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Educators believe that they are adequately preparing youth for the labor market while at the same time employers lament the students' lack of skills. A possible source of the mismatch in perceptions is that employers and educators have different understandings of the types of skills valued in the labor market. Using economics and psychology literature to define four skills sets—socio-emotional, higher-order cognitive, basic cognitive, and technical—this paper reviews the literature that quantitatively measures employer skill demand, as reported in a preference survey. A sample of 27 studies reveals remarkable consistency across the world in the skills demanded by employers. While employers value all skill sets, there is a greater demand for socio-emotional skills and higher-order cognitive skills than for basic cognitive or technical skills. These results are robust across region, industry, occupation, and education level. Employers perceive that the greatest skills gaps are in socio-emotional and higher-order cognitive skills. These findings suggest the need to re-conceptualize the public sector's role in preparing children for a future labor market. Namely, technical training is not equivalent to job training; instead, a broad range of skills, many of which are best taught long before labor market entry, should be included in school curricula from the earliest ages. The skills most demanded by employers—higher-order cognitive skills and socio-emotional skills—are largely learned or refined in adolescence, arguing for a general education well into secondary school until these skills are formed. Finally, the public sector can provide programming and incentives to non-school actors, namely parents and employers, to encourage them to invest in the skills development process.

Although the Latin American region has shown an impressive growth in educational attainment over the past two decades, that education has failed to yield expected benefits. A mounting body of research and policy debates argues that the quantity of education is not an adequate metric of human capital acquisition. Rather, individuals' skills—what they actually know and can do—should stand as policy targets and be fostered across the life course. Evidence from around the world shows that both cognitive and socio-emotional skills are demanded by employers and favorably affect a range of outcomes, including educational attainment and employment outcomes. Through original empirical research investigating the role of cognitive and socio-emotional skills in shaping adults' labor market outcomes in Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, and Peru, supplemented by similar studies in other Latin American countries, this review confirms that cognitive skills matter for reaping labor market gains in terms of higher wages and formal jobs in Latin America; but so do socio-emotional skills. Moreover, socio-emotional skills seem to particularly influence labor force participation and tertiary education attendance as a platform to build knowledge. The study also presents a policy framework for skills development by: (i) providing insights by developmental psychologists about when people are neuro-biologically, socio-emotionally, and situationally ready to develop socio-emotional skills, and (ii) suggesting new directions in cognitive development.

Realizing the potential of young people in Latin America and the Caribbean is essential both to their well-being and to the region's long-term welfare. Young people are often seen as the source of problems that plague the area, namely rising levels of crime and violence, unemployment, and drug use. However, there is little understanding of the problems young people face, the reasons that some engage in risky behaviors, and how best to support the most vulnerable. Youth at Risk in Latin America and the Caribbean attempts to fill this knowledge gap by identifying at-risk youth and providing policy makers with evidence-based guidance that will make their countries' investments in young people more effective. The authors find that more than half the region's young people can be considered \"at risk\" of engaging in negative behaviors, which each year reduce regional economic growth by up to 2 percent. They also confirm that the causes of risky behavior in developed countries—weak relationships with schools and family, poor self esteem, household poverty, negative gender norms, and misguided laws—are also relevant in Latin America and the Caribbean. Based on this analysis, the authors describe 23 policies and programs that experts agree are the foundation of a successful youth development portfolio, ranging from early childhood development programs to parent training to cash transfers granted in exchange for positive behaviors. It also lays out strategies for implementing such a portfolio in a budget-constrained environment. This book will be of great interest to those working in the areas of social analysis and policy, social development and protection, and poverty reduction.

Statistical analyses of diatom assemblages from radiocarbon-dated sediment cores were used to reconstruct changing palaeoceanographic conditions in the western and west-central Ross Sea, Antarctica, from. c.12 14C kyr BP to the present. Data from three Kasten cores support a north-to-south time-transgressive glacial/interglacial transition. Assemblages at the base of each core suggest that glacial processes affecting frustule preservation were significant during the late Pleistocene. Increasing biogenic silic and decreasing per centages of reworked species suggest that upper water-column productivity, instead of preservational processes, increasingly dominates diatom assemblages during grounding-line recession (c.12to c.6 14C kyr BP). A warm ing during the middle to late Holocene (c.6to c.3 14C kyr BP) may have resulted in: (a) spring sea ice melting prior to the annual inception of the Ross Sea polynya in the west-central Ross Sea, and (b) increased plateletice delivery due to increased melting beneath the ice sheet in coastal areas. An increasingly cooler late Holocene (c.3 14C kyr BP to the present) may have resulted in: (a) decreased sea-ice melting prior to physical disinte gration of the annual sea-ice cover by spring inception of Ross-Sea-polynya winds in the west-central Ross Sea, and (b) decreased platelet-ice delivery in coastal areas.

Creating job opportunities for its large and growing number of young people, is a key development challenge for the government of Sierra Leone. It is also crucial for maintaining peace and promoting pro-poor growth. Young people ages 15 to 35 years old are at a particular disadvantage relative to today's children or adults, as they grew up during a war, thereby potentially stunting their development and their transition into adulthood. This transition culminates with secure employment and the resources to provide for oneself and one's family. History suggests that marginalized young people can disrupt a peaceful society; youth who lacked education and access to job opportunities were at the core of the recent conflict, and it is important that this cycle not be repeated. The challenge is how to support their transition to adulthood and, in the process, avoid future conflict. 'Youth Employment in Sierra Leone' examines the supply and demand sides of the labor market to better understand the situation of today's young people, relative to that of adults, and presents an evidence-based menu of potential programs and policies for Sierra Leone. In particular, the authors use a recent household survey and census data to examine patterns of formal and informal labor force activity and human capital accumulation. The authors commissioned a labor demand survey and report on its findings to determine the extent to which urban and rural employers hire young people and their decision-making process. The study reviews skill development programs to enhance youth employability, based on a review of international best practices and of the main programs in Sierra Leone. The authors conclude that youth are a dynamic part of the labor market and that the observed youth employment patterns are a result of the economy's structure rather than constraints facing youth. Short-term actions—to address the immediate needs of today's youth—and long-term strategies to improve the labor market's underlying limitations will be of interest to policy makers who are looking to turn the serious political, social, and economic challenges of sustainable youth employment into an opportunity.

The role of psychiatric mental health in ambulatory care nursing is quite diverse. This article reviews several unique care environments and the role of nurses in those spaces. Keywords: Mental health, psychiatric mental health, psychiatry, ambulatory care.

Offering evidence from both detailed individual country studies and homogenized statistics across the Latin American and Caribbean region, this book examines the impact of the minimum wage on wages, employment, poverty, income distribution and government budgets in the context of a large informal sector and predominantly unskilled workforces.

Moving beyond the simple comparisons of averages typical of most analyses of household income shocks, this article employs quantile analysis to generate a complete distribution of such shocks by type of household during the 1995 crisis in Mexico. It compares the distributions across normal and crisis periods to see whether observed differences were due to the crisis or are intrinsic to the household types. Alternatively, it asks whether the distribution of shocks during normal periods was a reasonable predictor of vulnerability to income shocks during crises. It finds large differences in the distribution of shocks by household types both before and during the crisis but little change in their relative positions during the crisis. The impact appears to have been spread fairly evenly. Households headed by people with less education (poor), single mothers, or people working in the informal sector do not appear to experience disproportionate income drops either in normal times or during crises.