strategically. The one notable is the most implacable segment of the jihadist militants: all the more reason to be pessimistic.     

Escaping poverty and becoming poor in 36 villages of Central and Western Uganda

Twenty-four per cent of households in 36 village communities of Central and Western Uganda have escaped from poverty over the past 25 years, but another 15 per cent have simultaneously fallen into poverty. A roughly equal number of households escaped from poverty in the first period (ten to 25 years ago) as in the second period (the last ten years) examined here. However, almost twice as many households fell into poverty during the second period as in the first period. Progress in poverty reduction has slowed down as a result. Multiple causes are associated with descent into poverty and these causes vary significantly between villages in the two different regions. For nearly two-thirds of all households in both regions, however, ill health and health-related costs were a principal reason for descent into poverty. Escaping poverty is also associated with diverse causes, which vary across the two regions. Compared to increases in urban employment, however, land-related reasons have been more important for escaping poverty in both regions.     

UNPACKING COMPLEX MEDIATION MECHANISMS AND THEIR HETEROGENEITY BETWEEN SITES IN A JOB CORPS EVALUATION

This study aims to test the theory underlying Job Corps, one of the largest education and training programs in the U.S. serving disadvantaged youth. Central to the program are vocational training and general education that serve as two concurrent mediators transmitting the program impact on earnings. To distinguish the relative contribution of each, we develop methods for decomposing the Job Corps impact on earnings into an indirect effect transmitted through vocational training, an indirect effect transmitted through general education, and a direct effect attributable to supplementary services. We further ask whether general education and vocational training reinforce each other and produce a joint impact greater than the sum of the two separate pathways. Moreover, we examine the heterogeneity of each causal effect across all the Job Corps centers. This article presents concepts and methods for defining, identifying, and estimating not only the population averages but also the between‐site variance of these causal effects. Our analytic procedure incorporates a series of weighting strategies to enhance the internal and external validity of the results and assesses the sensitivity to potential violations of the identification assumptions.