Showing papers on "Poverty published in 1976"

WHO SHALL LIVE? Health, Economics and Social Choice

Abstract: In this classic book, Professor Victor Fuchs draws on his deep understanding of the strengths and limitations of economics and his intimate knowledge of health care institutions to help readers understand the problems every nation faces in trying to allocate health resources efficiently and equitably. Six complementary papers dealing with national health insurance, poverty and health, and other policy issues, including his 1996 presidential address to the American Economic Association, accompany the original 1974 text. Health professionals, policy makers, social scientists, students and concerned citizens will all benefit from this highly readable, authoritative, and nuanced discussion of the difficult choices that lie ahead.

Economic Consequences of Teenage Childbearing

Abstract: Economists since the time of Malthus have attempted to unravel the interrelationship between fertility and various economic variables, primarily income. These analyses have concentrated mainly on two aspects of the economic determinants and consequences of fertility decisions: the macroeconomic impact of fertility on development and growth' and, more recently, the home economics approach, which employs microeconomic models to analyze fertility decisions.2 Unfortunately, neither the findings nor the approaches of previous analyses of the economics of fertility are particularly helpful in determining the economic effects of teenage childbearing. Moreover, the consequences of teenage childbearing, per se, except perhaps for the medical consequences, have been neglected by disciplines other than economics. Ideally, we should like to find the economic difference to the individual woman and to society if the woman becomes pregnant or does not become pregnant while a teenager. We may call the microeconomic consequences the economic differential between two average women, identical except that one became pregnant while still in her teens. The impact of many such pregnancies produces a macroeconomic effect. Teenage childbearing is associated with less schooling, lower income, increased poverty and dependency, and increased levels of childbearing, much of which is unwanted and out-ofwedlock.

Poverty, urbanization, and crime

Abstract: In an effort to evaluate the situational determinants of crime, principal components analysis was used to reduce 59 demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of 840 American cities to six independent factors: affluence, stage in life cycle, economic specialization, expenditures policy, poverty, and urbanization. When regressed upon crime rates two of these six factors, urbanization and poverty, were found to be the more important criminogenic forces. The exception to this generalization was the South, where stage in life cycle was more important than poverty in explaining crime. One reason for this exception may be that the South, though having a lower standard of living than other regions of the country, does not have the “culture of poverty” usually associated with lower income. Contrary to the assumption upon which most ecology of crime studies are based, larger cities (over 100,000 in population) are not representative of all cities. Greater association between socioeconomic variables and crime was found in larger than in smaller cities.

Poverty and Poor Relief in Pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia

Abstract: R ECENT studies have given clear indications that poverty had become a major problem in eighteenth-century America, especially in the urban centers.' But lost in generalized notions of increasing social stratification, growing propertylessness, and swollen poor relief rolls is a particular understanding of when and why poverty became the lot of a large number of city dwellers, who and how numerous the poor were, and how ideology and social conditions interacted in the responses of public officials and city leaders to this blotch on the promise of American life. Because extensive records of private and public agencies that dealt with poor relief have survived for eighteenth-century Philadelphia, it is possible to provide some tentative answers to these questions for at least one colonial city and, in the process, to uncover new data about changing social conditions in that city before the Revolution. Philadelphia might seem an unlikely place to study poverty in colonial America because the city has been viewed so often, both by eighteenthcentury commentators and by modern historians, as representative of the nearly unlimited possibilities for social ascent. The legend of Benjamin Franklin on his "way to wealth" has clouded historical vision for a long time. Moreover, it is widely believed that Quaker humanitarianism, upper-class benevolence, and social progress were the distinguishing characteristics of Philadelphia life. This view has been most compellingly presented by Carl and Jessica Bridenbaugh, whose study of the "social uses of the favors of providence" in Philadelphia portrays an elite who believed intensely in the Enlightenment view of the perfectibility of mankind. Regarding the "indignities of poverty, illness, social injustice and misfortune" as affronts to

Discrimination and Poverty among Women Who Head Families

Abstract: Attitudes toward working women and the wages they earn have long been influenced by the implicit assumption that men support families whereas women do not. Yet one out of every seven children in the United States lives in a family where the father is absent.1 This paper is concerned with these families headed by women, with how and why they have been growing, their economic status, and the policy alternatives for dealing with the poverty they so often face. Data are presented which suggest that labor market discrimination and occupational segregation are factors which contribute to the lack of income which characterizes these families.

The victorian slum: an enduring myth?

Abstract: The term slum is a loose definition of the environs and behavior of the poor. Isolated from the remainder of society, slum residents are presumed to live a deviant life either by preference or cultural predisposition, or as a consequence of their deprivation. This synthesis of spatial isolation and social deviance was an inextricable element of changes in attitudes to poverty in the early nineteenth century, and has been remarkably persistent. The concept of the “Victorian Slum'’has been questioned in relation to modern cities, but the concept also appears to lack validity in Victorian cities.

Dilemmas of Social Reform (Poverty and Community Action in the United States)

Abstract: (1976). Dilemmas of Social Reform (Poverty and Community Action in the United States) Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 981-984.

Medical Services under the New Poor Law

Abstract: Sickness has always been a prime cause of poverty. It prevents bread-winners from earning their families’ keep, and calls for expenditure over and above the normal on drugs and the services of doctors and nurses. The more advanced the forms of social and economic organisation, the more acute the problems it raises. The Industrial Revolution, by polarising rural society, and by increasing the proportion of urban dwellers in the population as a whole, made new demands on society’s resources of social organisation. The relative decline of smaller village communities in which the closeness of personal relationships made it difficult to ignore a family’s problems arising out of sickness, and the relative rise of large, impersonal and unhealthy cities where any sense of corporate responsibility was slow to develop, intensified a problem that had always of necessity made heavy demands on social organisation.

Born to be poor: birthplace and number of brothers and sisters as factors in adult poverty.

Abstract: Household heads who grew up as members of large families and/or as natives of small towns or rural areas tend to have less education and are more likely to be poor than those coming from small families and/or large cities. Data to support these conclusions have been drawn from two independent sources--a special Social Security Administration supplement to the April 1968 Current Population Survey and findings from the Retirement History Study conducted by the Social Security Administration.

Japan's Literary Feminists: The "Seito" Group

Abstract: Despite an active and productive first-wave feminist movement, which predates by two generations current international efforts to improve the status of women, present-day Japan, with its "modern" society dominated by samurai in business suits, does not reflect the gains women have made in other nations and societies. Preceding the necessary political activism of such contemporary leaders as Ichikawa Fusae (b. 1893)1 was a literary articulation of women's awareness of themselves and of their social problems. As early as the 1890s, Japanese women, some of whom were poor and others of whom were more or less privileged, explored arranged marriage, the geisha and mistress system, lack of decent employment and the poverty this caused, a desire for independence from family and men, and abortion. Unfortunately, neither they nor the majority of Japanese women writers have been translated into English. Lacking critical respect and reputation, they are not considered significant enough to compete with the male authors who have gained international stature. In some cases, their themes would be an embarrassment to the male establishment if sent abroad. Unfortunately, few young Japanese themselves are familiar with these writers, although

Escapism, penetration, and response: industrial tourism and the Caribbean.

Abstract: The essential relationship between international tourism and the Third World falls within the pattern of initiative by the industrial society that determines response in the newly emerging nations. One of its chief attributes is to define "wealth" by the characteristics of the industrial elite, "poverty" by their relative absence, and to ascribe to the notion of "wealth" the object of universal desire. In tourism, as in other fields, emergence from colonialism has much to do with testing the implicit attitudes underlying international relationships formed during the era of European expansion. The utility of existing relations to Third World nations depends on whether these can accommodate urgent shifts in international politics, or whether they demand one's subordination as a precondition. The response to such inquiry need not be dogmatic, so that even if one concludes, for example, that conventional tourism requires continued initiative from abroad and response from within, there may still be development value in having visitors from overseas temporarily at leisure within such a receiving society. The attitudinal relationship, however, may have to be re-cast, and this, in turn, may challenge conventional tourism doctrine. Yet this broad redefinition of international relationships is very much what preoccupies Third World nations today, and it makes no sense for tourism to be left out of the redress, particularly

The Relief of Poverty, Attitudes to Labour, and Economic Change in England, 1660–1782

Abstract: During the past two or three decades economic and social historians have displayed a sustained interest in the pre-conditions of the Industrial Revolution in England, and among the many explanations of this remarkable break-through into modern industrialization the role of labour (including population) has been accorded a prominent place. Yet although questions about wages, labour supply, productivity, poverty, and poor relief have been staple ingredients in the economic and social historian's diet ever since his discipline began to take shape in the late nineteenth century, there are still serious gaps in our knowledge of the size, composition, quality and living standards of the English labour force in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some of these gaps may eventually be filled, at least partially, by detailed empirical studies of local and regional demographic, economic and social conditions. But even the most sanguine researcher must admit that there will continue to be deficiencies of data and unanswerable questions, so the need for interpretative, even speculative, studies will remain. The present paper falls within this latter category, for it is mainly concerned with the relationships between ideas, policies and conditions affecting the English labouring poor in the period under examination. It combines a review of the present state of knowledge of these matters with some speculative observations about causal connections and the possibilities of future research.

Class Power and Social Control: The War on Poverty

Abstract: UNDER what conditions can the poor have an impact on urban political outcomes? In this paper, ’I present the results of an attempt to empirically assess this question. The basic hypothesis is that a city’s position in the national class structure affects its responsiveness to its least powerful social groups. The particular context that I investigated is the allocation of War on Poverty funds among large central cities in the 1960s. Using statistical analysis I argue that the local presence of nationally powerful corporations and labor unions was an important determinant of the ability of poor and nonwhite communities to