Helping oneself by helping others: evaluation of a service credit banking demonstration

Between 1987 and 1990, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded six service credit banking demonstration programs among the elderly in which participants delivered services in return for credits, entitling them to later service. This evaluation of the demonstrations found that these six sites successfully attracted elders for the delivery of household support services to a relatively old, frail population with potentially limited social networks. Evidence on the significance of the "credit" in attracting volunteers was mixed, but the programs have attracted new volunteers, and have not substituted for other volunteer activities. Program development has entailed considerable staff investment in volunteer support; programs are better understood as community membership organizations than as mechanical exchanges.     

Woman cadres are women's friends

The All-China Women's Federation (WF) is a non-governmental organization of women and the highest leading body of the Women's Federations at all levels of the country. The WFS spare no efforts to do women good turns, work for their well-being and serve them wholeheartedly. The WFs are actively organizing women to learn to read and write and to acquire skills. The WFs play a role in protecting and education women, and in struggling for the safeguard of the legitimate rights of women and children. The WFs at all levels have been showing great concern for family planning. Finally, the WFs devote much attention to the training of women cadres, and to the improvement of their cultural level and working ability.     

The Canadian temporary visa programme as an alternative to the European guest worker scheme

This article analyzes Canada's employment visa program, through which foreigners enter the Canadian labor market for relatively short time periods. It further demonstrates some major differences between this policy and the European guest worker scheme. Governments in Western Europe viewed guest workers' benefits as preventing wages and inflation from rising, allowing profits and investments to increase, and sustaining economic growth. A question to consider is whether guest workers' demands on social services, in relation to their tax and other contributions, exceed those of the indigenous population and thus reduce their profitability. Canada, in contrast, has avoided the need to provide services for the children of foreign workers or jobs for their spouses by limiting visa length to a maximum of 1 year. The majority of employment visa holders to Canada enter without dependents. Another difference is the far smaller scope of the Canadian program. Canada's employment visa program provides only about 0.5% of total employment, whereas guest workers in European countries may comprise up to 23% (Switzerland). The occupations of service and teaching account for the majority of workers included in the Canadian visa program, while manufacturing subsumes a large share of European guest workers. It is important to stress that, with relatively low levels for permanent immigration to Canada, the employment visa program rivals that flow as a yearly contributor to labor supply, indicating a need for closer attention to the evaluation of this policy.     

Analyses and discussions of data from China's 1982 census--a report on the International Seminar on China's 1982 Census

This is a report from an international seminar held in Beijing, China, devoted to the results of the 1982 census of China. The report includes a synopsis of the discussions on topics such as the sex ratio, age distribution, fertility, mortality, labor force, and household size and family structure.     

Public pensions in transition

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze problems of financing an old-age insurance when birth rates are low and population declines or fertility fluctuates with time. A government then searches for optimal policies to cope with such problems. A first criterion could be seen in the Pareto principle. But we all know that there is no way out of PAYG unless at least one generation has to pay for the transition. Therefore an optimal policy is concerned with intergenerational redistribution and optimal growth.In the absence of public pensions the economy will in the long run converge to a steady state which is not optimal in the sense of a golden rule. This dynamic in-efficiency results from the decentralized decision making by the consumers and the firms. If the PAYG system influences the savings ratio of the economy, public pensions can be seen as an instrument to implement a modified golden rule.Paper presented at the ISPE-conference on The Fiscal Implications of an Ageing Population, Vaalsbroek, The Netherlands, May 30–June 1, 1990. I am obliged to Dieter Bös, Friedrich Breyer, Christian Keuschnigg, Wolfgang Kitterer, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Financial support through Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB 303 is gratefully acknowledged.     

富民兴盟 教育先行

沙漠戈壁绵亘境内2/3的阿拉善盟,建国初(原阿拉善旗、额济纳旗)仅有小学4所,初中一所,在校生738人,教职工33人.民族教育尤为落后,蒙古族识字者仅有270余人,占人口总数的2.1%.1990年底,全盟所辖三旗(阿拉善左旗、阿拉善右旗、额济纳旗)、两场(吉兰太、雅布赖盐场)各级种类学校已发展到132所,在校生33656人,其中蒙授6878人,教职工专任教师3449人,蒙授800人.建盟十年间,全盟基本普及初等教育,扫除了文盲.中小学全部实现"一无两有"或"一无五有".危房下降到0.84%.小学、初中、高中专任教师合格率均列全区前茅.冲破樊篱走出新路1983年,鉴于陈旧落后的教育结构、教学方法、教学内容、教育管理体制等制约着教育的发展.盟委、行署制定了《关于当前教育改革若干问题的决定》,首先     

What affects nonprofit survival?

This article describes mortality patterns for nonprofit organizations in a major U.S. metropolitan area between 1980 and 1988. Twenty percent of the nonprofits in a panel ceased operations during this period. Mortality rates were found to vary widely. In some instances, high mortality was found in parts of the sector that were growing rapidly. Overall, nonprofits that ceased to operate were younger and smaller, used fewer strategies to attract funders, and had less diversified income streams than survivors. These patterns also varied substantially. The results point to the drawbacks of using limited or commonsense information and the necessity of theory-based research.