Utility Subsidies as Social Transfers: An Empirical Evaluation of Targeting Performance

Subsidies to residential utility customers are important in‐kind transfer mechanisms in developing countries. Do these subsidies reach the poor? This article finds the average targeting performance of water and electricity subsidies to be similar to that of other social‐transfer mechanisms using the same targeting method. The most common form — a quantity‐based consumption subsidy aiming to subsidise low‐volume customers — is highly regressive. Many geographically‐targeted and most means‐tested utility subsidies are progressive, but still exclude many poor households. Connection subsidies are an attractive alternative in low coverage areas, but they will only reach the poor if utilities extend network access to poor households and if households choose to connect.     

Bad Boys and School Suspensions: Public Policy Implications for Black Males

The focus of this research is the disciplinary policy of school suspension and its effect on black male students. We examined the application of public school suspensions by race and sex in an integrated school district in the southeastern portion of the United States. Data for the study were compiled from oficial records housed in the administrative complex for the entire school district. The suspensions cover one academic year from September of 1983 through June of 1984. During this period of time black males were disproportionately suspended in both the elementary and secondary schools. This finding is consistent with other research noting that black students, and in particular black male students, are disproportionately affected by the various policies of public schools. We then discuss the implications of these findings for black males. Policies which limit educational opportunities for black males increase the probability of their need for welfare services, incarceration in prisons, and commitment to mental hospitals. Our conclusion is that the policy of suspending problem students is not only an effort by elementary and secondary school administrators and faculty to remove bad boys but is also one of several policies which limit educational opportunities for black males.     

Women’s Voluntary Organizations in Canada: Bridgers,Bonders, or Both?

Using a sample of 645 voluntary organizations in Canada, this study explores the differences between women’s voluntary organizations and gender-neutral organizations in their propensity to form a bridging or a bonding interorganizational relationship. The results suggest that not only do women’s organizations in Canada collaborate more than gender-neutral organizations, but also the tendency to have bridging or bonding relationships is significantly different. The factors predisposing women’s organizations to have collaborators inside or outside their network seems to be affected by how much the environmental changes in Canada impact their survival and whether the nature of the causes they support makes them an attractive partner. For gender-neutral organizations the tendency to bridge or bond seems to relate more to traditional organizational characteristics, such as size and staffing efficiency.     

Coming to terms: a discussion of John Ogbu’s cultural‐ecological theory of minority academic achievement

Over the course of 30 years of academic work, the late educational anthropologist John Ogbu had an enormous influence on educational research, and on educational anthropology in particular. In this paper, I lay out the tenets of his cultural‐ecological (CE) theory of minority student responses to schooling. I also offer critical commentary and point out ways in which CE theory can be sharpened to facilitate increasingly nuanced and accurate analyses. Even as I point to specific problems in Dr Ogbu’s work, my suggestions for enhancing CE theory do not contradict its basic tenets, which provide a solid resource for researchers who study minority student communities. Rather, they add nuance to it by incorporating recent developments in anthropological theory.     

Families, orphans and children under stress in Zimbabwe

This paper evaluates a programme called FOCUS in Zimbabwe: Families, Orphans, and Children under Stress. The programme was initiated in 1993 and works with seven community groups, providing support to around 6500 children in 2000 households. The programme succeeds through committed community volunteers, who made over 93,000 visits to households in 1999. Communities are mobilised by building on existing practices, using natural entry points, and careful selection of local volunteers and supervisors. There is good community ownership, extremely low volunteer turnover, and reporting systems verify that aims and objectives are met. The programme maintains good ethics, addresses a range of children's rights, and is sustainable through a mixture of donor funds, FACT (sponsoring organisation) support and community support. Issues of concern include better recognition of psycho-social needs, prevention and protection from sexual abuse, reducing stigma and discrimination, increasing child-centred approaches and participation, and reducing gender imbalance among volunteers.     

Instrumental Variables for Logistic Regression: An Illustration

The estimated effect of a regressor on an outcome is inconsistent when that regressor is determined simultaneously with that outcome. Instrumental variables estimation is a means of obtaining consistent parameter estimates in this situation. The best-known form of instrumental variables is two-stage least squares; unfortunately, this procedure cannot be simply extended to non-linear models such as logistic regression. Instrumental variables estimation, however, is still possible, and using the Generalized Method of Moments, this paper is the first to produce instrumental variables estimates for logistic regression. Obtaining these estimates is easy using widely available software. An illustrative example is provided. This methodology should be useful to social scientists familiar with 2SLS and logistic regression.     

Metabolism, energy, and entropy in Marx's critique of political economy: Beyond the Podolinsky myth

Until recently, most commentators, including ecological Marxists, have assumed that Marx's historical materialism was only marginally ecologically sensitive at best, or even that it was explicitly anti-ecological. However, research over the last decade has demonstrated not only that Marx deemed ecological materialism essential to the critique of political economy and to investigations into socialism, but also that his treatment of the coevolution of nature and society was in many ways the most sophisticated to be put forth by any social theorist prior to the late twentieth century. Still, criticisms continue to be leveled at Marx and Engels for their understanding of thermodynamics and the extent to which their work is said to conflict with the core tenets of ecological economics. In this respect, the rejection by Marx and Engels of the pioneering contributions of the Ukrainian socialist Sergei Podolinsky, one of the founders of energetics, has been frequently offered as the chief ecological case against them. Building on an earlier analysis of Marx's and Engels's response to Podolinsky, this article shows that they relied on an open-system, metabolic-energetic model that adhered to all of the main strictures of ecological economics – but one that also (unlike ecological economics) rooted the violation of solar and other environmental-sustainability conditions in the class relations of capitalist society. The result is to generate a deeper understanding of classical historical materialism's ecological approach to economy and society – providing an ecological-materialist critique that can help uncover the systemic roots of today's “treadmill of production” and global environmental crisis. Paul Burkett is Professor of Economics at Indiana State University, Terre Haute. He is the author of Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective (1999), and the co-author, with Martin Hart-Landsberg, of China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle (2005). John Bellamy Foster is Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and co-editor of Monthly Review (New York). He is the author of The Vulnerable Planet (1994, 1999); “Marx's Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology (September 1999); Marx's Ecology (2000); Ecology Against Capitalism (2002); and Naked Imperialism (2005).     

Assessing the effectiveness of strategic planning

This paper describes a method for assessing the effectiveness of strategic planning systems in terms of the results actually observed subsequent to planning activity. The paper explains in particular how, in making the assessment, one might cope with the fact of environmental change subsequent to the setting of planned goals. This ends oriented approach to measuring effectiveness is shown to be complementary to process oriented approaches and is illustrated by an example from the coal industry.