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Intervention: Social assistance programs supplement incomes of the most income-insecure. Because income is a fundamental source of health, income supplementation is expected to result in a boost to health status. As Canada finds itself in the midst of heated debate regarding the structuring (and restructuring) of social assistance programs, there is little evidence available for policymakers about the effectiveness of current social assistance programs in improving the health of the income-insecure., Research Question: In this paper, we evaluate the health effects of social assistance programs in Ontario, Canada-wide and in peer programs from the United States and the United Kingdom., Methods: We used nationally representative household panel surveys (e.g., Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics) which follow individuals over time. Using fixed effects modelling, which controls for time-invariant characteristics of individuals, and further controlling for key time-varying characteristics, we modelled change in health status associated with change in receipt of social assistance in these societies. Health status was measured using self-rated health (fair/poor versus good/very good/excellent)., Results: Our results suggest that the health of social assistance recipients was worse (Ontario, Canada, UK) or no different (US) than the health of non-recipients. For example, in Canada, receipt of social assistance was associated with 52.5% higher odds of reporting fair or poor health., Conclusion: Social assistance programs in Canada and peer countries are currently inadequate for improving the health of the income-insecure. This is likely due to insufficient benefits, exposure to precarious job conditions, or selection factors.

Since the late nineteenth century, state actions have aimed at alleviating poverty and inequality involved in the development of capitalism. For the particular case of Argentina, we have highlighted in other works some attributes of the state's interventions on vulnerable populations over the last decades. These attributes include their mass character, that is, the large number of programs and subjects receiving them (De Sena, 2011); their lifetime coverage, where at each stage of life (from pregnancy to old age) there is a subsidy for the poor subject; and reciprocity, that is to say, receiving aid in the form of a lifetime subsidy in response to conditions of poverty always has a conditionality, a "task" or "activity" that the person who receives it must carry out. This article outlines the narratives that the recipients themselves of social policies produce and that imply their practices of feeling regarding hope. Sixty-four interviews were conducted in the districts of La Matanza and the City of Buenos Aires between 2014 and 2019; the interviews include their stories and their hopes regarding the future of their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic crisis of 2008 severely affected the welfare states. As the economic situation of a country worsens, the resources that the public administration can devote to improve the situation of the people also decrease, endangering the advancement of those in a disadvantaged situation. People who have always lived in poverty, besides having their opportunities reduced, also face negative public views that affect the perceived legitimacy of such public aid, which can in turn be a mechanism for perpetuating their situation. Two studies (N = 252 and N = 266) analyse how a person in persistent poverty is perceived compared to a person in poverty due to the crisis—a circumstantial poverty. We also study some feasible mechanisms underlying this different perception, as well as their effects on attitudes toward social protection policies. In Study 1, results indicated that people showed more favourable attitudes toward social protection policies when they perceived someone in poverty due to the crisis, compared to the target who had been in poverty all his/her life. Individualistic attributions for poverty mediated this effect: when people think of someone in persistent poverty, they make more individualistic attributions concerning their situation, which leads to worse attitudes toward social protection policies. Identification with the group moderates this relation. Furthermore, Study 2 showed that participants perceive people who are in poverty because of economic crisis as more deserving of help than people who have always been poor. Some theoretical and practical implications for intergroup relations and public policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a replicable process for coproducing a theory of 'thriving', or more broadly 'wellbeing', in partnership with stakeholders to inform an area of policy. Coproduction promotes effectiveness, practicality, and legitimacy of wellbeing policies by combining insights from people with lived experience of that policy, the practitioners who implement it, and technical experts with relevant area specific knowledge. We illustrate our methodology using a case study of a coproduction exercise between wellbeing researchers and practitioners and users of Turn2us, a UK-based anti-poverty charity. We report both the process developed for this collaboration and the bespoke theory and measures of thriving in financial hardship that emerged from it. We emphasise the interplay between different types of inputs: quantitative and qualitative data, academic theories of wellbeing and lived experience, and formal and informal insights. Our experience demonstrates the value of contextualising wellbeing for practical contexts, serving as an important complement to top-down approaches relying on standardised theories and metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children of single mothers face higher rates of poverty than children in two-parent households in practically every affluent democracy. While this difference is widely acknowledged, there is little consensus regarding the causes of their poverty and, as a result, little consensus on the best way to address poverty among these children. Explanations include both individual-level, structural, and political explanations in four areas: family structure, labor force activity, economic performance, and welfare generosity. Previous research, however, tends to focus on only one of these four aspects at a time. Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, spanning a period of 31 years and 25 countries, I test each of these four explanations, examining the effects on children in single mother households separately (n = 105,814) and children in both single mother households and children in two-parent households (n = 668,549), conducting random intercept between-within logistic regression analysis. Individual-level measures of family structure and labor market activity affect child poverty generally in the expected way. Taking advantage of the longitudinal data at the country level, I focus on within-country change of the structural and political variables. Within-country economic performance is not significantly related to poverty, but welfare generosity, namely family allowances, significantly reduce the odds of poverty. Further, while the effects of family allowance spending are similar for children in both single mother and two parent households, they are stronger for the former than the latter. Yet, the disadvantage of living in a single mother household persists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Energy poverty has gained much traction over the last decades, holding both high multidisciplinary conceptual value, but also profound implications from a social policy perspective, being closely linked to the quality of life and well-being. The goal of our study is to evaluate recent measures aimed at tackling energy poverty in Europe by analysing the extent to which they are innovative on technological and governance dimensions. We do so by building an analytical tool which combines evaluation criteria along these two dimensions and by employing it for the analysis of twenty measures aimed at tackling energy poverty that have been designed and employed in ten European countries. These measures were selected with the support of an expert panel. Results: We identify three categories of innovative measures aimed at alleviating energy poverty: (1) measures with high technological scores, (2) measures with high governance scores, and (3) measures with high scores on both axes. The measures in the third category incorporate a variety of actors in sustainable partnerships and implement monitoring tools throughout the process, complementary to incorporating new technologies into the domestic sphere and promoting consumer awareness and consumption pattern transformation. Conclusions: Our findings allow for a better perspective on the shape innovation takes in the context of energy poverty policies. Based on our research, we argue that combining technological innovation and governance innovation has a better chance of generating more articulate and scalable, and potentially successful measures with respect to their purpose of tackling energy poverty, since the drivers of energy poverty rarely pertain to only technology or only governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the associations of a country's macroeconomic and social policy indicators and diverse household characteristics with joint-income-wealth-poverty (JIWP) among households with members aged 50 years and over in 18 European countries and Israel. A multidimensional approach was used to integrate income and wealth by defining four groups of households: twice-poor, economically vulnerable (poor only by wealth), protected poor (poor only by income), and non-poor. JIWP was examined for two wealth concepts—the 'net-worth' and the 'liquid-wealth'. Using the sixth wave of the Survey on Health, Aging and Retirement (SHARE), we employed multilevel multinomial models to study JIWP across countries. JIWP varied widely across countries, with both country's features and household characteristics shaping the picture of poverty. GDP per capita was negatively associated with JIWP. Total (gross) social expenditure and public social expenditure per capita were negatively associated with risk of JIWP. Greater minimum guaranteed income among working age households and higher replacement rate of pensions among elderly households were also negatively associated with JIWP. Higher public expenditure on health and better quality of the healthcare system decreased the risk of JIWP, but heavier reliance on private financing of the healthcare increased it. Implications for research and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie ( KZfSS) is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Poverty is an objective state, as well as a set of subjective experiences. This study explored how low-income seniors in urban China make meaning under the pressures of poverty-related shame. Based on two rounds of in-depth interviews with participants in Beijing, spanning 9 years, the researchers concluded that low-income seniors feel deprivation, experiences of being belittled and inferior and a sense of self-deprecation due to material scarcity. Under such pressures, the seniors actively reconstruct poverty-related experiences, demonstrating that older people living in poverty have a powerful meaning-making system, which serves as evidence of their resilience. However, reconstructing experiences of poverty should not be taken for granted, but be regarded as an appeal for dignity-oriented social policies. This rich meaning-making system could be a foundation upon which anti-poverty advocates adopt and advance various strengths-based interventions. These findings also point to implications for quality of life research with older people living in poverty and anti-poverty measures for this population in other developing contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic instability, social changes, and new social policies place economic insecurity high on the scholarly and political agenda. We contribute to these debates by proposing a new multidimensional, intertemporal measure of economic insecurity that accounts for both its multiplicity and its dynamism. First, we develop three theory-driven, multidimensional measures of economic insecurity. Principal Components Analysis validates the measure. Second, we develop a dynamic approach to insecurity, using longitudinal data and a newly revised headcount method. Third, we then use our new measures to analyze the distribution of insecurity in Europe. Our analysis shows that insecurity is widespread across Europe, even in low-inequality, encompassing welfare states. Moreover, it extends across income groups and occupational classes, reaching into the middle classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate age-related differences in social spending preference in an Asian context, drawing on a random survey of more than 1000 adults in Hong Kong in 2013. Contrary to popular belief, older adults in Hong Kong hold a negative view toward welfare spending, especially when it is directed toward the poor population. In contrast, descriptive statistics reveal that younger people tend to support increased spending on welfare assistance. The findings in this study provide evidence that reciprocity and solidarity in intergenerational relationships are present in Hong Kong. This demonstrates the nature of shifting social values held by different generations in a dynamic and demographically pressured Asian context. Amidst rising intergenerational conflict in different contexts in Asia, this study has profound implications for policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals hold beliefs about what causes poverty, and those beliefs have been theorized to explain policy preferences and ultimately cross-country variations in welfare states. However, there has been little empirical work on the effects of poverty attributions on welfare state attitudes. We seek to fill this gap by making use of Eurobarometer data from 27 European countries in the years 2009, 2010 and 2014 to explore the effects of poverty attributions on judgments about economic inequality as well as preferences regarding the welfare state. Relying on a four-type typology of poverty attribution which includes individual fate, individual blame, social fate and social blame as potential explanations for poverty, our analyses show that these poverty attributions are associated with judgments about inequality and broadly defined support for the welfare state, but have little or no effect on more concrete policy proposals such as unemployment benefits or increase of social welfare at the expense of higher taxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Soziale Passagen is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite significant progress in poverty measurement, few studies have undertaken an in-depth comparison of monetary and multidimensional measures in the context of low-income countries and fewer still in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the differences can be particularly consequential in these settings. We address this gap by applying a distinct analytical strategy to the case of Rwanda. Using data from two waves of the Rwandan Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey, we combine comparing poverty rates cross-sectionally and over time, examining the overlaps and differences in the two measures, investigating poverty rates within population sub-groups, and estimating several statistical models to assess the differences between the two measures in identifying poverty risk factors. We find that using a monetary measure alone does not capture high incidence of multidimensional poverty in both waves, that it is possible to be multidimensional poor without being monetary poor, and that using a monetary measure alone overlooks significant change in multidimensional poverty over time. The two measures also differ in which poverty risk factors they put emphasis on. Relying only on monetary measures in low-income sub-Saharan Africa can send inaccurate signals to policymakers regarding the optimal design of social policies as well as monitoring their effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The official method of measuring poverty in Russia is based on an absolute approach that uses an expertly calculated subsistence level as a poverty line. However, there is an ongoing debate about the possible use of other approaches to measuring poverty. This study focuses on identifying the relative 'poverty line' relevant to contemporary Russian society as a threshold of high poverty risk. Drawing on representative all-Russian surveys, the authors conclude that the relative poverty thresholds set at 0.5 and 0.75 times the median per capita family income identify different subgroups of the poor. A median threshold of 0.75 highlights poverty of the elderly, who are not considered to be poor by the absolute approach officially used in Russian statistics, but need attention in terms of social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a burgeoning literature on wealth in the rich world. It mainly focuses on the top. This paper shows that assets can also matter for the analysis of poverty and financial vulnerability. We introduce the concept of triple precariousness, afflicting households that not only have low income but also very low or non-existent assets to draw on for consumption needs, especially liquid assets. We ask whether these households—whom we might call the truly vulnerable—have different characteristics from those that we identify as poor or needy on the basis of income based metrics. This study looks in detail at Belgium, a country that represents a particularly interesting case because households are known to have levels of household wealth that are among the highest in the Eurozone, especially around and below the median, and yet it also has a comparatively high poverty rate, measured using disposable household income, as is commonly done in poverty studies. Drawing on HFCS data, we show that households with a reference person that is young, unemployed, low educated, migrant, single, and above all a tenant are especially financially vulnerable. By contrast, our assessment of the extent and depth of financial need among the elderly—a segment of society that is at a relatively high risk of income poverty—also changes. A substantial share of income poor elderly households own significant assets. We draw out some tentative consequences of these findings for anti-poverty and redistributive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty and disability are interrelated, but data that can disentangle to what extent one causes the other and vice versa is not available. However, data from Vietnam allows us to examine this interrelationship in a way not done previously. Using small area estimation techniques, we uncover three findings not yet found in the literature. First, disability prevalence rates vary significantly within a country even at the district level. Second, the poverty gap between people with and without disabilities also varies at the district level. And most importantly, the size of that gap lessens based on district characteristics that can be affected by policy. Districts with better health care and infrastructure, such as road and health services, show less of a link between disability and poverty, supporting the hypothesis that improvements in infrastructure and rehabilitation service can lessen the impact of disability on families with disabled members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several scholars have confirmed the role that the welfare state (WS) plays in reducing poverty, promoting equality and ensuring the common wellbeing. One of the limitations of the scholarship has been the conceptualization and operationalization of the WS and poverty as one-dimensional variables. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between welfare state development, single-dimensions deprivations and income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, before and after controlling for demographic and cyclical factors. The WS is operationalized as a one-dimensional variable, but also taking into account its multidimensional nature. Three individual deprivations suffered by people on poverty and two income inequality indicators are used as dependent variables. Three pooled time-series cross-section regression analyses with panel-corrected standard errors models were carried out on 18 countries in the region around 2000, 2005 and 2010. This paper shows that the development of social-welfare programs and institutions seems to be an effective way of tackling individual deprivations suffered by people on poverty in the region. On the other hand, the WS development didn't appear to be effective to reduce income inequality. The outcomes of welfare institutions appear to be the pivotal dimension to reduce income inequality and income deprivations in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To review psychosocial and policy interventions which mitigate the effects of poverty and inequality on mental health.Methods: Systematic reviews, controlled trials and realist evaluations of the last 10 years are reviewed, without age or geographical restrictions.Results: Effective psychosocial interventions on individual and family level, such as parenting support programmes, exist. The evidence for mental health impact of broader community-based interventions, e.g. community outreach workers, or service-based interventions, e.g. social prescribing and debt advice is scarce. Likewise, the availability of evidence for the mental health impact of policy level interventions, such as poverty alleviation or youth guarantee, is quite restricted.Conclusions: The social, economic, and physical environments in which people live shape mental health and many common mental disorders. There are effective early interventions to promote mental health in vulnerable groups, but it is necessary to both initiate and facilitate a cross-sectoral approach, and to form partnerships between different government departments, civic society organisations and other stakeholders. This approach is referred to as Mental Health in All Policies and it can be applied to all public policy levels from local policies to supranational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this review, we examine the effects of family economic security policies (i.e., minimum wage, earned income tax credit, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) on child and family health outcomes, summarize policy generosity across states in the USA, and discuss directions and possibilities for future research. This manuscript is an update to a review article that was published in 2014. Millions of Americans are affected by family economic security policies each year, many of whom are the most vulnerable in society. There is increasing evidence that these policies impact health outcomes and behaviors of adults and children. Further, research indicates that, overall, policies which are more restrictive are associated with poorer health behaviors and outcomes; however, the strength of the evidence differs across each of the four policies. There is significant diversity in state-level policies, and it is plausible that these policy variations are contributing to health disparities across and within states. Despite increasing evidence of the relationship between economic policies and health, there continues to be limited attention to this issue. State policy variations offer a valuable opportunity for scientists to conduct natural experiments and contribute to evidence linking social policy effects to family and child well-being. The mounting evidence will help to guide future research and policy making for evolving toward a more nurturing society for family and child health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines historical trends in poverty using an anchored version of the U.S. Census Bureau's recently developed Research Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) estimated back to 1967. Although the SPM is estimated each year using a quasi-relative poverty threshold that varies over time with changes in families' expenditures on a core basket of goods and services, this study explores trends in poverty using an absolute, or anchored, SPM threshold. We believe the anchored measure offers two advantages. First, setting the threshold at the SPM's 2012 levels and estimating it back to 1967, adjusted only for changes in prices, is more directly comparable to the approach taken in official poverty statistics. Second, it allows for a better accounting of the roles that social policy, the labor market, and changing demographics play in trends in poverty rates over time, given that changes in the threshold are held constant. Results indicate that unlike official statistics that have shown poverty rates to be fairly flat since the 1960s, poverty rates have dropped by 40 % when measured using a historical anchored SPM over the same period. Results obtained from comparing poverty rates using a pretax/pretransfer measure of resources versus a post-tax/post-transfer measure of resources further show that government policies, not market incomes, are driving the declines observed over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional assessments of economic growth and progress against poverty tell us little about whether the poorest are being left behind-whether the consumption floor is rising above the biological minimum. To address this deficiency, the paper identifies the expected value of the floor as a weighted mean of observed consumptions for the poorest stratum. Under the identifying assumptions and using data for the developing world over 1981-2011, the estimated floor is about half the $1.25 a day poverty line. Economic growth and social policies have delivered only modest progress in raising the floor, despite overall growth and progress in reducing the number living near the floor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) benefits the life course health development of infants, families, and society. Professional health associations recommend EBF for 4 months, and many now recommend EBF for 6 months. Yet only 18.8 % of US infants born in 2011 were exclusively breastfed. Numerous studies on breastfeeding are published, but few describe EBF. This study describes characteristics of women who initiated EBF and examines the associations of those factors with EBF lasting ≥4 months. The Life Course Health Development (LCHD) framework was used to structure the analysis and interpret results. Methods: Data collected through the Infant Feeding Practices Study II survey (2005-2007) were used to identify a cohort of women ( n = 1226) practicing EBF at the time of hospital discharge and their sociodemographic, health, work, and childcare characteristics. Associations of these characteristics with EBF lasting ≥4 months were studied by bivariate and logistic regression analyses. Results: College education [odds ratio (OR) 2.14, 95 % confidence interval (CI) 1.58-2.89] and marriage (OR 2.19, 95 % CI 1.43-3.37) were associated with greater odds of EBF lasting ≥4 months, whereas the plan to return to work after birth (OR 0.57, 95 % CI 0.43-0.74), living in the south (OR 0.67, 95 % CI 0.47-0.95), and postpartum depression risk (OR 0.43, 95 % CI 0.28-0.66) were associated with lower odds of EBF lasting ≥4 months. Discussion: Several factors associated with disparities in continued EBF were identified. The application of the LCHD framework furthers understanding of the multiple and interacting risks associated with early discontinuation of EBF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ranking of countries with respect to some welfare measure is highly popular and takes places with high frequency. Ranking of a country can change over time given the same welfare measure is applied. Rankings can also change depending on which welfare measure is applied in a given year. To what extent do we see ranking changes and which existing welfare measures best captures an unobserved, yet existing, notion of welfare in society? To investigate this we apply seven welfare indicators for fifteen EU countries covering the years from 2005 until 2011. The results indicate that rankings are particularly volatile for countries in the middle of the ranking distribution, while countries with either high or low welfare generally have lower volatility. A multidimensional poverty index has the highest correlation with the latent welfare measure. It is concluded that the observed rankings do not tell a coherent story, but often point in very different directions, although welfare indicators are often highly correlated. The change in indicator ranks is much less correlated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Luxembourg Income Study (now known as LIS) provides public access for research purposes to harmonized unit-record data sets for multiple countries, in addition to providing summary statistics from those data, including poverty and inequality measures. LIS is a well-managed and undeniably important global public institution for research on inequality and social policy in rich countries. However, LIS's eligibility criteria, country coverage, timeliness and some of its measurement practices limit its usefulness for many other purposes. The paper identifies a number of issues that would need to be addressed by a truly global micro-data base for studying poverty and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poverty rate amongst older Portuguese adults has decreased significantly in recent years as their incomes have increased and their levels of inequality and material deprivation have converged to the national average. This paper investigates whether this improved situation is homogeneous across this population group, but concludes that poverty pockets subsist. In particular, those aged 75+ and living alone record a poverty rate above 30 % in 2010, showing that this group is still subject to great economic and social vulnerability. An important feature of this income heterogeneity is the higher average income of the 65-74 age group versus the 75+ group. The evolution of both contributive and means-tested pensions has been a key element in the reduction of poverty amongst older people in Portugal and in improving their living standards. However, the austerity policies implemented post-2010 have made a strong impact on pensions and may reverse these positive developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty measurement and the analysis of the progress (or otherwise) of the poor, whether it is societies, families or individuals, is beset with difficulties and controversies surrounding the definition of a poverty line or frontier. Here, borrowing ideas from the mixture model literature, a new approach to assigning poverty-non poverty status is proposed which avoids specifying a frontier, the price is that an agent's poverty status is only determined to the extent of its chance of being poor. Invoking variants of Gibrat's law to give structure to the distribution of outcomes for homogeneous subgroups of a population within the context of a finite mixture model of societal outcomes facilitates calculation of an agent's poverty status probability. From this it is straightforward to calculate all the usual poverty measures as well as other characteristics of the poor and non poor subgroups in a society. These ideas are exemplified in a study of 47 countries in Africa over the recent quarter century which reveals among other things a growing poverty rate and a growing disparity between poor and non poor groups not identified by conventional methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies find that some social groups are stuck in poverty traps because of network effects. However, these studies do not carefully analyze how these groups overcome low human capital investment activities. Unlike previous studies, the model in this paper includes network externalities in both the human capital investment stage and the subsequent career stages. This implies that not only the current network quality, but also the expectations about future network quality affect the current investment decision. Consequently, the coordinated expectation among the group members can play a crucial role in the determination of the final state. We define 'overlap' for some initial skill ranges, whereby the economic performance of a group can be improved simply by increasing expectations of a brighter future. We also define 'poverty trap' for some ranges, wherein a disadvantaged group is constrained by its history, and we explore the egalitarian policies to mobilize the group out of the trap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The measurement of poverty as 'consistent' poverty offers a solution to one of the primary problems of poverty measurement within Social Policy of the last three decades. Often treated as if they were synonymous, 'indirect' measures of poverty, such as low income measures, and 'direct' measures, such as indices of material deprivation, identify surprisingly different people as being poor. In response to this mismatch, a team of Irish researchers put forward a measure which identified respondents in as being in poverty when they experienced both a low standard of living, as measured by deprivation indicators, and a lack of resources, as measured by a low income line. Importantly, they argued that the two measures required an equal weight. In this paper, I present a reconsideration of the consistent poverty measure from both conceptual and empirical perspectives. In particular, I examine the claim that low income and material deprivation measures should be given an 'equal weight'. I argue that, from a conceptual perspective, the nature of the indicators at hand means that a deprivation-led measurement approach might be understood to align with the definition of poverty which Nolan and Whelan outline and, from an empirical perspective, that it is the material deprivation measure-and not the low income measure-which is particularly effective in identifying individuals at risk of multiple forms of deprivation. However, I argue that greater attention needs to be given to the question of whether indicators of material deprivation provide a sufficient measure of material poverty and suggest that advancing the measurement of material deprivation beyond its relatively rudimentary state represents an important priority for poverty research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to care is a critical issue for ameliorating the health and social impact of marginalization. Research indicates that sexual minority women experience low utilization of medical care overall, combined with high levels of substance abuse and lack of access to culturally appropriate services. This study uses qualitative data to examine factors that affect access to services for sexual minority women who use(d) heroin or crack cocaine. Semi-structured interviews were done with 34 sexual minority women drug users, of diverse sexual identities, recruited from community-based agencies. Interviews explored factors shaping service utilization, including basic life history, self-assessed needs, positive and negative experiences with service providers, and barriers to care. Analysis explored prejudice and discrimination at institutional and interactional levels, the role of social policy, the interactional dynamics surrounding gender presentation, and how these institutional and social processes shape individual experience. The women who participated in this study described multiple layers of marginalization that limited access to-and discouraged use of-a range of vital services, but their stories simultaneously demonstrated the power of personal networks and low-threshold agencies to share resources, provide bridges to services, and build supportive communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vietnam experienced a dramatic drop in overall poverty during the 90s. However, the poverty reduction showed substantial variation across households, villages and regions. Using a multilevel model on panel data from the rural sample of the Vietnam Living Standard Measurement Survey we demonstrate the important role of villages in household poverty exit dynamics. We also show how an analysis of village-level random effects predictions can help targeting of policies to reduce poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accounting for the time individuals spend below the poverty line is an important dimension in order to design social policies to fight against poverty. The literature is currently aiming to construct a consistent aggregate measure of poverty over time that takes into account individual income lifetime profiles. It is however, far from clear which aspects of the specific patterns of poverty spells should be included. Using longitudinal data for Spain, this paper shows that the effect of spell recurrence on poverty dynamics is relevant. Poverty exit and re-entry rates vary not only with personal or household characteristics but also with spell accumulation and the duration of current and past spells. In general, our main findings support that an aggregate intertemporal poverty index should incorporate full individual poverty lifetime trajectories accounting for both poverty and non-poverty spell durations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the influence of individual characteristics and targeted and universal social policy on single-mother poverty with a multilevel analysis across 18 affluent Western democracies. Although single mothers are disproportionately poor in all countries, there is even more cross-national variation in single-mother poverty than in poverty among the overall population. By far, the United States has the highest rate of poverty among single mothers among affluent democracies. The analyses show that single-mother poverty is a function of the household's employment, education, and age composition, and the presence of other adults in the household. Beyond individual characteristics, social policy exerts substantial influence on single-mother poverty. We find that two measures of universal social policy significantly reduce single-mother poverty. However, one measure of targeted social policy does not have significant effects, and another measure is significantly negative only when controlling for universal social policy. Moreover, the effects of universal social policy are larger. Additional analyses show that universal social policy does not have counterproductive consequences in terms of family structure or employment, while the results are less clear for targeted social policy. Although debates often focus on altering the behavior or characteristics of single mothers, welfare universalism could be an even more effective anti-poverty strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers the problem of poverty in Russia from the 1990s to the present. The main factors are highlighted that foster the occurrence of poverty. It is noted that in modern Russia with constant growth of the real-life standard of the average Russian, the urgency of the problem of real poverty of the country's population has not lost its importance. Within these years, the process of income stratification of the population has intensified, as a result, the number of poor has increased with rank and file workers of many branches of the public sphere, members of single-parent families, pensioners, invalids, and rural inhabitants. The causes, dynamics, and consequences of this extremely negative process are considered. The reason for the differences between official statistical data on poverty in Russia and the much larger negative real picture are shown. The differences in income level are analyzed at the level of enterprises and interbranch and regional profiles. The processes of income stratification in Russia are compared with those of economically advanced G7 countries and countries with a socially oriented economy. The main directions of reducing poverty and inequality of the population are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainstream criminology has traditionally focused on poverty as an isolated variable, whose effects are typically explored by inserting a limited measure of this variable in a multivariate analysis. Peacemaking criminology, however, offers an alternative perspective. In this paradigm, poverty is seen as a source of suffering and, to a degree, a “crime” in and of itself. Furthermore, the suffering poverty engenders is an enveloping social experience that exposes its victims to concentrated disadvantage—or, to use Jonathan Kozol’s (1991) term, to a range of “savage inequalities.” Thus, poverty is best understood not as an isolated variable, but as a master status of fundamental social reality that subjects people to lives filled with suffering—suffering that can engender criminal behavior. From a peacemaking perspective, a key avenue for preventing crime is, in the short run, diminishing the suffering poverty causes and, in the long run, embracing social policies that reduce the prevalence of economic suffering in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If the absolute number of poor people goes up, but the fraction of people in poverty comes down, has poverty gone up or gone down? The economist’s instinct, framed by population replication axioms that undergird standard measures of poverty, is to say that in this case poverty has gone down. But this goes against the instinct of those who work directly with the poor, for whom the absolute numbers notion makes more sense as they cope with more poor on the streets or in the soup kitchens. This paper attempts to put these two conceptions of poverty into a common framework. Specifically, it presents an axiomatic development of a family of poverty measures without a population replication axiom. This family has an intuitive link to standard measures, but it also allows one or other of “the absolute numbers” or the “fraction in poverty” conception to be given greater weight by the choice of relevant parameters. We hope that this family will prove useful in empirical and policy work, where it is important to give both views of poverty—the economist’s and the practitioner’s—their due. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces series of articles published in the October 2005 issue of the journal "Social Indicators Research." Investigation of perceptions of poverty and wealth; Examination of attitudes toward state welfare policies in European countries; Development of a paradigm relating marketing to the improvement of living conditions.

Sociological interest in the implementation of policy generally focuses on the ways a single stream of policy creates a set of measurable consequences either for parents or children. This article takes an ethnographic approach to the study of conflicting policy mandates that collide in the lives of families moving from welfare to work at the same time that schools are implementing high stakes tests and the end of social promotion. We show that these two policies make contradictory demands on parents, to the potential detriment of children. Ethnographic research reveals the ways in which multiple and incompatible forms of policy impact poor families, putting them in the unhappy position of choosing between economic stability or mobility and children's educational performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article employs participant observation and interviewing at a community-based job readiness program operating under welfare reform to explore how attempts at cultural retraining (that is, bringing presumably deviant behavior in line with dominant cultural norms) are delivered, received, and interpreted by welfare-reliant women. This study finds that poor women--the targets of these reforms--largely resist cultural retraining, but, ironically, assert its usefulness for welfare-reliant women generally. These ethnographic data support and expand upon previous interview and focus group studies that have encountered the same attribution paradox among welfare-reliant women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the impact of poverty on social policy strategy. Impact of poverty on income distribution; Perspectives of income and economic standard; Function of social indicators on democratic process.

The article discusses the poverty existing among children aged below 18 years mostly living with single parent in Great Britain and Germany. In Germany every fifth child, and in Great Britain almost every third, is poor. Single parents who are not gainfully employed are at greater risk of poverty. In West Germany the poverty rate rises to 80 per cent in this group and in Great Britain to nearly 90 per cent. The poverty risk is similarly high among children of married parents if both are out of work. In both countries gainful employment is the best way to escape poverty. If a single mother who is poor takes a full-time job, in three-quarters of cases she will move above the poverty line. The average size of household is not the same in both the countries, but in terms of social policy the size of household should not affect the poverty risk. The duration of poverty is of great importance in a child's life, as is the degree of poverty at a particular point in time. It is evident that poverty lasts longer in Great Britain than in West Germany.

This article explicates and extends the analyses put forth by the author in his book, Prisons of Poverty, which argues that the generalised increase of carceral populations in advanced societies is due to the growing use of the penal system as an instrument for managing social insecurity and containing the social disorders created at the bottom of the class structure by neo-liberal policies of economic deregulation and social-welfare retrenchment. It retraces the steps whereby this ‘neo-liberal penality’ was elaborated in the United States and then diffused throughout the world, but contends that European countries are not blindly following the American road to mass imprisonment: Europe's path to the penal state entails the conjoint intensification of both social and penal treatments of poverty and the activation of the policing functions of welfare services leading to a form of ‘social panoptism’. Only the building of a Europe-wide social state can check the spread of the penalisation of poverty and its deleterious social consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the initiatives for poverty reform. Policymaking through private initiative involves a considerable amount of mutual give and take between funders and prospective grantees. What is perhaps most noteworthy about the Chicago Initiative as an example of private policymaking in an era of devolution is the prospect that private policy arenas may ironically be more inclusive of different actors interests than is the purportedly democratic legislative policy arena. While community organizations hardly encounter foundations as equal partners in carrying out the collaborative business of defining philanthropic agendas, community organizations still occupy key strategic positions within the private policymaking arena.

Over the past generation much attention has been paid to the disadvantaged in our society. Public and private programs have been developed to alleviate poverty and allow the underprivileged into the mainstream of society. While much more needs to be done, many of these programs have been highly successful. Unfortunately, many social programs have had perverse consequences for the intended beneficiaries. One example is the debate over differential tuition at State University of New York (SUNY) colleges. Advocates of uniform tuition at SUNY colleges take a position that at first glance appears compassionate, but upon closer examination may actually work against the interests of the low-income students it is meant to help. The purpose of this paper is to show how altruism without rigorous analysis can be dangerous to those in need of assistance. What is important is the effectiveness of public policy initiatives, not their method of delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pastoral contains a non-Marxist class based non-traditional analysis of sinful acts in economic life. Data on poverty, income distribution, unemployment and economic problems are used to assert the existence of a marginalyzed, economically disenfranchised class, victims of the sinful self-serving actions of individuals influential in economic and political institutions. Economic scarcity, the reality of risk, conflicting policy goals, imperfect economic policy insights, mistaken choices, and the consequences of sinful acts for the sinner are ignored as possible causes of imperfect economic outcomes as the bishops advocate solutions through an expanded agenda of government programs and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions of children in the United States suffer from poor care and inadequate services due to neglectful national social policy. More than 13 million children live in poverty and its negative consequences, at great individual and social cost. This paper outlines the need to seriously advocate for a preventive policy approach to child welfare and presents a blueprint for individual and collective political action. The cost-effectiveness and social benefits of preventive policies are demonstrated. Social workers understand the value of prevention in working with children and families, and are needed to advocate on the policy-making level for a preventive policy agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on poverty in Austria, highlighting attempts at preventing and alleviating poverty on the part of the welfare state. Additionally, social research and social services are evaluated and discussed. The role of integrative social planning is an additional consideration and political aspects such as social legislation and planning are discussed.