This book reflects the implications of a social performance management agenda for the perspective of twelve partners from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe, who participated in a three-year microfinance action-research programme known as Imp-Act. It features contributions from MFI staff who worked with Imp-Act directly, as well as from members of Imp-Act's academic team, who worked closely with the partners. The book reflects each MFI's unique, contextualized approach to measuring and monitoring the social impacts of microfinance, emphasizing the role played by this work in improving delivery of services; increasing client satisfaction and reducing drop-outs from microfinance programmes; and increasing impacts on poverty. Running through the book are three interlinked stories: the story of Imp-Act, an action-research partnership responding to particular concerns within the microfinance industry; the story of organizational systems and learning around social impacts, and the resulting changes to service provision and working practices; and the story of changes in clients' lives. The book reveals the faces behind the social performance agenda and the processes of discovery and self-discovery that underlie programme learning. The book communicates that Imp-Act is not only about proving impact or improving services, but is also about MFIs rediscovering their mission goals and instilling a sense of purpose in their staff and clients. Above all, the book shows that each management is unique, reflecting cultural and organizational differences. Thus, in contrast to available impact assessment frameworks, learning through Imp-Act has been largely driven by the MFI's own goals and perspectives.

Poor America describes the sharp contrast in the extent of poverty between the United States and six Western European countries. While 36 million Americans live below the poverty line, a much smaller percent of Western Europeans struggle with the same problem. Samuel J. Eldersveld seeks to discover why this variance exists by exploring various theories. To explain the larger percentage of American poor, he tackles the history of poverty in each of the featured countries along with examining the "system theory" approach, the role of values, the political elite character in the United States compared to Europe, and the differential robes of the business elites in these countries. Poor America follows the issue of poverty through the present day, discussing proposals and prospects for reform in poverty relief in the United States.

Originally published in 1972, Minority Perspectives is the second in a series exploring metropolitan problems within the government structure. The 1960's were a period of civils rights movements as well as poverty in the United States and in the 70's, it became clear that poverty was closely linked to race. This report sets out to explore issues contributing to the metropolitan-minority poverty problem such as racial exclusion and public policy. The papers included in this report discuss issues such as political power in metropolitan areas, the impact an address can have on economic opportunity for minority groups and the effects that laws and litigation can have on poverty. This title will be of interest to students of environmental and urban studies.

Unlike other regions around the world, several Latin American countries have managed to reduce income inequality over the last decade. Higher growth rates and growing employment, but also innovative wage policies and social programs, have contributed to reducing poverty and narrow income disparities. Yet, despite this progress, nation-states in the region demonstrate little capacity to substantially change their patterns of deeply rooted inequalities. Focusing on the limits and challenges of redistributive policies in Latin America, this volume synthesizes and updates the discussion of inequality in the region, introducing the perspective of global and transnational interdependencies. The book explores the extent to which redistributive policies have been interlinked with the provision and quality of public goods as well as with structural changes of the productive sector. Inspired by structuralist and neostructuralist thinking of Latin American economists, such as RaAl Prebisch and Celso Furtado, authors question the redistributive impact of the interplay of recent macroeconomic, fiscal and social policies, particularly under left and center-left administrations committed to greater equality. Bringing together experts in social, fiscal and macroeconomic policies to investigate the interdependent and global character of inequalities, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, economics, development and politics with interests in Latin America, inequality and public policy.

In the Dutch Republic, charitable collections, which formed the financial backbone of many poor relief institutions, were regularly organised by both religious and secular authorities. This book examines both the policies of church boards and town councils in organising these charitable appeals, as well as the general population's giving behaviour. Using archival sources from the towns of Delft, Utrecht, Zwolle, and 's-Hertogenbosch, Danielle Teeuwen shows how these authorities deployed organisational and rhetorical tactics-including creating awareness, establishing trust, and exerting pressure-to successfully promote fundraising campaigns. Not only did many relief institutions manage to collect large annual sums, but contributions came from across the socioeconomic spectrum.

Over the past two decades it has become widely recognized that housing issues have to be placed in a broader framework acknowledging that civil society in the form of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and their allies are increasingly networking and emerging as strong players that cannot easily be overlooked. Some of these networks have crossed local and national boundaries and have jumped political scales. This implies that housing issues have to be looked at from new angles: they can no longer simply be addressed through localized projects, but rather at multiple scales. The current debate is largely limited to statements about the relevance of individual organizations for local housing processes and tends to overlook the innovativeness in terms of re-scaling those processes and of influencing institutional change at various levels by transcending national boundaries. There is a significant lack of a systemic understanding of such globally operating grassroots networks and how they function in the housing process. This book brings together different perspectives on multi-scalar approaches within the housing field and on grassroots' engagement with formal agencies including local government, higher levels of government and international agencies. By moving away from romanticizing local self-initiatives, it focuses on understanding the emerging potential once local initiatives are interlinked and scaled-up to transnational networks.

Globally, around 2.8 billion people, also known as the "Other Third" or "energy poor," have little or no access to beneficial energy that meets their needs for cooking, heating, water, sanitation, illumination, transportation, or basic mechanical power." "This book uniquely integrates the hitherto segmented and fragmented approaches to the challenge of access to energy. It provides theoretical, philosophical and practical analysis of energy for the low energy (non-hydrocarbon based) Other Third of the world, and how the unmet needs of the energy poor might be satisfied. It comprehensively addresses the range of issues relating to energy justice and energy access for all, including appropriate sustainable energy technologies (ASETs).

The book breaks new ground by crafting a unified and cohesive framework for analysis and action that:

• Explains the factual and sociopolitical phenomenon of the energy poor whom lack clean energy for cooking, illumination, sanitation, drinking water, and mechanical or motive power.
• Demonstrates why energy is the primary determinant of human progress.
• Restates the conceptual and theoretical grounds found in moral and political philosophy, religious social teaching, and jurisprudence positing that the world ought to remedy the lack of access to energy.
• Makes the case for using ASETs to supplement the quest for electricity, and provide an intermediary source of energy during the transition to electricity.
• Recognizes the paucity of compelling information that promotes awareness of the negative impacts of energy poverty.
• Addresses the behavioral issues associated with the successful deployment of ASETs, which include human dignity and cultural concerns.
• Outlines the practical economic frameworks of energy sustainability based on quantitative metrics for how the lack of access to energy could be answered by electricity and ASETs.

This is a must-read for all scholars, students, professionals and policy makers working on energy policy, poverty, and sustainable energy technologies.

The studies collected here centre on the social and economic life of medieval Germany, within a broader European context. The first three articles engage the day-to-day workings of rural society: literature, verbal attack and the language of mediated settlement of conflicts lead to a nuanced view of social hierarchy, in which the meek too have a say. The next group examines some major elements of rural life, dealing with technology, resources, ecology, transport, communication and credit. In the second part, the author focuses on the life of the Jews in Germany, first charting the process of settlement of Jews in Germany, the dynamics of social stratification and household composition, and the impact of economics and persecution on settlement patterns. A case study uncovers the motives and steps that led up to the expulsion of the Jews of Nuremberg in 1498. These themes are followed up into the early modern period, when German Jewry mostly came to live a village life. The last studies deal with the economic history of medieval European Jews, including professions other than moneylending, and with the function of women in economic life.

The first and only monograph focusing on intergeneration mobility in the context of China's poverty alleviation. Studies the relationship between education and intergenerational social mobility Uses large-scale social survey data including the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), and the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP)

In this lively social history, first published in 1988, Lionel Rose explores in detail the plight of the street poor between 1815 and 1985. He describes the Victorian 'Rogues and Vagabonds' who made elicit peddling, begging frauds and other petty crime their profession. He considers the relevant legislation and systems for coping with the street poor, from the 1824 Vagrancy Act and accompanying improvements in policing, through the casual ward systems of the workhouses and the role of common lodging houses, to the development of Social Services in the 1940s and local authority provision of accommodation. This title will be of interest to students of history, criminology and sociology.

In this book Samantha Williams examines illegitimacy, unmarried parenthood and the old and new poor laws in a period of rising illegitimacy and poor relief expenditure. In doing so, she explores the experience of being an unmarried mother from courtship and conception, through the discovery of pregnancy, and the birth of the child in lodgings or one of the new parish workhouses. Although fathers were generally held to be financially responsible for their illegitimate children, the recovery of these costs was particularly low in London, leaving the parish ratepayers to meet the cost. Unmarried parenthood was associated with shame and men and women could also be subject to punishment, although this was generally infrequent in the capital. Illegitimacy and the poor law were interdependent and this book charts the experience of unmarried motherhood and the making of metropolitan bastardy.

In spite of living often unspeakably hard, endlessly challenging lives, rural folks, no matter how poor, remain tirelessly optimistic and believe things will get better next year. One struggling farmer explained it this way: "Sometimes I feel like a jackass in a hailstorm - I just have to stand here and take it...but what the hell - it'll stop hailing sooner or later". Trying to survive on the richest farmland in America has produced some of the nation's poorest people. Yet, this book argues, as pertains to rural poverty, the usual definitions and criteria don't always apply, the known predictors of poverty don't necessarily hold up -and rural people save themselves again and again, because they know no one else will. The book also refutes the common image of the poor as lazy slackers who don't want to work. In reality, the rural heartland is populated by fiercely independent, politically astute, extremely hard-working men and women who possess a wide array of useful skills - and who struggle year over year to stay afloat in small-town economies that rise and fall on the whims of remote farm policy decisions, a volatile world-wide marketplace, and Mother Nature, who is a fickle, wildly unpredictable business partner.

The debt problems of poor countries are receiving unprecedented attention. Both federal and non-governmental organizations alike have been campaigning for debt forgiveness for poor countries. The governments of creditor nations responded to that challenge at a meeting sponsored by the G-7, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank, all of which upgraded debt relief as a policy priority. Their initiatives provided for generous interpretations of these nations' abilities to sustain debt, gave them opportunities to qualify for debt relief more rapidly, and linked debt relief to broader policies of poverty reduction. Despite this, the crisis has only deepened in the first years of the new millennium. This brilliant group of contributions assesses why this has occurred. In plain language, it considers why debt relief has been so long in coming for poor countries. It evaluates the cost of a persistent overhang in debt for those countries. It also examines, head on, whether enhanced debt relief initiatives offer a permanent exit from over-indebtedness, or are merely a short-term respite. Above all, this volume for the first time addresses the issues on the ground: that is, the views and opinions about debt relief on the part of leaders in advanced nations, and the probability of further support for the most impoverished lands. In this approach, the editors and contributors have made an explicit and successful attempt to be inclusive and relevant at all stages of the analysis. This volume covers the full range of the poorest countries, with contributions by John Serieux, Lykke Anderson and Osvaldo Nina, Befekadu Degefe, Ligia Maria Castro-Monge, and Peter B. Mijumbi. Collectively, they offer a sobering scenario: unless measures are put in place now, in anticipation of further crises, the future of the very poorest nations will remain bleak and troublesome. John Serieux completed this volume as a senior researcher and specialist in international finance for the North-South Institute, an independent research institute based in Ottawa, Canada. Before that he was a lecturer at the graduate program in economics at Chancellor College, at the University of Malawi. His major works are in domestic and foreign resource mobilization. Yiagadeesen Samy is completing his doctoral research in economics at the University of Ottawa in international trade and economics of development. His key interest is now in trade and labor standards.

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The studies of poverty, progress and development in this volume, first published in 1991, by a distinguished international roster of authors and researchers, aim to increase knowledge of the social mechanisms of pauperization, marginalization, and the exclusion of certain categories of society; to bring to light the potential and creative role of socio-cultural, intellectual, ethical, moral and spiritual values in progress and the development process; and to examine the links and contradictions between development and progress in order to propose ways of reducing social inequalities.

Poverty and inequality are at record levels. Today, forty-seven million Americans live in poverty, while the median is in decline. The top 20 percent now controls 89 percent of all wealth. These conditions have renewed demands for a new economic Bill of Rights, an idea proposed by F. D. Roosevelt, Truman and Martin Luther King, Jr. The new Economic Bill of Rights has a coherent plan and proclaims that all Americans have the right to a job, a living wage, a decent home, adequate medical care, good education, and adequate protection from economic fears of unemployment, sickness and old age. Integrating the latest economic and social data, Ending Extreme Inequality explores each of these rights. Each chapter includes: an analysis of the social problems surrounding each right; a historical overview of the attempts to right these wrongs; and assessments of current solutions offered by citizens, community groups and politicians. These contemporary, real-life solutions to inequality can inspire students and citizens to become involved and open pathways toward a more just society.

Surviving with Dignity explores three key interconnected themes-structural violence, suffering, and surviving with dignity-through examining the lived experiences of first and second-generation migrant Hausa men in Niamey over the past two decades in the current neoliberal moment. Colonialism, state mismanagement, structural adjustment, and global neoliberalism have inflicted structural violence on Nigeriens by denying them human and particularly socioeconomic rights and relegating them to a status at-or very near-the bottom of UN Human Development Index in each year of the past decade. As a result of structural violence, most Hausa of Niamey suffer grinding and intractable poverty that has intensified over the past two decades. Suffering is a recurrent and expected condition; it is the normal condition. The central goal of the book is to explain the material (migration and informal economy work) and symbolic (meaning-making) strategies that Hausa individuals and communities have deployed in their struggles to not only to literally survive in the face of economic austerity on the outer periphery of the global economy, but also to survive with dignity.Despite daunting challenges, many Hausa men find strength and patience in their humble devotion to Islam, cherish their vibrant sociability and gracious hospitality, deeply value extraordinary conversational virtuosity and knowledge, deploy humor in complex transcendent, defensive and self-critical ways, perpetuate a sense of hope and optimism for the future, articulate their own modernities, and strive relentlessly to feel connected to the modern world at large. Extreme poverty created by socioeconomic injustice constitutes an unacceptable assault on human dignity. Hausa men's remarkable strength does not negate the reality of the socioeconomic injustices they face. Their dire poverty in a world of plenty is unacceptable even when they handle it gracefully.

Does poverty lead to environmental degradation? Do degraded environments and natural resources lead to poverty? Or, are there other forces at play? Is the relationship between poverty and the environment really as straightforward as the vicious circle portrayal of 'poverty leading to environmental destruction leading to more poverty' would suggest? Does it matter if the relationship is portrayed in this way? This book suggests that it does matter. Arguing that such a portrayal is unhelpful and misleading, the book brings together a diverse range of analytical frameworks and approaches that can enable a much deeper investigation of the context and nature of poverty-environment relationships. Analytical frameworks and approaches examined in the book include political ecology, a gendered lens, Critical Institutionalism, the Environmental Entitlements framework, the Institutional Analysis and Development approach, the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, wellbeing analysis, social network analysis and frameworks for the analysis of the governance of natural resources. Recommended further reading draws on published material from the last thirty years as well as key contemporary publications, giving readers a steer towards essential texts and authors within each subject area. Key themes running through the analytical frameworks and approaches are identified and examined, including power, access, institutions and scale.

In The Cost of Not Educating the World's Poor, Lynn Ilon observes from her 30 years of travel and work in some 20 developing countries, how global instability, problems of environmental degradation, spread of global disease, migration and political instability are a cost of viewing the uneducated poor as separated from a networked of fast-growing global knowledge. This book shows how powerful global learning systems are rapidly forming and linking the rich world with the world of the poor and developing nations. Using a narrative voice interleaved with concise introductions to the underlying theories (economics, development, learning, technology and networks) it shows us how changing our ways of thinking can lead to new possibilities. The Cost of Not Educating the World's Poor is based on an emerging theory of development economics and the author's own vast experiences and stories. It also discusses, among other issues: International development and how it has evolved toward an emphasis on knowledge How networked human capital creates new potential for poorly resourced countries The formation of a global system of learning networks The digitization of knowledge How nations improve their well-being through knowledge and equity This inter-disciplinary assessment of international learning inequality and the methods to overcome it will appeal to researchers concerned with emerging concepts of global learning networks and their effects on development. It will also be of interest to students and policymakers studying national inequality, economics, and global development.

Around 1.4 billion people presently live in extreme poverty, and yet despite this vast scale, the issue of global poverty had a relatively low international profile until the end of the 20th century. In this important new work, Hulme charts the rise of global poverty as a priority global issue, and its subsequent marginalisation as old themes edged it aside (trade policy and peace-making in regions of geo-political importance) and new issues were added (terrorism, global climate change and access to natural resources). Key updates for the new edition: evaluation of the post-2015 Development Agenda and the Rio+20 exploration of how Colombia and Brazil are pushing a sustainability agenda as a Southern perspective to challenge the aid focus of OECD post-MDGs interests examination and discussion of the gradual shift of power and influence to the BRICs and emerging regional powers (Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa) but the lack of change in global institutions exploration of Russia's lack of participation in the development agenda The first book to tackle the issue of global poverty through the lens of global institutions; this fully updated volume provides an important resource for all students and scholars of international relations, development studies and international political economy.

Touring Poverty addresses a highly controversial practice: the transformation of impoverished neighbourhoods into valued attractions for international tourists. In the megacities of the Global South, selected and idealized aspects of poverty are being turned into a tourist commodity for consumption.

The book takes the reader on a journey through Rocinha, a neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro which is advertised as "the largest favela in Latin America." Bianca Freire-Medeiros presents interviews with tour operators, guides, tourists and dwellers to explore the vital questions raised by this kind of tourism. How and why do diverse social actors and institutions orchestrate, perform and consume touristic poverty? In the context of globalization and neoliberalism, what are the politics of selling and buying the social experience of cities, cultures and peoples?

With a full and sensitive exploration of the ethical debates surrounding the sale of emotions elicited by the first-hand contemplation of poverty, Touring Poverty is an innovative book that provokes the reader to think about the role played by tourism and our role as tourists within a context of growing poverty. It will be of interest to students of sociology, anthropology, ethnography and methodology, urban studies, tourism studies, mobility studies, development studies, politics and international relations."

This book brings together a vast range of pre-eminent experts, academics, and practitioners to interrogate the role of media in representing economic inequality. It explores and deconstructs the concept of economic inequality by examining the different dimensions of inequality and how it has evolved historically; how it has been represented and portrayed in the media; and how, in turn, those representations have informed the public's knowledge of and attitudes towards poverty, class and welfare, and political discourse. Taking a multi-disciplinary, comparative, and historical approach, and using a variety of new and original data sets to inform the research, studies herein examine the relationship between media and inequality in UK, Western Europe, and USA. In addition to generating new knowledge and research agendas, the book generates suggestions of ways to improve news coverage on this topic and raise the level of the debate, and will improve understanding about economic inequality, as it has evolved, and as it continues to develop in academic, political and media discourses. This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners alike in the areas of journalism, media studies, economics, and the social sciences, as well as political commentators and those interested more broadly in social policy.

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 is one of the most important pieces of social legislation ever enacted. Its principles and the workhouse system dominated attitudes to welfare provision for the next 80 years. This new Seminar Study explores the changing ideas to poverty over this period and assesses current debates on Victorian attitudes to the poor. David Englander reviews the old system of poor relief; he considers how the New Poor Law was enacted and received and looks at how it worked in practice. The chapter on the Scottish experience will be particularly welcomed, as will Dr Englander's discussion of the place of the Poor Law within British history.

The collective message of this compendium is caution: don't put excessive pressure on African institutions. Sayre Schatz, Ravi Gulhati and Satya Yalamanchili, and Raymond Hopkins, in particular, argue that laissez-faire won't work in Africa; that reforms must be carefully sequenced; and that evidence on the relationship between food subsidies and declining agricultural productivity is scanty. Foreign Affairs This collection of essays was assembled to address the problems of Africa from a variety of perspectives. The contributors have attempted to ask some basic but up-to-now unaddressed questions and to reframe many of the issues. The overall approach is intentionally interdisciplinary. Although recognizing that Africa's economic decline has resulted from poorly designed policy, the contributors also attempt to place that policy in its historical and cultural context. Similarly, they establish a comparative perspective for Africa's economic performance, and point to outside forces that have been overlooked. Finally, the contributors investigate some key issues in agricultural policy, such as decentralization, the role of women, and food subsidies.

Across South Asia in the last two decades, there has been widespread emphasis on governance reforms aiming to reduce poverty through Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The recent development agenda has had great impact over the region , and this book finds that it largely widens the gap between the rich and poor, which combined with rising inflation, contributes to political instability. The book analyses the discourses of development agenda and governance crisis and provides a survey of the region by not only focusing on India, Pakistan and Bangladesh but also on the smaller countries in the region, such as Bhutan. Explaining three components of the development agenda as criteria for economic development - poverty reduction, governance reforms and civil society participation through liberal democracy - this book explores the consequences of the neo-liberal democracy and recent development agenda coupled with governance reforms. This work argues that the political economy of South Asia is largely derived from experiences of historical colonialism and recent changes driven by contemporary rise of India as a global power after the triumph of new-liberal democracy and market capitalism in the post-cold war era. It proposes a strengthening of the instruments of endogenous governance and people's participation in South Asian countries to reduce poverty through MDGs and other development goals in combination with top-down and bottom up approaches. Offering an understanding of governance and development in the context of the South Asia, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of Political Economics, International Development Studies, Political Science, and Governance Studies, as well as policy makers.