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The primary purpose of this paper is to review and evaluate the causes of educational poverty in less developed countries. The basic intent in carrying out such a study is to define and derive the role of governing agencies in deliberately creating educational poverty in the country, so that the private interest of the rich and powerful ruling class can be fully safeguarded. This study is of crucial interest to the common man because majority of the people living in less developed countries are poor in spite of the fact, that almost all these countries own ample human and material resources. However, the common man in these countries is continuously suffering, generation after generation, and has been denied access to basic amenities of life. The rich and powerful ruling class, in majority of the less developed countries, has intentionally denied basic education facilities to its people for keeping them ignorant and unaware of their fundamental rights to share national resources and to gain competence for comfortable living in the society. The paper advocates a complete reversal in economic growth policies of the less developed countries so that top priority is given to those projects and programs that directly benefit the common man in the society. In this respect, the author calls for awareness among the people to exercise their economic and social rights so that people of all the strata can share equally the fruits of growth and prosperity.

This paper comments on the work of Rector et al. (1999a, 1999b). The poverty lines implicit in their restrictive material deprivation approach are disputed and the claim that America has triumphed over poverty is rejected. Evidence is presented showing that poverty among the poorest Americans has significantly increased and is now near an all time high. The long economic expansion since the recession of 1990-1991 has left hardcore poverty essentially unchanged and relative deprivation among the poorest of the poor has increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of high welfare re-entry rates has attracted great attention from economists and policymakers. Using a very rich administrative data set for the minimum income program of the Madrid Government (over 50,000 spells), this paper aims to broach various questions arising from the issue of welfare re-entry. We try to identify what factors determine observed differences in the durations of the first off-welfare spell. We analyze the combined effects of the length and type of exit of the first spell, unemployment, and sociodemographic characteristics. The experience of the first spell and, to a lesser extent, employability can contribute toward lengthening the time spent outside the program. Our results also show that off-welfare spells of households leaving the program in periods of low economic growth will be longer than those that do so during economic expansions. With the exception of unemployment effects, our estimates yield very similar results to those obtained in the U.S. studies, suggesting that U.S. welfare policies and analyses are not entirely irrelevant for European discussions of welfare policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article uses two data sets- the 1940 and 1950 census files- in combination with the three subsequent census files to describe long-run trends in black poverty. The paper described a forty-year record of progress in reducing black poverty. The optimism that should have resulted from that progress was tempered by three other events of the 1970's: the accelerating breakup of the black family, the growing numbers of black men with little contact with the labor market, and a continued slowdown in economic growth. As a result, we have entered a new racial era in the U.S., in which black labor market progress no longer guarantees improvements in economic welfare, especially for the black underclass. Trends in labor market wages of black men and women represent only a first step in understanding the changes in black poverty that have taken place. The paper concludes with an examination of the downside of black economic progress-the in- creasing disengagement of many black men from the labor market.

The relationships among various subsets of economic development, poverty, crime, and/or income inequality have been separately investigated in several theoretical and empirical studies. However, there has been very little empirical analysis on the interdependence among all these variables in one framework. This paper examines the causality between economic development and poverty while incorporating crime and inequality. It employs a co-integration test, a 4-variable vector autoregressive (VAR) model, and a Granger test in the US over the period 1959–2001. Findings reveal a feedback loop mechanism between economic development, poverty, and crime. Interestingly, income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient has no important impact on any of the variables. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses about establishment of welfare reform by Family Assistance Plan (FAP), as a major social policy goal. Former U.S. President James E. Carter placed welfare reform -- the Program for Better Jobs and Income (PBJI) -- high on his legislative agenda. The FAB and PBJI were both variants of the negative income tax. Former President Ronald Wilson Reagan also placed welfare reform at the center of his social policy agenda in his first year in office. This paper focuses on the welfare cuts and suggests how their effects will differ by race. A table in article presents 1980 data on the incidences of pretransfer and official poverty of white and nonwhite persons; on the dependence of the pretransfer poor on cash welfare and nonwelfare transfers; and on the antipoverty effectiveness of the two types of transfers, measured by the percentage of pretransfer poor persons taken out of poverty by transfers. The Reagan program assumes that those who remain poor will be better off waiting for economic growth to trickle down from those above them rather than relying on welfare and public jobs programs.

This paper examines why Canadian poverty rates fell relative to U. S. poverty rates during the periods 1970-1979 and 1979-1986. During the 1970s the principal reason for declining Canadian poverty rates is higher economic growth. During the 1980s, however, differences in government transfer policy are the main cause of relative poverty change in the two countries. Virtually all of the 3.3 point fall in relative Canadian/U.S. poverty rates from 1979 to 1986 can be attributed to expansions in the Canadian transfer system and simultaneous contractions in U. S. transfers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies the relationship between economic growth and the extent of poverty among American families in order to find ways to reduce the poverty. The income distribution stretches as average income grows; if this were not true, poverty would long since have ceased to be a problem. In colonial times, the income gap between the very poor and all but the very rich must have been at most a few hundred dollars. Since the median income in the U.S. now is well above any upper bound of poverty, if the dispersion of income had remained constant as its central tendency grew, no one would now be poor. But the dispersion of income expands along with its central tendency. The quintile boundaries of the income distribution rise approximately by the same percentages, thus bringing widening absolute differentials. This accords with our retributive standards of justice; people are rewarded in proportion to their relative degrees of social worth or productivity. It incidentally guarantees the persistence of poverty without public policies designed to redistribute income or earning power.

Prevailing measures of relative poverty are unchanged when all incomes grow or contract by the same proportion. This property stems from seemingly implausible assumptions about the disutility of relative deprivation and the cost of social inclusion. We propose "weakly relative" lines that relax these assumptions. On calibrating our measures to national poverty lines and survey data, we find that half the population of the developing world in 2005 lived in poverty, only half of whom were absolutely poor. The total number of poor rose over 1981 to 2005 despite falling numbers of absolutely poor. With sustained economic growth, the incidence of relative poverty became less responsive to further growth. The number of relatively poor rose, just as the numbers of absolutely poor fell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns over rising college tuition and slow economic growth have brought renewed attention to the role of federal and state financial aid programs in opening access to education. Despite a large body of literature examining the effects of grant aid on four‐year and public two‐year college enrollment, for‐profit colleges—particularly the vast majority that offer two‐year degrees and certificates—have largely been ignored. Using panel data methods and a new administrative data set of for‐profit colleges operating in California between 1989 and 2003, I assess the impact of the federal Pell Grant program, the G.I. Bill, and California's Cal Grant program on the net number of for‐profit colleges per county. The results suggest that for both Pell and Cal Grants, increases in the per‐student maximum award encourage for‐profit entry. This relationship is particularly strong in counties with high adult poverty levels, where more students are eligible for aid. Further, these gains in the private sector do not appear to come at the expense of the public sector. Rather, public community colleges also experience enrollment gains as the generosity of Pell and Cal Grants increases, although this reaction appears to be weaker than the reaction of for‐profits. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses on the measure used to gauge poverty in the U.S., Europe and other developing countries. It discusses that the present official measure of poverty in the U.S. is flawed and both, the poverty threshold and measurement of available resources should be improved. It reports that European countries provided with sufficient social aid but they face a technical problem of relative poverty threshold. Also mentioned are the levels of economic development in developing and underdeveloped countries.

The article focuses on the association between weather risk and poverty as well as the significance of weather index insurance for agricultural and rural areas in lower-income countries in the U.S. Uninsured weather risks tend to contribute to the existence of chronic poverty, though health problems are often considered as the greatest risk encountered by many rural households. The risk of extreme weather events contributes to the existence of chronic poverty. It was concluded that the effective mechanisms transferring risk can catalyze investment and economic growth, lessening poverty in rural areas of lower income countries.

This article considers whether the economic transformation in the United States during the 1990s included the reduction of poverty in metropolitan (metro) areas. The authors investigate poverty change over the last business cycle, a period of overall strong economic growth. Their analysis identifies evidence of both poverty reduction and persistence. Findings show a general decline in poverty, with decline greatest in the metro areas with the highest poverty rates at the beginning of the last business cycle. Yet the relatively strong economy did not move the metro areas with the highest poverty from their relative position. The article documents that the underlying factors affecting metro-area poverty will have to be changed to fundamentally address poverty in high-poverty-rate metro areas. Reliance on changes in the macro economy will not be sufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1947, Harry S. Truman could scarcely imagine that "anyone thought [India] was important." But only a decade later, Senator John F. Kennedy put forward a radically different appraisal of the value of India, and the strategic meaning of poverty. The sheer scale of India's deprivation, he argued, made it the decisive ideological battleground, and "a world power with a world audience" in its own right. In the minds of American planners, India's position at the center of a line of containment gradually gave way to its more crucial function as a model of economic development. The goal of representing India as an authentically Western model, distinct from China, underlay an aid relationship that created the "problem" of hunger and then made solving it an international goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the conundrum of why the nonelderly poverty rate in the U.S. has failed to decline as the economy has expanded. The lack of improvement in the poverty rate reflects a weakened relationship between poverty and the macroeconomy. The authors find that the lack of improvement despite rising living conditions is due to the stagnant growth in median wages and increasing inequality. Holding all else equal, changes in female labor supply should have reduced poverty further, but an increase in the rate of female heads of families may have worked in the opposite direction.

The thesis of this study is that as a result of increased inequalities in welfare rules, the 1996 welfare reform act not only enhanced incentives for poor families to move but also (and perhaps more important) created disincentives for them to stay in "race to the bottom" states. In testing this thesis, we evaluated the mediating and moderating roles of state economic development and family structure. We merged data from three main sources: the 1996-1999 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the Urban Institute's Welfare Rules Database, and state economic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Modeling both destination (pull) and departure (push) effects of welfare policy measures and selected covariates in a nested discrete-time event-history migration analysis, we found robust support for the thesis that stringency in state welfare-eligibility and behavior-related rules stimulated interstate out-migration of poor families in the United States. However poor families were not drawn to states with relatively more-lenient welfare rules, although stringency in state welfare dollar benefits inhibited in-migration and state unemployment patterns may have conditioned the migration effects of welfare-reform rules on the choice of destination. Single mothers were not more directly affected by welfare-eligibility and behavior-related rules than were poor married couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role and impact of community participation in the development of the Roxbury Master Plan in Boston, Massachusetts. It describes how residents and activists utilized the Roxbury Master Plan as a tool to raise challenges to planning ideas perceived as detrimental to the neighborhood, Discussion of this master plan provides a laboratory for examining race and class relationships and tensions generated by proposals for economic development strategies based on benefiting powerful institutional players as a way of helping low-income, neighborhoods. Review of the development of this neighborhood master plan between the period 1999 and 2003 shows how residents can use community participation to ensure adoption of broad economic development strategies advocated by proponents of big business that do not spell dislocation and gentrification for poor and working-class neighborhoods. The case study also represents a critique of smart growth and New Urbanism as planning concepts in terms of how issues of race, class, and social inequality are approached or ignored by some planners. The study is based on the author's involvement in the development of the Roxbury Master Plan, including participation in meetings and interviews with residents, elected officials, and representatives of city government between 1999 when the Roxbury Master Plan was officially launched and its completion in 2003. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article criticizes the use of the Misery Index as a gauge of macroeconomic performance. The use of the Misery Index by U.S. President George Bush symbolizes the almost exclusive focus of economic policy in the 1980s on growth and price stability. There is no doubt that the rate of economic growth and the rate of inflation should be two important criteria in judging the success of any economic policy. Assuming for the moment that distributional concerns are unimportant, the Misery Index still has several shortcomings that diminish its usefulness as a policy indicator. First, the index is generally used to judge the success or failure of economic policy in specified periods. Another limitation of the Misery Index is that it simply adds together the unemployment and inflation rates unweighted. Economic justice, like macroeconomic performance, has many dimensions, and capturing its trends can be difficult. Nonetheless, two prominent indicators of absolute and relative economic well-being are the poverty rate and overall income inequality. The sum of the two produces what we call the Poverty And Inequality (PAIN) index. Between 1980 and 1990, the Misery Index declined about 50 percent, a fact which the Bush administration heralded. At the same time, however, the PAIN index rose by about 8 percent, despite eight consecutive years of overall economic expansion.

The article presents an analysis of neighborhood change in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1980s using two-wave panel design and causal modeling. Studies have shown that poverty predicts rates of births to unmarried mothers, juvenile delinquency, crime and drug-related problems in urban neighborhoods. Economic deprivation theory postulates that high rates of juvenile delinquency, crime and drug-related problems are associated with poor neighborhoods and suggests that a rise in poverty increases a sense of economic injustice, which results in higher rates of violence. In this article authors study interrelationships among neighborhoods' poverty levels and types of social conditions described in the urban poverty literature by examining factors related to neighborhood poverty in Cleveland at the beginning and end of the 1980s. It demonstrates the usefulness of panel analysis using LISREL (Linear Structural Relations) version 7.2. It reports that the Cleveland economy grew steadily throughout the 1950s, 1960s and much of the 1970s, with the emphasis on manufacturing enterprises. In the early 1980s both Cleveland and its suburbs lost a large number of manufacturing jobs either permanently or to the furthest suburbs. In the city of Cleveland 90,000 manufacturing jobs were lost between 1979 and 1983. Along with jobs loss, Cleveland lost population and investment in new housing mostly to its suburban areas.

Poverty has become an important term in contemporary America. Much has been said in recent months about its level and the prospects for its removal, with most of the discussion being concentrated upon the increasing reluctance of poverty to disappear in the face of economic growth. The author suggests that there exists in the U.S., a sizable number of individuals who are relatively unaffected by the general course of economic progress. For lack of a better term, these people may be considered to be in the "backwash" of American economic life, in effect, non-participants in the increasing affluence of this society. There has been a decline since 1956 in the rate at which poverty is eliminating. Part of this decline is due to the general sluggishness of the economy in this period. However, a substantial part must also be attributed to the presence of a "hard-core" group of people who are not basically affected by the normal processes of economic growth. The existence of a nonlinear relationship between the extent of poverty and the economic-activity variables admits the existence of a declining poverty-elimination rate and, consequently, the possibility that the future impact of economic growth and progress the extent of poverty will be minimal.