Educational Inequalities among Latin American Adolescents: Continuities and Changes over the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s

The goal of this paper is to examine recent trends in educational stratification for Latin American adolescents growing up in three distinct periods: the 1980s, during severe recession; the 1990s, a period of structural adjustments imposed by international organizations; and the late 2000s, when most countries in the region experienced positive and stable growth. In addition to school enrollment and educational transitions, we examine the quality of education through enrollment in private schools, an important aspect of inequality in education that most studies have neglected. We use nationally representative household survey data for the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay. Our overall findings confirm the importance of macroeconomic conditions for inequalities in educational opportunity, suggesting important benefits brought up by the favorable conditions of the 2000s. However, our findings also call attention to increasing disadvantages associated with the quality of the education adolescents receive, suggesting the significance of the EMI framework-Effectively Maintained Inequality-and highlighting the value of examining the quality in addition to the quantity of education in order to fully understand educational stratification in the Latin American context.     

市场化改革与收入差距扩大(英文)

在市场化过程中，中国出现了收入差距不断扩大的趋势，从而社会上出现了一些将收入差距扩大的原因归结为市场化改革的错误认识。本文通过对我国改革开放以来收入分配格局变化的主要特点和导致收入差距扩大的原因加以细致实证分析，对一些模糊认识加以澄清。本文认为在个人收入差距扩大的诸多因素中，传统计划体制遗留下来的一些制度和政策，在部门利益和地方利益驱使下新形成的有悖于市场体制规则的制度和政策，政府对市场缺失和市场扭曲采取的不作为态度，对资本节制和劳动保护的不足，政府对经济的过度干预，成为导致收入差距扩大和收入分配不公的最重要因素     

B值同分布鞅随机变元序列矩收敛的注记

讨论了一类B值同分布鞅随机变量的矩完全收敛性, 在二阶光滑空间中当一定矩存在条件下，利用切尾法、下鞅的极大值不等式、高阶法等分析技巧，给出了此类B值同分布鞅随机变量的矩完全收敛性的充分条件，揭示了B值同分布鞅随机变量的矩完全收敛性与矩存在性之间的关系，得到了满意的结果。     

INTRODUCTION

This introductory essay considers how we might forge a critical language to discuss an emerging constellation of cultural production in South Africa: that which focuses on the work of ‘intimate exposure’ in order to shape a public–private sphere, which in turn forges forms of citizenship unavailable, or submerged by, a history of segregation. We ask the two following questions in order to better understand the dynamics of desegregation and re-racialization in twenty-first century South Africa: what is at stake in the dynamics of private exposure, particularly, but not limited to, the work of contemporary artists, be it exposure of the self or exposure of the lives of others – out of aggression or tenderness, as a gesture of ordinariness or excess, in relation to strangeness or love? Moreover, how do new dramas of secrecy, confession and exposure map onto or circumvent the staging of these issues during the apartheid years, which, itself layering over the scars of the colonial period, provide the subterranean foundation across which recent events play out? Addressing these and other questions takes us through a series of debates animating the current global and South African cultural studies.     

Poverty as a Form of Violence

Abstract

This paper advances the theory that poverty is one of the deadliest forms of violence. Together, poverty and violence are a potent force that is antithetical to the collective well-being of our society. Existing data reveal that the correlation between poverty and violence is statistically significant. The vast discrepancy between the prosperity of the rich and the profound deprivation of the poor in this country suggest that a structural perspective may be particularly instructive. Poverty as a form of violence will be examined in terms of four interrelated variables and a set of recommendations for change will be proposed.     

Maximizing Health Benefits and Minimizing Inequality: Incorporating Local‐Scale Data in the Design and Evaluation of Air Quality Policies

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency undertook a case study in the Detroit metropolitan area to test the viability of a new multipollutant risk‐based (MP/RB) approach to air quality management, informed by spatially resolved air quality, population, and baseline health data. The case study demonstrated that the MP/RB approach approximately doubled the human health benefits achieved by the traditional approach while increasing cost less than 20%—moving closer to the objective of Executive Order 12866 to maximize net benefits. Less well understood is how the distribution of health benefits from the MP/RB and traditional strategies affect the existing inequalities in air‐pollution‐related risks in Detroit. In this article, we identify Detroit populations that may be both most susceptible to air pollution health impacts (based on local‐scale baseline health data) and most vulnerable to air pollution (based on fine‐scale PM_2.5 air quality modeling and socioeconomic characteristics). Using these susceptible/vulnerable subpopulation profiles, we assess the relative impacts of each control strategy on risk inequality, applying the Atkinson Index (AI) to quantify health risk inequality at baseline and with either risk management approach. We find that the MP/RB approach delivers greater air quality improvements among these subpopulations while also generating substantial benefits among lower‐risk populations. Applying the AI, we confirm that the MP/RB strategy yields less PM_2.5 mortality and asthma hospitalization risk inequality than the traditional approach. We demonstrate the value of this approach to policymakers as they develop cost‐effective air quality management plans that maximize risk reduction while minimizing health inequality.     

Another ‘Lost Decade’? Crisis and Structural Adjustment in Europe and Latin America

With the recent economic crisis, conditional lending and mandatory structural reforms arrived in the European Union. Greece and a number of other crisis countries were subjected to a rigorous process of economic adjustment in exchange for emergency credits from the troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund). Conditionality and structural adjustment were first tested in Latin America. This article compares the European adjustment programmes with the structural reforms introduced in Latin American countries several decades earlier. By doing so, the article reveals strong parallels in spite of the fact that the initial adjustment programmes are rarely considered a success story and that the neoliberal ideology which inspired the related reforms is widely made responsible for the recent crisis. The fact that there are differences in the adjustment programmes is not the result of a re-think of the neoliberal agenda, but of the specific dynamics of European integration and of pragmatic responses to financial threats. However, the article also shows parallels in the outcome of structural adjustment. Some European crisis countries face a ‘lost decade’ quite similar to the one experienced in Latin America in the 1980s.     

Multivariate Chebyshev inequality in generalized measure space based on Choquet integral

The multivariate Chebyshev inequality for a random vector on probability measure space has been studied by numerous authors. One thing that seems missing is the multivariate version of Chebyshev inequality in non additive cases. In this article, we show that this inequality still works in generalized probability theory based on Choquet integral.     

Race,deprivation, and immigrant isolation: The spatial demography of air-toxic clusters in the continental United States

This article contributes to environmental inequality outcomes research on the spatial and demographic factors associated with cumulative air-toxic health risks at multiple geographic scales across the United States. It employs a rigorous spatial cluster analysis of census tract-level 2005 estimated lifetime cancer risk (LCR) of ambient air-toxic emissions from stationary (e.g., facility) and mobile (e.g., vehicular) sources to locate spatial clusters of air-toxic LCR risk in the continental United States. It then tests intersectional environmental inequality hypotheses on the predictors of tract presence in air-toxic LCR clusters with tract-level principal component factor measures of economic deprivation by race and immigrant status. Logistic regression analyses show that net of controls, isolated Latino immigrant-economic deprivation is the strongest positive demographic predictor of tract presence in air-toxic LCR clusters, followed by black-economic deprivation and isolated Asian/Pacific Islander immigrant-economic deprivation. Findings suggest scholarly and practical implications for future research, advocacy, and policy.