With representatives from different disciplines stressing the central importance of freedom in analyzing poverty and emphasizing some important policy issues, this book offers a view of poverty that will orient research in directions previously neglected, and help those in charge of implementing poverty reduction policies.
Poverty is a paradoxical state. Recognizable in the eld for any sensitive observer who travels in remote rural areas and urban slums and meets marginalized people in a given society, poverty still remains a challenge to conceptual formalization and to measurement that is consistent with such formalization. The analysis of poverty is multidisciplinary. It goes from ethics to economics, from political science to human biology, and any type of measurement rests on mathematics. Moreover, poverty is multifaceted according to the types of deprivation, and it is also gender and age speci c. A vector of variables is required, which raises a substantial problem for individual and group comparisons necessary to equity analysis. Multidimension- ity also complicates the aggregation necessary to perform the ef ciency analysis of policies. In the case of income poverty, these two problems, equity and ef ciency, have bene ted from very signi cant progress in the eld of economics. Similar achievements are still to come in the area of multidimensional poverty. Within this general background, this book has a very modest and narrow-scoped objective. It proposes an operational methodology for measuring multidimensional poverty, independent from the conceptual origin, the size and the qualitative as well as the quantitative nature of the primary indicators used to describe the poverty of an individual, a household or a sociodemographic entity.
Despite endorsements of the concept of sustainable development and the linking of sustainable development with the Millennium Development Goals, progress towards the eradication of poverty has been disappointing. The underlying principles of sustainable development need to be more critically and actively applied to both poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation. While recognizing the need for better integration of poverty reduction and conservation objectives by both developmental and conservation agencies, particular attention is paid to the reasons why conservation should do better in contributing to long-term sustainable development and more immediately to poverty reduction.
The early returns from Census 2000 data show that the United States continued to undergo dynamic changes in the 1990s, with cities and suburbs providing the locus of most of the volatility. Metropolitan areas are growing more diverse—especially with the influx of new immigrants—the population is aging, and the make-up of households is shifting. Singles and empty-nesters now surpass families with children in many suburbs. The contributors to this book review data on population, race and ethnicity, and household composition, provided by the Census's "short form," and attempt to respond to three simple queries: —Are cities coming back? —Are all suburbs growing? —Are cities and suburbs becoming more alike? Regional trends muddy the picture. Communities in the Northeast and Midwest are generally growing slowly, while those in the South and West are experiencing explosive growth ("Warm, dry places grew. Cold, wet places declined," note two authors). Some cities are robust, others are distressed. Some suburbs are bedroom communities, others are hot employment centers, while still others are deteriorating. And while some cities' cores may have been intensely developed, including those in the Northeast and Midwest, and seen population increases, the areas surrounding the cores may have declined significantly. Trends in population confirm an increasingly diverse population in both metropolitan and suburban areas with the influx of Hispanic and Asian immigrants and with majority populations of central cities for the first time being made up of minority groups. Census 2000 also reveals that the overall level of black-to-nonblack segregation has reached its lowest point since 1920, although high segregation remains in many areas. Redefining Urban and Suburban America explores these demographic trends and their complexities, along with their implications for the policies and politics shaping metropolitan America. The shifts discussed here have significant influence
There are fewer people living in extreme poverty in the world today than 30 years ago. While that is an achievement, continuing progress for poor people is far from assured. Inequalities in access to key resources threaten to stall growth and poverty reduction in many places. The world's poorest have made only a small absolute gain over those 30 years. Progress has been slow against relative poverty as judged by the standards of the country and time one lives in, and a great many people in the world's emerging middle class remain vulnerable to falling back into poverty. The Economics of Poverty reviews critically past and present debates on poverty, spanning both rich and poor countries. The book provides an accessible new synthesis of current economic thinking on key questions: How is poverty measured? How much poverty is there? Why does poverty exist, and is it inevitable? What can be done to reduce poverty? Can it even be eliminated? The book does not assume that readers know economics already. Those new to the subject get a lot of help along the way in understanding its concepts and methods. Economics lives through its relevance to real world problems, and here the problem of poverty is both the central focus and a vehicle for learning.
This anthology constitutes an important contribution to the interdisciplinary debate on poverty measurement and alleviation. Absolute and relative poverty—both within and across state boundaries—are standardly measured and evaluated in monetary terms. However, poverty researchers have highlighted the shortfalls of one-dimensional monetary metrics. A new consensus is emerging that effectively addressing poverty requires a nuanced understanding of poverty as a relational phenomenon involving deprivations in multiple dimensions, including health, standard of living, education and political participation. This volume advances the debate on poverty by providing a forum for philosophers and empirical researchers. It combines philosophically sound analysis and genuinely global research on poverty's social embeddedness. Next to an introduction to this interdisciplinary field—which links Practical Philosophy, Development Economics, Political Science, and Sociology—it contains articles by leading international experts and early career scholars. The contributors analyse the concept of poverty, detail its multiple dimensions, reveal epistemic injustices in poverty research, and reflect on the challenges of poverty-related social activism. The unifying theme connecting this volume's contributions is that poverty must be understood as a multidimensional and socially relational phenomenon, and that this insight can enhance our efforts to measure and alleviate poverty.
Poverty and inequality persist in many dimensions in the developing world. In order to understand the determinants of poverty and its distribution between and within countries, it is necessary to know its dimensions and the channels through which poverty and inequality affect human well-being. This book analyzes the spatial disparities of the outcomes and determinants of poverty, the interdependencies of dimensions of poverty, the distribution of progress in human development over the population and the dynamics of poverty risk over time. The study takes into account the global spread of poverty. Based on cross-country comparisons of countries from Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, this study does not only consider on average outcomes and determinants of different indicators of human well-being, but also examines their distribution between and within countries.
So long as large segments of humanity are suffering chronic poverty and are dying from treatable diseases, organized giving can save or enhance millions of lives. With the law providing little guidance, ethics has a crucial role to play in ensuring that the philanthropic practices of individuals, foundations, NGOs, governments, and international agencies are morally sound and effective. In Giving Well: The Ethics of Philanthropy, an accomplished trio of editors bring together an international group of distinguished philosophers, social scientists, lawyers and practitioners to identify and address the most urgent moral questions arising today in the practice of philanthropy. The topics discussed include the psychology of giving, the reasons for and against a duty to give, the accountability of NGOs and foundations, the questionable marketing practices of some NGOs, the moral priorities that should inform NGO decisions about how to target and design their projects, the good and bad effects of aid, and the charitable tax deduction along with the water's edge policy now limiting its reach. This ground-breaking volume can help bring our practice of charity closer to meeting the vital needs of the millions worldwide who depend on voluntary contributions for their very lives.
The final book from a towering pioneer in the study of poverty and inequality—a critically important examination of poverty around the world In this, his final book, economist Anthony Atkinson, one of the world’s great social scientists and a pioneer in the study of poverty and inequality, offers an inspiring analysis of a central question: What is poverty and how much of it is there around the globe? The persistence of poverty—in rich and poor countries alike—is one of the most serious problems facing humanity. Better measurement of poverty is essential for raising awareness, motivating action, designing good policy, gauging progress, and holding political leaders accountable for meeting targets. To help make this possible, Atkinson provides a critically important examination of how poverty is—and should be—measured. Bringing together evidence about the nature and extent of poverty across the world and including case studies of sixty countries, Atkinson addresses both financial poverty and other indicators of deprivation. He starts from first principles about the meaning of poverty, translates these into concrete measures, and analyzes the data to which the measures can be applied. Crucially, he integrates international organizations’ measurements of poverty with countries’ own national analyses. Atkinson died before he was able to complete the book, but at his request it was edited for publication by two of his colleagues, John Micklewright and Andrea Brandolini. In addition, François Bourguignon and Nicholas Stern provide afterwords that address key issues from the unfinished chapters: how poverty relates to growth, inequality, and climate change. The result is an essential contribution to efforts to alleviate poverty around the world.
Although the world has seen a strong increase in global incomes in the last two decades and consequently a decline in global poverty rates, the number of persons living in absolute poverty remains on unacceptably high levels. Besides rising incomes can not distract from the fact that resources to fight global problems remain scarce. These resources have to be devoted to the fight against different global problems like the fight against communicable and non-communicable diseases (especially HIV/AIDS and Malaria) or the fight against global warming. The main precondition to achieve the best results with these limited resources is a good knowledge about the determinants and the best policies to fight each problem. But before being able to analyze the determinants of the different global problems and especially of poverty, it is of fundamental importance to find the right indicators for each phenomenon. This book contributes to the discussion of appropriate poverty indicators for the different dimensions of poverty like income poverty, undernutrition and child mortality and proposes a multidimensional poverty indicator that takes the income distribution into consideration.