Download or read book Changing Poverty Changing Policies written by Maria Cancian and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poverty declined significantly in the decade after Lyndon Johnson's 1964 declaration of "War on Poverty." Dramatically increased federal funding for education and training programs, social security benefits, other income support programs, and a growing economy reduced poverty and raised expectations that income poverty could be eliminated within a generation. Yet the official poverty rate has never fallen below its 1973 level and remains higher than the rates in many other advanced economies. In this book, editors Maria Cancian and Sheldon Danziger and leading poverty researchers assess why the War on Poverty was not won and analyze the most promising strategies to reduce poverty in the twenty-first century economy. Changing Poverty, Changing Policies documents how economic, social, demographic, and public policy changes since the early 1970s have altered who is poor and where antipoverty initiatives have kept pace or fallen behind. Part I shows that little progress has been made in reducing poverty, except among the elderly, in the last three decades. The chapters examine how changing labor market opportunities for less-educated workers have increased their risk of poverty (Rebecca Blank), and how family structure changes (Maria Cancian and Deborah Reed) and immigration have affected poverty (Steven Raphael and Eugene Smolensky). Part II assesses the ways childhood poverty influences adult outcomes. Markus Jäntti finds that poor American children are more likely to be poor adults than are children in many other industrialized countries. Part III focuses on current antipoverty policies and possible alternatives. Jane Waldfogel demonstrates that policies in other countries—such as sick leave, subsidized child care, and schedule flexibility—help low-wage parents better balance work and family responsibilities. Part IV considers how rethinking and redefining poverty might take antipoverty policies in new directions. Mary Jo Bane assesses the politics of poverty since the 1996 welfare reform act. Robert Haveman argues that income-based poverty measures should be expanded, as they have been in Europe, to include social exclusion and multiple dimensions of material hardships. Changing Poverty, Changing Policies shows that thoughtful policy reforms can reduce poverty and promote opportunities for poor workers and their families. The authors' focus on pragmatic measures that have real possibilities of being implemented in the United States not only provides vital knowledge about what works but real hope for change.
Download or read book Women and Poverty written by Heather E. Bullock and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-09-18 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women and Poverty analyzes the social and structural factors that contribute to, and legitimize, class inequity and women's poverty. In doing so, the book provides a unique documentation of women's experiences of poverty and classism at the individual and interpersonal levels. Provides readers with a critical analysis of the social and structural factors that contribute to women's poverty Uses a multidisciplinary approach to bring together new research and theory from social psychology, policy studies, and critical and feminist scholarship Documents women's experiences of poverty and classism at the interpersonal and institutional levels Discusses policy analysis for reducing poverty and social inequality
Download or read book Policies to Address Poverty in America written by Melissa Kearney and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-06-19 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One-in-seven adults and one-in-five children in the United States live in poverty. Individuals and families living in povertyÊnot only lack basic, material necessities, but they are also disproportionally afflicted by many social and economic challenges. Some of these challenges include the increased possibility of an unstable home situation, inadequate education opportunities at all levels, and a high chance of crime and victimization. Given this growing social, economic, and political concern, The Hamilton Project at Brookings asked academic experts to develop policy proposals confronting the various challenges of AmericaÕs poorest citizens, and to introduce innovative approaches to addressing poverty.ÊWhen combined, the scope and impact of these proposals has the potential to vastly improve the lives of the poor. The resulting 14 policy memos are included in The Hamilton ProjectÕs Policies to Address Poverty in America. The main areas of focus include promoting early childhood development, supporting disadvantaged youth, building worker skills, and improving safety net and work support.
Download or read book Children in Poverty written by Aletha C. Huston and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The number of children living in poverty in the United States increased dramatically during the 1980s and remains high. Why are so many children growing up in poor families? What are the effects of poverty on children's physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development? What role can public policy and policy research play in preventing or alleviating the damaging effects of poverty on children? Children in Poverty examines these questions, focusing on the child rather than on parents' income or self-sufficiency.
Download or read book Social Protection in Africa written by Frank Ellis and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely book makes accessible to a broad audience the ideas, principles and practicalities of establishing effective social protection in Africa. It focuses on the major shift in strategy for tackling hunger and vulnerability, from emergency responses mainly in the form of food transfers to predictable cash transfers to the chronically poorest social groups. The first part of the book comprises nine theme chapters, covering vulnerability, targeting, delivery, coordination, cost-effectiveness, market impacts, and asset effects, while the second part consists of fifteen social protection case studies. The continuous interplay between these two parts makes for a unique contribution to the contemporary literature on social protection. The book takes a positive and forward looking view regarding the feasibility of achieving successful social transfers to the poorest in Africa; nevertheless, a critical stance is taken where appropriate, and unresolved strategic issues regarding the targeting, coverage and scale of social transfers are highlighted. Social Protection in Africa is an essential read for personnel, advisors and consultants working for aid donors, United Nations agencies, NGOs and governments on social transfer programmes in sub-Saharan African countries. In addition, the book represents a valuable resource for training courses on social protection, and will be vital reading for Masters level students and researchers studying emergency relief, social protection, vulnerability and poverty reduction in low-income countries.
Download or read book A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-09-16 with total page 619 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.
Download or read book The Impact of MacroEconomic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution written by Luiz A. Pereira da Silva and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2008-06-19 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A companion to the bestseller, The Impact of Economic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution, this title deals with theoretical challenges and cutting-edge macro-micro linkage models. The authors compare the predictive and analytical power of various macro-micro linkage techniques using the traditional RHG approach as a benchmark to evaluate standard policies, such as a typical stabilization package and a typical structural reform policy.
Download or read book Legacies of the War on Poverty written by Martha J. Bailey and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2013-07-31 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many believe that the War on Poverty, launched by President Johnson in 1964, ended in failure. In 2010, the official poverty rate was 15 percent, almost as high as when the War on Poverty was declared. Historical and contemporary accounts often portray the War on Poverty as a costly experiment that created doubts about the ability of public policies to address complex social problems. Legacies of the War on Poverty, drawing from fifty years of empirical evidence, documents that this popular view is too negative. The volume offers a balanced assessment of the War on Poverty that highlights some remarkable policy successes and promises to shift the national conversation on poverty in America. Featuring contributions from leading poverty researchers, Legacies of the War on Poverty demonstrates that poverty and racial discrimination would likely have been much greater today if the War on Poverty had not been launched. Chloe Gibbs, Jens Ludwig, and Douglas Miller dispel the notion that the Head Start education program does not work. While its impact on children’s test scores fade, the program contributes to participants’ long-term educational achievement and, importantly, their earnings growth later in life. Elizabeth Cascio and Sarah Reber show that Title I legislation reduced the school funding gap between poorer and richer states and prompted Southern school districts to desegregate, increasing educational opportunity for African Americans. The volume also examines the significant consequences of income support, housing, and health care programs. Jane Waldfogel shows that without the era’s expansion of food stamps and other nutrition programs, the child poverty rate in 2010 would have been three percentage points higher. Kathleen McGarry examines the policies that contributed to a great success of the War on Poverty: the rapid decline in elderly poverty, which fell from 35 percent in 1959 to below 10 percent in 2010. Barbara Wolfe concludes that Medicaid and Community Health Centers contributed to large reductions in infant mortality and increased life expectancy. Katherine Swartz finds that Medicare and Medicaid increased access to health care among the elderly and reduced the risk that they could not afford care or that obtaining it would bankrupt them and their families. Legacies of the War on Poverty demonstrates that well-designed government programs can reduce poverty, racial discrimination, and material hardships. This insightful volume refutes pessimism about the effects of social policies and provides new lessons about what more can be done to improve the lives of the poor.
Download or read book Poor Policy written by D. Eric Schansberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the conventional approach most "poverty" books take—a focus on how government attempts to assist the poor with welfare programs—D. Eric Schansberg instead presents in this volume a dynamic and timely alternative to the idea. Using public choice economics, he illustrates how special interest groups advocate policies that benefit themselv
Download or read book Understanding Poverty written by Sheldon DANZIGER and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In spite of an unprecedented period of growth and prosperity, the poverty rate in the United States remains high relative to the levels of the early 1970s and relative to those in many industrialized countries today. Understanding Poverty brings the problem of poverty in America to the fore, focusing on its nature and extent at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Poverty Inequality and Democracy written by Francis Fukuyama and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of populism in new democracies, especially in Latin America, has brought renewed urgency to the question of how liberal democracy deals with issues of poverty and inequality. Citizens who feel that democracy failed to improve their economic condition are often vulnerable to the appeal of political leaders with authoritarian tendencies. To counteract this trend, liberal democracies must establish policies that will reduce socioeconomic disparities without violating liberal principles, interfering with economic growth, or ignoring the consensus of the people. Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy addresses the complicated philosophical and moral issues surrounding the distribution of economic goods in free societies as well as the empirical relationships between democratization and trends in poverty and inequality. This volume also discusses the variety of welfare-state policies that have been adopted in different regions of the world. The book’s distinguished group of contributors provides a succinct synthesis of the scholarship on this topic. They address such broad issues as whether democracy promotes inequality, the socioeconomic factors that drive democratic failure, and the basic choices that societies must make as they decide how to deal with inequality. Chapters focus on particular regions or countries, examining how problems of poverty and inequality have been handled (or mishandled) by newer democracies in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy will prove vital reading for all students of world politics, political economy, and democracy’s global prospects. Contributors: Dan Banik, Nancy Bermeo, Dorothee Bohle, Nathan Converse, Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, Francis Fukuyama, Béla Greskovits, Stephan Haggard, Ethan B. Kapstein, Robert R. Kaufman, Taekyoon Kim, Huck-Ju Kwon, Jooha Lee, Peter Lewis, Beatriz Magaloni, Mitchell A. Orenstein, Marc F. Plattner, Charles Simkins, Alejandro Toledo, Ilcheong Yi
Download or read book Policy Politics and Poverty in South Africa written by Jeremy Seekings and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seekings and Nattrass explain why poverty persisted in South Africa after the transition to democracy in 1994. The book examines how public policies both mitigated and reproduced poverty, and explains how and why these policies were adopted. The analysis offers lessons for the study of poverty elsewhere in the world.
Download or read book Visions of Poverty written by Robert Asen and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Robert Asen explores the ways in which images of the poor functioned in policy debates to advantage some positions and disadvantage others. Visions of Poverty demonstrates that any future policy agenda must first come to terms with the vivid, disabling images of poverty that continue to circulate. In debating reforms, participants - whose ranks should include potential recipients - need to imagine poor people anew."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Working and Poor written by Rebecca M. Blank and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2007-01-09 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last three decades, large-scale economic developments, such as technological change, the decline in unionization, and changing skill requirements, have exacted their biggest toll on low-wage workers. These workers often possess few marketable skills and few resources with which to support themselves during periods of economic transition. In Working and Poor, a distinguished group of economists and policy experts, headlined by editors Rebecca Blank, Sheldon Danziger, and Robert Schoeni, examine how economic and policy changes over the last twenty-five years have affected the well-being of low-wage workers and their families. Working and Poor examines every facet of the economic well-being of less-skilled workers, from employment and earnings opportunities to consumption behavior and social assistance policies. Rebecca Blank and Heidi Schierholz document the different trends in work and wages among less-skilled women and men. Between 1979 and 2003, labor force participation rose rapidly for these women, along with more modest increases in wages, while among the men both employment and wages fell. David Card and John DiNardo review the evidence on how technological changes have affected less-skilled workers and conclude that the effect has been smaller than many observers claim. Philip Levine examines the effectiveness of the Unemployment Insurance program during recessions. He finds that the program's eligibility rules, which deny benefits to workers who have not met minimum earnings requirements, exclude the very people who require help most and should be adjusted to provide for those with the highest need. On the other hand, Therese J. McGuire and David F. Merriman show that government help remains a valuable source of support during economic downturns. They find that during the most recent recession in 2001, when state budgets were stretched thin, legislatures resisted political pressure to cut spending for the poor. Working and Poor provides a valuable analysis of the role that public policy changes can play in improving the plight of the working poor. A comprehensive analysis of trends over the last twenty-five years, this book provides an invaluable reference for the public discussion of work and poverty in America. A Volume in the National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy
Download or read book Why Americans Hate Welfare written by Martin Gilens and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-13 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tackling one of the most volatile issues in contemporary politics, Martin Gilens's work punctures myths and misconceptions about welfare policy, public opinion, and the role of the media in both. Why Americans Hate Welfare shows that the public's views on welfare are a complex mixture of cynicism and compassion; misinformed and racially charged, they nevertheless reflect both a distrust of welfare recipients and a desire to do more to help the "deserving" poor. "With one out of five children currently living in poverty and more than 100,000 families with children now homeless, Gilens's book is must reading if you want to understand how the mainstream media have helped justify, and even produce, this state of affairs." —Susan Douglas, The Progressive "Gilens's well-written and logically developed argument deserves to be taken seriously." —Choice "A provocative analysis of American attitudes towards 'welfare.'. . . [Gilens] shows how racial stereotypes, not white self-interest or anti-statism, lie at the root of opposition to welfare programs." -Library Journal
Download or read book The Political Logic of Poverty Relief written by Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Political Logic of Poverty Relief places electoral politics and institutional design at the core of poverty alleviation. The authors develop a theory with applications to Mexico about how elections shape social programs aimed at aiding the poor. They also assess whether voters reward politicians for targeted poverty alleviation programs.
Download or read book The Economics of Poverty written by Martin Ravallion and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are fewer people living in extreme poverty in the world today than 30 years ago. While that is an achievement, continuing progress for poor people is far from assured. Inequalities in access to key resources threaten to stall growth and poverty reduction in many places. The world's poorest have made only a small absolute gain over those 30 years. Progress has been slow against relative poverty as judged by the standards of the country and time one lives in, and a great many people in the world's emerging middle class remain vulnerable to falling back into poverty. The Economics of Poverty reviews critically past and present debates on poverty, spanning both rich and poor countries. The book provides an accessible new synthesis of current economic thinking on key questions: How is poverty measured? How much poverty is there? Why does poverty exist, and is it inevitable? What can be done to reduce poverty? Can it even be eliminated? The book does not assume that readers know economics already. Those new to the subject get a lot of help along the way in understanding its concepts and methods. Economics lives through its relevance to real world problems, and here the problem of poverty is both the central focus and a vehicle for learning.
