Although the absolute number of poor people in the world has declined significantly in recent decades, poverty reduction continues to be a very important issue. There still are very large numbers of poor people, relative poverty is an increasingly concerning problem, and progress on poverty reduction varies enormously from one part of the world to another. Factors contributing to poverty reduction include economic growth, economic integration, and specific poverty-reduction programs, which are often initiated by Western countries. This book considers poverty reduction from a global perspective. Development and Poverty Reduction looks at a wide range of specific subjects, across all continents. It highlights in particular how the issues are perceived from a non-Western perspective and especially how the rise of China is both having a profound impact on poverty reduction globally and also changing the overall way in which development and poverty reduction are approached.

Minimum income protection provides the last social safety net for people in need. The book provides a systematic comparative and longitudinal analysis of minimum income protection systems in 17 EU countries based on a newly developed dataset. Country-specific chapters providing institutional overviews are combined with comparative quantitative indicators on issues such as benefit levels, expenditures and beneficiaries. The book will be of major interest to researchers, scholars and experts in income protection, poverty and the welfare state.

"Well-being Ranking" tells the story of the development of assessment methods since the rise of wealth ranking in the 1980s.It looks at the results of well-being ranking exercises and how they help identify important differences within communities and monitor changes in well-being over time and describes the successful use of ranking tools over large populations and the value of using multi-dimensional models of well-being.Wealth-ranking is a participatory tool enabling people to group their fellows into wealth bands, and thus identify the very poor. Now the method has been developed to include the broader aspects of well-being such as social standing and health that people value as much as material wealth. The book suggests that understanding differences within communities is essential for good development aid work and briefly explores the ideas used to make assessments of well-being at national levels. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in participatory methods, from researchers and students of international development, to field workers and staff of international development agencies."

This book explores the informal (political) patronage relations between the urban poor and service delivery organisations in Mumbai, India. It examines the conditions of people in the slums and traces the extent to which they are subject to social and political exclusion. Delving into the roles of the slum-based mediators and municipal council

This book is about family life in areas of concentrated poverty and social problems - areas where it is difficult to bring up children and where surrounding conditions make family life more fraught and more difficult. The book is based on a long-run UK study of neighborhood conditions as they affect parents raising their children. The book draws on the lives of 200 families that the authors interviewed annually over a 10 year period. It examines the future prospects of families living in low income urban areas that suffer multiple problems of deprivation. It provides a unique insight into: what families need, what works and doesn't work, what helps or hinders, what is left to do, and which new approaches may be helpful. (Series: CASE Studies on Poverty, Place and Policy)

This book is about family life in areas of concentrated poverty and social problems - areas where it is difficult to bring up children and where surrounding conditions make family life more fraught and more difficult. The book is based on a long-run UK study of neighborhood conditions as they affect parents raising their children. The book draws on the lives of 200 families that the authors interviewed annually over a 10 year period. It examines the future prospects of families living in low income urban areas that suffer multiple problems of deprivation. It provides a unique insight into: what families need, what works and doesn't work, what helps or hinders, what is left to do, and which new approaches may be helpful. (Series: CASE Studies on Poverty, Place and Policy)

This book, first published in 1996, examines an important developmental transition: the formation of identity, as well as the influence that having a well-developed identity may have, on a sample of adolescents living in urban Chicago. This study proposes that identity commitment, exploration, and continuity will be associated with positive psychological and behavioural outcomes for adolescents. This title will be of interest to students of sociology, psychology and urban studies.

This landmark study provides the first comprehensive assessment of the nature and associations between the three main forms of social disadvantage in Australia: poverty, deprivation and social exclusion. Drawing on the author's extensive research expertise and his links with welfare practitioners, it explains the limitations of existing approaches and presents new findings that build on the insights of disadvantaged Australians and views about the essentials of life, providing the basis for a new deprivation-based poverty measure.

This important book makes a vital academic and political statement in the cause of social justice. It begins with an appreciation of the seminal contributions of Peter Townsend (1928-2009), and applies them to contemporary policy debates. It brings together many of the leading contributors to current debates in this field and provides a compelling manifesto for change for students and researchers in the social sciences, policy makers and practitioners, and everybody with an interest in creating a more equal and socially just society.

This book investigates one of the most pervasive forms of modern slavery: bonded labour, whereby labour is linked with a credit agreement, leaving a debtor bound to repay their debt through long-term servitude. Drawing on cases from Nepal and India, the author adopts a human rights-based approach, interpreting slavery as a violation of human rights, and focusing on the empowerment of slaves as rights holders. Ultimately the book aims to explore the links between rights, power inequality and oppression, and to uncover ways to achieve the full liberation of bonded labourers. Identifying the factors and forces that contribute to and reinforce the situation of bonded labour in South Asia, the book demonstrates how systems of bonded labour are connected to long-term processes of colonisation, dispossession, migration, nationalisation of natural resources, and the introduction of private land ownership. Despite the fact that the United Nations has reported debt bondage as the most prevalent form of forced labour worldwide, there it is still little known about the real practical impacts of this approach to the lives of marginalised people. Based on extensive ethnographic research, this book will be a useful guide to students and scholars of modern slavery, international development, and South Asian studies.

This landmark study provides the first comprehensive assessment of the nature and associations between the three main forms of social disadvantage in Australia: poverty, deprivation and social exclusion. Drawing on the author's extensive research expertise and his links with welfare practitioners, it explains the limitations of existing approaches and presents new findings that build on the insights of disadvantaged Australians and views about the essentials of life, providing the basis for a new deprivation-based poverty measure.

This collection offers a timely reassessment of viable ways of addressing poverty across the globe today. The profile of global poverty has changed dramatically over the past decade, and around three-quarters of the poor now live in middle income countries, making inequality a major issue. This requires us to fundamentally rethink anti-poverty strategies and policies, as many aspects of the established framework for poverty reduction are no longer effective. Featuring contributions from Latin America, Africa and Asia, this much-needed collection answers some of the key questions arising as development policy confronts the challenges of poverty and inequality on the global, national and local scale in both urban and rural contexts. Providing poverty researchers and practitioners with valuable new tools to address new forms of poverty in the right way, Poverty and Inequality in Middle Income Countries shows how a radical switch from aid to redistribution-based social policies is needed to combat new forms of global poverty.

This book investigates the best strategies for poverty alleviation in post-disaster urban environments, and the conditions necessary for the success and scaling up of these strategies. Using the case study of Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in the Philippines, the strongest typhoon ever to make landfall, the book aims to draw out policy recommendations relevant for other middle- and lower-income countries facing similar urban environmental challenges. Humans are increasingly living in densely populated and highly vulnerable areas, often coastal. This increased density of human settlements leads to increased material damage and high death tolls, and this vulnerability is often exacerbated by climate change. This book focuses on urban population risk, vulnerability to disasters, resilience to environmental shocks, and adaptation in relation to paths in and out of poverty. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, including primary survey data from victims and those charged with overseeing the relief effort in the Philippines, Urban Poverty in the Wake of Environmental Disaster has significant implications for disaster risk reduction as it relates to the urban poor and is highly recommended for scholars and practitioners of development studies, environment studies, and disaster relief and risk reduction.

When award-winning (and working-class) journalist Tracie McMillan saw foodies swooning over $9 organic tomatoes, she couldn't help but wonder: What about the rest of us? Why do working Americans eat the way we do? And what can we do to change it? To find out, McMillan went undercover in three jobs that feed America, living and eating off her wages in each. Reporting from California fields, a Walmart produce aisle outside of Detroit, and the kitchen of a New York City Applebee's, McMillan examines the reality of our country's food industry in this "clear and essential" ("The Boston Globe") work of reportage. Chronicling her own experience and that of the Mexican garlic crews, Midwestern produce managers, and Caribbean line cooks with whom she works, McMillan goes beyond the food on her plate to explore the national priorities that put it there.
Fearlessly reported and beautifully written, "The American Way of Eating "goes beyond statistics and culture wars to deliver a book that is fiercely honest, strikingly intelligent, and compulsively readable. In making the simple case that--city or country, rich or poor--everyone wants good food, McMillan guarantees that talking about dinner will never be the same again.

Why are development discourses of the 'poor child' in need of radical revision? What are the theoretical and methodological challenges and possibilities for ethical understandings of childhoods and poverty? The 'poor child' at the centre of development activity is often measured against and reformed towards an idealised and globalised child subject. This book examines why such normative discourses of childhood are in need of radical revision and explores how development research and practice can work to 'unsettle' the global child. It engages the cultural politics of childhood - a politics of equality, identity and representation - as a methodological and theoretical orientation to rethink the relationships between education, development, and poverty in children's lives. This book brings multiple disciplinary perspectives, including cultural studies, sociology, and film studies, into conversation with development studies and development education in order to provide new ways of approaching and conceptualising the 'poor child'. The researchers draw on a range of methodological frames - such as poststructuralist discourse analysis, arts based research, ethnographic studies and textual analysis - to unpack the hidden assumptions about children within development discourses. Chapters in this book reveal the diverse ways in which the notion of childhood is understood and enacted in a range of national settings, including Kenya, India, Mexico and the United Kingdom. They explore the complex constitution of children's lives through cultural, policy, and educational practices. The volume's focus on children's experiences and voices shows how children themselves are challenging the representation and material conditions of their lives. The 'Poor Child' will be of particular interest to postgraduate students and scholars working in the fields of childhood studies, international and comparative education, and development studies.

Poverty alleviation is a major objective of development. More than a fifth of the world's population lives in absolute poverty, and the majority of the poor live in rural areas. This volume studies what can be done for alleviating rural poverty. Four chapters address the measurement of poverty and inequality, including the use of household expenditure surveys and intra-household income distribution. Evidence is presented for India, Mauritania, Cte d'Ivoire and China. Other chapters present case studies on strategies for rural development: provision of rural credit in Bangladesh and India; technical change in Philippine agriculture; contract farming in Thailand; and banana growers in the Windwards. The contributions introduce the problems of rural development and show that effective rural development is assisted by investment in education and secure access to credit; that equity is important for incentives but not directly related to poverty; and that technical and institutional reform are essential, but require careful design and implementation.

This book provides new empirical evidence on access to and use of ICTs and their effect on poor households in four East African countries--Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda--along with experiences from other countries in Southern Africa. "ICT Pathways to Poverty Reduction" presents a conceptual framework to analyze how poverty dynamics change over time and to shed light on whether ICT access benefits the poor as well as the not-so-poor. Overall, the study concludes that ICTs make a difference to the livelihoods of the poor and contribute to reducing both financial and non-financial dimensions of poverty.Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been proven to promote economic growth, but do we know that ICTs can reduce poverty? This book addresses the questions: Under what conditions do women benefit economically from using ICTs? How are the livelihoods of rural users affected? Which ICTs are being used by low-income entrepreneurs? "ICT Pathways to Poverty Reduction" is essential reading for policymakers, researchers, and academics in international development or ICT for development, as well as staff of development agencies working on livelihoods for the poor.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1997. Considerable research has been done to identify neighbourhood influences on children's affective states, motivation, and behaviour. This population, along with the elderly, are the nation's largest dependent groups. In contrast, little research has been done to determine what impact living among poor neighbours has upon older Americans, specifically upon their psychological well-being and neighbourhood satisfaction. In this study the author has sought out to explore this deficit, using a sociological standpoint to examine quality-of-life issues relevant to elderly inner-city residents. This title will be of interest to students of sociology and urban studies.

Examines the impact of poverty, inequality and social programmes in Russia, exploring these issues from the 1990s to the present day. The approach is based on institutional theory, complemented by Amartya Sen's capability approach highlighting the importance of agency and an institutional framework as a means for change. The emphasis on agency, female responsibility and the role of NGOs is a significant contribution to the field.

This book explores the vital role of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in compensating for the market's and government's inability to provide vital services. Its key theoretical contribution is the notion that poverty is the result of a triadic failure-when markets, government, and civil society become dysfunctional at the same time. Using data on Catholic missionaries' development work, this study presents the various ways by which FBOs mitigate market and government failures in healthcare, education, and social services, and in the process build and strengthen civil society. This study has two main objectives. First, it aims to present an overview of missionaries' development work, evaluating the socioeconomic significance of their faith-based development work. In addition, various comparative advantages and disadvantages have been imputed to FBOs in the religion-development literature, and we assess to what extent missionaries actually exhibit these posited qualities in practice. Second, the groundwork is laid for future religion-development scholars by presenting a theoretical framework and a method for evaluating the role and contributions of FBOs in the larger community. This is an important investigation of contemporary worldwide Christianity and its relationship with development. As such, it will interest scholars of religious studies and missiology, as well as development economics, public service and the political economy.

Unemployment and the state in Britain offers an important and original contribution to understandings of the 1930s. Through a comparative case study of south Wales and the north-east of England, the book explores the impact of the highly controversial means test, the relationship between the unemployed and the government and the nature of some of the largest protests of the interwar period. This study will appeal to students and scholars of the depression, social movements, studies of the unemployed, social policy and interwar British society. -- .

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.

Originally published in 1924, Unemployment Relief in Great Britain takes up the history of unemployment relief in Great Britain, focusing on the after effects of the post-war period and the Great Depression. Primarily, the book provides a detailed study of England's experience with compulsory unemployment insurance and public employment exchanges. The book provides an intriguing study that will appeal to sociologists and historians alike, adeptly weaving practical aspects of the insurance acts, and the administration of employment exchanges.

Cash Transfers, for all their notable successes, have been criticised for their limited ability to move poor households to provide sustainable routes out of poverty. This book draws on original qualitative research by leading scholars and development policy experts from a range of disciplines to examine whether cash transfers can have transformative spillover effects on individuals, households and communities. Case studies from Africa, the Middle East and Latin America show that, while there are limits to the sustainability of the transformations brought about by Cash Transfers, they can bring about changes affecting the social and political integration of very poor households. With chapters on Psycho-Social Wellbeing, Social Accountability and Social Capital, this comprehensive volume casts new light on the ongoing debates over the significance of the Cash Transfer 'revolution'. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Development Studies.