Suchergebnisse

Fundamental changes in China's finance system for social services have decentralized responsibilities for provision to lower levels of government and increased costs to individuals. The more localized, market-oriented approaches to social service provision, together with rising economic inequalities, raise questions about access to social services among China's children. With a multivariate analysis of three waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (1989, 1993 and 1997), this article investigates two dimensions of children's social welfare: health care, operationalized as access to health insurance, and education, operationalized as enrolment in and progress through school. Three main results emerge. First, analyses do not suggest an across-the-board decline in access to these child welfare services during the period under consideration. Overall, insurance rates, enrolment rates and grade-for-age attainment improved. Secondly, while results underscore the considerable disadvantages in insurance and education experienced by poorer children in each wave of the survey, there is no evidence that household socio-economic disparities systematically widened. Finally, findings suggest that community resources conditioned the provision of social services, and that dimensions of community level of development and capacity to finance public welfare increasingly mattered for some social services.

▪ Abstract  This review examines research on education and inequality in developing regions. In tracing the progress of this field of inquiry, it focuses on empirical studies of educational inequality in four broad areas: macro-structural forces shaping education and stratification; the relationship between family background and educational outcomes; school effects; and education's impact on economic and social mobility. It assesses the contributions of research in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to the general study of education and social stratification and the theoretical leverage gained from examining stratification processes in developing regions of the world. Finally, the review discusses recent developments that hold promise for addressing the knowledge gaps that remain; these include utilizing relatively new data sources and methods in comparative, cross-national studies and greater collaboration between researchers who study strikingly similar questions but remain segregated due to their focus on either industrialized or developing societies.

In recent decades, China has transformed from a relatively egalitarian society to a highly unequal one. What are the implications of high levels of inequality for the lives of children? Drawing on two nationally representative datasets, the China Family Panel Studies and the China Education Panel Survey, we develop a comprehensive portrait of childhood inequality in post-reform China. Analyses reveal stark disparities between children from different socio-economic backgrounds in family environments and in welfare outcomes, including physical health, psychosocial health and educational performance. We argue that childhood inequality in China is driven not only by the deprivations of poverty but also by the advantages of affluence, as high socio-economic status children diverge from their middle and low socio-economic status counterparts on various family environment and child welfare measures. (China Q/GIGA)