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"Poverty History."
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The haves and the have-nots : a brief and idiosyncratic history of global inequality
\"One of the world's leading experts on wealth, poverty, and the gap that separates them, explains how wealth is unevenly spread throughout our world, now and through time. Economist Branko Milanovic uses history, literature and stories straight out of today's newspapers, to discuss one of the major divisions in our social lives: between the haves and the have-nots. He reveals just how rich Elizabeth Bennet's suitor Mr. Darcy really was; how much Anna Karenina gained by falling in love; how wealthy ancient Romans compare to today's super-rich; where in Kenyan income distribution was Obama's grandfather; how we should think about Marxism in a modern world; and how location where one is born determines his wealth. He goes beyond mere entertainment to explain why inequality matters, how it damages our economic prospects, and how it can threaten the foundations of the social order that we take for granted\"--From publisher description.
Book
Does Money Matter? The Effects of Cash Transfers on Child Development in Rural Ecuador
A large body of research indicates that child development is sensitive to early‐life environments, so that poor children are at higher risk for poor cognitive and behavioral outcomes. These developmental outcomes are important determinants of success in adulthood. Yet, remarkably little is known about whether poverty‐alleviation programs improve children’s developmental outcomes. We examine how a government‐run cash transfer program for poor mothers in rural Ecuador influenced the development of young children. Random assignment at the parish level is used to identify program effects. Our data include a set of measures of cognitive ability that are not typically included in experimental or quasi‐experimental studies of the impact of cash transfers on child well‐being, as well as a set of physical health measures that may be related to developmental outcomes. The cash transfer program had positive, although modest, effects on the physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development of the poorest children in our sample.
Journal Article
Politics of hunger
The 1840s witnessed widespread hunger and malnutrition at home and mass starvation in Ireland. And yet the aptly named ‘Hungry 40s’ came amidst claims that, notwithstanding Malthusian prophecies, absolute biological want had been eliminated in England. The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were supposedly the period in which the threat of famine lifted for the peoples of England. But hunger remained, in the words of Marx, an ‘unremitted pressure’. The politics of hunger offers the first systematic analysis of the ways in which hunger continued to be experienced and feared, both as a lived and constant spectral presence. It also examines how hunger was increasingly used as a disciplining device in new modes of governing the population. Drawing upon a rich archive, this innovative and conceptually-sophisticated study throws new light on how hunger persisted as a political and biological force.
eBook
On our street : our first talk about poverty
Using illustrations, full-color photographs and straightforward text, this nonfiction picture book introduces the topics of homelessness and poverty to young readers.
Book
The Claims of Poverty
In The Claims of Poverty , Kate Crassons explores a
widespread ideological crisis concerning poverty that emerged in
the aftermath of the plague in late medieval England. She
identifies poverty as a central preoccupation in texts ranging from
Piers Plowman and Wycliffite writings to The Book of
Margery Kempe and the York cycle plays. Crassons shows that
these and other works form a complex body of writing in which
poets, dramatists, and preachers anxiously wrestled with the status
of poverty as a force that is at once a sacred imitation of Christ
and a social stigma; a voluntary form of life and an unwelcome
hardship; an economic reality and a spiritual disposition.
Crassons argues that literary texts significantly influenced the
cultural conversation about poverty, deepening our understanding of
its urgency as a social, economic, and religious issue. These texts
not only record debates about the nature of poverty as a form of
either vice or virtue, but explore epistemological and ethical
aspects of the debates. When faced with a claim of poverty, people
effectively become readers interpreting the signs of need in the
body and speech of their fellow human beings. The literary and
dramatic texts of late medieval England embodied the complexity of
such interaction with particular acuteness, revealing the ethical
stakes of interpretation as an act with direct material
consequences. As The Claims of Poverty demonstrates,
medieval literature shaped perceptions about who is defined as
\"poor,\" and in so doing it emerged as a powerful cultural force
that promoted competing models of community, sanctity, and
justice.
eBook
A people's history of poverty in America
Political scientist Stephen Pimpare presents a compulsively readable social history vividly describing poverty from the perspective of poor and welfare-reliant Americans.
Book
Disease and Discrimination
Disease and discrimination are processes linked to class in the early American colonies. Many early colonists fell victim to mass sickness as Old and New World systems collided and new social, political, economic, and ecological dynamics allowed disease to spread.
Dale Hutchinson argues that most colonists, slaves, servants, and nearby Native Americans suffered significant health risks due to their lower economic and social status. With examples ranging from indentured servitude in the Chesapeake to the housing and sewage systems of New York to the effects of conflict between European powers, Hutchinson posits that poverty and living conditions, more so than microbes, were often at the root of epidemics.
eBook
Why America Lost the War on Poverty--And How to Win It
In a provocative assessment of American poverty and policy from 1950 to the present, Frank Stricker examines an era that has seen serious discussion about the causes of poverty and unemployment. Analyzing the War on Poverty, theories of the culture of poverty and the underclass, the effects of Reaganomics, and the 1996 welfare reform, Stricker demonstrates that most antipoverty approaches are futile without the presence (or creation) of good jobs. Stricker notes that since the 1970s, U.S. poverty levels have remained at or above 11%, despite training programs and periods of economic growth. The creation of jobs has continued to lag behind the need for them.Stricker argues that a serious public debate is needed about the job situation; social programs must be redesigned, a national health care program must be developed, and economic inequality must be addressed. He urges all sides to be honest--if we don't want to eliminate poverty, then we should say so. But if we do want to reduce poverty significantly, he says, we must expand decent jobs and government income programs, redirecting national resources away from the rich and toward those with low incomes.Why America Lost the War on Poverty--And How to Win Itis sure to prompt much-needed debate on how to move forward.
eBook