Comorbid mood and adjustment disorders among pathological gamblers seeking treatment in Hong Kong

Research findings on comorbidity and pathological gambling are non–existent in Chinese communities. The objectives of this study were to: (a) determine the prevalence of comorbid mood and adjustment disorders among pathological gamblers seeking treatment in Hong Kong; (b) compare demographic profiles and clinical features in pathological gamblers with and without comorbid mood and adjustment disorders; and (c) explore the association and temporal relationship between pathological gambling and comorbid mood and adjustment disorders. Assessment instruments included demographic data, BSI, SCID-I, ASI and LIFE-RIFT. Results showed that about two-thirds (63.7%; n = 128) of 201 participants reported lifetime comorbid psychiatric disorders. Most common comorbid disorders were mood disorders (29.4%; n = 59) and adjustment disorders (20.9%; n = 42). Pathological gamblers with comorbid mood or adjustment disorders showed more severe levels of psychopathology, impairment in psychosocial functioning and gambling problems. This study is important because it is the first scientific comorbidity study among pathological gamblers in a Chinese context.     

秘鲁城市女性劳动参与的微观研究

本文利用2001年秘鲁国家统计和信息局第三期家庭抽样调查数据,运用Logistic回归,分析了在秘鲁城市中,人口、经济和教育变量是如何影响女性劳动参与的.并且将首都利马和利马以外的其他地区加以区分来进行分析。研究结果表明在秘鲁城市范围内.女性劳动参与随着女性生命周期的变化出现了很明确的模式;生育、婚姻状况、与家长的关系、接受高等教育(指硕士及以上和培训)明显地影响女性劳动参与。在首都利马和其他地区的大部分影响方向很类似。但是在首都利马的影响程度要大一些。     

The potential of child care tax credits to reduce poverty and welfare recipiency

As more and more mothers of young children enter the work force, interest in government financing of child care grows. The chief government subsidy for child care is the child care credit in the federal Internal Revenue Code. This is a nonrefundable credit and therefore provides benefits only to those with incomes high enough to require them to pay income tax. Yet of the $ 5.5 billion spent by the federal government on child care in 1986, this program accounted for $ 3.5 billion.This paper simulates the effects of expanding the child care tax credit by (1) doubling the reimbursement rates of the current credit; (2) making the credit refundable; and (3) both making the credit refundable and increasing its value for all families with income below $ 32,000.Results suggest that these changes will have modest effects on the income and earnings of mothers, and on the poverty gap and welfare recipiency. Costs, however, differ substantially. Doubling the value of the credit is far more expensive than either making the credit refundable or making it both refundable and more generous at the bottom of the income distribution. Making the credit refundable may cost taxpayers very little by leading to increases in hours worked and concomitant reductions in welfare payments.     

The Quality of Life of Hong Kong’s Poor Households in the 1990s: Levels of Expenditure, Income Security and Poverty

This paper examines the changes in the quality of life of poor households in Hong Kong in the late 1990s by analyzing their levels of expenditure, income security and poverty before and after 1997. Though there have been significant increases in the levels of expenditure among CSSA recipients, the expenditure among these poorest households in Hong Kong is still below that of non-CSSA recipients. Increasing poverty in Hong Kong is the result of increasing housing costs borne by these low expenditure households, who have to squeeze their expenditure on food and other items in order to meet the rising cost of housing. De-industrialisation and mass unemployment have given capital and the state unchecked authority to restructure the economy and to deregulate the labour market. Many low-income households have been hit hard as they faced redundancy, unemployment and wage-cuts after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. What jobs have been created are mostly part-time, temporary and contract jobs, and there has thus been an erosion in both job and income security. The quality of life of poor households is devastating not only in the sense that their living standards are low, but also that they are socially excluded from the mainstream of society.     

Integrations,identity and conflicts: A cross-border perspective on residential relocation of Hong Kong citizens to Mainland China

This paper aims to test if traditional literature on both internal residential mobility and international migration hold up in explaining the driving forces behind the home-moving behaviours of Hong Kong residents to the Chinese Mainland, under a mixture of economic integrations, past connections along with present structural and identity differences. The multi-dimensionality of this behaviour, in comparison to other forms of residential movements in the literature, is shown as there is no single attribute, albeit all necessary conditions, sufficient enough to encourage such movement on its own. Instead, the cross-border residence is primarily a middle-class, middle-aged phenomenon, due to one’s past connections with Mainland China throughout his/her life course and the possession of financial resources insufficient to afford larger living space in Hong Kong yet enough to benefit from the remarkable living cost advantages on the other side of the border. It provides some directions for studying similar forms of residential mobility in the era of globalization when the functions of national borders have become more obscure than before. Implications from this residential behaviour are then discussed.     

Dynamic selection of dispatching rules for job shop scheduling

Although the academic contribution to job shop scheduling is abundant, its impact on practice has been minimal. The most preferred approach to job shop scheduling in the industry is dispatching rules. A major criticism against dispatching rules is that there is no single universal rule. The effective choice of dispatching rules depends on the scheduling criterion and existing job shop conditions. In this paper, the authors have proposed a scheduling method based on the analytic hierarchy process, that dynamically selects the most appropriate dispatching rule from several candidate rules. The selection is based on the existing job shop conditions. This method is applied to two formal job shop problems, and the results for single dispatching rules are inferior to the method proposed in this paper.     

澳门教育革新之路——浅析澳门校本课程的发展

澳门大约有90%的学校为私立学校.回归后,教育当局运用各种行政力量企图加强地区课程的领导,然而仍呈现出"大市场、小政府"的状况.在办学自主的旗帜下,各校貌似有"校本"的形态,而是否落实真正的校本课程仍有待考证.通过回顾上世纪90年代以来澳门的教育改革历程,了解"校本课程"的缘起、演变和发展及教育改革不同阶段中的相关论述,呈现澳门校本课程的发展情境与现实困境,为未来教育变革提供参考.     

THEORY OF SEGMENTED ASSIMILATION AND THE ADOPTION OF MARIJUANA USE AND DELINQUENT BEHAVIOR BY ASIAN PACIFIC YOUTH

This article examines the adoption of behaviors of the teen drug and delinquent subcultures among Asian Pacific youth within the framework of the theory of segmented assimilation. Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou's theory offers a new perspective to the question: Under what conditions are youth susceptible to marijuana use and delinquent behavior? In contrast to Milton Gordon's classic one‐path theory, segmented assimilation theory looks to the immigrant culture and social capital (e.g., social solidarity) as critical factors in the assimilation process. The theory suggests several different types of adaptation by immigrant youth and Asian youth born in the United States. The data from the Asian Student Drug Survey were used to analyze the patterns of marijuana use and delinquent behavior among Japanese. Chinese, Filipino. Korean, Southeast Asian, Asian Indian, and Pacific Islander youth, controlling for human capital and social capital, as well as other relevant factors. Logistic regression analysis was used to determine the factors that affect the odds of marijuana use and delinquent behavior for the seven ethnic groups in this study. The likelihood of marijuana use differed significantly among the ethnic groups. For example, Pacific Islander and Filipino youth were much more likely than Japanese youth to use marijuana. Korean, Southeast Asian, and Asian Indian youth did not differ significantly from the Japanese youth in marijuana use. Like the model that predicted marijuana use, the Chinese youth were least likely to engage in delinquent behavior, while Filipino and Pacific Islander youth were most likely. Segmented assimilation theory points to the importance of the human and social capital that serve to insulate youth from the influence of the teen drug and delinquent cultures.     

Japanese marketing strategies in the United Kingdom

This article is based on a study which examined hypotheses about Japanese marketing using a matched sample of British companies and their major Japanese competitors. Japanese subsidiaries in Britain were shown to be much more marketing-oriented, more responsive to strategic opportunities, and more single-minded in their pursuit of market share. Organizationally, there were few differences between the two groups. The Japanese subsidiaries, however, were more inclined to use product or market-based divisions and continuous, informal planning and control procedures. The result is that managerial focus and responsibility are centred upon overall product-market rather than financial or production performance, with continuous feedback facilitating rapid adaptation and implementation of marketing plans and strategy.