Employment and training solutions for the economically disadvantaged: An essay

Conclusion The persistence of urban poverty and the presence of economically disadvantaged families in our cities is a continuing challenge to national aspirations for equal opportunity and economic justice. A continuing bifurcation of society between those who enjoy an increasing share of economic prosperity and others who are stuck on the lowest rung of the economic ladder should be unacceptable. The search must continue for ways to improve the productivity and earning power of those who need assistance in getting a foothold on the escalator to a middle-income standard of living. Employment and training programs remain one of the options necessary to achieve that goal. While past programs have not been a panacea, they have contributed to a modest improvement in income among many who participated in them. In the choice of weapons required to combat urban poverty, employment and training programs should be part of the arsenal. The experience of the past, while limited, justifies continued investment in the employment and training option, and the continued experimentation with programs to address the needs of specific target groups. Only by testing new and increasingly comprehensive training models will we find the right mix to accelerate the decline in urban poverty. To achieve success in reducing urbna poverty, it is important to maintain steady, balanced economic growth, and persist in the experimentation with job training models.     

Black power and state welfare policy

Conclusions The three strategies for the black movement are centered on black individual development resources, black capitalist resources, and political violence. The conflicts between the theorists of each strategy have been major. This study indicates that although black individual development, black capitalist, and black violence strategies are ideologically opposed, each one, nevertheless, has an influence on welfare policy. Black individual and violence resources influence Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments; black capitalist and violence resources influence the number of Aid to Families with Dependent Children recipients. These results suggest that there are a variety of means to social change even though there are ideological disputes about the values of each approach.     

Trade policy and industrial policy in China: What motivates public authorities to apply restrictions on exports?

This paper investigates the motives behind China's fiscal policy targeting exports. It relies on detailed data at the product level over the period 2002–2012. We analyze two major export fiscal instruments: export tax and export VAT rebate. Our results suggest that while pursuing many objectives simultaneously, Chinese policy used the two instruments in a complementary way with the aim of achieving their industrial policy and strategic objectives. Some are officially stated objectives such as promoting technology or environmental protection, while others do not appear in official documents, such as subsidizing downstream sectors. We also observed that China managed these instruments dynamically to address temporary shocks, for example to temper rising food price or to support strategic sectors sensitive to price competitiveness in the middle of the financial crisis.     

当前中美贸易摩擦问题的政策分析

由于中国已成为美国最大的贸易逆差来源,且这种贸易不平衡短期内不会解决,而中美贸易摩擦在未来较长时期却会存在。所以对该问题产生的背景原因、集中体现、结论对策进行深入分析就显得十分重要。     

Employment hardship and rural minorities: Theory,research, and policy

Rural racial and ethnic minorities are among the poorest of all Americans. This article situates their plight both theoretically and empirically in the context of employment hardship. Defined by access to employment and job quality, employment hardship is more prevalent among nonmetropolitan African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans than it is among either their central city counterparts or non-Hispanic whites. The strengths and limitations of both individuallevel frameworks (e.g., human capital) and macro-level theories (e.g., uneven development) in explaining the economic double jeopardy faced by rural minorities are discussed. Policy recommendations designed to ameliorate employment hardship are presented. This paper was prepared as the author’s contribution to the Rural Minorities Working Group of the Rural Sociological Society Task Force on Persistent Rural Poverty. The Working Group’s report appears as chapter 6 inPersistent Poverty in Rural America (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993).     

Beyond Anecdotes: A Quantitative Examination of Black Women in Academe

Using data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates, the Survey of Doctorate Recipients, and the Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System Completion Survey by Race, this paper provides a quantitative analysis of black woman as they progress through the academy as students, faculty or administrators. This paper will detail the number of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees awarded to black woman, the colleges and universities that are successful at conferring said degrees, and the professional outcomes of black women employed in academe. We find that black women earn twice as many degrees as black men and that younger black female professors seem to face fewer barriers to success in the academy than their predecessors.     

Rural Nonfarm Employment and Incomes in Latin America: Overview and Policy Implications

Rural nonfarm employment (RNFE) and incomes (RNFI) are crucial to Latin American rural households. The 11 rural household income studies in this volume, reviewed in this paper, use 1990s data and show that RNFI averages 40% of rural incomes. RNFI and RNFE have grown quickly over the past three decades. The review of evidence provided some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of Latin American rural households. In terms of shares of rural incomes: (1) nonfarm wage incomes exceed self-employment incomes; (2) RNFI far exceeds farm wage incomes; (3) local RNFI far exceeds migration incomes; (4) Service-sector RNFI far exceeds manufactures RNFI. These findings suggest the need for more development program attention to wage employment in the service sector, versus the traditional focus on small enterprise manufactures. Moreover, poor households and zones tend to have higher shares in their incomes but lower absolute levels of RNFI as compared to richer households and zones. The RNFE of the poor tend to be the low-paid nonfarm equivalent of semi-subsistence farming. Raising the capacity of the poor to participate in the better-paid types of RNFE is crucial — via employment skills training, education, infrastructure, credit. Finally, RNFE has grown fastest and been most poverty-alleviating where there are dynamic growth motors, in particular in the agricultural sector, but also in tourism, links to urban areas, mining and forestry. This means that developing RNF jobs cannot be done at the expense of programs promoting agricultural development.     

Black women in employment and training programs

This article examines the past experience of women-with a focus on black women-in employment and training programs. In spite of the fact that women have been underrepresented in these programs and often steered toward training in “traditionally female” occupations, they exhibit higher postprogram earnings gains than males. Overall, however, the training provided has at best shifted women into low-wage clerical fields with average annual earnings barely above the poverty level. Therefore, these programs-taken alone-can not be expected to have a major impact on an important problem facing blacks: welfare dependency.