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Existing concepts of water political economy focus on political bargaining within relatively static institutional and climactic environments. This article adds 'post' to water political economy to explore how non-stationary climate interacts with endogenous political institutions to create and magnify policy and behavioural uncertainties. These post-water political economy ideas are then applied to food security to explore potential future scenarios. The implications are terrible for poor people living in water-scarce, food-importing countries, but not much better for everyone else. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, microinsurance witnessed an upward trend in India, accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting its necessity. Despite this, research indicates that microinsurance penetration remains limited, especially in Developing Countries like India. This study aims to evaluate the reach of micro-term insurance and the challenges faced by the underprivileged in accessing its benefits. Secondary data reveals that microinsurance failed to reach Poor People. However, Primary data underscores that the primary barriers are lack of awareness and the amount of premium. Moreover, we found that individuals outside the poverty demographic perceive microinsurance as advantageous for themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender inequality remains a significant problem in Ghana with many women socially and economically disadvantaged. Social protection interventions, in particular cash transfer programmes, have the potential to increase wellbeing and reduce gender gaps in poor households. This article analyses the wellbeing differences between men and women beneficiaries of Ghana's Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme. Using a multiple regression moderation interaction model, we analyse six wellbeing dimensions (financial, health, education, food, housing and social) of 322 LEAP cash transfer beneficiaries in Ghana's KEEA district. We found that female-headed households achieve better wellbeing than male-headed households when LEAP income is paid at regular intervals. Regular LEAP payments also reduce gender gaps in wellbeing. These findings contribute to the design of policies seeking to bridge the wellbeing gap between men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential dissatisfaction occurs due to a discrepancy between residents' expectations and their residential environment. This phenomenon appears in a confrontation process, mostly in low-income families who cannot afford to relocate, calling for extracting their lived experiences. This study aimed to extract the consequences of residential dissatisfaction so that residents' various coping strategies were narrated. This narrative was achieved through transcendental phenomenology and semi-structured interviews. The residents of Mehr housing scheme contributed to expressing the mentioned narrative through purposive sampling of Minudasht, Iran. Meanwhile, transcriptions were divided into three categories: revision of needs, change in the physical environment and relocation. The results included eight themes that residents showed to residential dissatisfaction. Residents' strategies for dealing with residential dissatisfaction were also structured by an analytical framework encompassing individual/family, social, internal and external aspects. This article provides fresh insights into residents' responses to residential dissatisfaction both in theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, residents and community organizations in the ethnically diverse neighborhood of Albany Park, on Chicago’s northwest side, have been resisting gentrification, emerging as one of the city’s most active neighborhoods in anti-displacement organizing and policy setting. We seek to understand how a multiplicity of actors, human and non-human, have coalesced to achieve a modicum of success in stalling, subverting, and overcoming gentrification and its attendant displacement of low-income residents. We draw on the work of urban assemblage theorists to build a temporal and spatial analysis, showing the complex assemblage of resistance actors, their experiences, and their narratives over a 20-year time span. Despite the fear of many scholars and residents, Albany Park shows that once started, gentrification is not inevitable. We introduce the concept of “inplacement” to show resistance to displacement is possible through the work of civil society organizations and other neighborhood actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety concerns continue to be challenging amid racially segregated communities of urban concentrated disadvantage. Although contributing factors to crime in such neighborhoods have been described, there is a lack of knowledge regarding how social isolation and perceptions of safety impact community health. This qualitative study explored how minoritized residents (N = 23) from an urban community of economic disadvantage perceived the influence of environmental and residential conditions on their health. Use of the grounded theory method produced conceptual insights into the process of how safety concerns led to fear, which created stress and prevented residents from using outdoor public spaces. Additionally, results indicated how the cyclical nature of such physical withdrawal reinforced social isolation and stigma by those outside the community, ultimately affecting residents’ ability to maintain healthy living. Implications include implementing a multi-pronged public health policy that addresses safety perceptions, crime exposure, and social inclusion to improve health conditions in low-income communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transgender persons need to regularly interact with health services and practitioners for both gender-transition purposes and routine care. Communication between clinicians and patients is a key element of health care. However, barriers to communication with transgender people in the health care context are usual. They typically include a lack of willingness among health staff to care for trans patients, an adherence to cisnormativity and misgendering by clinicians, and the existence of a displeasing climate during the interaction. Miscommunication generates a series of adverse consequences, including the avoidance of health care by patients and the social marginalization of transgender people. The implementation of novel health policies and organizational restructuring are important steps to create a safe environment for the trans population within health systems. Modification of administrative procedures as well as training and advice for health practitioners are also necessary to facilitate communication with trans people and improve health outcomes among this underprivileged population. The establishment of a society with equal rights among its members and a life without discriminations is the ultimate goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the impact of migration on the access and utilisation of sexual and reproductive health services by women living in an informal settlement in Dhaka, Bangladesh. A total of 16 in-depth interviews were conducted in March and April of 2019 with women (18–49 years old) who had migrated from rural areas to Dhaka. They reported continued economic insecurity while receiving minimal support from the state. All women reported financial and infrastructural barriers to accessing formal sexual and reproductive health services and tended to seek resources and support through social networks within the slum and from informal health services. Compared with more recent migrants, women who had migrated and resided in the slums for longer found it easier to utilise social networks and resources for sexual and reproductive health. Women had more agency in experimenting with contraceptives but had less power in making decisions during pregnancy and when seeking health care. Menstrual health was a neglected aspect of public health. The study indicates that public health policy targeting the urban poor needs to address the unique challenges faced by migrant women in informal settlements to rectify inequities in health services that leave significant portions of the urban poor population behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with global imbalances as an increasingly important issue in our age. While the literature establishes that current accounts are inversely related to the ratio of income to consumption inequality in OECD, our study finds that this relationship is reversed in Asia. That ratio has much to do with various schemes of consumption smoothing, which are affected by policy interventions to alleviate the effects of rising income inequality. Different policies may generate opposite outcomes. In OECD, policy encourages consumer credit and deficit spending among low-income people so that consumption inequality is kept artificially low, leading up to a current account deficit. In Asia, policy promotes output growth via high savings with no well-developed smoothing schemes designed to help poor households, so that consumption inequality moves in line with income inequality, with excess savings recycled into a current account surplus. Hence, any reduction in global imbalances requires both regions to adjust their policies for mitigating income inequality and optimizing smoothing schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines Tianqiao, the largest commercial and entertainment centre, which underwent a significant transformation into the most popular public space in Republican Beijing. Spatial informality has often been overlooked in planning history, due to its deviation from traditional disciplinary norms, tools, and materials, yet it can offer valuable insights into Chinese urban public spaces and their social values. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including government documents, newspapers, social surveys, and personal records, this paper elucidates how everyday life and popular culture emerged as effective strategies for the poor population to exert their political power and passively resist the state's incomplete urban regularization efforts. This exemplifies a distinct type of Chinese public space that acts as a mediator between the state and society, particularly from a bottom-up perspective of urban modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent do journalists differ in their vulnerability to pressure from actors outside media organizations? This study complements research on such external interference by introducing the interference-vulnerability model. It typologizes three types of interference—professional, economic, and violent—that damage three basic motivations of journalists: professional status, economic status, and physical security. Further, it explains journalists’ experience of the three types of interference by their differing vulnerabilities, which stem from their value to external actors and the costs of noncompliance with interference. This argument builds on the theorized dynamic interaction between media professionals and external actors and applies the theory of routine activities and of rational choice. Multivariate regression of 567 journalists’ responses to a survey in Switzerland confirms the proposed model. Professional interference is aimed at informationally vulnerable journalists who publish on sensitive and investigative topics and have a wide reach. Economic interference is aimed at financially vulnerable journalists who cover consumer-oriented topics, have financial decision-making power, and work in economically competitive structures. Violent interference is directed against journalists who are vulnerable because of their identities: women and marginalized minorities. The model helps to explain external interference more comprehensively and to counter threats to journalistic autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies of poor relief have focused on parishes either metropolitan or wholly rural, whereas the focus of this article is on the distinctive experience of Battersea, a village in the London hinterland. Although the village suffered from the rising cost of poor relief experienced nationwide at the end of the eighteenth century, this article argues that the response of its vestry was shaped by Battersea's liminal location. Consideration is given to the central role that the workhouse played in the provision of poor relief, and demonstrating that the social networks of parochial leaders were key to the development of policy. Many of the vestry members had commercial and professional interests in the metropolis and elsewhere, and these, together with their patronage of London charitable institutions, helped both to shape their response to the problems of poverty that they encountered, and influenced their administration of the Battersea workhouse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although peer support is documented as a predictor of adolescents' prosocial behavior, the influencing mechanism of peer support on prosocial behavior among adolescents from low-income families has not been fully researched. The current research conducted two studies to examine the influencing mechanism of peer support on prosocial behavior among adolescents from low-income families. Study 1 (N = 579) investigated the influencing mechanism of peer support on prosocial behavior with a longitudinal dataset. Study 2 (N = 228) investigated the effect of peer support priming on money donation with an experimental approach. The results of Study 1 and Study 2 consistently demonstrated that communal social goals mediated the association between peer support and prosocial behavior among adolescents from low-income families, and cumulative family risk moderated this indirect link. The positive effect of peer support on prosocial behavior through communal social goals might be weakened if adolescents experience more risk factors in the family context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-income populations are disadvantaged in a car-dependent society despite car ownership and could be using walking and cycling to reduce their travel costs. This study explores how low-income households with and without cars living in various geographies disproportionately use walking and cycling to save money in comparison to higher-income households. Data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey is used to investigate the variation in walking and cycling behavior among three groups of households: (1) carless low-income households, (2) low-income households with cars, and (3) higher-income households. Generalized ordered logistic regression models are estimated to examine how the probability of using active travel to save money varies by household type, location (urban, suburban, rural) and other socioeconomic attributes. We find that low-income households are more likely to walk or cycle to save money on transportation compared to higher-income households. Carless low-income households present a higher probability to use active travel to decrease travel costs in comparison to car-owning low-income households. Our results also indicate that on average, urban residents are more likely to travel actively to reduce expenses compared to suburban and rural residents. The lowest spatial variation is found for carless low-income households, demonstrating their higher disadvantage compared to those with cars. Low-income people of color are more likely to use active travel to save money while being a female, older, or having children are attributes associated with a lower probability to use active travel to reduce travel expenses in low-income households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism studies pay relatively little attention to the importance of reflexivity and metacognition. This article highlights the integral importance of explicitly considering reflexivity and metacognition issues as part of the research process when studying pro-poor tourism (PPT). Hence, the paper presents a reflexive and metacognitive account of the challenges and obstacles encountered while undertaking ethnographic fieldwork in PPT. Drawing on the first author's research experiences in Vietnam with informal tourism workers, it reflects the positional, ethical, and methodological challenges faced during and after the fieldwork. This article is the first to provide a critical reflection on fieldwork in PPT, thereby adding to the conceptual recognition of the importance of reflexivity and metacognition in tourism studies overall. It also shares deeper insights into the difficulties associated with research that involves poor people, whose voices remain largely absent from tourism studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the relationships between multidimensional and monetary poverty indices in international and national poverty profiles, and empirically explore the consequences of identifying poor people relying on a combination of both approaches. Taking first a cross-country perspective, focusing on 90 countries in the developing world, we corroborate that the incidence of poverty by money metrics and the global Multidimensional Poverty Index, a non-monetary measure of poverty, are correlated. Digging deeper, we use microdata from six countries—Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Uganda—to study the joint densities of monetary and multidimensional welfare and the poverty identification mismatches for a comprehensive array of poverty line pairs. Mismatches are important, particularly in the poorer countries. Although mismatches could be avoided by combining both approaches in a dual cutoff-based poverty measure, the choice of the monetary poverty line remains a considerable issue as it changes the nonmonetary composition of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the moral economies of distribution and redistribution in Africa, focusing on the fairness of capitalist systems and the unequal distribution of wealth. It argues that understanding the moral views and contestations surrounding distribution and redistribution is crucial for understanding African societies and economies. The text discusses the concept of moral economy and its application in various African settings, highlighting the complexities of redistribution and the use of moral arguments to accept or reject requests for redistribution. It also examines redistributive practices among elites in Equatorial Guinea, the moral beliefs of female traders, the moral contestations surrounding diamond mining in Zimbabwe, and the culture of wealth redistribution in Southern Ethiopia. The article emphasizes that individuals in these settings have strong moral views on distribution and redistribution, but that moral critiques often do not lead to structural changes in distributive outcomes. [Extracted from the article]

This article reviews four books that explore the history and experiences of Black, Latino, and Asian suburbanization in the United States. The books highlight the struggles and agency of these communities in gaining access to middle-class suburbia, as well as the challenges they face in maintaining stability and navigating the suburban ideal. The authors also discuss the complexities of suburban integration, emphasizing that it is not solely about Black-White integration but also involves integration within racial and ethnic groups. Overall, these books provide a nuanced understanding of suburban diversity and exclusionary suburbanization in the United States. [Extracted from the article]

This article considers the place of brickmaking as an activity supported or promoted by parish poor relief. Parochial work schemes were typically founded on agricultural work, textile manufacturing, or unskilled tasks like oakum picking, yet the manual exertion was necessarily required for making bricks prior to mechanization attracted some parishes to experiment with this form of hard and deterrent labour. Brick production did not take place in a vacuum, however, ensuring that the consequences of a parish commissioning or making bricks could be felt across the community which supplied raw materials or services, ensuring that the process was not solely a check on indolent poverty. Close reading of overseers' vouchers, the receipts which sometimes survive attesting to the detail of parish payments, show the significance of brick in parish economies for the paupers, parish officers, parish suppliers, and wider communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor people in India routinely have to wait for short-term employment, basic services and subsidized goods. Based on fieldwork in Delhi, this paper describes how this waiting blends into an environment where men are underemployed and women try to make ends meet by engaging in contentious public activities. While negotiating destabilized gender roles, the latter downplay their wait for services and describe much of their paid and unpaid work as 'mere' waiting and just 'passing time'. In complex responses, they sometimes internalize the relations of power that keep them waiting, while subverting them on other occasions. Exploring what these women hide or minimize brings to light a host of activities that question our understanding of the boundaries of labour, idleness and the broader work of social reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test an adjusted version of the classic monocentric-city model to explain the spatial sorting of rich versus poor people in Jakarta. We find that in Jakarta (1) the urban rich tend to live in the city centre; (2) because of extreme congestion levels, the elasticity between income and the opportunity cost of time spent commuting is higher than the elasticity between income and demand for larger plots of residential land; and (3) the motorbike is the most important and fastest mode of transport for the urban poor. These findings contrast with existing evidence from the United States. Both the logic of the monocentric-city model and empirical evidence suggest that the urban rich in Jakarta tend to cluster in the city centre. However, empirical evidence also suggests that the sorting of the rich and poor in Jakarta—as indicated by spatial variation in income, expenditure and land prices—depends not only on distance from the city centre but also on other neighbourhood characteristics, especially flood risk, crime rates and the proximity of a commercial area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a summary of Richard Rorty's book, "Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America." Rorty examines the perspectives of American intellectuals on poverty, income disparities, and foreign affairs. He criticizes intellectuals on both the left and right for prioritizing cultural issues over economic ones and questions the future of American egalitarianism in the face of globalization. Rorty also discusses the decline of Western power and emphasizes the need for practical solutions to global challenges. His ideas continue to be relevant today, and he is remembered as a respected scholar. [Extracted from the article]

This article shows that post-Keynesian economics is more closely tied to the proposal of equality of place rather than that of equality of opportunity. More precisely, it advocates for the approach of utilizing equality of place as a means to attain equality of opportunity. These are two conceptions of social policy. Equality of opportunity distinguishes between poor and non-poor, and state intervention is focused on poor people. This mode of intervention promotes individuals' improvements in human capital, assuming that the poor can reach the position they want through a competitive process. In contrast, the idea of equality of place is intertwined with the concept of decommodification and supply-side subsidies. It envisions a scenario in which markets might not ensure that people can access fundamental rights. Consequently, it suggests an alternate role for state intervention. Because some heterodox and post-Keynesian authors have identified with the principle of equality of opportunity, it is important to clarify the nature of the relationship between social policy and post-Keynesian economics. The principle of equality of place can provide a framework of social policy that is consistent with the tenets of the post-Keynesian tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(Rustamova has written for numerous non-government media outlets in Russia for a Russian audience, such as Meduza and TV Rain, on Russian politics and society. Keywords: Putin; dissent; Russia; Ukraine war; authoritarianism; sanctions; Cold War EN Putin dissent Russia Ukraine war authoritarianism sanctions Cold War 315 317 3 11/11/22 20221101 NES 221101 In the last issue of the I Bulletin i 's bi-monthly magazine, the executive editor, Dan Drollette Jr., interviewed Russian independent journalist Farida Rustamova about what it is like to try to do honest, accurate, uncensored journalism from modern-day, Putin's Russia - for primarily a Russian audience. Putin, dissent, Russia, Ukraine war, authoritarianism, sanctions, Cold War. [Extracted from the article]

Some scholars have argued that every year, huge amount of financial and human resources are being deployed by international development agencies, and NGOs to improve the living conditions of millions of poor people living in most African countries, yet most of these interventions are not achieving the objectives expected. This study seeks to know the validity of this postulation by exploring the intersection of participatory communication, role-players engagement, and project proposal in achieving far-reaching impact and success of development interventions in Africa. A systematic literature review method was used. The findings showed that 25% of the 48 development interventions evaluated were failed projects, 64.58% projects came midway, and 10.42% projects were successful. The findings support the postulation of Farreach perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental health conditions were seen to rise during the COVID-19 pandemic as individuals lost loved ones due to the pandemic, lost jobs, and in many cases had to care for elderly and other loved ones. For students, the pandemic also brought the additional challenge of having to transition to online learning. In this study, we investigated the depression and anxiety levels of students in a Hispanic-serving institution and the coping strategies they used to deal with the stress during the pandemic, and the relationship of students' depression and anxiety levels to their preference of learning and their other demographic characteristics. A survey was administered online via Qualtrics to the students. The depression and anxiety faced by the students in this study could have been attributed to them being majority Latino and economically disadvantaged, which studies have shown to be more disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Students who have taken online courses before were associated with lower depression levels, which may indicate that those who have not taken online courses may have been experiencing more stress with this transition. Students employed approach-based coping strategies instead of avoidance strategies which are known as more positive forms of coping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to evaluate public transport access distribution based on a framework of vertical equity principles. In this method, traffic analysis zones (TAZs) are analyzed by comparing the estimated transit demand with the existing geographical distribution of the network's benefits (e.g., accessibility and mobility). The framework deploys the concept of connectivity power to measure the distribution of a transit system's supply. On the other hand, demand is measured by an exhaustive index, the weighted average of four social indicators, namely the number of low-income people, the population, the households without vehicles, and the disabled in the TAZs. These weights can differ from city to city depending on culture, politics, social behavior, and costs of effective parameters such as fuel, parking, and tickets in that particular city. The framework was applied to the comprehensive transit network of Tehran, Iran. Finally, diagonal and radical lines linking the city's southwest to its northeast are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper foregrounds the use of "Living Labs" as instruments for the delivery of just low carbon transformations. Living Labs are commonly understood as stakeholder-centred, iterative and open-innovation ecosystems that involve multiple forms of co-creation and engagement among different actors in a given territory. Over a period of three years, thanks to a unique pan-European action research study, three such Labs were set up in different locations in Europe -- a large North-western European city (Manchester, England), a mid-sized mountainous town in South-eastern Europe (Metsovo, Greece) and a series of rural settlements in Central Europe (Nyírbátor, Hungary). Working closely with local residents and relevant organisational stakeholders, the research teams that led the Labs undertook multiple low-carbon interventions in the homes of low-income residents, while continuously monitoring the broader impacts of intermediation practices on energy equity and sustainability across three consecutive cycles of activity. We present and discuss the results of these activities, so as to uncover the impacts of Living Labs on energy poverty both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We reiterate that collecting demographics will not answer the question in the JEP:HPP statement about knowing "to whom to generalize findings" unless the demographics are included in the main data analysis as potential moderators. Thus, the JEP:HPP policy inadvertently increases the advantage that richer researchers have over poorer ones, or the advantage that researchers with grant money have over researchers without grant money. There is much concern, exemplified by the currently active APA Task Force on Race and Ethnicity Guidelines in Psychology (approved 2019), for the inclusion of racially and ethnically diverse participants in research studies. [Extracted from the article]

In the Global South, the urban poor are heavily policed and bear the brunt of police violence. Evidence suggests that the urban poor also support punitive policing. Why do those individuals most affected by police violence also appear to support increased police presence in their neighborhoods? Combining extensive fieldwork with a public opinion survey in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, this paper develops a theory that the urban poor support punitive policing because it reduces other forms of violence they are routinely exposed to in public spaces. Our argument contrasts with the prevalent hypothesis that support for punitive policing amongst the urban poor originates in conservative views of security provision. Because Uruguay is a least likely case for this argument, our results are highly informative. The results demonstrate the deeply unequal distribution of the lived experience of authoritarian coercive practices in an otherwise democratic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the documentary film "The Elephant Whisperers," which explores the relationship between humans and elephants in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in India. The film highlights the importance of coexistence and conservation efforts, showcasing the bond between caretakers Bomman and Bellie and the orphaned elephants they care for. It also emphasizes the cultural significance of elephants in Indian society. The article emphasizes the role of media in raising awareness about environmental issues and promoting positive change. The film has received international acclaim and recognition for its portrayal of the challenges faced by animals and the importance of conservation. [Extracted from the article]

Stimulating the endogenous motivation of the impoverished individual is crucial to prevent the reoccurrence of widespread poverty, consolidate efforts of poverty eradication, and achieve rural revitalization. Considering whether villages receive tourism-targeted assistance as a quasi-natural experiment, using the Double Machine Learning (DML) method and six periods of balanced panel data from 392 impoverished households, the research analyzes the impact of tourism-targeted assistance on endogenous motivation. Findings indicate that, through promoting rural industry development and facilitating local employment, tourism-targeted assistance stimulate the endogenous motivation of the impoverished individuals efficiently. This effect is more pronounced in impoverished households with affluent labor force, high level of education and those engaged in tourism. Consequently, future efforts for rural revitalization should refine the strategy of targeted assistance based on the resource and demand of the rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outdoor environmental education aims to immerse students in environmental spaces and create opportunities for classroom learning to be applied in the field. However, students from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and low-income communities often have less access to these educational opportunities. This study examined the environmental education programs of nine community organizations in the San Francisco (SF) Bay Area. Through twenty-one interviews with program educators, we assessed two areas: (1) place-based learning being used as a connective tool for students and the community, and (2) ways in which access barriers to programming were addressed. Findings showed that community spaces, like gardens, brought students and the community together to reinforce the mission of place-based learning. Additionally, the findings contribute to the field of outdoor environmental education and place-based education by addressing how local organizations strategized to support equitable access through tactics like financial support and multilingual programming and materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land reforms have been implemented in many parts of the world because of both justice and the attractive developmental policy objectives of improving poor people's welfare – as the prime beneficiaries. Land reform also facilitates rural economic growth. In some parts of the world, like China and India, there is evidence that land reform has been effective in poverty reduction and in enabling economic growth. However, in other parts of the world, like South Africa, the impact of land reform has been very minimal mainly due to poor policy implementation, which entails inadequate support structures. Using an integrative literature review approach and key policy documents on South Africa's land reform, this article dissects this policy–practice gap in South Africa's land redistribution policy and proposes that land redistribution be implemented by a private independent entity to reduce state bureaucracy and inefficiencies and, in turn, improve execution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climatic events and other natural-related disasters experienced in the arid and semi-arid lands of northern Kenya negatively affect the pastoral livelihoods of the communities. Addressing vulnerability to climate shocks among pastoral communities of Kenya's Arid and Semi-lands presents a persistent challenge. Cash transfer programmes have increasingly grown as one mode of building household resilience. Understanding the role of cash transfer interventions on household resilience to climate shocks is key to policy programming. This paper aimed at determining the effects of cash transfers on household resilience to climate shocks. The paper evaluated the Hunger Safety Net Program, which is one of the largest unconditional cash transfer programs in Kenya. The Hunger Safety Net Program targeted poor people in northern Kenya including the counties of Turkana, Wajir, Marsabit, and Mandera. To establish the impact the paper compares households which received cash transfers with those that did not receive transfers. The panel fixed effects model was used to determine the effects of cash transfers on household resilience. The results indicate that cash transfers have positive significant effects on household resilience to climate shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an array of studies documenting community preparedness to flooding in towns and cities, particularly those in countries of the developing global south. However, fewer studies have investigated how cultural and social factors influence flood preparedness. In this article, we discuss the role of cultural and social attributes and how these can influence a community's preparedness to extreme flood events, with a focus on selected urban communities in Nigeria. Study revealed that despite, the effects of floods on the urban poor residents, they are actively involved and engaged in finding ways to build their adaptive capacity and resilience against flood events by deploying different strategies inspired through cultural and social attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"My Life in History" is a personal account of the author's journey into the field of history, inspired by their grandmother's stories of their family's past. Despite facing challenges in their education, the author obtained a Bachelor of Arts in social work and history from the University of Melbourne. They overcame gender biases and limited opportunities in academia to earn a PhD and have a successful career in teaching and research. The author's work focuses on topics such as single motherhood, institutional abuse, and welfare history in Australia. They emphasize their collaboration with service users and survivors, as well as their involvement in digital history and public spaces. The author expresses gratitude towards their mentors, colleagues, and the individuals whose stories they have documented. [Extracted from the article]

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is a new, increasingly popular form of short-term credit used for everyday items. While critics are concerned that these typically unregulated products pose risks for financially vulnerable people, many BNPL companies argue their app-based products are more responsible than other forms of credit. In this study, I use Davis' (2020) mechanisms and conditions framework of affordances and Light et al.'s (2018) walkthrough method to analyse how three popular BNPL products (Afterpay, Klarna and Zip) define responsible lending and spending. I argue these BNPL companies claim they are more responsible than credit cards because they are more inclusive and have fairer loan terms, and that these claims are made possible by the platformed nature of BNPL products. At the same time, these BNPL companies define responsible consumers as those who make their repayments on time. This redefinition of responsible consumption encourages increased spending and normalises the use of BNPL credit for that consumption. These products, which challenge traditional regulatory responses to consumer credit, are disproportionately used by lower-income families, who are increasingly reliant on credit for everyday purchases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People and places are entangled through material, social, discursive and emotional relations, which makes it complex to understand the daily living in a certain place. In this article, we explore such entanglements, with an outset in two underprivileged neighbourhoods in Denmark, by drawing on two sets of theoretical thinking: The framework of multiplicity, and the concept of place. We argue that the neighbourhoods cannot be defined as either good or bad places of living. Rather they exist in complex ways, where what makes some people feel at home, is what makes others feel insecure, and where such ambivalent feelings can co-exist inherently for individual residents. Furthermore, our analysis shows that manifold enactments of residents and places enable multiple trajectories of how to live and identify oneself in relation to the neighbourhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban transit systems have differential impacts across population groups, including the perceptions of impacts. Nevertheless, the evaluation of difference in perceived benefits of transport investment is under researched, and few attempts have been made to quantify the extent to which transport provision meets users' requirements. This paper explores how the impact of rail transit on development and regeneration differs across different income groups and migrants, assessing equity dimensions that arise through surveys on residents' perceptions, using evidence from Chongqing, China. The analysis utilises both MANOVA and discriminant analysis. The result shows that the lowest income group perceives they benefit least from the rail transit impacts, while the highest income group perceives they benefit most. There is a significant unequal perceived benefit distribution between migrants and local residents within the low-income groups. Reflections are made on policies and planning interventions which might be introduced to achieve greater social equity in impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The educational system in nineteenth-century Sweden was, as in many other industrialising states, segregated by social class. Children of the economically and politically marginalised classes were educated in basic primary subjects in the nationwide Folkskola (primary schools). From 1868 to the early 1940s, the government issued, subsidised, and distributed the Läsebok för folkskolan (Reader for Primary School; "the Reader"). Besides poems and songs, the Reader contained religious, fictitious, moral, and historical texts – all wrapped in an explicit nationalist discourse. However, it also contained images and ideologies about social class which have remained unexplored. The representations and social vernaculars in the Reader about how children of the working poor should identify and conduct themselves in order to grow up as functional members of a bourgeois society have been more or less overlooked. This paper deals with the images of the poor and marginalised in the Reader. We suggest not only that the Swedish state reproduced a class-based society through a segmented school system, but that the social descriptions in the book were aimed to produce diligent and docile workers to serve the political and economic interests of the dominant classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that estimating the comprehensive and precise impacts of the COVID-19 crisis is challenging, this paper aims to quantify the overall impacts of the COVID-19 on Thai economy both at the macroeconomic and household levels. Our finding indicates that if government supports are not implemented, the country's GDP could fall by 13.66 percent—the most important transmission channels of this severe impact coming from inbound and domestic tourism demand shocks. The pandemic has also significantly increased the level of poverty in Thailand. And those people facing the greatest risk of falling into poverty tend to be those living in urban areas, especially in metropolitan Bangkok, as well as those whose head of household is working in the tourism sector. In exploring the effectiveness of the mitigation measures implemented by the Thai government, our findings also show that such mitigation measures could successfully help lower the numbers of poor and almost poor people to below those of the Pre-COVID-19 era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the largest source base ever assembled – some 12 million words of diverse material ranging from letters, through life-writing and to committee minutes – to investigate the public presence of those with sensory, physical or mental impairments. Focusing on the nineteenth century, the classic period in which it is argued that impairment came to be constructed into 'disability' and subject to medical intervention, and on poor people the article makes three core points. First, that ordinary people could not have avoided seeing or being involved with people living with these impairments in their everyday public lives; second, that few of these people and even fewer of those living with physical and mental issues constructed impairment into disability – indeed the phrase is almost completely absent from the 12 million word corpus in terms of its modern usage; finally, that while public presence did not guarantee good and respectful treatment of people navigating physical, sensory or mental issues, in most cases and at most times in the nineteenth century there was a clear sense of societal and personal obligation to such people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several global policy frameworks focus on managing (risks of) disasters affecting broad populations. In those frameworks resilience is a conceptualisation that possibly has important ideological implications. It is often opposed to fragility, and used to validate the notion of recurring insecurity, promote individual adaptability almost in the form of an obligation, and push the idea that crises/catastrophes are opportunities for profound changes. While effects from the COVID-19 pandemic have brought the protective role of the state to the fore, applying the word resilience to poor people requires clarification, especially in contexts of weak state public services and because assessment of complex poverty situations too often remains oversimplified and error-prone. We argue that to build capacity for resilience poor households need policies that protect and help them out of poverty, and that policy-making processes require engagement with people. Individuals must be asked about their perceptions and management of risks and threats, both in daily life and under exceptional circumstances, especially if the resulting stress factors accumulate and interact. This socially informed, place-specific, and multi-level approach could contribute substantially to identifying interventions, reducing poverty and poverty related risks, enhancing well-being and promoting development and cooperation programmes that meet people's expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water Cool(ing) Island (WCI) literature has paid little attention to smaller waterscapes in developed areas that are most vulnerable to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. To fill this gap, this study investigated participants' changes in body temperature and stress level associated with the visual, auditory, and thermal properties of small waterscapes. The results of this study demonstrated that smaller waterscapes can provide effective cooling for predominantly hardscaped urban settings prone to the effects of UHI. This approach offers low-income residents without air-conditioning outdoor alternatives to indoor cooling centres in a post-pandemic era with more frequent and severe heat waves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant studies have deployed variable-centered methods to examine predictors of children's nutritional status, and few focus on the double burden of malnutrition among young Chinese children. This paper adopts a person-centered approach and leverages data from large samples of Chinese families (the China Health and Nutrition Survey, CHNS 2004–2015, and China Family Panel Studies, CFPS 2010–2018) to examine trends in the prevalence of stunting, overweight, and stuntingoverweight in early childhood. We developed a hierarchical structure of socioeconomic indicators, including region (Eastern-Central-Western), urbanicity (urban-rural), and family socioeconomic status gradient (four quartiles). We assessed relative risks for malnutrition for 24 subgroups of children from varying socioeconomic strata. Results indicate that the prevalence of stunting decreased consistently while the prevalence of being overweight increased first, followed by a decreasing trend. Moreover, a small group of stuntedoverweight children (4.7%) was identified. Data from the CHNS indicated that children from affluent families in the Central region were prone to being overweight. Data from the CFPS indicate that underprivileged groups (children from poor rural families living in Western China) were at higher risk for both undernutrition and overnutrition than their more advantaged peers. The findings suggest that children in poor, rural areas in Western China should be targeted for malnutrition alleviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]