50 years ago, World Bank President Robert McNamara promised to end poverty. Alleviation was to rely on economic growth, resulting in higher incomes stimulated by Bank loans processed by deskbound Washington staff, trickling down to the poorest. Instead, child poverty and homelessness are on the increase everywhere. In this book, anthropologist and former World Bank Advisor Glynn Cochrane argues that instead of Washington's "management by seclusion," poverty alleviation requires personal engagement with the poorest by helpers with hands-on local and cultural skills. Here, the author argues, the insights provided by anthropological fieldwork have a crucial role to play.

This book analyses government relationships with international financial institutions by evaluating the role of citizen participation when national poverty reduction policies are formulated in low-income countries. Based on in-depth research from Bangladesh, the concept of participation is investigated from the contrasting perspectives of theory and practice. The first part of the book explores the rhetoric of participation in development policies, while the second part presents empirical evidence of participation in the formulation of Bangladesh's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper where, at local level, development brokers play an important role. It argues that participatory policies are not enough, that an overhaul is needed in the approach to poverty reduction which will require strong political commitment. This topical book will make essential reading for academics, students and researchers in international development studies and poverty-related fields.

Early education and care has become a central policy area in many countries. As services expand rapidly, it is crucial to examine whether children from disadvantaged backgrounds receive provision of the highest possible quality. In this original, topical book, leading experts from eight countries examine how early education and care is organised, funded and regulated in their countries. Bringing together recent statistical evidence, the book gives an up-to-date picture of access to services by different groups, providing rich insights on how policies play out in practice, and the extent to which they help or hinder disadvantaged children to receive high quality provision. An equal start? reveals the common tensions and complexities countries face in ensuring that early education and care is affordable, accessible and of high quality. Its critical examination of the potential for better policies ensures that An equal start? will be of interest to academic readers as well as policy makers and practitioners.

New York Times bestselling author Paul Tough's Whatever It Takes is "one of the best books ever written about how poverty influences learning, and vice versa" (The Washington Post). What would it take? That was the question that Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What would it take to change the lives of poor children -- not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children's Zone, a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in their lives -- their schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents. Whatever It Takes is a tour de force of reporting, an inspired portrait not only of Geoffrey Canada but also of the parents and children in Harlem who are struggling to better their lives, often against great odds. Carefully researched and deeply affecting, this is a dispatch from inside the most daring and potentially transformative social experiment of our time.

Assembled from a series of newspaper articles first published in the newspaper Morning Chronicle throughout the 1840s, this exhaustively researched, richly detailed survey of the teeming street denizens of London is a work both of groundbreaking sociology and salacious voyeurism. In an 1850 review of the survey, just prior to its initial book publication, William Makepeace Thackeray called it "tale of terror and wonder" offering "a picture of human life so wonderful, so awful, so piteous and pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that readers of romances own they never read anything like to it." Delving into the world of the London "street-folk"-the buyers and sellers of goods, performers, artisans, laborers and others-this extraordinary work inspired the socially conscious fiction of Charles Dickens in the 19th century as well as the urban fantasy of Neil Gaiman in the late 20th. Volume II explores the lives of: sellers of secondhand merchandise sellers of live animals sellers of natural curiosities "street-Jews" chimney sweepers and more. English journalist HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) was a founder and editor of the satirical magazine Punch.

Americans are overworked. After declining for a century through hard-fought labor movement victories, average annual work hours increased approximately 8 percent for all working adults from 1979 to 2016. In Worked Over, sociologist Jamie McCallum reveals how the battle over time on the job has been central to conflicts over capitalism from the beginning, how overwork is at the heart of the inequities and injustices in America's economy today, and why workers must fight to take control of the time they spend working. From Amazon warehouses to Silicon Valley campuses, from late night Uber deliveries to later night strip clubs, from factories in Ohio to retail floors everywhere, McCallum explains how the contemporary American workplace exploits workers' time and constrains their lives. Whether it's the manager's stopwatch, the scheduling algorithm's dispassionate authority, or our own internal clock that pushes us because we're afraid of falling behind or losing our jobs, ordinary people have lost much say over when and how much we work. Work, more than anything else, dictates when we sleep, eat, raise our kids, and live the rest of our lives. Popular discussions of overwork tend to focus on striving professionals, but as McCallum demonstrates, it's the hours of low-wage workers have increased the most, and it's their working lives that remain the most precarious and unpredictable in a service-oriented, on-demand economy. What's needed is not individual solutions but collective struggle. Throughout Worked Over, McCallum offers inspiring stories of how the battle to win back control of time has been renewed today by those most vulnerable to the capitalist society's electronic whip. Combining the rigor of a scholar, the storytelling of a journalist, and the vision of an activist, McCallum shows that winning shorter hours will require a radical break from our current political and economic system. Worked Over is an inside look at why our lives became tethered to work -- and how we might regain a greater say over our work time and build a more just society in the process.

This authoritative collection, which includes a new introduction surveying the fields, contains key contributions from the comparative literature on the politics of income maintenance policy.In recent years theoretical work has been dominated by Gosta Esping-Andersen's regime theory. This volume demonstrates how that theory, together with arguments on convergence and path-dependency, has been applied to the comparative study of income maintenance policy. It highlights issues about the difference between social insurance and social assistance and about the important differences in the way women and families are treated. The collection looks at the literature that seeks to explain cutbacks, or their absence, highlighting issues about pensions policy. Income Maintenance Policy will be an invaluable source of literature for researchers, students and policymakers alike.

First published in 1979, Urban Poverty in Britain 1830-1914 examines the plight of the poor in towns as a direct result of industrialization. This valuable study examines the major causes of poverty - low pay, casual labour, unemployment, sickness, widowhood, large families, old age, drink and personal failings - and society's response to the problem. It also pays attention to the changes in food consumption brought about by migration to the urban areas. Detailed accounts of specific problems and specific situations are combined with a look at the broader questions, and subsequently provides a thorough account of urban poverty in this period.

In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi's "most-everything girl," might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, "Behind the Beautiful Forevers, "based on years of uncompromising reporting, ""carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds--and into the hearts of families impossible to forget.
Winner of the National Book Award - The PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award - The Los Angeles Times Book Prize - The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award - The New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
"The New York Times - The Washington Post - O: The Oprah Magazine - USA Today - New York - The Miami Herald - San Francisco Chronicle - Newsday"
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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
"The New Yorker - People - Entertainment Weekly - The Wall Street Journal - The Boston Globe - The Economist - Financial Times - Newsweek"/The Daily Beast" - Foreign Policy - The Seattle Times - The Nation - St. Louis Post-Dispatch - The Denver Post - "Minneapolis" Star Tribune - "Salon" - The Plain Dealer - The Week - Kansas City Star - "Slate" - Time Out New York - Publishers Weekly"
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"NEW YORK TIMES" BESTSELLER
"A book of extraordinary intelligence and] humanity . . . beyond groundbreaking."--Junot Diaz, "The New York Times Book Review"
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"Reported like Watergate, written like "Great Expectations, "and handily the best international nonfiction in years."--"New York"
"This book is both a tour de force of social justice reportage and a literary masterpiece."--Judges' Citation for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award
" A] landmark book."--"The Wall Street Journal"
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"A triumph of a book."--Amartya Sen
"There are books that change the way you feel and see; this is one of them."--Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
" A] stunning piece of narrative nonfiction . . . Katherine] Boo's prose is electric.""--O: The Oprah Magazine"
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"Inspiring, and irresistible . . . Boo's extraordinary achievement is twofold. She shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as important, she makes us care.""--People"

"From the Hardcover edition."

Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter, literacy, and basic health care. One third of all human deaths are from poverty-related causes: 18 million annually, including over 10 million children under five.
However huge in human terms, the world poverty problem is tiny economically. Just 1 percent of the national incomes of the high-income countries would suffice to end severe poverty worldwide. Yet, these countries, unwilling to bear an opportunity cost of this magnitude, continue to impose a grievously unjust global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably perpetuates the catastrophe. Most citizens of affluent countries believe that we are doing nothing wrong.
Thomas Pogge seeks to explain how this belief is sustained. He analyses how our moral and economic theorizing and our global economic order have adapted to make us appear disconnected from massive poverty abroad. Dispelling the illusion, he also offers a modest, widely sharable standard of global economic justice and makes detailed, realistic proposals toward fulfilling it.

Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this classic book incorporates responses to critics and a new chapter introducing Pogge's current work on pharmaceutical patent reform.

Winner of the British Academy Peter Townsend Prize for 2013 How do men and women get by in times and places where opportunities for standard employment have drastically reduced? Are we witnessing the growth of a new class, the 'Precariat', where people exist without predictability or security in their lives? What effects do flexible and insecure forms of work have on material and psychological well-being? This book is the first of its kind to examine the relationship between social exclusion, poverty and the labour market. It challenges long-standing and dominant myths about 'the workless' and 'the poor', by exploring close-up the lived realities of life in low-pay, no-pay Britain. Work may be 'the best route out of poverty' sometimes but for many people getting a job can be just a turn in the cycle of recurrent poverty - and of long-term churning between low-skilled 'poor work' and unemployment. Based on unique qualitative, life-history research with a 'hard-to-reach group' of younger and older people, men and women, the book shows how poverty and insecurity have now become the defining features of working life for many.

'At the beginning of the 2000-2010 decade, Bob Baulch (with John Hoddinott) was setting the micro-econometric agenda on poverty dynamics and chronic poverty and producing work that 'non-economists' had to read if they wanted to conduct serious research on these issues. In this volume - through his analytical excellence, the pursuit and methodological rigour, extraordinary energy, and his ability to lead such a distinguished network of colleagues - Bob Baulch has set the research agenda on poverty dynamics and chronic poverty for the next ten years.'- From the foreword by David Hulme, University of Manchester, UK 'This volume on poverty dynamics in developing countries, whose authors include the leaders in this field, is a must for analysts and research students. It advances the literature by addressing three important issues - measurement error, attrition, and tracking. For each of these questions, the volume leads by example, showing how they can be handled in specific cases. The results show that escape from poverty is a diverse phenomenon, and establish the importance of country and context specificity. The volume provide an analytical platform for careful policy assessment of policy alternatives.' - Ravi Kanbur, Cornell University, US This edited book analyzes what traps people in chronic poverty, and what allows them to escape from it, using long-term panel surveys from six Asian and African countries. The distinguishing feature of these studies, which were commissioned by the Chronic Poverty Research Center, is they span longer periods or have more survey waves than most developing country panels. This allows a detailed account of the maintainers of chronic poverty and drivers of poverty dynamics. Many of the studies (from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nepal, Pakistan, South Africa and Vietnam) are written by leading development economists, and all pay careful attention to the difficult issues of attrition, measurement error and tracking. The book's comparative perspective highlights the common factors which cause people to fall into chronic poverty and allow them to break-free from it. A number of promising policies and interventions for reducing chronic poverty are identified. This up-to-date book will be an excellent resource for international development agencies, academics specializing in development economics and development studies, and researchers in international NGOs. Graduate students of development economics and development studies will also find much to interest them. Contributors include: B. Baulch, S.D. Bhatta, V.H. Dat, S. Dercon, D. Hulme, H.R. Lohano, J. May, C. Porter, A. Quisumbing, S. Sharma, I. Woolard

Asia contains the bulk of the world's poor, as many as 500 million people. A significant fraction of these poor are chronically poor, which means that they and their families have been poor for years and will remain in poverty unless governmental policies are adopted which can lift them out of poverty.

This book focuses on rural poverty and those countries in Asia with the largest number of chronically poor, including the two emerging superpowers of China and India, other countries of South Asia and the Mekong region as well as Indonesia and Philippines in Southeast Asia. Systematic analysis of who is poor, where they live, and why they are poor is carried out. Microeconomic, sector and macroeconomic policies which have been adopted to address this important social issue are also discussed. Through specific country analysis, the book outlines additional concrete measures that can be taken to reduce chronic poverty and improve the welfare of these people.

The greatest problems facing humanity today are climate change, poverty, and the increasing separation between the rich and poor. The aim of this book is to examine the social constructions that have led to these breakdowns, and provide potential solutions that are based on a fundamental change in the structure of society and the values on which a new and better social system can be built. Unless we as a society set a drastically different course soon, human life as we know it will suffer greatly, perhaps even cease altogether. Excess consumption is becoming anti-social as the effects of global warming and increasing poverty become apparent. What, then, will form the new social values on which society replaces the present emphasis on work and material consumption that now prevail? This book's answer to that question is accomplishment and aesthetic consumption. This proposed refocused existence will necessitate a new economic order that provides access to a livelihood beyond the market system. This groundbreaking book will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, leisure studies, political science, and social work.

The goal of this book is to join social movement analysis with collective action theory. To that end, the author introduces the organizational empowerment model of collective action. All social movement theories lack a discussion of the influence of movement organization on the tactics of an organization. A national survey of social movement organizations is employed to develop a model of how the organizational features of the local group, competition among social movement organizations, the political settings of the organization, and organizational empowerment influence collective action style. This model will allow for testing some long held assumptions about organizational change as well as assumptions about the efficacy of poor people organized to achieve change.

As homelessness continues to plague North America and also becomes more widespread in Europe, anthropologists turn their attention to solving the puzzle of why people in some of the most advanced technological societies in the world are found huddled in a subway tunnel, squatting in a vacant building, living in a shelter, or camping out in an abandoned field or on a beach. Anthropologists have a long tradition of working in poverty subcultures and have been able to contribute answers to some of the puzzles of homelessness through their ability to enter the culture of the homeless without some of the preconceptions of other disciplines. The authors, anthropologists from the U.S.A. and Canada, offer us an analysis of homelessness that is grounded in anthropological research in North America and throughout the world. Both have in-depth experience through working in communities of the homeless and present us withthe results of their own work and with that of their colleagues.

Income inequality is an increasingly pressing issue in the United States and around the world. This book explores five critical issues to introduce some of the key moral and empirical questions about income, gender, and racial inequality:
-Do we have a moral obligation to eliminate poverty?
-Is inequality a necessary evil that's the best way available to motivate economic action and increase total output?
-Can we retain a meaningful democracy even when extreme inequality allows the rich to purchase political privilege?
-Is the recent stalling out of long-term declines in gender inequality a historic reversal that presages a new gender order?
-How are racial and ethnic inequalities likely to evolve as minority populations grow ever larger, as intermarriage increases, and as new forms of immigration unfold?

Leading public intellectuals debate these questions in a no-holds-barred exploration of our New Gilded Age.

This original and topical book tells the untold stories of migrants' experiences of, and responses to, financial exclusion in London. Breaking important new ground, it offers an insight into migrants' lives which is often overlooked, yet is increasingly vital for their broader integration into advanced financialised societies. Adopting a holistic focus, Migrants and their Money investigates migrants' complex financial lives which extend far beyond remittance sending, exploring their banking, saving, credit and debt related practices. It highlights how migrants negotiate the complex financial landscape they encounter and the diverse formal and informal ways in which they manage their money in the financial capital of the world. Drawing upon a rich evidence base, this book will be of particular interest to academics, local authorities, policy makers and the financial services industry.

This book represents a truly innovative and empowering approach to social problems. Instead of focusing solely on a seemingly tireless list of major problems, Sara Towe Horsfall considers how select key issues can be solved and pays particular attention to the advocate groups already on the front lines. Horsfall first provides a r

This book provides an accessible introduction to food inequality in the United States, offering readers a broad survey of the most important topics and issues and exploring how economics, culture, and public policy have shaped our current food landscape. Food inequality in the United States can take many forms. From the low-income family unable to afford enough to eat and the migrant farm worker paid below minimum wage to city dwellers stranded in an urban food desert, disparities in how we access and relate to food can have significant physical, psychological, and cultural consequences. These inequalities often have deep historical roots and a complex connection to race, socioeconomic status, gender, and geography. Part of Greenwood's Health and Medical Issues Today series, Food Inequalities is divided into three sections. Part I explores different types of food inequality and highlights current efforts to improve food access and equity in the U.S. Part II delves deep into a variety of issues and controversies related to the subject, offering thorough and balanced coverage of these hot-button topics. Part III provides a variety of useful supplemental materials, including case studies, a timeline of critical events, and a directory of resources. Examines many different types of food inequality and explores how such factors as race, class, and gender can impact our access to and relationship with food Highlights important issues and controversies relevant to the topic, including equitable pay for food workers and the limitations of such welfare programs as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) and government-subsidized school lunches Offers illuminating case studies that use engaging real-world scenarios to highlight key ideas and debates discussed in the book Provides readers with a curated Directory of Resources to guide their search for additional information

"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."

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book is about being disabled and being poor and the social, cultural and political processes that link these two aspects of living. Environmental barriers, limited access to services and discriminatory attitudes and practice are among key elements that drive disabled people into poverty and keep them there. 'Disability and poverty' explores the lived realities of people with disabilities from across the developing world and examines how the coping strategies of individuals and families emerge in different contexts.

Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty has long been portrayed as the most potent symbol of all that is wrong with big government. Conservatives deride the War on Poverty for corruption and the creation of "poverty pimps," and even liberals carefully distance themselves from it. Examining the long War on Poverty from the 1960s onward, this book makes a controversial argument that the programs were in many ways a success, reducing poverty rates and weaving a social safety net that has proven as enduring as programs that came out of the New Deal.

The War on Poverty also transformed American politics from the grass roots up, mobilizing poor people across the nation. Blacks in crumbling cities, rural whites in Appalachia, Cherokees in Oklahoma, Puerto Ricans in the Bronx, migrant Mexican farmworkers, and Chinese immigrants from New York to California built social programs based on Johnson's vision of a greater, more just society. Contributors to this volume chronicle these vibrant and largely unknown histories while not shying away from the flaws and failings of the movement--including inadequate funding, co-optation by local political elites, and blindness to the reality that mothers and their children made up most of the poor.

In the twenty-first century, when one in seven Americans receives food stamps and community health centers are the largest primary care system in the nation, the War on Poverty is as relevant as ever. This book helps us to understand the turbulent era out of which it emerged and why it remains so controversial to this day.

A half-century after the ""War on Poverty"" of Lyndon Johnson, poverty rates remain unchanged. Scholars have advanced polarized theories about the causes of poverty, as politicians have debated how (or if) to fund welfare programs. Yet little research has been conducted where the poor are provided a platform to speak on their own behalf. While it is important to understand how economic systems affect the homeless, it is equally important to learn about the day-to-day realities faced by those who rely on public policies for survival. Drawing on the author's experience working in the homeless community, this book presents some of their stories of loss, abuse, addiction and marginalization through interviews, observations and ethnographic research.

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.