Child poverty is currently regarded by many as the 'number one' issue in Britain. Yet it has not always been so high on the policy agenda. What were attitudes to poor children 200 years ago? How did child poverty emerge as both a quantifiable and urgent issue? And how did policy makers respond? These are the questions that this book tackles. The book: * presents a broad but sophisticated overview of 200 years of investigation into and responses to the plight of poor children; * identifies key moments and figures of the period; * includes chapters on children and work, education and child poverty research to provide the essential context for the story of the 'discovery' of child poverty. Clearly and accessibly written, this book provides a concise but richly detailed account of the subject. It will appeal to policy makers, practitioners, researchers and all those with an interest in child poverty wishing to understand the antecedents of current research and policy. Studies in poverty, inequality and social exclusion series Series Editor: David Gordon, Director, Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research. Poverty, inequality and social exclusion remain the most fundamental problems that humanity faces in the 21st century. This exciting series, published in association with the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research at the University of Bristol, aims to make cutting-edge poverty related research more widely available. For other titles in this series, please follow the series link from the main catalogue page.

Taking as its starting point the authors' earlier work on Labour Legislation and Public Policy, this book provides a detailed account and critical analysis of British labour legislation and labour market regulation since the early 1990s. Referring back to the earlier history, and filling in the gaps in the early and mid-1990s, the work concentrates mainly on the legislation and policy measures in the employment sphere of the New Labour governments which have been in power since 1997, placing those developments in the context of the relevant aspects of European Community law. The work argues for an understanding of this body of legislation and regulatory activity as being directed towards the realisation of a flexible labour market, and shows how this objective has been pursued in three intersecting areas, those of regulating personal or individual employment relations, regulating collective representation, and promoting work. It explores the methods of regulation which have been used, developing a taxonomy of regulation and a notion of 'light regulation' to characterise some recent legislative interventions. It considers how far the administration of Prime Minister Tony Blair has fulfilled its promises or claims of 'fairness at work', 'welfare to work' and 'success at work'. It is intended to be of interest to those concerned with the study of British and European labour or employment law, employee relations or human resource management, labour market economics, and contemporary politics.

This book select successful cases of poverty reduction and alleviation in the Guizhou province of China, which reflects the highest number and widest distribution of people living in poverty. The local government seeks to achieve sustainable development goals and find multiple solutions to the problem.. The book introduces local experiences and presents the whole process from policy making to practice.

Many theorists now give credence to the idea that those in informal paid work are an economic asset and that policy initiatives should be aimed at bringing them into the legitimate sphere. However, where people are on low incomes and face poverty, this presents a particular challenge. This study examines the relationship between poverty and informal work. Exploring the experiences of people engaged in low-paid informal work, it contends that unless government seeks to understand and include the informal economy in its strategies, it will never be able to reach its employment, anti-poverty or regeneration targets. The research shows that people in some deprived areas work informally - out of need, not greed -in response to poverty. Identifying low benefit rates, low wages and rules which limit the hours people can work as the three basic issues that underpin informal work, the report examines what works, and what does not, in tackling this activity. It provides in-depth evidence and a range of practical solutions to support and enable more people who wish to, to make the transition from the informal to formal economy. The report offers a greater understanding of the choices that people on low incomes are making and on how government policy and practice can better respond to these. People in low-paid informal work is aimed at government decision and policy makers, politicians, national assemblies, regional development agencies, local authorities and statutory delivery agencies, businesses, the voluntary and community sectors, trade unions and think tanks, as well as the general public.

What would schools and communities look like if the health and well-being of all our children were our highest priorities? More important than test scores, profits, or real estate values? What actions would we take if we wanted to guarantee that all our children were growing up with what they needed to be healthy, happy, and successful-and not just some of them? The United States was once among the healthiest countries in the world. As of now, it is ranked no better than twenty-ninth. Those who bear the brunt of our worsening health are the poor, people of color, and, most of all, our children. All Children Are All Our Children situates our ongoing health crisis within the larger picture of inequality and the complex interplay of systems in the U.S. based on class, privilege, racism, sexism, and the ongoing tension between the ideals of democracy and the realities of corporate capitalism. Public education is caught in the middle of those tensions. All Children Are All Our Children begins by defining what we mean by health, looking at the many factors that support or undermine it, and then identifies steps that can be taken locally in our schools and in our communities that can support the health and well-being of our young people and their families, even as we work towards necessary change at the state and national policy level.

What would schools and communities look like if the health and well-being of all our children were our highest priorities? More important than test scores, profits, or real estate values? What actions would we take if we wanted to guarantee that all our children were growing up with what they needed to be healthy, happy, and successful-and not just some of them? The United States was once among the healthiest countries in the world. As of now, it is ranked no better than twenty-ninth. Those who bear the brunt of our worsening health are the poor, people of color, and, most of all, our children. All Children Are All Our Children situates our ongoing health crisis within the larger picture of inequality and the complex interplay of systems in the U.S. based on class, privilege, racism, sexism, and the ongoing tension between the ideals of democracy and the realities of corporate capitalism. Public education is caught in the middle of those tensions. All Children Are All Our Children begins by defining what we mean by health, looking at the many factors that support or undermine it, and then identifies steps that can be taken locally in our schools and in our communities that can support the health and well-being of our young people and their families, even as we work towards necessary change at the state and national policy level.

Active Labour Market Policies aim to assist people not in work into employment through a range of interventions including job search, preparation, training and in-work support and development. While policies, programmes and scholarship predominantly focus on jobseekers' engagement with these initiatives, this book is the first text to shed light on the employer's perspective. Bringing together renowned scholars from social and public policy and human resource management, the book draws on empirical studies, comparative case studies and real-life examples from practice, providing a comprehensive analysis of this under-explored issue. This go-to resource will inform HRM and public policy scholarship and promote collaborations between the disciplines.

Education Reform and Gentrification in the Age of #CamdenRising: Public Education and Urban Redevelopment in Camden, NJ examines the perceptions and interpretations of Camden-a New Jersey community whose population is predominately minority, historically impoverished, and rapidly employing neoliberal strategies in public education and urban redevelopment. Using the framework of standpoint theory as a lens to alternatively view change and "progress" in Camden (dubbed by city officials as #CamdenRising), this book highlights the views of Camden residents who hold little sociopolitical capital yet are profoundly impacted by the city's efforts in employing neoliberal approaches within urban development and public education. This book will center current and future resident viewpoints on living in a city whose leadership employs neoliberal tactics in redevelopment and in rebranding public education. Participants in this work reported feelings of political alienation pertaining to participation in redevelopment and public education decision-making. Further, participants also believe such recent efforts for change in Camden are intended to benefit a targeted, potentially gentrifying, population and not the majority low-income minorities who currently reside there.

This new and timely book deals with the magnitude and the intensity of the poverty in Latin America, Mexico and the state of Nuevo Leon. The enormous and chronic social problems of poverty in 1970 struck approximately 40 per cent of the families of Latin America or 119 million people. In 1990, of 423,913,043 habitants of Latin America, 46 per cent were living in poverty, that is to say, 195 million people were suffering this calamity (CEPAL). According to the same CEPAL, in 2002 44 per cent of the population of Latin America was poor, whereas 19.40 per cent were living in extreme poverty, indigence or misery. Seen in another way, the poverty in Latin America increased in that period of 20 years, from 1970 to 1990, 38.97 per cent. At the moment, in Latin America there are 225 million poor people. This book is an essential reference to a problem which the world must, if for no other reason than necessity, deal with in a vigorous and just manner.

A fresh look at the complex question of outdoor poor relief in the nineteenth century. The consequences of extreme poverty were a grim reality for all too many people in Victorian England. The various poor laws implemented to try to deal with it contained a number of controversial measures, one of the most radical and unpopular being the crusade against outdoor relief, during which central government sought to halt all welfare payments at home. Via a close case study of Brixworth union in Northamptonshire, which offers an unusually richcorpus of primary material and evidence, the author looks at what happened to those impoverished men and women who struggled to live independently in a world-without-welfare outside the workhouse. She retraces the experiences ofelderly paupers evicted from almshouses, of the children of the aged poor prosecuted for parental maintenance, of dying paupers who were refused medical care in their homes, and of women begging for funeral costs in an attempt toprevent the bodies of their loved ones being taken for dissection by anatomists. She then shows how increasing democratisation gave the labouring poor the means to win control of the poor law. ELIZABETH T. HURREN is a Reader in the Medical Humanities, University of Leicester.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. Beggars and begging were ubiquitous features of pre-Famine Irish society, yet have gone largely unexamined by historians. This book explores at length for the first time the complex cultures of mendicancy, as well as how wider societal perceptions of and responses to begging were framed by social class, gender and religion. The study breaks new ground in exploring the challenges inherent in defining and measuring begging and alms-giving in pre-Famine Ireland, as well as the disparate ways in which mendicants were perceived by contemporaries. A discussion of the evolving role of parish vestries in the life of pre-Famine communities facilitates an examination of corporate responses to beggary, while a comprehensive analysis of the mendicity society movement, which flourished throughout Ireland in the three decades following 1815, highlights the significance of charitable societies and associational culture in responding to the perceived threat of mendicancy. The instance of the mendicity societies illustrates the extent to which Irish commentators and social reformers were influenced by prevailing theories and practices in the transatlantic world regarding the management of the poor and deviant. Drawing on a wide range of sources previously unused for the study of poverty and welfare, this book makes an important contribution to modern Irish social and ecclesiastical history.

Wastelands is an exploration of trash, the scavengers who collect it, and the precarious communities it sustains. After enduring war and persecution in Kosovo, many Ashkali refugees fled to Belgrade, Serbia, where they were stigmatized as Gypsies, consigned to slums, sidelined from the economy, and subjected to violence. To survive, Ashkali collect the only resource available to them: garbage. Vividly recounting everyday life in an illegal Romani settlement, Eirik Saethre follows Ashkali as they scavenge through dumpsters, build shacks, siphon electricity, negotiate the recycling trade, and migrate between Belgrade, Kosovo, and the European Union. He argues that trash is not just a means of survival: it reinforces the status of Ashkali and Roma as polluted Others, creates indissoluble bonds to transnational capitalism, enfeebles bodies, and establishes a localized sovereignty.

World poverty is an important book offering fresh insights into how to tackle poverty worldwide. With contributions from leading scholars in the field both internationally and in the UK, the book asks whether existing international and national policies are likely to succeed in reducing poverty across the world. It concludes that they are not and that a radically different international strategy is needed. This book is a companion volume to Breadline Europe: The measurement of poverty (The Policy Press, 2001). The focus of World poverty is on anti-poverty policies rather than the scale, causes and measurement of poverty. A wide range of countries is discussed including countries such as China and India, which have rarely been covered elsewhere. The interests of the industrialised and developing world are given equal attention and are analysed together. Policies intended to operate at different levels - international, regional, national and sub-national - ranging from the policies of international agencies like the UN and the World Bank through to national governments, groups of governments and local and city authorities - are examined. Key aspects of social policy, like 'targeting' and means-testing, de-regulation and privatisation, are considered in detail. World poverty will become a definitive point of reference for anyone working, studying or researching in the poverty field. Studies in poverty, inequality and social exclusion series Series Editor: David Gordon, Director, Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research. Poverty, inequality and social exclusion remain the most fundamental problems that humanity faces in the 21st century. This exciting series, published in association with the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research at the University of Bristol, aims to make cutting-edge poverty related research more widely available. For other titles in this series, please follow the series link from the main catalogue page.

For many students, working while in college is a defining characteristic of the undergraduate experience. However, student workers often view campus employment as a money-making opportunity rather than a chance for personal development. Likewise, institutions often neglect to consider campus jobs as a means to education and student engagement. It is the distinction between work for remuneration and work for personal development which shapes much of the discussion of student employment throughout A Good Job. This book makes the case for campus employment as a high-impact practice in higher education and provides models for institutional efforts to implement new student employment strategies. Carefully designed campus employment opportunities can have numerous benefits, including career exploration and preparation, learning, and increased engagement leading to increased retention. The authors make the case that employment can and should be a purposeful and powerful component in any higher education institution's efforts to support student learning, development, and success. This book is an excellent resource for anyone interested in capitalizing on the developmental and learning potential of student employment on campus.

This book explores the issue of social exclusion. It asks three main questions: How can social exclusion be measured? What are its main determinants or influences? And what policies can reduce social exclusion? The authors aim to consider how a focus on social exclusion may alter the policy questions that are most relevant by fostering debate in government, research, and academic circles.

Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions: Counternarratives of Black Family Resilience offers a unique perspective on the complexities of being a Black mother addicted to crack, powder cocaine, heroin, and crank. Qualitative interviews provide rich narratives from five Black mothers challenging negative controlled images and stereotypes of Black motherhood and drug addiction. Using Black Feminist Thought, Critical Race Feminism, and Resilience as conceptual frameworks, this book confronts hegemonic constructions of Black mothers and their children within the context of drug addictions. Particular attention is focused on using the mothers' self-definitions of struggles and family resilience to dismantle the negative controlled images of the junkie and the crack ho' and her crack baby. The mothers in this book speak truth to their experiences with motherhood and addictions to some of the most powerful street drugs that explicitly defy the junkie, crack ho', and crack baby images. The book also addresses tensions existing within researcher-participant relationships and nuances unique to research with Black mothers in recovery. Personal lessons learned and challenges experienced during the research process are highlighted as Tivis shares dilemmas of self-reflections of positionality, accountability and use of language. Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions contains important implications for research and practice in education and across other disciplines concentrating on mothers and children from racially diverse backgrounds. This book will be relevant for both undergraduate and graduate students and academics within these disciplines. Rethinking Black Motherhood and Drug Addictions will be of interest to advanced pre-service teachers and other disciplines engaging in clinical and professional practice with addiction and with families.

Sabina Alkire shows how Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen's capability approach can be coherently---and practically---put to work in poverty reduction activities so that the voices and values of the poor matter. This provides economists, philosophers, theologians, and development practitioners with a way forward that addresses both theoretical and practical challenges.

Homelessness touches every corner of our country, even the most prosperous ones. In No Vacancy: Homeless Women in Paradise, Michael E. Reid tells the story of more than five hundred women living without shelter in the affluent sea-side communities of Monterrey, Pebble Beach, and Carmel, California. Even in these glittering cities, one by one, homeless women were dying, their bodies appearing in plain sight. When Reid, an Episcopal priest, became aware of these tragedies, he had to act, and he co-founded the Fund for Homeless Women. This new venture took him deep into the complex realities homeless women face. He found that the well-meaning policies and programs in place in fact often had the unintentional effect of widening the gap between the indigent and mainstream society. No Vacancy captures the realities of homelessness in affluent northern California and exposes pitfalls encountered by those who wish to combat it. Reid presents an unvarnished look at the culture of long-term homelessness, and his experience provides helpful guidance for fighting this crisis. He also explores the root causes that can result in homelessness, including marginalization and the gender-based bias--and its disproportionate effect on women of color. This timely book provides needed guidance from the frontlines of the fight against homelessness, especially as activists and homeless people face weakened political and financial support from the government and their communities.

Famous journalistic record, exposing poverty and degradation of New York slums around 1900, by major social reformer. 100 striking and influential photographs.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Want, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness: first recognized together in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, these are the focus of the Social Question. In 1942 William Beveridge called them the "giant evils" while diagnosing the crises produced by the emergence of industrial society. More recently, during the final quarter of the twentieth century, the global spread of neoliberal policies enlarged these crises so much that the Social Question has made a comeback. The Social Question in the Twenty-First Century maps out the linked crises across regions and countries and identifies the renewed and intensified Social Question as a labor issue above all. The volume includes discussions from every corner of the globe, focusing on American exceptionalism, Chinese repression, Indian exclusion, South African colonialism, democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, and other phenomena. The effects of capitalism dominating the world, the impact of the scarcity of waged work, and the degree to which the dispossessed poor bear the brunt of the crisis are all evaluated in this carefully curated volume. Both thorough and thoughtful, the book serves as collective effort to revive and reposition the Social Question, reconstructing its meaning and its politics in the world today.

"One of the main theses of the Marienthal study was that prolonged unemployment leads to a state of apathy in which the victims do not utilize any longer even the few opportunities left to them. The vicious cycle between reduced opportunities and reduced level of aspiration has remained the focus of all subsequent discussions." So begin the opening remarks to the English-language edition of what has become a major class in the literature of social stratification.

The study on which "Marienthal" is based was conducted in 1930 in Austria, at the time of a depression that was worse than anything experienced in the United States. But the substantive problem is still very much with us, although our focus is now poverty rather than unemployment. In Austria, the institutional response to mass unemployment was the dole. Unlike the work relief programs of the New Deal, the dole system left workers destitute and idle. The essential finding of this research is that when people are deprived of work, there is a breakdown in the personality structure of a group.

"Marienthal" represents a colossal breakthrough in social research. It provides a combination of quantification and interpretive analysis of qualitative material-an approach that remains in the forefront of present-day research design. The work combines statistical data at hand, case studies, information on historical background of those being studied, and questionnaires combined with solicited reports that enhances a sense of daily life without intrusion by investigators. The work provides a unique insight into how creative innovations can assist in overcoming collective deprivations.

The work of Marie Jahoda, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and Hans Zeisel was sponsored by the then newly created Psychological Institute at the University of Vienna. Each of the authors went on to extraordinary professional careers. Jahoda held positions at New York University, Brunel University, and the University of Sussex. Lazarsfeld spent the better part of his career from 1933 to his death at Columbia University in New York City. Zeisel came to the University of Chicago after the rise of Nazism.

A livelihoods approach views the world from the point of view of the individuals, households and social groups who are trying to make a living in volatile conditions and with limited assets. It provides a framework for understanding the opportunities and assets available to poor people and the sources of their vulnerability, as well as the impact upon them of external organizations, processes and policies. Based on recent and extensive research, this collection assesses the value of the livelihoods approach in analyzing urban poverty and guiding the selection of policy and program components. Part two reviews the situation and strategies of poor urban people and identifies the policy and practical implications. In part three reviews recent project experience and finally policy and practical implications are identified.Lasting improvements in well-being depend not just on economic development but on political commitment to addressing the concerns of the poor as well as governance structures and processes that are responsive to the claims and needs of different groups of poor people. This readable account will be important for professionals, development workers, academics and students.

Wars, especially civil wars, are among the most serious causes of human suffering and underdevelopment. Yet economic analysis of developing countries at war is relatively rare. These volumes aim to reverse this neglect, tracing the economic and social consequences of conflict both theoretically and through empirical investigations, including seven country case studies. A major objective is to identify policies which may reduce the heavy human and economic costs. Volume One provides a general framework for the analysis, examines the political economy of countries at war, and provides an empirical overview of the costs of war for the poor countries worst affected by conflict. The approach is multidisciplinary: political and sociological analysis is needed in order to understand motivations and behaviour during conflict; while economic analysis is necessary to evaluate how poor people are affected. The analysis includes an investigation of how the international system, including food aid, affects the war economies, and identifies international as well as domestic policies which may reduce the human and economic costs of conflict. The subject is particularly important in view of the high incidence of wars in poor countries. Between 1950 and 1990, around 15 million deaths were caused (directly or indirectly) by war in developing countries. The end of the Cold War led to a transition to peace in many of the areas in which conflict had been fuelled by East-West antagonism, but new wars erupted. From 1989 to 1995, between 34 and 51 armed conflicts were waged each year, the great majority in poor developing countries. These volumes investigate economic and social consequences at macro-, meso- and micro- levels, aiming to identify the indirect costs (e.g. via inflation and reduced entitlements) as well as direct costs of military operations. The in-depth country case studies published in Volume Two (Afghanistan, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Uganda) are summarized in Volume One. These explore the main economic mechanisms operating during war and the policy responses of governments and international actors, showing how each can enlarge the costs and further fuel the conflicts. The large variations in this response and in the consequent costs point to domestic and international policies which can reduce the human and economic costs even before peace is restored.

In this ground-breaking, two-volume study of the adjustment of advanced welfare states to international economic pressures, leading scholars detail the wide variety of responses in twelve countries. Volume I presents comparative analyses of differences in the vulnerabilities and capabilities of these countries, in the effectiveness of their policy responses, and in the role of values and discourses in the politics of adjustment. Volume II presents in-depth analyses of the experiences of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom as well as special studies on the participation of women in the labour market, early retirement, the liberalization of public services, and international tax competition.