Determinants of youth not in education,employment or training: Evidence from Sri Lanka

The presence of a large proportion of youth neither in education, employment, or training (NEET) signals problems in a country’s education and labor market systems, and has wide‐ranging negative consequences, extending beyond the individual to the economy and society. Using Sri Lankan Labour Force Survey data for the year 2016 and binomial and multinomial logistic regression models, in this paper we provide the first estimates of NEET‐related risk factors in Sri Lanka. Key risk factors of becoming NEET include being female, being of ethnic and religious minorities, belonging to the older 20 to 24 age group, having very low or very high levels of education, being illiterate in English, belonging to a low‐income household or one headed by a male, having young children, and living in more remote areas. Our findings hold several important policy implications for reducing the NEET rate in Sri Lanka and engaging more youth in education and in the labor force.     

Mundane heroines: Conflict,Ethnicity, Gender,and Female Headship in Eastern Sri Lanka

For the last twenty years, eastern Sri Lanka has witnessed a bitter and bloody civil conflict. This paper explores the experience of female-headed households in the region. Only partially the product of war, such households cannot be bundled together as a social problem with a single solution. Our study endorses the feminist suspicion of falsely homogenizing accounts of women's lives and suggests instead an alternative emphasis on the many ways in which gendered relations of dominance and subordination are maintained. With its co-existing Muslim, Tamil, and Sinhala groups, eastern Sri Lanka facilitates the exploration of ethnicity as a source of variation. The households included in this study share a common structure and face the same economic problems, yet ethnic differences divide them. The paper charts the problems, strategies, and partial triumphs of these lone mothers and proposes policies to help them in their mundane but heroic struggle.     

生态系统服务价值对土地利用变化的动态响应——基于2000～2012年安徽省淮南土地利用的经验证据

土地利用变化对生态系统服务价值具有重要影响。文章在构建生态系统服务价值对土地利用的动态响应模型及因子影响力系数估算模型的基础上,基于安徽淮南市土地利用变化的经验数据,实证检验了该研究区域生态系统服务价值对土地利用的响应特征,并探究了不同土地利用类型对生态系统服务价值的影响力大小。研究结果表明,该研究区域生态系统服务价值对土地利用程度的响应较大,土地利用程度对生态系统服务价值具有负效应,生态系统服务价值呈现出先增后减的倒"U"型变化趋势,其中,该区域耕地和建设用地对其生态系统服务功能的影响最大。因此,淮南市今后的发展一定要优化土地利用结构,注重生态环境质量,从而实现土地资源利用的可持续发展。