Many developing countries have relied on the varied forms of diversified secondary technical education as the main venue for training skilled workers and mid-level technicians. But there have been numerous and strong critics against this mode of technical education. As an alternative, the...

In this paper we use the Indian National Sample Survey data for 1993-94 to examine the relationship between women's education and labor force participation. While it has been recognized in the literature that education is associated with lower labor force participation for women in South Asia,...

This report presents available evidence on adult education and training in Europe and Central Asia (ECA), differentiating two separate types: continuing vocational education and training (CVET) for the employed, sought either by employers or individuals, and retraining and second chance...

Several studies have examined the determinants of training in developing countries but only few have paid attention to the potential importance of international standards such as ISO 9000 or ISO 14000 on the firm's training decision. This paper examines training determinants using recent...

This report examines the situation of child labor in Thailand in the last decade. It finds that child labor has decreased significantly, for example, the labor force participation rates of those aged 13-14 years has almost halved since 1990. Despite this decline, 1.6 million children below the...

This report examines the various challenges and opportunities of mainstreaming gender issues in social fund projects and offers five good practice examples of gender integration in social fund projects in Ethiopia, Honduras, Malawi, Moldova, and Romania. Each case study takes gender into...

This report provides a description of the diversity of current policies towards the family across the European Union and an account of the current"state of the art"on the effects of these policies on demographic and labor market behavior. There is an implicit assumption that the tax and benefit...

This paper reviews the work of Sweden's International Aid for Solidarity and Humanity (SHIA), and umbrella association of Swedish organizations of people with disabilities, and derives lessons, and good practices on disability-related activities. SHIA emphasizes supporting human rights, while...

In the late 1980s, privatization and downsizing of nationalized steel mills, and related firms in the metal industry, have lead to large-scale redundancy plans. A special Steel Foundation was created as part of a social plan. This foundation acted like an independent training center, where...

This paper reviews the Bank involvement in the vocational education and training (VET) sub-sector in the 1990s. The paper aims to do just that, by mainly seeking answers to the following questions: 1) How has the Bank performed in its lending services to its clients in VET? 2) How have VET...