Retirements at risk: employees lack a comprehensive, realistic view of resources and needs

Employees who are following conventional retirement-planning advice will be in for a rude awakening as they approach retirement and discover that they can't afford to retire just yet or are likely to outlive their retirement funds. The article discusses how we have arrived at this point, what the implications are, and what both employers and employees can do to remedy the situation.     

农民增收的曙光初露——苏州市吴中区农民增收问题调查

前一阶段，我们围绕农民增收问题，对吴中区进行了调查，我们总的印象是：农民较大幅度增收的曙光初露，2004年能不能成为农民收入增长从滞缓到较快、城乡居民收入差距从不断扩大到逐步缩小的历史性拐点，还有待时间验证，但不管未来的发展如何，2004年农民收入出现较大幅度增长势头，是一个值得纪念的年份，一个关注“三农”问题的人们喜上眉梢的年份。     

Indigenous Land Rights Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Constraint on Productivity?

This article uses cross-sectional evidence from Ghana, Kenya,and Rwanda in 1987–88 to examine the question, Are indigenousland rights systems in Sub-Saharan Africa a constraint on productivity?The evidence supports the hypothesis suggested by historicalstudies, that African indigenous land rights systems have spontaneouslyevolved from systems of communal control towards individualizedrights in response to increases in commercialization and populationpressure. Cross-sectional data on the incidence of land improvementsand on land yields provide little support for the view thatlimitations under indigenous law on the right to transfer landare a constraint on productivity.     

The Dynamics of Returns to Education in Kenyan and Tanzanian Manufacturing*

We use micro data on manufacturing employees in Kenya and Tanzania to estimate returns to education and investigate the shape of the earnings function in the period 1993–2001. In Kenya, there have been long‐run falls in the returns to education while for Tanzania there is evidence of rising returns in the 1990s. The earnings functions are convex for both countries and this result is robust to endogeneity. Convexity may be part of the explanation as to how rapid expansion of education in Africa has generated so little growth if expansion has been concentrated at lower levels of education.