Like many countries in the world, India is mired in bureaucratic rigidities and hierarchical structures of exploitation and oppression, leading to a well-known problem of clogged pipes in the complex system of public welfare services. It is widely recognised that this clogged system requires innovative intervention, via transparent policies that are able to avoid political capture. This book reports on three overlapping pilot schemes in Madhya Pradesh and Delhi, including a special project in tribal villages, in which over 6,000 people were provided with a modest basic income paid monthly over 18 months. The project was funded by UNICEF and UNDP and implemented by SEWA (The Indian Self-Employed Women's Association). Written by Guy Standing who designed the pilot schemes and Renana Jhabvala, the head of SEWA, who implemented them, the book examines the effects of these pilot schemes at the individual, family and local economy levels. The pilots are discussed in the context of the new Food Security Act, the government's job guarantee plan, MGNREGA, and ongoing debate over the efficacy of the Public Distribution System and its ration shops disbursing rice, wheat, sugar and kerosene.The authors look at a number of alternative options for addressing rural poverty, including subsidies, targeting, selectivity and conditionality, contrasting them with the basic income model. They argue that the provision of basic incomes not only provides economic security but has many knock-on effects, allowing families to escape the debt trap, enrich food consumption and unlock constraints to schooling and healthcare. Above all it may enable individuals, including women, the disabled, the elderly and those in excluded castes or tribes, to engage more effectively in wider society.

This book assesses Ecological Migration and Precision Poverty Alleviation Measures, based on research conducted in Ningxia. "Resettling residents currently living in poor areas" is an important measure for "precise poverty alleviation." China's central government has provided extraordinary support for these areas, so as to help with "removing poverty nests," "changing poverty industries," and "pulling out the roots of poverty."This book is mainly based on research conducted in Ningxia, one of the earliest areas in China to achieve poverty alleviation and development through immigration and relocation. Since the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, Ningxia's ecological migration has been integrated into the process of new urbanization and industrialization. Poverty alleviation and relocation not only involves regional transfer, industrial transformation, and changes in livelihood, but also the social adaptation and integration of migrant groups. In addition to examining these aspects, the book shares stories of how impoverished individuals have succeeded in changing their fates.

Family-based service (FBS) programs have been developing rapidly across the country at a time of increasingly scarce human resources and in a politically volatile climate. Such a context has made evaluation of such programs imperative. The present volume reviews basic elements of evaluation in the light of current knowledge and then highlights the most useful research instruments for measuring changes in child and family functioning. Chapters focus on evaluation methods that can be employed to determine the success of existing policy and to influence the development of new policy. The authors assume that their readers will have a basic familiarity with research methods and program evaluation. They discuss the challenges they have encountered in conducting extensive research on family preservation, family support. and other related programs and pose practical solutions for administrators, practitioners, and evaluators confronted with similar difficult issues. Each chapter presents a brief conceptual framework for understanding issues related to assessment. Essential elements are reviewed, while research design, measurement variables, and qualitative and quantitative analyses are discussed in turn. The book concludes with a review of the limitations of evaluations.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of youth unemployment and is renowned for being one of the most unequal societies in the world. In this context, training and education play critical roles in helping young people escape poverty and unemployment. Post-school Education offers insights about the way in which young people in South Africa navigate their way through a host of post-school training and education options. The topics range from access to, and labour market transitions from, vocational education, adult education, universities, and workplace-based training. The individual chapters offer up-to-date analyses, identify some of the challenges that young people face when accessing training and education and also point to gaps between education and the labour market. The contributors are all experts in their respective components but write with a holistic view of the post-school education system, using an unashamedly empirical lens. Post-school Education will be of interest to all researchers and policymakers concerned with the transformative role of further education and training in society.

This comprehensive and carefully organized collection provides an overview of the relationship between gender and economic stratification in seven industrialized countries. Everywhere, as a Polish commentator notes, `men have too much power, and women too much work.' Nevertheless, these studies reveal large differences in the circumstances of women in different countries and help to illuminate the several developments in the labor market, the family, and public policy which explain the extreme feminization of poverty in the United States. Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York Lucid, careful, and systematic, the book builds a compelling explanation for the needless impoverishment experienced by millions of American women and offers a sensible, realistic agenda for its reduction. Michael B. Katz, University of Pennsylvania This study asks whether the feminization of poverty, the tendency of women and their families to become the majority of the poor, is unique to the United States, where the phenomenon was first discovered. Seven industrialized nations, both capitalist and socialist, with different degrees of commitment to social welfare are compared: Canada, Japan, France, Sweden, Poland, the Soviet Union, and the United States. In each of the countries the authors analyze information about women, labor market conditions, equalization policies, social welfare programs, and demographic variables such as the rates of divorce and single parenthood. According to Goldberg and Kremen, it is possible to predict the feminization of poverty when three conditions are present: (1) insufficient efforts to reduce work place and wage inequities for women; (2) the absence or ineffectiveness of social welfare programs which can redress the cost, both economic and personal, of the dual role that women have assumed in industrialized societies; and (3) the presence of increasing rates of divorce and single motherhood. An array of labor market and social welfare programs in use in the six other industrialized nations are then reviewed by the authors for possible adaptation in the United States. This important work will be a valuable resource for scholars across the academic and professional disciplines of political science, sociology, economics, social work, and women's studies.

This book provides a novel approach to unemployment as a contested political field in Europe and examines the impact of welfare state regimes, conceived as political opportunity structures specific to this field, public debates and collective mobilizations in unemployment politics.

Under the rule of the current economic order, social injustice is ever-increasing. Issues such as poverty, inhumane working conditions, inadequate wages, social insecurity and an unhealthy labor market continue to persist. Many states are also unable to produce policies capable of resolving these problems. The characteristics of the capitalist system currently render it unable to provide social justice. In fact, on the contrary, the system reinforces these injustices and prevents economic and social welfare from reaching the masses. Many Muslim scholars have analyzed and, indeed, criticized this system for years. This book argues that an alternative and more equitable theoretical and practical economical order can been developed within the framework of Islamic principles. On the other hand, the experiences of societies under the rule of Muslim governments do not always seem to hold great promise for an alternative understanding of social justice. In addition, the behaviors of Muslim individuals within their economic lives are mostly shaped by the necessities of daily economic conditions rather than by the tenets of Islam that stand with social justice. Until 1990s, studies of Islamic economics made connections between finance and the notion of social justice, but work conducted more recently has neglected this issue. It is therefore evident that the topic of social justice needs to be revisited in a more in-depth manner. Filling an important gap in existing literature, the book uniquely connects social justice and Islamic finance and economics on this topic. Theory, practice and key issues are presented simultaneously throughout this book, which is based on the writings of a number of eminent scholars.

Poverty in India is intimately connected with caste, untouchability, colonialism and indentured servitude, inseparable from the international experience of slavery and race. Focusing on historical and modern practices, this book goes beyond traditional economic approaches to poverty and demonstrates its genesis in exclusion, isolation, domination and extraction resulting in the removal of human and economic rights. Examining cash and assets transfers and enhancement of women's rights, primary health and education, it scrutinizes inadequacies in compensatory policies for redressing the balance. This is an original interdisciplinary contribution that offers bold domestic and international policies anchored in human radicalism to eradicate poverty.

In her extraordinary bestseller, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses readers in the intricacies of the ghetto, revealing the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. Focusing on two romances--Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar--"Random Family" is the story of young people trying to outrun their destinies. Jessica and Boy George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the street, all four caught in a precarious dance between survival and death. Friends get murdered; the DEA and FBI investigate Boy George; Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure homelessness, betrayal, the heartbreaking separation of prison, and, throughout it all, the insidious damage of poverty.
Charting the tumultuous cycle of the generations--as girls become mothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation--LeBlanc slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism and comes back with a riveting, haunting, and true story.

There has been a rapid global expansion of academic and policy attention focusing on in-work poverty, illustrating that across the world there are increasing numbers of people who could be described as the ?working poor?. Taking a global and multi-disciplinary perspective, this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of current research at the intersection between work and poverty. Authoritative contributions from leading researchers in the field provide comprehensive coverage of conceptual and measurement issues, causal drivers and mechanisms, key empirical findings, policy issues and debates. The Handbook is unique in offering perspectives from a wide range of regions and countries, stretching beyond developed countries. It also does justice to the paradigmatic diversity in approaches to in-work poverty, offering a wealth of variety in disciplinary approaches. Academically rigorous, yet clear and concise, this Handbook will benefit students and scholars of public policy, politics, social policy and development studies. It will also prove accessible for policy analysts and journalists looking to explore the issue from new angles. Contributors include: P. Barbieri, A. Barrientos, K.M. Blankenship, D. Brady, E. Crettaz, G. Cutuli, J.C. Feres, N.-S. Fritsch, M. Giesselmann, J. Horemans, A. Horton, L. Kenworthy, M. Leibbrandt, A. Levanon, D.T. Lichter, K. Lilenstein, H. Lohmann, J.-d. Lue, B. Maitre, L. Maldonado, L.C. Maldonado, S. Marchal, I. Marx, R. Maurizio, R. Nieuwenhuis, B. Nolan, S. Oselin, S. Ponthieux, L. Pradella, J. Prieto, E. Saburov, W. Salverda, S.R. Sanders, S. Scherer, D. Seikel, D. Spannagel, B.C. Thiede, V. Unnikrishnan, W. Van Lancker, L. Vandecasteele, G. Verbist, R. Verwiebe, C.T. Whelan, J. Wills, I. Woolard, C.-Y. Yeh

The current economic crisis has presented itself as a formidable challenge to the welfare states of Europe. It is more relevant than ever to ask: do existing minimum income protection schemes succeed in adequately protecting citizens, be it whether they are excluded from work, working, retired, or having children? Drawing on in-depth and up-to-date institutional data from across Europe and the US, this volume details the reality of minimum income protection policies over time. Including contributions from leading scholars in the field, each chapter provides a systematic cross-national analysis of minimum income protection policies, developing concrete policy guidance on an issue at the heart of the European debate.

PLANT CLOSED--A sign of the times? These two words have had profound meaning for workers in every factory and office across the country. Millions of workers who have already been displaced by closings have had to pick up the pieces of shattered lives and get on with the business of living. Those who are still working are faced with the insecurity of wondering whether they might find the gates closed some morning when they arrive at work. The number of plant closings and the threat of future closings have raised many questions. What has been happening to the American economy that has resulted in major companies closing their doors? What forces within the international and national political economies are converging to reshape the labor force, eliminating jobs in manufacturing and expanding employment in the lower wage, insecure manufacturing sector? What happens to displaced workers, their families, and the community in which they work? In "Plant Closings," the authors examine the reasons plants close and the social, economic, and psychological consequences. A variety of causes are identified including capital flight, decreasing profit rates, and the pursuit of lower labor costs. Through the analysis of a case study the authors examine the changing health patterns, political attitudes, and financial stability of displaced workers. There is also discussion of the impact on the community at large and on the individual institutions within the community. Finally, the authors analyze legislation that addresses the human and social costs of unemployment. "Carolyn C. Perrucci" is professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Purdue University. "Robert Perrucci" is professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Purdue University. "Dena B. Targ" is professor in the Department of Child Development and Family Studies at Purdue University. "Harry R. Targ" is professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University.

A compelling investigation into the phenomenon of dirty work - labour that society considers essential, but morally compromised. A New Statesman Book of the Year 'This book will prompt a public reckoning with inequality in work' Michael J. Sandel 'A scathing and thoughtful book about labor and principles' Rebecca Solnit 'A writer in the tradition of George Orwell and Martha Gellhorn' Corey Robin 'Confronts a series of deep and vexing moral questions... penetrating, astutely observed, beautifully written' Patrick Radden Keefe Guards who patrol the wards of America's most violent and abusive prisons; undocumented immigrants who man the 'kill floors' of industrial slaughterhouses; drone operators who kill people from thousands of miles away. These are the essential workers we prefer not to think about. Their morally dubious, often physically violent and dangerous activity sustains modern society yet is concealed from our gaze. It is work that falls disproportionately in deprived areas, on immigrants and people of colour, and entails a less familiar set of occupational hazards - stigma, shame and moral injury. A striking, sophisticated and nuanced investigation, Dirty Work will change the way you think about society.

While recent Labour and coalition governments have insisted that many unemployed people prefer state benefits to a job, and have tightened the rules attached to claiming unemployment benefits, mainstream academic research repeatedly concludes that only a tiny minority of unemployed benefit claimants are not strongly committed to employment. Andrew Dunn argues that the discrepancy can be explained by UK social policy academia leaving important questions unanswered. Dunn presents findings from four empirical studies which, in contrast to earlier research, focused on unemployed people's attitudes towards unattractive jobs and included interviews with people in welfare-to-work organisations. All four studies' findings were consistent with the view that many unemployed benefit claimants prefer living on benefits to undertaking jobs which would increase their income, but which they find unattractive. Thus, the studies gave support to politicians' view about the need to tighten benefit rules.

This volume looks at the three dimensions of social exclusion: economic, social and political. Exclusion is analyzed as a new approach to such issues as the "new" poverty, precariousness, long-term unemployment, social polarization and lack of citizenship. The book shows how relational and distributional aspects of poverty are interlinked.

A MURDER HE CAN'T FORGET. A CASE ONLY SHE CAN SOLVE. 'OUTSTANDING' IAN RANKIN Amazon Best 100 Books of The Year Barnes & Noble Best Books of The Year Top Ten Best Thrillers of the Year - Washington Post * * * * * Daisy Clayton's killer was never caught. In over ten years, there has been no breakthrough in her murder case. Detective Renee Ballard has faced everything the LAPD's notorious dusk-till-dawn graveyard shift has thrown at her. But, until tonight, she'd never met Harry Bosch - an ex-homicide detective consumed by this case. Soon, she too will become obsessed by the murder of Daisy Clayton. Because Ballard and Bosch both know: every murder tells a story. And Daisy's case file reads like the first chapter in an untold tragedy that is still being written - one that could end with Ballard herself, if she cannot bring the truth to light... * * * * * CRIME DOESN'T GET BETTER THAN CONNELLY. 'One of the world's greatest crime writers' Daily Mail 'Crime thriller writing of the highest order' Guardian 'A terrific writer with pace, style and humanity to spare' The Times 'America's greatest living crime writer' Daily Express 'The pre-eminent detective novelist of his generation' Ian Rankin 'A master' Stephen King 'A genius' Independent on Sunday 'A superb natural storyteller' Lee Child 'One of the great storytellers of crime fiction' Sunday Telegraph 'Justly regarded as one of the world's finest crime writers' Mail On Sunday 'No one writes a better modern thriller than Connelly' Evening Standard

Land reform and the possibility of expropriation without compensation are among the most hotly debated topics in South Africa today, met with trepidation and fervour in equal measure. But these broader issues tend to obscure a more immediate reality: a severe housing crisis and a sharp increase in urban land occupations.

In Promised Land, Karl Kemp travels the country documenting the fallout of failing land reform, from the under-siege Philippi Horticultural Area deep in the heart of Cape Town’s ganglands to the burning mango groves of Tzaneen, from Johannesburg’s lawless Deep South to rural KwaZulu-Natal, where chiefs own vast tracts of land on behalf of their subjects. He visits farming communities beset by violent crime, and provides gripping, on-the-ground reporting of recent land invasions, with perspectives from all sides, including land activists, property owners and government officials. Kemp also looks at burning issues surrounding the land debate in South Africa – corruption, farm murders, illegal foreign labour, mechanisation and eviction – and reveals the views of those affected.

Touching on the history of land conflict and conquest in each area, as well as detailing the current situation on the ground, Promised Land provides startling insights into the story of land conflict in South Africa.

integrates gender, class, and race and doesn't treat them separately, which makes it both comprehensive but also theoretically cohesive for those scholars who don't want to see these categories divorced the authors pay increased attention to disability, intersectionality, immigration, religion, and place greater emphasis placed on crime and the criminal justice system as well as health and the environment new chapter on policy alternatives and venues for social change. the chapters are really well calibrated for teaching both in length and progression (they build on each other). Easy to structure the course without switching things around much. covers a wide net of inequalities, thus raising awareness of inequality in all its phases is shows structural factors in social stratification.

A volume in Research on Hispanic and Latino Business Series Editors Michael William Mulnix and Esther Elena Lopez-Mulnix More than one in every five Latin Americans lives on less than $2 a day, and Latin America is the most unequal region in the world. The book tackles the problem of poverty and inequality in Latin America through the novel approach of using the decentralization of government functions to satisfy the basic needs of the poor. Decentralization can bring government closer to the people and strengthen the voice of the voiceless. Satisfying basic needs for services such as education and health care enhances productivity and imparts an indispensable opportunity to earn an income sufficient to emerge from poverty and to live a full life. Part 1 describes the poverty and inequality of Latin America and the Basic Needs Approach to Development. Part 2 introduces a model of decentralization as a step-by-step process, and it shows the policymaker how to implement decentralization in stages through matching its various degrees with real-world circumstances. Part 3 enriches the understanding of policymakers by analyzing real-world cases of decentralization in light of the decentralization model. The second edition includes two new chapters that cover the important but often neglected topic of taxation for inclusive development. Chapter 8 analyzes the influential tax advice of the World Bank in terms of its effect on decentralization and the satisfaction of basic needs. Appendix B of Chapter 8 presents an empirical analysis in support of the chapter's argument that the Bank's policy is in need of revision. Chapter 9 analyzes the effects of the World Bank's tax advice on El Salvador's tax reform and development process. Two other chapters have been extensively updated: Chapter 6 records and analyzes the rapid evolution of Mexico's Oportunidades program for health, education and nutrition, and Chapter 10 evaluates the progress of the United States' innovative program for foreign aid, The Millennium Challenge Account. Throughout the book, tables and references have been updated.

In the past, youth has been seen as a transition into the labour market, but today young people's identities are increasingly wrapped up in their value as workers. In this book, young people describe the meaning of work in their own words. Drawing on these narratives, the author reveals how their identities are intertwined with the dynamics of labour and value in post-Fordist capitalism and how social inequalities are manifested through the practices and ethics that young people draw upon to cultivate an economically productive self. Illuminating the rapidly changing social conditions that mould youth identities, this book represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of youth and work.

The stated aim of much development assistance is the reduction of poverty. This book examines how development interventions might be more effectively targeted to achieve this aim. Part One provides an overview of planning for poverty reduction, and evidence on the extent and causes of poverty. Part Two examines participatory approaches to development planning. Part Three assesses macro-economic strategies and programs for poverty reduction. Part Four concludes with a microeconomic analysis of the distribution of benefits from investment projects.