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Since Esping-Andersen [(1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. New York: Wiley] classified 18 capitalist countries into "three worlds of welfare capitalism", comparative studies of welfare have been dominated by his work and the responses to it. This paper focuses on two important responses. Firstly, there is a criticism that East Asian welfare regimes have not been given sufficient attention in the study by Esping-Andersen (1990). Secondly, analysts have doubts about the assumption that welfare regimes have a high degree of internal policy cohesion. To make contributions to these two responses, two analytical tasks are conducted. Firstly, new health care, education and leave benefits policy domains covering 16 East Asian and European capitalist countries/territories are built. Secondly, evidence generated from these policy domains is used to inform the discussion of two arguments: (i) there is a lack of essential conditions for East Asian countries/territories to form their own unique category of welfare regime in the areas of education, health care and leave benefits; and (ii) welfare regimes have a high degree of internal policy cohesion.

Endogenous, ideas-led growth theory and the literature on agent-based modeling with neighborhood effects are crossed. In an economic overlapping generations framework, it is shown how social interactions and neighborhood effects are of vital importance in the endogenous determination of the long run number of skilled workers and therefore of the growth prospects of an economy. Neighborhood effects interact with the initial distribution of skilled agents across space and play a key role in the long run stabilization of the number of skilled individuals. Our model implies a tendency toward segregation, with a possibly positive influence on growth, if team effects operate. The long run growth rate is also shown to depend on the rate of time preference. Initial circumstances are of vital importance for long run outcomes. A poor initial education endowment will imply a long run reduced number of skilled workers and a mediocre growth rate, so there is no economic convergence tendency. On the contrary, poor societies will grow less, or will even fall into a poverty trap, and will diverge continuously from richer ones.

Several empirical studies have examined the gender-differentiated effects of education on economic growth or on a steady-state level of economic output, using cross-country data to determine the quantitative importance of these effects and the direction of correlation. This chapter reports on a similar study of the gender effects of education using province-level data for Turkey. It finds that female education positively and significantly affects the steady-state level of labor productivity, while male education has either positive or insignificant effects. A separate examination of the effect of the educational gender gap finds a negative relationship with output. The results are robust to a number of sensitivity analyses, such as elimination of outlier observations, controls for simultaneity and measurement errors, controls for omitted variables through the inclusion of regional dummy variables, the use of steady-state versus growth equations, and the consideration of different samples.

This chapter uses data from a commissioned nationwide sample survey of some 1,100 female-headed households, as well as from focus groups with female household heads. Women-headed households constitute about one-tenth of Jordan's households. By region of residence, religion, and household size they differ little from households in the country at large. But nearly half of them (48 percent) are living below the poverty line, compared with about 13 percent in the population at large. Their annual spending is less than one-third of the nationwide average. Very few of the women household heads work outside the home: 78 percent of them are not and have never been employed. Their education levels are low: about 54 percent are either illiterate or have only basic schooling, and about 27 percent have secondary education. The problems faced by women household heads include malnutrition (a problem in nearly one in five of these families); social stigma attached to themselves and their children; problems in rearing their sons, many of whom drop out of school and become socially withdrawn; and pressures from their own or their husband's family. Recommendations are made for policies and other measures to assist female-headed households.

In recent decades, the Middle East and North Africa region achieved substantial improvement in women's education, but without a commensurate increase in women's participation in the labor market. Using primary household survey data collected in 2008 in Amman, Cairo, and Sana'a, this chapter empirically investigates whether education acts as a vehicle for labor market participation among urban women. As a baseline, we investigate the determinants of female labor force participation by means of a single-equation probit model. Based on the results of the probit model, we analyze the role of social norms. Results confirm that education increases female labor supply. However, when levels of schooling are considered, only high levels of education (post-secondary/university/post-university education) show a positive and significant effect. The study also confirms the negative association between traditional attitudes and female labor supply. Thus, policies in the region that aim to raise female labor force participation need to focus more broadly than on investment in education, to take account of other economic and non-economic barriers to female labor supply. Further investment in education in itself may not achieve the full intended goal for women in the labor market.

This study analyses social inequality in education in China, focusing on parental class effects on children’s educational attainment. While there is a massive increase in the state provision of educational opportunities, class differences persist and are becoming even more pronounced for the younger cohort. The growing social disparity as found in China is at odds with findings of trendless fluctuation or weakening inequality in the Western societies. It is argued that it is the growing socio-economic disparity in China as compared with the relative stability in class-lined conditions in the Western countries that may account for the different findings between this study and those by other scholars.

This chapter discusses the phenomenon of inter-generational transmission of education inequality in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has a unique position in the world, particularly in the Islamic World. This is the first study on this topic. It addresses separately the effect of father and mother’s education on educational attainment of daughters, as well as whether there is an interactive effect of mother and father on daughters’ outcomes, in order to address the possibility of assortative mating, and thus the endogeneity of the wife’s education with respect to her husband’s education. Findings indicate that, while both mothers’ and fathers’ education influence daughters’ educational outcomes, mothers’ education has a stronger impact. Conversely, fathers’ education has a stronger impact on sons.

In 2002, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced a goal of quadrupling per capita income by the year 2020. Starting at income levels of the year 2000, this would require a growth rate of 7.2 percent per annum in per capita income or close to 8.0 percent in GDP. Such unresolved and emerging problems as growing income disparities, increasing pollution, pressures on infrastructure, the inefficiency of stateowned enterprises, and political instability are often cited as reasons to doubt the attainability of the CCP's goal. However, China's progress in addressing fundamental constraints that might limit rapid economic growth augurs well for the success of its economic goals. Although there are disagreements about economic policy among top leaders, the continued transformation into a market economy and the promotion of increasing local autonomy in economic matters are not in doubt. In education, China has substantially increased the percentage of its workforce receiving a college education, and continuing growth in this investment in human capital could account for a large portion of the desired growth rate. In addition, the value of improvements in the quality of economic output unmeasured by GDP, such as advances in the quality of health care and education, could raise reported growth rates by as much as 60 percent. Finally, the government's increasing sensitivity to public opinion and issues of inequality and corruption, combined with improving living conditions, have resulted in a level of popular confidence in the government that makes political instability unlikely.

This paper assesses the effects of education and health on economic growth by partitioning the reasons for cross-country variation in income levels into three components: (i) persistent factors influencing the level of output; (ii) time-varying factors influencing the level of output (e.g., levels of health and education); and (iii) persistent factors influencing a country's rate of technical progress. Persistent factors are ones that remain unchanged (e.g., geographical location) or that change only slightly in the time period under study (e.g., potentially endogenous determinants of technical progress such as a country's orientation toward free trade). Multi-level modeling techniques using maximum likelihood methods were used for estimation. This paper draws on earlier work but extends it to use more recently available data including China. The initial analysis used data on 53 countries over the period 1965–1990 and estimated that education improvements accounted for about 14% of economic growth over this period and health improvements accounted for about 11%. The extended analysis, including China, that this paper reports included data from 86 countries over the period 1960–2000 at 10-year intervals. Findings were broadly similar to the initial analysis, although the magnitude of the estimated effects for education and for health were smaller. Taking our range of models and parameter estimates into account, we feel that education improvements probably accounted for 5%–8% of China's economic growth between 1970 and 2000 and that health improvements accounted for 1%–5%. Our small and imprecise China-specific estimate of health's effect probably results from the atypical pattern in China of successful early efforts to improve health followed by stagnation in health during the later period of rapid growth.

This paper offers an explanation of the quantitative changes in education spending by the framework of demand analysis, including the changes in the ratio of educational funding to GDP in the period 1991–2002. The income effect is estimated mainly by using cross-provincial data, while time series data are used to estimate the price effect. Changes in government and non-government spending through time can be satisfactorily explained by the income and price effects. Demand for education services in the three levels of primary school, secondary school and higher education, and aggregate demand for all education services are investigated. The relation between income inequality and inequality in education opportunities is briefly discussed. Ten important findings are stated.

This paper updates our knowledge of Chinese school enrollment and graduation patterns by analyzing the 2000 Chinese Census. Looking at the school enrollment and attainment snapshot in 2000 and comparing these rates with the enrollment rates in 1990 provides us with important insight into the effect of economic, social and institutional reforms of the 1990s on the generation of students coming through the system in the early post economic reform era. The findings show that substantial progress has been made in China's goal of universal education for all children through the 9th grade.

Recent research literature on migration in China has mainly focused on adult migrants. As more and more people participate in the migration process and as migrants expand the duration of their stays in cities, migrant children increasingly become part of the migration stream. The presence of large numbers of migrant children in cities, especially children without local hukou, creates major problems for their parents and challenges for education policy-makers. In this paper, we examine the school enrollment of migrant children who resided in cities of Guangdong province in 1995. Using data from the 1995 China 1% Population Sample Survey, we apply a research strategy that incorporates both migration origin as well as destination. This allows us to estimate school enrollment rates for temporary migrant children, permanent migrant children, and local children, in addition to non-migrant children at the place of origin. Two major findings emerge from multivariate analyses of school enrollment. First, temporary migrant children are much less likely to be enrolled in school compared to local children. Temporary migrants with less than one year of residence in cities suffer the most. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, permanent migrant children are more likely to be enrolled in school than local children due largely to the highly selective nature of their parents. Second, compared to non-migrant children at the place of origin, rural temporary migrant children from Guangdong also encounter a major disadvantage in terms of school enrollment. As education becomes more and more important for socio-economic mobility in the Chinese society, such disadvantages faced by temporary migrant children is likely to have detrimental and long-term consequences for migrant children and for urban society as a whole.

Since the 1980s health care reform in rural China, the coverage of public health insurance has considerably diminished and the price of medical service continues to increase. Using data from the 1991 and 1997 China Health and Nutrition Surveys, this paper examines the rural residents' demand for medical care and illustrates the impact of the reform. Our study reveals a positive relationship between education and health status, and a negative relationship between education and medical expenditure. Simultaneously, the income effect of medical care is inelastic (0.31), which means that individuals with lower income are burdened with higher medical expenditure. In addition, the income effect significantly influences the decision to seek care when ill, which implies a credit constraint in health care consumption. There has been a persistent increase of inequality in rural China. Our study suggests that the situation is much worse if we take into account the health inequality and higher medical expenditure of the poor people.

A specific set of guidelines for academic library accreditation is difficult to determine, due to differences in levels of academic institutions. The purpose of studying the perceptions of accreditation liaisons and librarians of Level-One, Associate degree-granting institutions, was to examine their compliance with regional accreditation standards and utilize the results to help librarians better understand the process of preparing for accreditation. A suggestion for further research would include the interaction of multiple authors of varying skills such as survey writing, statistical analyses, and experiences in accreditation. Librarian inclusion on accreditation committees, training, and collaboration with overall institutional effectiveness could also be studied and encouraged. This paper was the Master's project of the author in May 2008, in the School of Library and Information Science, at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg.