Remittances and Children's Capabilities: New Evidence from Kyrgyzstan, 2005-2008

The Kyrgyz Republic is one of the largest recipients of international remittances in the world; from a Balance of Payments measure of remittances, it ranked tenth in the world in 2008 in the ratio of remittances to GDP, a rapid increase from 30th place in 2004.Remittances can be used to maintain the household's standard of living by providing income to families with unemployed and underemployed adult members. Remittances can also be used to promote investment not only in businesses and communities but also in people. In this paper, we examine the role that remittances have played in the Kyrgyz Republic in promoting investments in children. Based on the capabilities approach to well-being initiated by Sen (2010), we look at the impact of remittances and domestic transfer payments primarily from internal migration on children's education and health. Our outcomes include enrollment in school and preschool, expenditures, stunting and wasting of preschool children, and health habits of older children. We use unique panel data from the Kyrgyz Republic for 2005-2008 and thus control for some of the biases inherent in cross-sectional studies of remittances and family outcomes. We find that overall remittances and domestic transfers have not promoted investments in the human capital of children. Specifically, preschool enrollments were higher in the urban north but secondary school enrollments were lower in other regions in remittance receiving households; expenditures were also negatively affected in the south and the mountain areas. These negative enrollment results were larger for girls than for boys. We also found evidence of stunting and wasting among young children and worse health habits among boys in remittance or transfer receiving households. In the long run, Kyrgyzstan needs human capital development for growth; our results suggest that remittances are not providing the boost needed in human capital to promote development in the future.Children’s education and health, Remittances, Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia

Labour Markets and the Financial Crisis: Evidence from Tajikistan

Many Tajik are confronted with the financial crisis that influences their decision making in everyday life, including their behavior in the labor market. In our paper, we aim to study the impact of the financial crisis 2008/2009 on individual labor market decisions in Tajikistan by enlarging usual determinants with a set of macroeconomic variables. This is the first study investigating the impact of the financial crisis in developing countries using fixed effects estimation. Using two waves of a unique panel data set, we find that the global financial crisis heavily impacts employment patterns in Tajikistan. Our results show that regular wage employment decreases significantly during times of economic turmoil. We also examine gender differences of the impact on employment structures and find that men and women are affected through different channels: as wage employed women mostly work in unprotected and not guaranteed jobs, they were more likely than men to change their employment status during the crisis.

Incorporation of Nanoparticles into Polymersomes: Size and Concentration Effects

Because of the rapidly growing field of nanoparticles in therapeutic applications, understanding and controlling the interaction between nanoparticles and membranes is of great importance. While a membrane is exposed to nanoparticles its behavior is mediated by both their biological and physical properties. Constant interplay of these biological and physicochemical factors makes selective studies of nanoparticles uptake demanding. Artificial model membranes can serve as a platform to investigate physical parameters of the process in the absence of any biofunctional molecules and/or supplementary energy. Here we report on photon- and fluorescence-correlation spectroscopic studies of the uptake of nanosized SiO₂ nanoparticles by poly(dimethylsiloxane)-<i>block</i>-poly(2-methyloxazoline) vesicles allowing species selectivity. Analogous to the cell membrane, polymeric membrane incorporates particles using membrane fission and particles wrapping as suggested by cryo-TEM imaging. It is revealed that the incorporation process can be controlled to a significant extent by changing nanoparticles size and concentration. Conditions for nanoparticle uptake and controlled filling of polymersomes are presented