Double Penalty in Returns to Education: Informality and Educational Mismatch in the Colombian Labour Market

This article examines the returns to education taking into consideration the existence of educational mismatches in the formal and informal employment of a developing country. Results show that the returns of surplus, required and deficit years of schooling are different in the two sectors. Moreover, they suggest that these returns vary along the wage distribution, and that the pattern of variation differs for formal and informal workers. In particular, informal workers face not only lower returns to their education, but suffer a second penalty associated with educational mismatches that puts them at a greater disadvantage compare to their formal counterparts.     

Using job evaluation to achieve pay equity

Job evaluation has become linked to debates over comparable worth. Proponents of pay equity complain that job evaluation is often biased against predominantly female jobs. Nonetheless, job evaluation is proposed as a tool to achieve more equitable pay for predominantly female jobs. We discuss ways in which conventionally used job evaluation plans incorporate sex bias and how these biases may be minimized. We conclude that, when care is taken to avoid sex bias, job evaluation is the best available tool to achieve pay equity. We predict that its use will grow, particularly in the public sector.     

Assessing international aid for local governance in the Western Balkans

This article investigates the impact of international efforts to cultivate effective and authoritative local governing institutions in the Western Balkans, a prime testing ground for democratization aid to post-war states. It explores three hypotheses, each of which argues that a particular approach of international actors toward domestic officials best improves the quality of local governance. The study's gathering of interview and survey data from field-based actors enables it to evaluate local government reforms' impact on domestic communities. This investigation arrives at three findings. First, in the view of Western Balkan peoples, local governance reforms do not produce benefits when they are either imposed or ignored by international authorities. Secondly, reforms produce benefits for local communities when they are designed to meet domestic concerns. More specifically, reforms valued by local communities are designed in ways that respond to domestic, rather than international, concepts of good local governance that emphasize socioeconomic aspects and produce tangible benefits. Well designed reforms also include significant aid targeting local governance that is coupled with the promise of a larger political settlement that is attractive to powerful domestic elites and contingent on clearly articulated local governance reforms. Thirdly, such aid best characterises European Union efforts only in Macedonia.     

Ethylene glycol poisoning

A 40-year-old man was admitted to the emergency department after a suicide attempt. The patient was found at home unconscious, with an open bottle of antifreeze near him. The patient was in a coma on admission, but neurological examination excluded intracranial changes. Results of initial urine and serum toxicological screening tests were negative. Laboratory values indicated metabolic acidosis, leukocytosis, urinalysis revealed hematuria and unrecognized crystals. Osmolality and osmol gap were not determined on patient admission. Treatment with ethanol as an antidote and hemodialysis were started because of metabolic acidosis, anamnestic data and clinical status of the patient, and subsequently led to improvement of his condition. Further toxicological analyses of glycolic and oxalic acids in serum and urine samples were performed by ion-chromatography (IC) method and showed high values in spot urine and serum ultrafiltrate at admission, but during therapy the values progressively decreased. Treatment of poisoned patient for 3 weeks resulted in complete recovery.     

What Does the Epidemic of Childhood Obesity Mean for Children with Special Health Care Needs?

Bringing the 12.8% of children with special healthcare needs into the national response to the childhood obesity epidemic will require new information, a view of health promotion beyond that which occurs within healthcare systems, and services and supports in addition to the multi-sectoral strategies presently designed for children overall. These efforts are necessary to protect the health of the nation's 9.4 million children with special health care needs now and long-term.     

Sexual orientation as a justice issue: Issues of postmodern social philosophy and religion for civil rights

This essay theoretically explores three core concerns for social justice research and analysis in the transition from social and legal philosophical foundations based upon Enlightenment categorical universals to a postmodern context that recognizes concurrent globalization and the constructed nature of particular status identities. Utilizing sexual orientation as a case study, the concerns are, what constitutes a civil right in a postmodern context, how useful are categories versus behaviors in protecting civil rights, and how does religion affect the civil morality that justifies and legitimates justice criteria? The argument is made that a justice construct for sexual orientation must rely both on behavioral freedoms and ontological status for adequate protection of human dignity and equality. It also is argued that interreligious discourse is essential to reparticularize religiomoral assumptions that have justified inequality and to provide an adequate negotiated grounding to legitimate shared norms upon which postmodern justice philosophy can be built.