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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Relentlessly, the wide health gap between different groups of people living in Britain continues to get even wider. This book presents new evidence (which was not available to the government's Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health) on the size of the gap, and the extent to which the gap is widening. In particular, new geographical data are presented and displayed in striking graphical form. It challenges whether the government is concerned enough about reducing inequalities and highlights the living conditions of the million people living in the least healthy areas in Britain. It presents explanations for the widening health gap, and addresses the implications of this major social problem. In the light of this evidence the authors put forward social policies which will reduce the health gap in the future. The widening gap synthesises all the information available to date and should be read alongside the report of the evidence presented to the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health (Inequalities in health, The Policy Press, 1999) and by all those concerned with reducing health inequalities. Studies in poverty, inequality and social exclusion series Series Editor: David Gordon, Director, Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research. Poverty, inequality and social exclusion remain the most fundamental problems that humanity faces in the 21st century. This exciting series, published in association with the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research at the University of Bristol, aims to make cutting-edge poverty related research more widely available. For other titles in this series, please follow the series link from the main catalogue page.

Money was already tight for UK families living on a low income before the COVID-19 pandemic, but national lockdowns made life much harder. Telling the stories of these families, this book exposes the ways that pre-existing inequalities, insecurities and hardships were amplified during the pandemic for families who were already in poverty before COVID-19, as well as those pushed into poverty by the economic fallout it created. Drawing on the Covid Realities research programme, and developed in partnership with parents and carers, it explores experiences of home-schooling, social security receipt and government, community and charitable support. This book sets out all that is wrong with the status quo, while also offering a powerful agenda for change. Also see 'COVID-19 Collaborations: Researching Poverty and Low-Income Family Life during the Pandemic' (Open Access) to find out more about the challenges of carrying out research during COVID-19.

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."

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 Beveridge Lecture, delivered on 18 March 1999, Prime Minister Tony Blair committed his government to abolishing child poverty within 20 years. He concluded that the present-day welfare state is not fitted to the modern world, and laid out his vision for a welfare state for the 21st century. Blair's vision, grounded in a particular conception of social justice, is perhaps as challenging as the blueprint laid down by Beveridge. Ending child poverty presents Blair's Beveridge Lecture alongside the views of some of Britain's foremost policy analysts and commentators. This unique collection makes it possible to not only read the ideas of leading current thinkers in this critical area of policy, but also to compare them with the Prime Minister's lecture, and to see which ideas he himself took up and in what form. Ending child poverty is a record of not only the Lecture itself, but also of the ideas available to government and their influence on its leader at an important moment in the formation of policy. It provides a rich tapestry on analysis, insight and reflection that will, it is to be hoped, stimulate critical debate about the future shape of British welfare. This collection is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of modern society and politics and provides an accessible handbook for undergraduate students of politics, social policy and sociology.

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.

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.

First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"This collection of 17 essays examines poverty and its causes from a variety of angles. The common thread is a concern for the structural causes of poverty; the book therefore offers a welcome alternative to the dominant ideological views that portray poverty as a result of individuals' decisions, attributes and/or moral failings...The authors show the connections between capitalism, slavery and the development of state policies and ideologies that maintained the oppressed and exploited status of African Americans after the Civil War and constituted the basis for the emergence of white identity and privilege to the detriment of working class identities based on a recognition of the common plight of workers, regardless of skin color...this is an outstanding collection, useful for courses in social stratification, the sociology of work, and race and ethnic relations."
"--Science and Society"

Since the end of the Second World War, poverty in the United States has been a persistent focus of social anxiety, public debate, and federal policy. This volume argues convincingly that we will not be able to reduce or eliminate poverty until we take the political factors that contribute to its continuation into account.

Ideal for course use, A New Introduction to Poverty opens with a historical overview of the major intellectual and political debates surrounding poverty in the United States. Several factors have received inadequate attention: the impact of poverty on women; the synergy of racism and poverty; race and gender stratification of the workplace; and, crucially, the ways in which the powerful use their resources to maintain the economic status quo.

Contributors include MimiAbramovitz, Peter Alcock, Bonnie Thornton Dill, Raymond Franklin, Herman George Jr., Michael B. Katz, Marlene Kim, Rebecca Morales, Sandra Patton, Valerie Polakow, Jackie Pope, Jill Quadagno, David C. Ranney, Barbara Ransby, Bette Woody, and Maxine Baca Zinn.

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.

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.

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 American 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, to a living wage, to a decent home, to adequate medical care, to a good education, and to adequate protection from economic fears of unemployment, sickness, and old age.Integrating the latest economic and social data, this new book 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.

Shortlisted for BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed's second Ethnography Awards in partnership with the British Sociological Association! Educational Binds of Poverty tackles the assumptions made by many recent social and educational policy initiatives suggesting that the best way to improve educational prospects of children in poverty is through an increased emphasis upon a culture of control, discipline, regulation and accountability. In this book, Ceri Brown presents these assumptions against a review of the research literature and an original ethnographic longitudinal study into the lives of children in poverty, in order to highlight the gap between policy discourses and the lived experiences of children themselves. Through the theoretical concept of a set of 'binds' against educational success, the book explores four key areas that children in poverty have to navigate if they are to be successful in school. These are: material deprivation the cultural contexts of school, home and the community friendship and social capital the effects of student mobility through atypical school changes. In seeking to characterise and explain what life is like for young school children, this book questions why policy makers have a radically different frame of reference in purporting to understand how their policies will change the behaviour of those living in poverty. This leads onto a consideration of what lessons may be learned in order to contribute towards a more appropriate policy agenda that attends to the multiple binds that children in poverty have to negotiate.

Most governments attempt to target resources directly at the poor through a variety of measures including food and credit subsidies, job creation schemes and basic health and education projects. These measures are usually classified as being either promotional (to help raise welfare in the long term), or protectional (to support the poor in times of adverse shocks). However, for many Asian countries the reality of these poverty targeting measures has proved disappointing. Following a comprehensive overview by the editor, this book offers a detailed assessment of the results of directly channelling resources to the poor and extensively discusses the experience of five Asian countries - India, Indonesia, the People's Republic of China, the Philippines and Thailand. The authors demonstrate how in many cases these targeting measures have failed due to their high cost and errors of both undercoverage (where many of the poor are excluded) and leakage (when many of the better-off also benefit from these schemes). The authors conclude that whilst poverty targeting remains a critically important objective, past targeting errors must not be forgotten and improved methods of both identifying and reaching the poor must be implemented. Written by leading experts in the field and including analysis of original country surveys, this seminal text documents clearly the operation and success of aid schemes in Asia. This book will make a worthy addition to the literature on development, poverty reduction, social welfare and Asian studies. It will also be an important source of reference for academics and students of economic development, aid practitioners, government officials and development NGOs.

The single-room occupancy (SRO) tenements and welfare hotels located throughout New York City, but concentrated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, provided housing for many of society's troubled, marginal members in the late 1970s, when this book was originally published. The predominant population of these buildings was old, non-white, unemployed, disabled, and in poor health. What distinguished this community, however, was not that it is was part of a ghetto or slum, but that it was composed of poor people living amidst affluence, combining elements of both the law-abiding and criminal worlds.

Institutionally, the SRO tenement world described in this book is seen as a half-way area between open society and the total institution. Without the support and control available in the SROs, confinement in a total institution would be a certainty for many of the residents. This book, a participant-observer journal as well as an ethnographic study, suggests an alternative to institutionalization.

As Edward Sagarin notes in his preface, Siegal does not lack compassion for the sufferings of the people, but the focus is on the descriptions of their lives. Outposts of the Forgotten documents the circumstances of some of New York's forgotten residents.

* Case studies and research on how organizations are working to alleviate local and global poverty* Provides conceptual and research rationales for why management education must address the issue of poverty* The first part of a book series by the PRME Working Group on PovertyThis book provides a combination of case studies and current action research describing how businesses and civil society organizations are working to alleviate poverty in local and global communities. It provides conceptual and research rationales for why management education and management institutions must address the issue of poverty. The book responds to one of the major findings from the research of the PRME Working Group on Poverty that the topic of poverty still lacks a strong business case for management educators and program/institutional administrators.The distinctive features of this book are that it: (1) includes examples of small and medium-sized (SME) businesses; (2) deals with the issue of poverty as a human rights violation; (3) explores the issue of absolute versus relative poverty; (4) deals with leadership challenges in organizations committed to poverty alleviation; and (5) discusses the issues in terms of management education s responsibility for setting new management, research, institutional and intellectual agendas.The first of two books to be produced by the PRME Working Group on Poverty, "Socially Responsible Organizations and the Challenge of Poverty " provides both researchers and practitioners with the most wide-ranging coverage yet published on how business can be a positive force in alleviating poverty and how management education needs to adapt to this increasingly crucial prerogative."

The Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) is world s largest civil society movement fighting against poverty and inequality, incorporating over 100 affiliated country-level coalitions. It has become a significant global actor and its annual days of mobilisation now attract over 175 million people around the world.

This book seeks to explore GCAP s power and its embodiment of emancipatory change. It develops a framework that assesses its external power as an actor by exploring how power works in it, and the relationship between the two. Gabay demonstrates that GCAP, and actors like it, may transcend some of the obstructions they face in navigating and proposing alternatives to dominant codes and practices of neo-liberal globalisation. Thematically, the book explores GCAP s constitutive powers along three axes: hegemony, inclusion and legitimacy. It draws on a wide range of social and political theory, including Liberalism, Anarchism and postcolonial theory and featuring case studies on Malawi and India.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, international development, global governance, social movements and civil society. "

This impressive research collection discusses the most important contributions by some of the leading scholars in the field of poverty measurement. It analyses what constitutes poverty and associated poverty measures, as well as conceptual and empirical approaches to set poverty lines for both national and international settings. The research collection also discusses national and international income poverty measures, multidimensional poverty indices, and ways to capture poverty dynamics.

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."