The world wanted South Africa’s true, liberated history – and the writing of it – to begin in 1994, but deep contradictions have quickly bubbled to the surface, revealing a society gripped in turmoil.

The results of all this have been, of course, paradoxical: a series of elections since 1994 seemed to confirm the ANC’s hold, both popular and legitimate, on power. Yet, simultaneously, South Africa has found itself with one of the world’s highest rates of protest and dissent, expressed both in the work-place and on township streets, in universities and technicons, clinics and central city squares. 16 August 2014 saw the lives of nearly three dozen platinum mineworkers end prematurely and violently. The premeditated “Marikana Massacre” demonstrated to the world how little Nelson Mandela’s ANC had changed South Africa’s core power relations, notwithstanding the dramatic, heroic victory over racist rule in 1994.

South Africa: The Present as History traces South African history from early days through the long European conquest and into two decades of democracy. The current socio-economic paradox – one that finds inequality, unemployment and poverty worsening since 1994 – reflect Mandela’s early 1990s concessions, choices which reduced the pursuit of genuine socio-economic and political transformation to the mere realisation of what can best be termed ‘low-intensity democracy’.

Analysing tensions exemplified by Marikana, the authors consider potential futures for an increasingly volatile society. Genuine liberatory possibilities could continue to be vanquished – but that is not the only possible results of today’s turmoil.

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.

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.

Most Latin American countries are now attempting the radical reform of their healthcare financing and delivery systems. In many cases, these reforms complement and contribute to broader neo-liberal orthodoxies of economic and social reform. Key strategies include decentralising hospital administration and the promotion of private health insurance. However, experiences across the region are quite diverse, and countries such as Cuba persist with a system of healthcare based on very different principles. This book identifies key problems facing healthcare systems in the region and evaluates the reforms that have been implemented to date. It pays particular attention to problems of implementation and the impact that changes to health policy are having on poor and vulnerable groups.

Social problems, such as childhood lead poisoning, do not occur in a vacuum. As such, defining such problems requires a holistic examination of the broad social, political, and economic influences that create and perpetuate the issue of concern. Richardson does this with eloquence and heart. She also investigates the attitudes various groups have held toward the Residential Lead-based Paint Hazard Reduction Act (Title X). In doing so, she reveals much about the attitudes officials hold toward problems that primarily affect poor communities, and demonstrates how these attitudes directly affect policymaking and policy enforcement. The social consequences of lead poisoning analyzed in this volume fall into the following categories:

• Housing
• Health
• Education
  Policy-making
• and
• Legal Challenges
• . The Cost of Being Poor would be useful to individuals in the fields of public health, policy, education, and law. Furthermore, this work would be of special use to educators, who would benefit from familiarity with lead poisoning as a factor in their students' lives and from becoming aware that there are options that poisoned children have to improve their situation. The first step necessary in eliminating social problems is to understand the nature of the problem. This study is a step in that direction.

Nothing is more important to a new, fragile or developing nation than developing the capacity of its government to support national well-being. Every society is complex; every government is complex. Yet, well-intentioned international development aid, born in an era of infrastructure projects, continues to apply simplistic technical solutions to these wickedly complex development problems. It's an outside-in approach that rarely succeeds, even by the development industry's own admission. But out there, amongst the billions of dollars of failed interventions, there are bright spots of success - places where capacity is harnessed, not just for today, but for tomorrow, too. What is working so well? Drawing on research, practical experience, and stories of success, Jim Armstrong explores these emerging approaches.

While there is no denying that the world has made huge progress against absolute poverty over the last 200 years, until recent times the bulk of that progress had been made in wealthy countries only. The good news is that we have seen greater progress against poverty in the developing world in recent times-indeed, a faster pace of progress against extreme poverty than the rich world saw over a period of 100 years or more of economic development. However, continuing progress is far from assured. High and rising inequality has stalled progress against poverty in many countries. We are seeing generally rising relative poverty in the rich world as a whole over recent decades. And even in the developing world, there has been less progress in reaching the poorest, who risk being left behind, and a great many people in the emerging middle class remain highly vulnerable to falling back into poverty. The Economics of Poverty strives to support well-informed efforts to put in place effective policies to assure continuing success in reducing poverty in all its dimensions. The book reviews critically the past and present debates on the central policy issues of economic development everywhere. How much poverty is there? Why does poverty exist? What can be done to eliminate poverty? Martin Ravallion provides an accessible new synthesis of current knowledge on these issues. It does not assume that readers know economics already. Those new to economics get a lot of help along the way in understanding its concepts and methods. Economics lives though its relevance to real world problems, and here the problem of global poverty is both the central focus and a vehicle for learning.

The past decade has seen the emergence of new types of trade union representatives attracting new and more diverse activists; this book explores their motivations and values, drawing upon the voices of the activists themselves and capturing the relationship between work, social identity and class consciousness.

Offering a comparative perspective, this book examines working poverty -- those in work who are still classified as "poor." It argues that the growth in numbers of working poor in Europe is due to the transition from a Keynesian Welfare State to a 'post-fordist' model of production.

The last thirty years have witnessed an urban renaissance in America. Major cities have managed to drive down the murder rate, improve the schools, restore the built environment, and revitalize their economies. Middle class families are putting down roots in neighborhoods once given up for dead. But solutions to homelessness have eluded even the most successful cities. While the South Bronx was once synonymous across the globe for "slum," now, San Francisco and Los Angeles are just as internationally notorious for their homelessness crises. Indeed, the same cities with the worst homelessness crises rank among America's most successful. One of the crisis' more perplexing features is how cities that have met with so much success with respect to economic development, crime and public education have failed to even ease their homelessness crisis, much less end it. In Homelessness in America, Stephen Eides examines the history, governmental and private responses, and future prospects of this intractable challenge. The "chronic" nature of the challenge should be understood, he argues, by reference to American history and American ideals. The history of homelessness is bound up with industrialization and urbanization, the closing of the West, the Great Depression, and the post WWII decline and subsequent revival of great American cities. Though we've used different terms ("tramp" "hobo" "bum") at other times, something like homelessness has always been with us and the debate over causes and solutions has always involved conflicts over fundamental values. After explaining why homelessness persists in America and correcting popular misconceptions about the issue, Eides offers concrete recommendations for how we can do better for the homeless population. Homelessness in America engages readers by answering the most common questions their audience brings to the topic and exploring other questions that are no less important for being not as commonly asked. Homelessness intersects with multiple other policy areas: education, urban development, criminal justice reform, mental health. By exploring the intersection of homelessness with so many other policy areas, this book aspires to provide a comprehensive account of the challenge.

Over the past decade, the European Union and national policy-makers alike have paid more attention to childhood poverty and children's rights. Whether this has led to better policies, and whether these policies have in turn resulted in less childhood poverty and more human dignity, remains debatable. Children's rights may provide some common ground for the different perspectives on the causes of poverty. They also introduce specific process requirements, in particular the participation of the poor. At the same time, children's rights may gain from an encounter with child poverty studies, not least in grasping the complexity of child poverty and in making a realistic assessment of their own potential for addressing child poverty. This book introduces several approaches in the field of child poverty and children's rights studies, and identifies intersections between different theoretical approaches from both domains. It is a collaborative project of Centrum OASeS and the UNICEF Chair in Children's Rights, both located at the University of Antwerp. The Chair, established in 2007, acts as a knowledge broker of children's rights within the academic community and between the academic community and policy and practice, through teaching, research, and service to the community. The research topics of the Centrum OASeS include poverty and other forms of social exclusion, ethnic minorities, urban policy, social economy and supported employment, and social networks.

The EPIC PLAN reveals a common sense solution to end poverty, wars and terrorism. It is based upon ideals of influential and successful leaders of the past. Help solve the world problem. Read this book. This is vital to all!

This work assesses the possibilities and limitations of reducing poverty among families with children by increasing the work effort of the adults in those families. Following a historical review of family poverty since 1995, the authors present several policy simulations, including increased employment, a higher minimum wage, more generous tax credits, a child allowance, and reduced childcare or medical expenses. Specific policy proposals-including the proposals of the Biden Administration-are assessed using four criteria: reducing child poverty; equitable treatment of the poorest groups; promotion of self-sufficiency; and cost-effectiveness. The authors conclude that while no single policy is able to reduce family poverty by half while meeting the other criteria, several combinations of policies have the potential to do so.

Susan R. Holman examines the theme of poverty in the fourth-century sermons of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen, and Gregory Nysson. These sermons are especially important for what they tell us about the history of poverty relief and the role of fourth century Christian theology in constructing the body of the redemptive, involuntary poor. Some of the topics explored include the contextualization of the poor in scholarship, the poor in late antiquity, and starvation and famine dynamics. In exploring this relationship between cultural context and theological language, this volume offers a broad and fresh overview of these little-studied texts.

Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights collects thirteen new essays that analyze how human agency relates to poverty and human rights respectively as well as how agency mediates issues concerning poverty and social and economic human rights. No other collection of philosophical papers focuses on the diverse ways poverty impacts the agency of the poor, the reasons why poverty alleviation schemes should also promote the agency of beneficiaries, and the fitness of the human rights regime to secure both economic development and free agency. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 considers the diverse meanings of poverty both from the standpoint of the poor and from that of the relatively well-off. Part 2 examines morally appropriate responses to poverty on the part of persons who are better-off and powerful institutions. Part 3 identifies economic development strategies that secure the agency of the beneficiaries. Part 4 addresses the constraints poverty imposes on agency in the context of biomedical research, migration for work, and trafficking in persons.

How much are we morally required to do to help people who are much worse off than us? Philosophers have often raised this question in assessing the plausibility of particular moral theories. But it is a pressing question whatever one's moral outlook. Any plausible moral outlook should recognize requirements of beneficence -- requirements grounded directly in other people's need for assistance. Given this, there is a forceful case for thinking that we are morally required -- not only collectively, but also as individuals -- to devote a substantial proportion of what we have to helping the poor.
One way to present this case is by means of a simple analogy: an analogy between giving money to an aid agency and rescuing a needy person directly. Part I of Garrett Cullity's book examines this analogy in detail, discussing the ways in which it is politically and metaphysically simplistic. However, there remains an important truth in the simple analogy. It is that we are morally required to help.
In one way, our world imposes a radical separation between its rich and poor inhabitants: our material circumstances are starkly different. In another way, however, it does not: the human experiences and fulfillments of rich and poor are fundamentally the same. This is an important part of the case for thinking that their welfare grounds requirements of beneficence on us to help them. But Part II shows that it is also part of the case for limiting those requirements. Drawing attention to the range of goods that ground requirements on us to help each other, Cullity argues that these requirements only make sense on the assumption that a life of a certain kind -- a life that is not restricted in an extremely demanding way -- is one that it is not wrong for us to live.

Insecure temporary employment is growing in Europe, but we know little about how being in such jobs affects political preferences and behaviour. Combining insights from psychology, political science and labour market research, this book offers new theories and evidence on the political repercussions of temporary jobs.

This title provides a one-stop resource for understanding the crisis of homelessness in the United States. It covers risk factors for homelessness, societal attitudes about the homeless, and public and private resources designed to prevent homelessness and help those in need. There are a number of questions to be answered when addressing the subject of homelessness in the United States. What are the primary causes of homelessness? What are the economic and socioeconomic factors that have an impact on homeless people? What demographic trends can be identified in homeless populations? Is the U.S. addressing the needs and concerns of homeless people adequately? Where are the areas with the highest homeless populations? What can be done to help homeless people who live with mental illness and/or addiction problems? Homelessness in America: A Reference Handbook answers all of these questions and more. It thoroughly examines the history of homelessness in the U.S., shining a light on the key issues, events, policies, and attitudes that contribute to homelessness and shape the experience of being homeless. It places special emphasis on exploring the myriad problems that force people into homelessness, such as inadequate levels of affordable housing, struggles with substance abuse, and gaps in the U.S.' social welfare system. In addition, it explains why some demographic groups are at heightened risk of homelessness. Original essays that provide insightful perspectives on causes and effects of homelessness Tables, graphs, and charts that provide important data for understanding various facets of homelessness A chronology of important events, laws, policies, and reforms pertaining to homelessness A glossary of terms used in the study of homeless populations

A volume in Research on Hispanic and Latino Business Series Editors Michael William Mulnix and Esther Elena Lopez-Mulnix Approximately 25% of Latin Americans live on less than $2 a day, and Latin America is the most unequal region of the world. Poverty and inequality cause suffering and slow development. The solution must include generating an inclusive development process through satisfying the basic needs of the poor that enhance their productivity, that enable them to contribute to the development process, and that enables them to earn the income necessary to live a full life. Decentralization of taxing and spending from the central government to lower levels of government can help to satisfy basic needs of the poor and create an inclusive development process. However, decentralization is a stepby- step process that must implemented by taking into account real-world circumstances such as a lack of administrative ability in local government, and by formulating policy accordingly. The book derives economic principles for implementing the process of decentralization, and it presents cases that illustrate the principles at work. It is an economic guide for policymakers and practitioners.

This book provides unique insights into the challenges and potential solutions to alleviate poverty in western China. Many people are interested in China's economic and social development; the development of Tibet is an important part of this narrative. Unlike big cities in the east of China, Tibet is still underdeveloped, with severe poverty, relatively poor communications, poor infrastructure, transport links, and limited social services. Using deep and well-researched analyses, learned Chinese scholars share their policy insights, experience and knowledge of the underlying causes and potential solutions to this underdevelopment and poverty. The reader is also provided with firsthand accounts of different people in Tibet, ranging from local government officials to poverty-stricken herdsmen. This book gets at the heart of problems faced by ordinary Tibetans, such as dealing with impacts of natural disasters, lack of education, managing ecological resettlement, and trying to prevent the transmission of intergenerational poverty.Looking at these issues from a theoretical, policy, government and practical perspective, Breaking Out of the Poverty Trap -- Case Studies from the Tibetan Plateau in Yunnan, Qinghai and Gansu covers the full range of issues in the development of the Tibetan Plateau.

At 4:00 am, Leonida Wanyama lit a lantern in her house made of sticks and mud. She was up long before the sun to begin her farm work, as usual. But this would be no ordinary day, this second Friday of the new year. This was the day Leonida and a group of smallholder farmers in western Kenya would begin their exodus, as she said,"from misery to Canaan," the land of milk and honey.Africa's smallholder farmers, most of whom are women, know misery. They toil in a time warp, living and working essentially as their forebears did a century ago. With tired seeds, meager soil nutrition, primitive storage facilities, wretched roads, and no capital or credit, they harvest less than one-quarter the yields of Western farmers. The romantic ideal of African farmers--rural villagers in touch with nature, tending bucolic fields--is in reality a horror scene of malnourished children, backbreaking manual work, and profound hopelessness. Growing food is their driving preoccupation, and still they don't have enough to feed their families throughout the year. The wanjala --the annual hunger season that can stretch from one month to as many as eight or nine--abides.But in January 2011, Leonida and her neighbours came together and took the enormous risk of trying to change their lives. award-winning author and world hunger activist Roger Thurow spent a year with four of them--Leonida Wanyama, Rasoa Wasike, Francis Mamati, and Zipporah Biketi--to intimately chronicle their efforts. In The Last Hunger Season, he illuminates the profound challenges these farmers and their families face, and follows them through the seasons to see whether, with a little bit of help from a new social enterprise organization called One Acre Fund, they might transcend lives of dire poverty and hunger.The daily dramas of the farmers' lives unfold against the backdrop of a looming global challenge: to feed a growing population, world food production must nearly double by 2050. If these farmers succeed, so might we all.

This book offers a detailed account of the employment promises made to local East Londoners when the Summer Olympic Games 2012 were awarded to London, as well as an examination of how those promises had morphed into the Olympic Labor market jamboree from which local communities were excluded. Regarding the global job market of London, this study provides a nuanced empirical view on how the world's biggest mega event was experienced and endured in terms employment by its immediate hosts, in one of the UK's poorest, most ethnically complex, and transient areas. The data has been collected through ethnographic observation and interviews with local residents, and expert interviews with the Olympic delivery professionals. Using Bourdieusian theory of contested capital, the findings provide an important bearing on the reproduction of inequality in the local labor markets of Olympic host cities.

Nine million people in the United States live in rural poverty. This large segment of the population has generally been overlooked even as considerable attention, and social conscience, is directed to the alleviation of urban poverty. This timely, needed volume focuses on poor, rural people in poor, rural settings. Rural poverty is not confined to one section of the country or to one ethnic group. It is a national problem and the resolution of hidden America's persistent economic plight will now depend on a better understanding of who is poor and why. The clear, authoritative chapters describe the declining opportunities available in rural areas--including the social, educational, and political factors that so often pose barriers to economic advancement.

Part One provides a comprehensive description of the poor population and an analysis of rural poverty's underlying dynamics. Low wages, the character of rural labor markets, and chronic inter-generational poverty are carefully considered to lay the basis for formulating sound responses. Part Two looks at the condition of particular groups suffering poverty in rural areas. These include African-Americans, Appalchians, Native Americans, and migrant workers. It addresses the special problems of those who, although in relatively prosperous rural areas, live at or below the poverty level. Part Three looks to successful lessons from the past and evaluates current steps that may be taken to frame policy recommendations that will mitigate present stress, foster improved opportunities, and open a better life to America's rural poor.