Showing papers on "Poverty published in 1978"

Rural poverty and agricultural performance in India

Abstract: Time-series evidence on rural poverty over the past two decades in India is examined. In general, the time series shows a pattern of fluctuation, with the incidence of poverty falling during periods of good agricultural performance and rising during periods of bad performance. The incidence of poverty in all of India is inversely related to agricultural performance measured in terms of agricultural NDP per rural person. This correlation between poverty and agricultural performance suggests that faster agricultural growth might have led to reduced poverty rates. The state level analysis demonstrates a similar significant inverse relationship in at least seven states, accounting for 75 percent of the rural poor. On the other hand, state level analysis also shows that there may be a process at work in the rural economies that tends to increase poverty over time. The existence of an underlying force within the rural economy is extremely important. The nature of these forces, their variation across states, and technique to mitigate their effects require further analysis. Statistical data are included. 20 references.

Politics and the Professors: The Great Society in Perspective

Abstract: In the early 1960s America was in a confident mood and embarked on a series of efforts to solve the problems of poverty, racial discrimination, unemployment, and inequality of educational opportunity. The programs of the Great Society and the War on Poverty were undergirded by a broad consensus about what our problems as a nation were and how we should solve them. But by the early seventies both political and scholarly tides had shifted. Americans were divided and uncertain about what to do abroad, fearful of military inferiority, and pessimistic about the capacity of government to deal affirmatively with domestic problems. A new administration renounced the rhetoric of the Great Society and changed the emphasis of many programs. On the scholarly front, new research called into question the old faiths on which liberal legislation had been based. In this book, the sixteenth volume in the Brookings series in Social Economics, Henry Aaron describes both the initial consensus and its subsequent decline. He examines the evolution of attitude and pronouncements by scholars and popular writers on the role of the federal government and its capacity to bring about beneficial change in three broad areas: poverty and discrimination, education and training, and unemployment and inflation. He argues that the political eclipse of the Great Society depended more on events external to it--war in Vietnam, dissolution of the civil rights coalition, and, finally, the Watergate scandal and all its repercussions--than on its intrinsic failings. Aaron concludes that both the initial commitment to use national polices to solve social and economic problems and the subsequent disillusionment of scholars andlaymen alike rest largely on preconceptions and faiths that have little to do with research themselves.

Women and the Poor Law in Victorian and Edwardian England

Abstract: Throughout the history of the New Poor Law, from its introduction in 1834, women were a majority of adult recipients of Poor Law relief. Almost certainly they were a majority of the much larger number of the very poor as they were, indeed, of the entire population. The central objective of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act was to withdraw poor relief from men judged capable of work, the 'able-bodied' in Poor Law terminology.[1] Such persons were to be granted relief only in conditions so rigorous that no-one would voluntarily seek it in preference to work the approach conventionally described as 'less eligibility'. The Act of 1834 intended that relief should be available to the 'able-bodied' only in strictly regulated workhouses, whose function was to inculcate and maintain habits of work-discipline for those temporarily withdrawn from the labour market. The legislation of 1834 was the work of the political economist Nassau Senior, the bureaucratic reformer Edwin Chadwick, and the experienced administrator of a rigorous Poor Law regime in a Suffolk workhouse, George Nicholls. These policymakers recognised the existence of a category of 'non able-bodied', 'deserving' poor which included the sick, the aged, children and the mad. This group, they believed, could not be expected to support themselves by work, and could not be described as work-shy dependents upon the public purse. These, the Law of 1834 allowed, could be granted outdoor relief, a weekly dole upon which they could support themselves, or be supported, in their own homes; or if they needed institutional care, they could be cared for in the workhouse, but under a separate, more relaxed regime than was allowed to the 'able-bodied'. However, these policy-makers of 1834 identified the unemployed male 'ablebodied' worker as the central problem of poverty at that time. They assumed that much unemployment was voluntary and could be substantially reduced in an expanding economy, by encouraging men to find work. They took for granted the universality of the stable two-parent family, primarily dependent upon the father's wage, and the primacy of the family as a source of welfare. Hence the poverty of women and children was thought to be remediable by the increased earnings of husbands and fathers. These were assumptions quite incompatible with the realities of the 1830s, of industrial low pay and recurrent unemployment, and early or sudden death. Many deserted or abandoned women were left to support children or other dependents on less than subsistence wages. The policy-makers ignored or underestimated severe problems of poverty among

The roots of Black poverty: The Southern plantation economy after the Civil War

Abstract: In the last twenty years historians, sociologists and economists have engaged in a great reevaluation of the black experience in the United States since the Civil War. The basic question is why blacks have not been able to enter the mainstream of American life and gain their fair share of the benefits of an affluent society. The response of liberal reformers is that racial discrimination kept blacks from obtaining adequate opportunities in the labor market or the educational system; the remedy is to open the labor market and the educational system and to try to eliminate racist attitudes. In this program the national government is seen as an independent source of reform that can set matters right, although real change will take time. Opposed to this view is the conserva-

Women-headed households: the ignored factor in development planning.

Abstract: This study emphasizes the importance of female-headed households in developing societies in development planning. Micro-data (data on female-headed households is obscured at the macro-data level) on female-headed household are translated into aggregate data for 74 developing countries. Results of the analysis show that the average percentage of potential female-headed household is: 22% for sub Sahara Africa; 20% for C. America and the Caribbean; 16% for N. Africa and the Middle East; and 15% for S. America. Also included in this report is a separate case study of female households in the Caribbean which provided a model for generating data on female-headed household by way of national censuses and which focused on the disadvantaged position of women who are heads of household compared to the general female population and to the male-headed households. A review of international data on female-headed households indicates a direct relationship between modernization and rise of female-headed households. Further research should be encouraged to substantiate the common notion that explanatory factors for female family headship can be found in both internal/international migration; mechanization of agriculture; development of agribusiness; urbanization; overpopulation; lower class marginality; and emergence of a class system of wage labor. The international data strongly suggest that there is a direct linkage between female family headship and poverty. Women in developing societies are increasingly becoming the sole or main breadwinner for their families; almost all are not prepared for the role. Specific economic policies directed to such women in developing societies may prove helpful in the struggle against poverty.

Poverty and economic growth: trickle down peters out

Abstract: Previous studies have found that economic growth tends to “trickle down” to poor families. This study investigates whether use of a relative definition of poverty eliminates the impact of economic growth on the incidence of poverty of various demographic groups and whether a decrease in the impact of growth has occurred since 1964. With the exception of families with male heads, economic growth no longer affects poverty irrespective of whether a relative or absolute definition of poverty is used. Our findings indicate that the contribution of growth has been overstated, that much of the past success has been illusory, and that poverty will be more intractable in the future.

Modernizing Institutions, Mobilization, and Third World Development: A Cross-National Study

Abstract: Following the implications of modernization theory, we test via panel regression analysis several hypotheses relating modernizing institutions to the economic development of poor countries. Controlling for the economic constraints imposed by initial poverty and world-system position, we find that the school furthers economic development while exposure to the cinema hinders it. Further analysis shows that these effects vary by political context: in countries with mobilizing regimes, the positive contributions of the school are strong, while in countries with nonmobilizing regimes the adverse effects of the cinemaare strong. Following Portes, we argue that the cinema impedes economic growth by transmitting and promoting Western values incompatible with the social ethos that must accompany programs of national economic development. We discuss the relevance of our findings to the problem of social mobilization in poor countries.

Poverty: Explanations of Social Deprivation

Abstract: Inevitably, reading is one of the requirements to be undergone. To improve the performance and quality, someone needs to have something new every day. It will suggest you to have more inspirations, then. However, the needs of inspirations will make you searching for some sources. Even from the other people experience, internet, and many books. Books and internet are the recommended media to help you improving your quality and performance.

International inequality and national poverty

Abstract: In undergoing this life, many people always try to do and get the best. New knowledge, experience, lesson, and everything that can improve the life will be done. However, many people sometimes feel confused to get those things. Feeling the limited of experience and sources to be better is one of the lacks to own. However, there is a very simple thing that can be done. This is what your teacher always manoeuvres you to do this one. Yeah, reading is the answer. Reading a book as this international inequality and national poverty and other references can enrich your life quality. How can it be?

A Note on Measurement of Poverty and Income Inequalities in Pakistan: Some Observations on Methodology

Abstract: Only a few attempts have been made at measuring the extent of poverty and inequalities in the distribution of income in Pakistan [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7]. Most, in fact all but one [4], have been based on information collected under the Household Income and Expenditure Surveys [8, 9, 10]. The aim of this paper is to point out the methodological shortcomings in the estimation procedure used in these studies and to suggest an alternative improved methodology for measuring poverty using data from the Household Surveys. It must be pointed out that it is not intended to discuss here at any length the estimates presented to illustrate the application of the suggested methodology.

To Feed This World: The Challenge and the Strategy

Abstract: A primary component of the solution to the world food problem is for poor countries to get crop and animal production up, and to do so on hundreds of millions of small farms. But production of food in itself is not enough. The hungry have no money, and until their purchasing power is increased, giving them access to food as well as other necessities, there can be no solution to the world food problem. It must be remembered that increasing agricultural productivity and prosperity in the countryside is not a panacea for the economic and social problems of a nation. But rural progress will be crucial to the general development of most nations. Those responsible nationally for establishing goals, allocating resources, and implementing programs of work must achieve a balance among the many competing demands upon national resources. For the first time in history the world now appears to have the capability of dealing effectively with the difficult problems of hunger and poverty. And, while the food--poverty--population problem is massive and complex and will be extremely difficult and time-consuming to resolve, the existence of new capabilities provides a magnificent opportunity, perhaps a fleeting one, to deal with it effectively -more » if governments have the wisdom and the will to act.« less

The marginal utility of income transfers to the third world.

Abstract: If the poor will be with us always, how poor must they be? Should we abandon hope of any significant improvement in living conditions for the hundreds of millions of terribly poor people in this world, and, instead, by some desperate notion of “triage,” concentrate our limited resources on trying to help those who, while still poor, nevertheless start from something a little better than the bare subsistence level of India, Bangladesh, or poorest Africa? Such questions raise innumerable further questions about morality, about the sources of global poverty, and about the organizational capacity of poor countries ever to cope with their problems. But they also raise some serious empirical questions about what improvement in living standards we can hope for when a minority of people, however rich, give up part of their income or wealth to try to help very much larger numbers of poor people. Recall such old antisocialist arguments in the United States that even if the richest 5 percent of the people were to give up half their income to the poor, that would only be enough to bring the poorest half of the population just one-third of the way toward the average income level for the country. In short, why should so few give up so much to help so many so little?

Parents and children in the inner city

Abstract: Part 1: Data 1. The problem defined 2. The families and the environment 3. The control groups and the random sample 4. The boys at school 5. The Play-groups 6. Delinquency Part 2: Conversations With Parents 7. Shared experience and the socialization of children 8. The world of the child 9. Achievement, self-reliance and responsibility 10. Tolerance and discipline Part 3: Interpretaion 11. Child-centredness 12. The poverty syndrome and child development

The Third World in Perspective

Abstract: What do we mean by the Third World? This title has become a convenient omnibus term for the world’s underdeveloped countries. It came into vogue during the 1960s and embraces a third element in the world power structure. Our world is dominated by the ‘free world’ of the Atlantic bloc and the centrally organised European communist bloc. They comprise the technologically advanced nations but hold only 40 per cent of the world land surface and a minority 30 per cent of the world’s population. There remains a vast community of independent nations, most recently emerged from the colonial era, to be found mainly in the lower latitudes: they comprise the Third World. In this group are the poorest nations in the world, technologically backward but capable of great advances and possessing in their territories a great wealth of mineral, vegetable and energy resources. In the strict sense they are not a homogenous bloc separate from the two advanced power groups, for in their poverty they seek patronage and help, and lean to one group or the other.