Since the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971, political philosophers in the English-speaking world have shared a broad consensus that social justice should be understood as a matter of fair distribution of social resources. Many contemporary political philosophers disagree sharply about what would count as a fair distribution of social resources, yet agree that if social resources were to be distributed fairly, then social justice would exist. In Beyond Redistribution, Kevin M. Graham argues that political theories operating on a distributive understanding of social justice fail to address adequately certain forms of social injustice related to race. Graham argues that political philosophy could understand race-related injustice more fully by shifting its focus away from distributive inequities between whites and nonwhites and toward white supremacy, the unfair power relationships that allow whites to dominate and oppress nonwhites. Beyond Redistribution offers a careful, detailed critique of the positions of leading contemporary liberal political philosophers on race-related issues of social justice. Graham's analysis of the racial politics of police violence and public education in Omaha, Nebraska, vividly illustrates why the search for racial justice in the United States must move beyond redistribution.

The persistence of poverty hurts us all, and attacking poverty is a major policy objective everywhere. In Britain, the main political parties have an anti-poverty mandate and in particular an agreed commitment to eliminate child poverty by 2020, but there is controversy over how this should be done. This book addresses one of the main causes of poverty, financial exclusion - the inability to access finance from the high-street banks. People on low or irregular incomes typically have to resort to loan sharks, 'doorstep lenders' and other informal credit sources, a predicament which makes escape from the poverty trap doubly difficult. Over the last fifteen years, a strategy of breaking down the poverty trap has been implemented, known in the UK as community development financial institutions (CDFIs), typically non-profit lending institutions focussed on the financially excluded, and seeking to learn from the achievements of microfinance around the world. Focussing on the period 2007-09, during which the UK went into a global recession, this book investigates how CDFIs work and how well they have helped low-income people and businesses to weather that recession. Based on a study of eight CDFIs in four UK cities, we ask: what ideas for overcoming financial exclusion have worked well, and which have worked badly? What can we learn from the experience of these CDFIs which can help reduce poverty in this country and globally? We assess the impact of CDFIs using a range of indicators (including income, assets, education, health) and ask what changes in policy by both CDFIs and government agencies (for example, benefits agencies) might be able to increase impact. Some of the key lessons are: CDFIs need to work with appropriate partners to build up savings capacity in their clients; the community environment is vital in determining who escapes from the poverty trap; and CDFIs can never function properly unless they learn how to control their overdue debts. This book will be vital reading for those concerned with social policy, microfinance and anti-poverty policies in industrialised countries and around the world.

China has made huge economic strides in recent decades but poverty is still a major issue on the agenda for rural China. Poverty and Development in China analyses how poverty is recognized and measured and how people in poverty are identified, literally asking: who is poor in China? Lu Caizhen 's research compares four approaches to poverty assessment: China 's official poverty identification method, the participatory approach to poverty assessment, the monetary approach, and use of multidimensional poverty indicators. Each of these is applied to the same population of households to identify the poor in rural Wuding County, Yunnan Province.

The analysis shows that there is in fact very little overlap of households identified as poor by the various means, and that choice of approach does matter in the outcome of who is identified as poor. This has implications at the theoretical, methodological, and policy levels. Lu discusses these in detail, concluding that at present, there is a need to shift away from poverty reduction strategies that narrowly emphasize income generation activities, as these are often short-term efforts. Instead, the focus should move towards a broader combination of short-term and long-term strategies to break poverty 's inter-linked structural causes.

Although welfare reform is currently the government's top priority, most discussions about the public's responsibility to the poor neglect an informed historical perspective. This important book provides a crucial examination of past attempts, both in this country and abroad, to balance the efforts of private charity and public welfare. The prominent historians in this collection demonstrate how solutions to poverty are functions of culture, religion, and politics, and how social provisions for the poor have evolved across the centuries.

This groundbreaking volume researches the lives of gecekondu settlers in the capital city of Turkey in order to understand how households cope with poverty and why some households are more successful than others in reducing their deprivation. It takes a critical stance towards existing conceptions such as household survival, livelihood and coping strategy and develops an alternative model based on four types of household response to poverty: income generation, income allocation, consumption and investment. In explaining household responses and their outcomes for poverty, the book demonstrates the role of different resources beyond income including social, economic and cultural capital. It emphasises broader structural factors such as labour market processes and state policies which influence the availability and/or benefit delivery capacity of household resources, and thereby moves beyond the dominant view which overemphasises the resilience of the poor. Gender divisions within the household are also examined. The book adopts an innovative method for measuring poverty. The new method combines 'objective' and subjective dimensions of deprivation to develop a unique way of addressing two central questions: what are those standards of living whose absence indicates deprivation, and how can the value of each standard of living be determined?

That poor law was law is a fact that has slipped from the consciousness of historians of welfare in England and Wales, and in North America. Welfare's Forgotten Past remedies this situation by tracing the history of the legal right of the settled poor to relief when destitute. Poor law was not simply local custom, but consisted of legal rights, duties and obligations that went beyond social altruism. This legal truth is, however, still ignored or rejected by some historians, and thus lost to social welfare policy-makers. This forgetting or minimising of a legal, enforceable right to relief has not only led to a misunderstanding of welfare s past; it has also contributed to the stigmatisation of poverty, and the emergence and persistence of the idea that its relief is a 'gift' from the state.

Documenting the history and the effects of this forgetting, whilst also providing a legal history of welfare, Lorie Charlesworth argues that it is timely for social policy-makers and reformists in Britain, the United States and elsewhere to reconsider an alternative welfare model, based on the more positive, legal aspects of welfare s 400-year legal history.

In Displacement City, outreach worker Greg Cook and street nurse Cathy Crowe present the stories of frontline workers, advocates, and people living without homes during the pandemic. The book uses prose, poetry, and photography to document lived experiences of homelessness, responses to the housing crisis, efforts to fight back for homes, and possible solutions to move Toronto forward. Contributors provide particular insight into policies affecting Indigenous peoples and how the legacy of colonialism and displacement reached a critical point during the pandemic. Offering rich stories of care, mutual aid, and solidarity, Displacement City provides a vivid account of a humanitarian disaster.

For the first time, researchers, policymakers and practitioners across the world will have access to a comprehensive mapping of research evidence and policy strategies about education and poverty in affluent countries. Although there is widespread agreement that poverty and poor educational outcomes are related, there are competing explanations as to why that should be the case. This is a major problem for practitioners, policy makers and researchers who are looking for pointers to action, or straightforward ways of understanding an issue that troubles education systems across the world. This unique book brings scholarship and analysis from some of the most influential researchers and writers on education and poverty within one text. The authors provide a synthesising framework that will help researchers and policy makers to examine future educational policy in a holistic and comprehensive fashion.

The author contends that the level and types of unemployment that occur in contemporary advanced capitalist societies are the result of the intended and unintended consequences of human actions. Arguing that unemployment is a predictable consequence of the ways in which work is organized within and between societies, he attacks the view that unemployment is either the result of impersonal, uncontrollable market forces or of the personal characteristics of these individuals or groups. Neither of these positions provides an adequate basis for an understanding of the problem. Using theories of labor market segmentation that are relatively recent in origin, Ashton offers a new framework for the analysis of this problem. Based on his analysis, he concludes that a low job-creation rate is a major cause of unemployment and discusses strategies that have been used successfully by governments to generate enough jobs.

Framing Class explores how the media, including television, film, and news, depict wealth and poverty in the United States. Fully updated and revised throughout, the second edition of this groundbreaking book now includes discussions of new media, updated media sources, and provocative new examples from movies and television, such as The Real Housewives series and media portrayals of the new poor and corporate executives in the recent recession. The book introduces the concepts of class and media framing to students and analyzes how the media portray various social classes, from the elite to the very poor. Its accessible writing and powerful examples make it an ideal text or supplement for courses in sociology, American studies, and communications.

This book looks at the role of social policy and particularly social security in addressing the ongoing challenge of poverty in East Asia despite the region s spectacular experience of economic growth in decent decades. The East Asian miracle resulted over the last four decades in a transformation of the region s traditional agrarian economies and significant increases in standards of living for many ordinary people. Even though it was given little attention, poverty has remained an ongoing problem. The problem became particularly evident however with the Asian financial crisis of 1997 when many low income and middle class workers became unemployed. As a result of this crisis, the need for effective social policies and social security programs were recognized. The idea that economic growth would solve the problem of poverty was increasingly challenged. Even in China today, where rapid growth has created new employment opportunities and the promise of prosperity for many, the government has recognized that the problem of poverty cannot be addressed only through economic growth but that comprehensive social policies must be formulated, and this includes the development of an effective security system.

If you had a trillion dollars and a year to spend it for the good of the world and the advancement of science, what would you do? It's an unimaginably large sum, yet it's only around one per cent of world GDP, and about the valuation of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. It's a much smaller sum than the world found to bail out its banks in 2008 or deal with Covid-19. But what could you achieve with $1 trillion? You could solve the problem of the pandemic, for one, and eradicate malaria, and maybe cure all disease. You could end global poverty. You could settle on the Moon and explore the solar system. You could build a massive particle collider to probe the nature of reality like never before. You could build quantum computers, develop artificial intelligence, or increase human lifespan. You could even create a new life form. Or how about transitioning the world to clean energy? Or preserving the rainforests, or saving all endangered species? Maybe you could refreeze the melting Arctic, launch a new sustainable agricultural revolution, and reverse climate change? How to Spend a Trillion Dollars is the ultimate thought experiment but it is also a call to arms: these are all things we could do, if we put our minds to it - and our money.

'This is an important and powerful book because of the rigour of the analysis, the good sense of the innovative strategies for action by government, business and civil society, and the concern throughout for social justice.' - John Langmore, Director, UN Division for Social Policy and Development One in six Australian kids live below the poverty line. Among the twenty-five leading industrialised countries, Australia has the fifth highest child poverty rate. This is a useful, if stark, indicator of the extent of long-term disadvantage in this country. Creating Unequal Futures? brings together eight of Australia's leading social scientists to introduce the reader to the processes which create and sustain persistent patterns of poverty and disadvantage. Although the contributors use different approaches, their research leads to a united call for a rethinking away from the prevailing 'gloom and doom' presentations of Australian material life. They signal pathways out of the dilemmas that bind people to poverty and disadvantage. If followed, those pathways will guide us to a future characterised by less inequality. If ignored, we may further entrench patterns of disadvantage and risk creating unequal futures for all Australians.

This work explains how countries that depend on the export of primary commodities, like coffee or cotton, are caught in a trap: the more they produce the lower the price falls on the international market. If they try to add value to their commodities by processing them, they run into tariff barriers imposed by the rich industrialized nations. To make matters worse, they have to compete with subsidized exports dumped on the world market by rich surplus-product countries. This edition contains an additional chapter which reports on the outcome of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the creation of the new World Trade Organization. It examines the impact of rapid economic liberalization on the livelihoods and natural environments of poor communities and recommends ways in which trade could be regulated to protect their rights. The book explains the complexities of the world trade system and examines what poor countries can do about the trap in which they find themselves.

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.

First published in 1991, This book looks at how capitalism has affected the organization of the poor. It also explores what the links are between notions of poverty and notions personal responsibility, philanthropy, morality and state forms. An intruiging work for anyone interested in the foundations and long-term progression of the welfare state.

The goal of Riots in the Cities, editors Silvia Marina Arrom and Servando Ortoll contend, is to encourage Latin Americanists to rethink standard notions of urban politics before the populist era. The actual political power wielded by the underprivileged city dwellers before the twentieth century has received little scholarly attention or has been downplayed. Researchers often described urban inhabitants as having little influence over both their lives and on the politics of their day. The elite were perceived as having firm control over the political process. The seven essays in this reader analyze urban riots that broke out in major Latin American population centers between 1765 and 1910. Inspired by the works of Eric Hobsbawm and George Rud,, the authors find that the participants in these riots were far from irrational. The crowds responded to specific social provocation and attacked property rather than people. When taken together these essays challenge the notion that prior to 1910 power was strictly in the hands of the elite. Lower-class city residents, too, held strong opinions and acted on their convictions. Most important, their voices were not unheeded by those who officially wielded power and implemented social policies.

Drawing on research from around the world, this atlas gives shape and meaning to statistics, making it an indispensable resource for understanding global inequalities and an inspiration for social and political action. Inequality underlies many of the challenges facing the world today, and "The Atlas of Global Inequalities" considers the issue in all its dimensions. Organized in thematic parts, it maps not only the global distribution of income and wealth, but also inequalities in social and political rights and freedoms. It describes how inadequate health services, unsafe water, and barriers to education hinder people's ability to live their lives to the full; assesses poor transport, energy, and digital communication infrastructures and their effect on economic development; and highlights the dangers of unclean and unhealthy indoor and outdoor environments. Through world, regional, and country maps, and innovative and intriguing graphics, the authors unravel the complexity of inequality, revealing differences between countries as well as illustrating inequalities within them.
Topics include: the discrimination suffered by children with a disability; the impact of inefficient and dangerous household fuels on the daily lives and long-term health of those who rely on them; the unequal opportunities available to women; and the reasons for families' descent into, and reemergence from, poverty.

The argument of this book, that women are central to development, is presented, through the story of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) - and of its projects in the field. It is a story which describes the reality of development within the context of the development system itself.;The author, UNIFEM's founding Director, describes UNIFEM's beginnings: the search for structure, securing independent management, and riding the political and bureaucratic waves. Part II, "At work in the world", examines projects and activities that have been assisted world-wide, ranging from augmenting productivity at village level to analyzing the impact of the global market on women, and is a rare look at the longer-term effects of projects that have "come to an end".;This is the story of a campaign - based on fieldwork in three continents - which has aimed to remove the invisibility that has cloaked so much of women's work, to support and increase their economic productive capacity - and to establish women as "agents of change, not creatures of circumstance".

'With its breadth and depth, The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty certainly deserves a place on the bookshelves of university libraries and of every academic and development professional with a specific interest in gender and development.' Gender in Management: An International Journal 'I recommend this book to be a staple of reference libraries.' British Politics and Policy 'These diverse, thoughtful essays go far beyond a mere summary of international scholarship. They outline a fascinating and provocative agenda for future policy-relevant research. This book will help redefine and revitalise the field of gender and development.' - Professor Nancy Folbre, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst In the interests of contextualizing (and nuancing) the multiple interrelations between gender and poverty, Sylvia Chant has gathered writings on diverse aspects of the subject from a range of disciplinary and professional perspectives, achieving extensive thematic as well as geographical coverage. This benchmark volume presents women's and men's experiences of gendered poverty with respect to a vast spectrum of intersecting issues including local to global economic transformations, family, age, 'race', migration, assets, paid and unpaid work, health, sexuality, human rights, and conflict and violence. The handbook also provides up-to-the-minute reflections on how to theorize, measure and represent the connections between gender and poverty, and to contemplate how gendered poverty is affected - and potentially redressed - by policy and grassroots interventions. An unprecedented and ambitious blend of conceptual, methodological, empirical and practical offerings from a host of established as well as upcoming scholars and professionals from across the globe lends the volume a distinctive and critical edge. Notwithstanding the broad scope of The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty, one theme in common to most of its 100-plus chapters is the need to 'en-gender' analysis and initiatives to combat poverty and inequality at local, national and international levels. As such, the volume will inspire its readers not only to reflect deeply on poverty and gender injustice, but also to consider what to do about it. This book will be essential reading for all with academic, professional or personal interests in gender, poverty, inequality, development, and social, political and economic change in the contemporary world.

Winner of the 2011 Paul Davidoff award

This is a book about poverty but it does not study the poor and the powerless; instead it studies those who manage poverty. It sheds light on how powerful institutions control "capital," or circuits of profit and investment, as well as "truth," or authoritative knowledge about poverty. Such dominant practices are challenged by alternative paradigms of development, and the book details these as well. Using the case of microfinance, the book participates in a set of fierce debates about development from the role of markets to the secrets of successful pro-poor institutions. Based on many years of research in Washington D.C., Bangladesh, and the Middle East, Poverty Capital also grows out of the author's undergraduate teaching to thousands of students on the subject of global poverty and inequality.

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.

A Nobel Peace Prize-winner outlines his radical economic vision for a better future.

Muhammad Yunus is the economist who invented microcredit, founded Grameen Bank, and earned a Nobel Peace Prize for his work towards alleviating poverty. Here, he proposes his vision for a new kind of capitalism, where altruism and generosity are valued as much as profit making, and where individuals not only have the capacity to lift themselves out of poverty, but also to affect real change for the planet and its people.

A World of Three Zeroes offers a challenge to young people, business and political leaders, and ordinary citizens everywhere to improve the world for everyone before it’s too late.

Since the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971, political philosophers in the English-speaking world have shared a broad consensus that social justice should be understood as a matter of fair distribution of social resources. Many contemporary political philosophers disagree sharply about what would count as a fair distribution of social resources, yet agree that if social resources were to be distributed fairly, then social justice would exist. In Beyond Redistribution, Kevin M. Graham argues that political theories operating on a distributive understanding of social justice fail to address adequately certain forms of social injustice related to race. Graham argues that political philosophy could understand race-related injustice more fully by shifting its focus away from distributive inequities between whites and nonwhites and toward white supremacy, the unfair power relationships that allow whites to dominate and oppress nonwhites. Beyond Redistribution offers a careful, detailed critique of the positions of leading contemporary liberal political philosophers on race-related issues of social justice. Graham's analysis of the racial politics of police violence and public education in Omaha, Nebraska, vividly illustrates why the search for racial justice in the United States must move beyond redistribution.