Showing papers on "Poverty published in 1971"

Violence Against Children.

Abstract: This paper develops a definition and conceptual model of violence against children on the basis of a series of nationwide epidemiologic studies, public opinion, and press surveys. Culturally sanctioned use of physical force in child rearing, poverty and discrimination, deviance in bio-psycho-social functioning, and chance events are identified as causal dimensions of physical child abuse. The scope of the phenomenon and selected findings from the surveys are discussed and social policies aimed at primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention are suggested. Attention is drawn to massive societal abuse of children, which is a related but much more serious social problem.

Poverty and Discrimination.

Abstract: Examines the causes of poverty, paying special attention to the interaction between poverty and racial discrimination.

Crisis in Child Mental Health: Challenge for the 1970's

Abstract: Crisis in Child Mental Health is a 500-page report to the Congress of the United States, representing three years of exhaustive study by the Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children. This definitive report opens with a brief, impassioned look at the tragic lack of any unified commitment to children and youth. In the next hundred pages are the many recommendations, followed by separate chapters of rich documentation. These subjects range from the impact of contemporary American society on family life and on mental health of children and youth, to poverty and mental health, the children of minority groups, and the innovative use of human resources for human services. The sheer range and diversity of these recommendations defies summary. This richness is at once the report's greatest strength and its gravest potential weakness. With such a broad social sweep some may be tempted to dismiss it as trying to be

We the Poor People: Work, Poverty, and Welfare

Abstract: Current welfare reforms-including recently enacted federal legislation-are largely symbolic politics, argue two experts in this important new book. According to Joel F. Handler and Yeheskel Hasenfeld, the real problem we face is not the spread of welfare but the spread of poverty among the working poor, a group that includes most welfare recipients. The surest way to solve the problem is to create jobs and supplement low-wage work. The authors offer proposals that would make it possible for individuals to support themselves and their families through working and that would establish a safety net for those relatively few individuals who are unable to do so. The authors discuss current policies, efforts, and programs designed to deal with the poor and analyze what works, what does not work, and why. Instead of income maintenance strategies, they promote policies that would facilitate leaving welfare for work-particularly in the case of single mothers. Their proposals range from creating jobs and supplementing income through the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to raising the minimum wage to providing health insurance and child care support. These are not inexpensive solutions, but they must occur if we truly wish to live in a society that strives to provide opportunities for all.

The Uses of Poverty: The Poor Pay All.

Abstract: Some twenty years ago Robert K. Merton applied the notion of functional analysis to explain the continuing though maligned existence of the urban political machine: if it continued to exist, perhaps it fulfilled latent unintended or unrecognized positive functions. Clearly it did. Merton pointed out how the political machine provided central authority to get things done when a decentralized local government could not act, humanized the services of the impersonal bureaucracy for fearful citizens, offered concrete help (rather than abstract law or justice) to the poor, and otherwise performed services needed or demanded by many people but considered unconventional or even illegal by formal public agencies.

Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and the New Deal

Abstract: A study of the biracial movement of sharecroppers who in the 1930s stirred the national conscience to their plight of poverty and servitude.

The Economic Implications of Malnutrition: The Dismal Science Revisited

Abstract: The first requirements for high labor productivity under modern conditions are that the masses of the population shall be literate, healthy, and sufficiently well fed to be strong and energetic. In many countries, I feel sure, if this were achieved all else necessary for rapid economic development would come readily and easily of itself. I also feel sure that whenever this has not been accomplished.. . it is not necessary to look for other factors.. . to explain the pervasive poverty and slow economic growth.1

Parent and child centers: their basis in the behavioral and educational sciences

Abstract: Intervention aimed at teaching mothers of poverty greater skills in child rearing can achieve not only gains in the measured competence of their children, but enrich the lives of the parents as well. Evidence from the behavioral and educational sciences is cited to support the belief a) in the plasticity of behavioral development; b) that a mutual interrelationship exists between lack of competence and poverty; c) that competence does not develop automatically in genotypes of even the highest potential; and d) that parents of poverty can be taught to become effective teachers of their young.

The Real poverty report

Abstract: Interestingly, the real poverty report that you really wait for now is coming. It's significant to wait for the representative and beneficial books to read. Every book that is provided in better way and utterance will be expected by many peoples. Even you are a good reader or not, feeling to read this book will always appear when you find it. But, when you feel hard to find it as yours, what to do? Borrow to your friends and don't know when to give back it to her or him.

Rural Health Care Systems

Abstract: Rural health is a problem of two basic dimensions. These are financial status and geographic location. As to financial status, rural areas are characterized by below-average incomes and considerable poverty. The great majority of the poorest counties in the United States are rural. As to geographic location, rural areas generally have a cluster of factors that are adverse to adequate health services. Along with population densities that range from low to sparse, rural areas usually have a limited tax base, scarce and widely dispersed health facilities, extreme shortages of health manpower, and negative attraction for new manpower. And yet, despite this somewhat grim summary, I think that the outlook for rural health is more encouraging than at any previous time. The most encouraging development on the income dimension is a growing realization that abject poverty is a national disgrace. No country as affluent as the United States can knowingly tolerate

A sociocultural perspective on physical child abuse.

Abstract: Suggests a series of measures for prevention of child abuse through education, legislation, elimination of poverty, and social services. Language: en

School Achievement and Post-School Success: A Review

Abstract: general remedy for improving one's lot in life. As early as the 17th century, the English political economist, Sir William Petty, noted the link between education and income. Indeed, the assumption that education would raise the economic status of the poor was an important factor in the United States in stimulating the universal free-schooling movement of the late 19th century. This same assumption contributed to the enactment of compulsory education laws in the early 20th century. Education came to be looked on as a primary means for keeping American society open and for enabling men to break the social, economic, and political bonds of poverty. The famous American educator, Horace Mann, reflected this tenet when, with uncommon insight for that time, he issued the statement at the head of this page (Mann, 1968). Our purpose in this paper is to explore the link between education, individual opportunity, and individual success. Specifically, we wish to examine the proposition that: the post-school opportunity and performance of a pupil is related to his achievement in school, and the relationship is such that higher achievement is associated with "success" and lower achievement is associated with lack of "success."

Introducing Social Change: A Manual for Community Development

Abstract: The development of industry in Europe and the United States has resulted in great marvels of production. However, non-Western nations, with a few exceptions, have not yet shared fully in this productivity, despite the desires of their leaders to do so. Also, in the United States, and in other industrial nations, there are sizeable minority groups which have not been fully assimilated into the productive pattern of the majority. Most live as poverty enclaves within the greater society. This socioeconomic imbalance has contributed to unrest in both the agrarian and industrial nations. Introducing Social Change deals with numerous topics of social change: cultural problems of change in general; a description of the concept of culture; a discussion of cultural change in its various forms; an introduction to the process of directed change; a discussion of the motivation necessary to bring about change; a treatment of the method of adapting an innovation to existing ideas and customs; the profile of the primary characteristics of most developing nations; the main characteristics and cultural values of America as a sample urban, industrial culture; and field problems of the change agent, and in particular those methods from anthropology that can be modified for use. Developments in the industrial countries, particularly the United States, have demonstrated the need for this second edition. When the original version was produced, little thought or activity was given to development efforts among ethnic minorities of industrial countries. Development was thought of almost exclusively as an activity relevant to the developing, non-industrial nations. It has become apparent that ethnic groups in industrial nations are also in need of economic development. Government policies, including funding, have been increasingly pointed in this direction.

The Poor Ye Need Not Have With You: Lessons from the War on Poverty.

Abstract: The best description of this sharp-witted, lively commentary is the book itself.\"The Politics of Provocation is the style of a petulant child.... It is forming opinions on the basis of \"whom\" we might like or dislike rather than \"what\" might or might not work.... If we don't like the poor, we get even with them. If we don't like the Pentagon, we get even with it. Then we feel better because we have shown someone how angry we are....\"The Problem-Solving style is the reverse of this.... It is the rule of reason in politics. It is the rule that leads us to weigh what we are doing or advocating according to the effects it has rather than how it makes us feel....\"The point is that by continuing in this direction of solving the problems of discriminatory behavior we can make progress far faster than we can against the attitudes that cause it. Anti-Semitic behavior has long since ceased to be a problem for American Jews in spite of the fact that anti-Semitic attitudes persist....\"As for the welfare system, \"the Politics of Provocation dictates that it is more important to catch that last sinner than to start doing away with the whole bloody thing.\"The Problem-Solving style can cut through this mess. It would dictate a simple system of income support, a national system of income support, a noninvestigatory system of income support, and most important, a system that would increase the incentive to work rather than trying to force people to work regardless of the consequence, a system that would encourage families to stay together instead of encouraging them to break up.....\".\".exhortation will not make discrimination go away, nor will a mass examination of individual consciences. That is why the 'white racism' accusation of the Kerner Report, although true, is irrelevant at least as it has been interpreted. The problem-solving style dictates that doing something about ending discrimination and segregation means not just talking about them but having programs that attack them in detail......\".The ordinary answer to an accusation of discrimination is increasingly becoming 'Who, me?' and it is meant sincerely. What will really be hard to give up, however, are habitual patterns that lead to discrimination without that intention: the pattern of the man who honestly doesn't mind living in an integrated neighborhood but doesn't want property values lowered; the pattern of the man who honestly doesn't mind working in an integrated situation but doesn't want seniority bent; the pattern of the man who honestly wants to see people of all races in managerial positions but won't turn down a Harvard graduate in favor of one from Howard....\

Psychological Factors in Poverty.

Abstract: Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1971, Vol 16(8), 537. Reviews the book, Psychological Factors in Poverty edited by Vernon L. Allen (1970). This is an excellent collection of essays dealing with psychological issues relating to poverty. It covers a wide range of

Alternative Conceptions of Poverty and their Implications for Income Maintenance

Abstract: This paper speaks to the problem of designing income maintenance programs from the perspective of sociological theory. First, the underlying logic of situational and cultural theories of poverty is delineated, and some of their general implications are explored. Afterwards, the predictions of these theories with respect to the response by poor persons to an income maintenance program are examined. It is argued that, in place of seeking whether one or the other type of explanation is valid in general, we ascertain for which groups in poverty and for what types of response a particular theory is likely to be more useful. The discussion is illustrated by a consideration of how an individual's response to income maintenance is likely to vary with ethnicity and neighborhood organization.