Heterogeneity in the Intrahousehold Allocation of International Remittances: Evidence from Philippine Households

This article shows that heterogeneity in the intrahousehold allocation of remittances sent by temporary international migrant workers exists among households in the Philippines, and may be attributable to the absence of the spouse, suggesting moral hazard, and to the gender and educational attainment of the household head, indicating differences in preferences. GLM estimates and post-estimation tests reveal that male heads spend more on alcohol and tobacco, that the presence of a female decision-maker in a household increases allocations to goods that improve the welfare of the children, and that household heads with less formal education allocate more to education.     

Suicide reporting content analysis: abstract development and reliability

Despite substantial research on media influences and the development of media guidelines on suicide reporting, research on the specifics of media stories that facilitate suicide contagion has been limited. The goal of the present study was to develop a content analytic strategy to code features in media suicide reports presumed to be influential in suicide contagion and determine the interrater reliability of the qualitative characteristics abstracted from newspaper stories. A random subset of 151 articles from a database of 1851 newspaper suicide stories published during 1988 through 1996, which were collected as part of a national study in the United States to identify factors associated with the initiation of youth suicide clusters, were evaluated. Using a well-defined content-analysis procedure, the agreement between raters in scoring key concepts of suicide reports from the headline, the pictorial presentation, and the text were evaluated. The results show that while the majority of variables in the content analysis were very reliable, assessed using the kappa statistic, and obtained excellent percentages of agreement, the reliability of complicated constructs, such as sensationalizing, glorifying, or romanticizing the suicide, was comparatively low. The data emphasize that before effective guidelines and responsible suicide reporting can ensue, further explication of suicide story constructs is necessary to ensure the implementation and compliance of responsible reporting on behalf of the media.     

Nato Bombing of Kosovo: Humanitarian Intervention or Crime against Humanity?

For 78 days in 1999, NATO forces led by theUnited States bombed Yugoslavia, killinghundreds of its civilians and devastating itsinfrastructure. NATO spokesmen justified thebombardment as ``humanitarian intervention'aimed at halting President Slobodan Milosevic's``ethnic cleansing' of non-Serbs in Yugoslavia. This essay deconstructs NATO's rationalizationsand analyzes other more sinister motives forthe bombing. By containing Yugoslavia, andmaintaining a permanent presence in Kosovo, theUnited States seeks to ensure its access toCaspian Sea oil, and to maintain economichegemony over Europe. U.S. activities inother countries, such as Turkey, corroboratethe non-``humanitarian' motives for the bombingof Yugoslavia. Finally, the essay analyzes whyNATO's so-called ``humanitarian' bombardment ofYugoslavia was rather a ``crime againsthumanity' undertaken in violation ofinternational law.