Changes in the international environment, from the stagflation of the 1970s to the globalization of capital markets in the 1990s, have challenged the ability of all advanced welfare states to maintain postwar achievements of full employment, social security and social equality. Nevertheless, national responses and actual performance differed greatly. This two-volume study examines the adjustment to external economic challenges over three decades in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom 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 the countries, including special studies on the participation of women in the labour market, early retirement, the liberalization of public services and international tax competition.

The theme of this book is that economic growth is key, but institutions and other national and subnational attributes matter as well. They are critical to explaining differences in social development and poverty reduction across countries and subnational areas that cannot be accounted for by growth alone. The book concludes that a more complete strategy needs to consider various institutional factors at the national and subnational levels to achieve rapid and sustained poverty reduction. Indeed, paying attention to these factors will benefit both growth and poverty reduction.

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.

Child poverty is rising across affluent Western societies; how it is measured is vital to how governments act to prevent, alleviate or eliminate it. While the roots of childhood poverty are fiercely debated and contested, they are all too often misrepresented in policy and media discourses. Seeking to redress this problem, Treanor places children's experiences, needs and concerns at the centre of this critical examination of the contemporary policies and political discourses surrounding poverty in childhood. She examines a broad range of structural, institutional and ideological factors common across developed nations, and their impacts, to interrogate how poverty in childhood is conceptualised and operationalised in policy and to forge a radical pathway for an alternative future.

Poverty and Inclusion in Early Years Education will help practitioners to understand the experiences of young children who are living in poverty. It examines the potentially devastating impact of poverty and social exclusion on children's chances in later life, and considers recent policy and practice reforms which have recognised the critical role played by early years settings and practitioners in guaranteeing a secure foundation for children's future attainment. The book explores the historical, political and legal aspects of policy on poverty and social exclusion, before offering guidance on how practitioners can help to address the inequalities caused by poverty and break the cycle of deprivation. Chapters go on to address the practicalities of working with children, families and agencies to create an inclusive early years environment, and focus on issues including: developing effective partnerships with families collaborating with outside agencies encouraging awareness of different socio-economic backgrounds. With case studies, reflective questions and further reading included throughout to help the reader to apply the ideas to their own practice, the book will be an invaluable resource for early years practitioners, students, and all those wishing to promote social inclusion and tackle the impact of social exclusion and poverty in early years settings.

This book reviews the fulfillment of two Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), namely poverty and inequality, in the Indian subcontinent. It examines the complex interplay among development, inequality and poverty in relation to corruption, environmental resource management, agricultural adjustment to climate change and institutional arrangements, with a special focus on the Northeastern region of the country. The topics covered offer a blend of theoretical arguments and empirical data with regard to the three main themes of the book, while also providing agricultural and environmental perspectives. The book also provides guidelines for policy initiatives for harnessing the region's potential in the areas of industry, trade, sustainable use of mineral, forest and other natural resources, nature-based tourism through proper infrastructure development, and resolving land issues to achieve inclusive development.In addition to introducing some new questions on the development-ethnic conflict interface, it uses sophisticated tools such as the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method in consumption expenditure to show the endowment, and return to endowment effects; and techniques like spatial correlation-regression to analyze regional variation, co-integration, vector autoregression, the panel data technique and the adaptation index to climate change, to understand socio-economic complexities and the effect of the concerned variables on entrepreneurship and human development.The book offers a timely contribution to our understanding of major MDGs and highlights their successes and failures. It also includes analytical frameworks that are key to future policy initiatives. Further, it disseminates approaches and methods that improve livelihoods and standards of living through poverty reduction and promoting inclusive development along with sustainable utilization of available natural resources. Putting forward various ideas for creating a more sustainable future, it inspires and encourages readers to pursue further studies to address the gaps that still remain.

Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. Leaving her home, she took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity? exposing the darker side of American prosperity and the true cost of the American dream.

This book introduces the notion of culinary capital to investigate socialisation and school mealtime experiences in an academy school based in the UK. Drawing on interviews collated from children, teachers and staff within the school, the text sheds light on food insecurity in society and schools as being major issue in educational policy. The book examines schools as a microcosm for society with school food space being the playground for socialisation. It shows how forms of culinary capital can be extended in the school dining hall where social space is negotiated with notions of inclusion and exclusion during mealtime. The book uses gender, class and race to understand the school dining hall as a space where culinary capital can be exchanged and learnt. Thorough research accompanied by ethnographic visuals, field notes and observations, it also explores the sensory impact of school gardens. As such the book will be of interest to students, teachers, school leaders, educators and policy makers in the fields of Education, Sociology, Social Policy and Food Studies.

The transition from school to work is recognized by developmental psychologists as a significant phase in maturation of young people. In the 1990s the likelihood that the transition might be delayed by a period of prolonged unemployment was greater than any time since the 1930s. The psychological consequences of such a delay need to be understood because they may be damaging to both the individual and to society, particularly if they are long-lasting. Such an understanding is essential for the development of sound policy in relation to youth unemployment. Originally published in 1993, Growing up with Unemployment describes a major longitudinal study of a large group of South Australian school leavers through the 1980s. It assesses the scale and context of the problem and reviews the methods and theories that have been developed to study the psychological impact of unemployment. It also looks at those factors which may contribute towards helping young people cope with it, such as financial security, social support and being involved in constructive activities with other people. The authors also examine how we might be able to predict future unemployment and understand the relationship between it and alcohol consumption, smoking and drug use. This book describes a major study with important implications for employment policy, as well as future theory and research. This title will be interesting historical reading for students of psychology and social policy, policy makers and all those who deal with young people.

The ongoing campaign of 'western development' launched in 1999 and the recent Chinese government initiative of 'building a harmonious society' highlight the urgency and significance of analyzing inequality and poverty. Prominent contributors from China and around the world explore trends of inequality and poverty in China, identify their causes and assess their consequences. Issues explored within this volume include regional/personal variation in incomes, measures of human wellbeing - such as health and education - the gap between the coastal regions (which have strongly benefited from the expansion of China's exports) and the interior regions, and urban-rural disparity. This volume also examines the impact that a variety of different factors have had in determining inequality and poverty and their dynamics. Factors examined include resource endowment, location (including proximity to major transport links such as coastal ports), historical differences in the pace of economic development, the uneven impact of economic reform and imbalance in the provision of economic and social infrastructure.

Through the new use of new empirical evidence derived from analysing employment services, gender equality policies and flexicurity in Greece and Portugal, this book provides compelling new insights into how European Employment Strategy (EES) can influence the domestic employment policy of European Union member states.

Presents a research in employment policy. This title addresses the reform of the unemployment insurance system.

In Poverty and Wealth in East Africa Rhiannon Stephens offers a conceptual history of how people living in eastern Uganda have sustained and changed their ways of thinking about wealth and poverty over the past two thousand years. This history serves as a powerful reminder that colonialism and capitalism did not introduce economic thought to this region and demonstrates that even in contexts of relative material equality between households, people invested intellectual energy in creating new ways to talk about the poor and the rich. Stephens uses an interdisciplinary approach to write this history for societies without written records before the nineteenth century. She reconstructs the words people spoke in different eras using the methods of comparative historical linguistics, overlaid with evidence from archaeology, climate science, oral traditions, and ethnography. Demonstrating the dynamism of people's thinking about poverty and wealth in East Africa long before colonial conquest, Stephens challenges much of the received wisdom about the nature and existence of economic and social inequality in the region's deeper past.

Poverty in Contemporary Economic Thought aims to describe and critically examine how economic thought deals with poverty, including its causes, consequences, reduction and abolition. This edited volume traces the ideas of key writers and schools of modern economic thought across a significant period, ranging from Friedrich Hayek and Keynes to latter-day economists like Amartya Sen and Angus Deaton. The chapters relate poverty to income distribution, asserting the point that poverty is not always conceived of in absolute terms but that relative and social deprivation matters also. Furthermore, the contributors deal with both individual poverty and the poverty of nations in the context of the international economy. In providing such a thorough exploration, this book shows that the approach to poverty differs from economist to economist depending on their particular interests and the main issues related to poverty in each epoch, as well as the influence of the intellectual climate that prevailed at the time when the contribution was made. This key text is valuable reading for advanced students and researchers of the history of economic thought, economic development and the economics of poverty.

Jane Addams, the co-founder of Hull House, the famous settlement home, writes about her experiences and insights in her autobiography, Twenty Years at Hull House. As a child growing up in Illinois, Addams suffered from Pott's Disease, which was a rare infection in her spine. This disease caused her to contract many other illnesses, then because of these aliments, Addams was self-conscious of her appearance. She explains that she could not play with other children often due to a limp, a side effect to her illnesses. Still, she is able to provide relatable and even amusing childhood anecdotes. Addams was very close to her father. She admired him for his political work, which likely inspired her own interest and attention to the social problems of her society. In a time invested with xenophobia and cruelty towards immigrants, Addams bought land in Chicago and co-founded a settlement house named Hull House. There, Addams sought to improve the lives of immigrants and the poor by providing shelter, essential social services, and access to education. Addams served as an advocate not only for the impoverished and immigrants, but also for women. She was a leader within the women's suffrage movement, determined to expand the work she did for her community to a national scale. Twenty Years at Hull House provides both a conversation about social issues and an example of how to act against them. Though originally published in 1910, Addams autobiography provides social discourse that is not only still relevant, but also considered radical by some. Addams' autobiography was well received when it was first released, impacting many key reform movements. Twenty Years at Hull House still carries that effect today, inspiring its readers to improve their community and advocate for those in need. This edition of Twenty Years at Hull House by Jane Addams features a new, eye-catching cover design and is printed in a readable font, ready to inspire readers to follow the footsteps and musings of activist Jane Addams.

Social problems are endemic to all societies. The UK is no exception and is grappling with a plethora of issues including poverty, family breakdown, domestic violence, teenage pregnancy, child abuse and neglect, youth offending, alcohol and drug misuse, mental health issues, homelessness, and ethnic and religious discrimination. These problems have huge implications for the individual, the family unit and society at large and take their toll on health, wellbeing, and community resources. They place an enormous amount of strain on government finances and the welfare state, and add to the burden on social institutions, such as the National Health Service and the social work and criminal justice systems. Contemporary Social Problems in the UK explores a wide range of social problems in the UK. Each social problem has been explored using a range of psychosocial theories to generate an understanding of various causal factors and to examine the linkages between different social problems. Government policy and legislation, remedial measures, preventive approaches, and strategies of intervention are also considered for each social problem that has been dealt with. Each chapter deals with a particular social problem and has been penned by an expert in that topic. The endeavour has been to provide a multi-dimensional overview of the social problem in a manner that is engaging and easy to read. The end-of-chapter content includes supplementary reading, useful topic related websites besides a quiz and individual / group activities to generate discussion and stimulate learning. This informative yet accessible textbook will be an invaluable resource for instructors and students in the social sciences as well as professionals who work with people who experience some of these problems.

The Richer, The Poorer charts the rollercoaster history of both rich and poor and the mechanisms that link wealth and impoverishment. This landmark book shows how, for 200 years, Britain's most powerful elites have enriched themselves at the expense of surging inequality, mass poverty and weakened social resilience. Stewart Lansley reveals how Britain's model of 'extractive capitalism' - with a small elite securing an excessive slice of the economic cake - has created a two-century-long 'high-inequality, high-poverty' cycle, one broken for only a brief period after the Second World War. Why, he asks, are rich and poor citizens judged by very different standards? Why has social progress been so narrowly shared? With growing calls for a fairer post-COVID-19 society, what needs to be done to break Britain's destructive poverty/inequality cycle?

This book addresses itself to the relationship between the ideological and material which has long occupied a primary place in Marxist scholarship and is seen to be of central importance to feminist analysis. This book looks at some aspects of the debate in the context of Asia.;In particular, it examines the role that ideology can play both as a disabling and an enabling factor in the lives of women seeking to earn a livliehood for themselves and their families under conditions of poverty.;The case studies relate to a mixed set of Asian countries, with an associated diversity of cultural and economic conditions.;Haleh Afshar is also editor of "Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil", "Women and Ideology" and "Women, State and Ideology". Bina Agarwal is editor of "Structures of Patriarchy: State, Community and Household in Modernising Asia" and author of "Mechanisation in Indian Agriculture" and "Cold Hearths and Barren Slopes: The Woodfuel Crisis in the Third World".

This book explores the relationship between youth labour market marginality and political participation, focusing on the example of Portugal and the role played by austerity policies in shaping patterns of activism. Through integrating primary and secondary empirical evidence with key ideas from classical and contemporary Sociology, the authors illustrate some of the key features of youth unemployment and job precariousness, also highlighting trends in formal and informal activist activities. Central to Youth Unemployment and Job Precariousness is the argument that following the onset of the economic crisis, there has been the birth of what we the authors term 'an austerity generation', comprised of young people facing difficulties in the labour market and uncertain futures. The book also highlights the difficulties young people have in making a political response to austerity, as well as their hopes for the future, including the need to raise consciousness about youth labour market marginalization and to return to more accountable forms of democracy.

Offers the latest research on poverty in the Graeco-Roman world, and unique insights suitable for social scientists as well as those studying ancient history and classical literature.

Social problems are endemic to all societies. The UK is no exception and is grappling with a plethora of issues including poverty, family breakdown, domestic violence, teenage pregnancy, child abuse and neglect, youth offending, alcohol and drug misuse, mental health issues, homelessness, and ethnic and religious discrimination. These problems have huge implications for the individual, the family unit and society at large and take their toll on health, wellbeing, and community resources. They place an enormous amount of strain on government finances and the welfare state, and add to the burden on social institutions, such as the National Health Service and the social work and criminal justice systems. Contemporary Social Problems in the UK explores a wide range of social problems in the UK. Each social problem has been explored using a range of psychosocial theories to generate an understanding of various causal factors and to examine the linkages between different social problems. Government policy and legislation, remedial measures, preventive approaches, and strategies of intervention are also considered for each social problem that has been dealt with. Each chapter deals with a particular social problem and has been penned by an expert in that topic. The endeavour has been to provide a multi-dimensional overview of the social problem in a manner that is engaging and easy to read. The end-of-chapter content includes supplementary reading, useful topic related websites besides a quiz and individual / group activities to generate discussion and stimulate learning. This informative yet accessible textbook will be an invaluable resource for instructors and students in the social sciences as well as professionals who work with people who experience some of these problems.

The aim of this analysis is to cover the most important elements of the political press, and thus to paint a coherent picture of the way in which Danish newspapers has discussed the subject of the unemployed over a period of 150 years.

Almost four decades since AIDS was first reported in Africa, the epidemic has reached a watershed moment where progress in prevention, care and support programs confronts intransigent socioeconomic and gender rights barriers and emerging funding uncertainties. While there are grounds for cautious optimism that the incidence of HIV infections and AIDS-related mortality can be further reduced, they cannot, by themselves, end the epidemic. This will require overcoming gendered inequalities, HIV stigma and neglect of high-risk youth and socially peripheralized groups.

The politics of austerity has seen governments across Europe cut back on welfare provision. As the State retreats, this edited collection explores secular and faith-based grassroots social action in Germany and the United Kingdom that has evolved in response to changing economic policy and expanding needs, from basic items such as food to more complex means to move out of poverty. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and practitioners in several areas of social intervention, the book explores how the conceptualization and constitutive practices of citizenship and community are changing because of the retreat of the State and the challenge of meeting social and material needs, creating new opportunities for local activism. The book provides new ways of thinking about social and political belonging and about the relations between individual, collective, and State responsibility.

Nearly 200 interviews with legal services lawyers and administrators, bar association officers, judges, and political officials form the basis for this book on the delivery of civil legal services to the poor. Beginning with a brief history of legal assistance programs, Kessler examines the operation of five local programs funded by the national Legal Services Corporation. The activities of poverty lawyers in urban, rural, and suburban settings are described and analyzed and the author offers an explanation for variables in service based on the constraints imposed by the interorganizational environment. The implications of his findings are examined from the perspective of existing theories of organizational behavior, the system's potential for effecting political and legal reform, and current political debates surrounding the future of the Legal Services Corporation.