Digital Commons Network^™

Analyzing The World Bank's Blueprint For Promoting "Information And Communications", Sherille Ismail

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Information and Communications for Development 2006: Global Trends and Policies, issued by the World Bank.

This Review provides a summary and brief analysis of foreign private investment, the book's blueprint for reform, and how investments have fared in promoting economic growth and reducing poverty. The book is a valuable asset for governments, scholars, investors, and the international community seeking to serve end users in developing countries.

Southern Rural Public Schools: A Study Of Teacher Perspectives, Leah P. Mccoy

The Qualitative Report

This ethnography explores teachers’ perspectives of the cultural issues affecting academic performance in twelve public high schools in rural Mississippi and Louisiana. Fr om a thematic analysis of the tape-recorded interviews of forty-one mathematics teachers, five categories emerged, each comprising a qualitative aspect of teaching high school in an economically depressed area of the deep South: society, race, students, families, and schools. Each of these categories is discussed and explicated using exemplars from the interviews to show how each category emerged from the data. In addition, the relationships among these categories, which form a destructive cycle of poverty, low expectations, …

Do Smaller Schools Really Reduce The “Power Rating” Of Poverty?, Theodore Coladarci

The Rural Educator

The percentage of variance in student achievement that is explained by student SES—“poverty’s power rating,” as some call it—tends to be less among smaller schools than among larger schools. Smaller schools, we are told, are able to somehow disrupt the association between SES and student achievement. Using eighth-grade data for 215 public schools in Maine, I explored the hypothesis that this finding is in part a statistical artifact of the lower reliability of school-aggregated student achievement in smaller schools. This hypothesis was supported for mathematics achievement but seemingly not for reading achievement. Implications are discussed.

Faces Of Social Work In South Africa: A Twenty:First Century Perspective, Dorothy L. Graff

African Social Science Review

This qualitative mini-ethnographic study explores the current issues facing the profession of social work in South Africa after the first fully democratic elections in ten years ended the apartheid era. It employed interviews with social work educators and practitioners, politicians, and other professionals; personal observations of diverse settings; conversations with citizens including blacks, whites and coloreds; and meetings with experts attending an international conference on African policy planning. Social work educators and practitioners generally agreed that the two major social problems currently facing South Africa are poverty and violence. Poverty-related issues include homelessness, substandard and dangerous housing, substance abuse, unemployment …

Searching For Social Capital In U.S. Microenterprise Development Programs, Nancy C. Jurik, Gray Cavender, Julie Cozogill

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper focuses on the claims and efforts of U.S. microenterprise development programs (MDPs) to build social capital among poor and low income entrepreneurs. MDPs offer business training and lending services to individuals operating very small businesses (with five or fewer employees and less than $20,000 in start-up capital). Advocates suggest that MDPs help promote economic development by building social capital defined as networks among small entrepreneurs and between entrepreneurs and their larger community. We begin our paper with a short review of the varied definitions and claims about the role of social capital in promoting civic and economic empowerment. …

Dependency By Law: Poverty, Identity, And Welfare Privatization, Frank Munger

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Privatization of welfare reflects the political pressure to limit public responsibility for protection of social citizenship. Recent welfare reforms incorporate three classic market-like privatization mechanisms--contracting out services forcing allocation of a limited pool of benefits, and deregulation. Deregulation entails strategic diversion and disqualification of large numbers of would-be applicants who are left without alternatives to the labor market. In this article I discuss an empirical study of the effects of deregulation of welfare on the self-perceptions of recipients. Interviews with recipients and with low-wage health care workers, former recipients, show that, criticisms of welfare notwithstanding, they have embraced welfare reform's …

Responding To The Needs Of At-Risk Students In Poverty, Sueanne E. Mckinney, Charlene Flenner, Wendy Frazier, Lyndon Abrams

Essays in Education

A major challenge in the educational system today is improving the quality of instruction for urban students. Concentrated poverty, family instability, and early exposure to violence are but a few hardships typical of growing up in an urban environment. From an early age urban children are confronted with a series of obstacles in their attempts to meet academic, personal, and social success. Urban teachers need to be conscious of and understand the ecology of the environment that has a profound influence and impact on the urban child’s success in school. Additionally, urban teachers must respond to the needs of their …

Katrina, The Constitution, And The Legal Question Doctrine, Robin West

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The article argues that the non-existence of welfare rights in American Constitutional law, and the non-existence of a widely shared sense of moral obligation to attend to poverty through the use of law, cannot be explained by reference to the Constitutional text or history. Rather, it is a function of the over-identification of ordinary morality with Constitutionalism, of the Constitution with law, and of law, with adjudicative law—what the article calls "the legal question doctrine." As courts cannot, will not, and possibly should not enforce "welfare rights," as a matter of adjudicated Constitutional law, so, we conclude, neither the Constitution, …

Poverty, Liz Burns

The Prairie Light Review

No abstract provided.

Overcoming Poverty: Difficult Yet Possible, Laura Dubberke

ESSAI

No abstract provided.

Social Assistance And The Challenges Of Poverty And Inequality In Azerbaijan, A Low-Income Country In Transition, Nazim N. Habibov, Lida Fan

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Although low-income countries in transition are facing the challenges of poverty and inequality, evidence on the performance of safety nets in these countries is scarce. This article uses micro-file data from a nationally representative household budget survey to analyze the existing social assistance programs in Azerbaijan, a low income country in transition, from the perspectives of poverty and inequality reduction. The empirical evidence presented in this paper indicates that the poverty and inequality reduction effectiveness of social assistance programs is inadequate. First, the benefits are very modest and the poor receive only a small proportion of them. Second, some programs …

The Effect Of Parental Work History And Public Assistance Use On The Transition To Adulthood, Stephanie Cosner Berzin, Allison C. De Marco, Terry V. Shaw, George J. Unick, Sean R. Hogan

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

No abstract provided.

The Earned Income Tax Credit: A Study Of Eligible Participants Vs. Non-Participants, Richard K. Caputo

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study (N = 1,504) showed that about half the EITC eligible tax filers in 2001 did not file EITC tax returns and that differences between EITC tax filers and non-EITC tax filers varied by birth place, Food Stamp program participation, marital status, race, residence, sex, socioeconomic history, and worker classification. Findings suggested that the EITC is well targeted in the sense that economically marginalized groups are likely to participate and that increased outreach efforts are also needed to ensure greater participation among tax filers eligible for the EITC but who …

The Severely-Distressed African American Family In The Crack Era: Empowerment Is Not Enough, Eloise Dunlap, Andrew Golub, Bruce D. Johnson

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Numerous African American families have struggled for generations with persistent poverty, especially in the inner city. These conditions were further strained during the 1980s and 1990s by the widespread use of crack cocaine. For many, crack use became an obsession, dominated their lives, and superseded family responsibilities. This behavior placed additional pressure on already stressed kin support networks. This paper explores the processes prevailing in two households during this period. In the 2000s, children born to members of the Crack Generation are avoiding use of crack but face major deficits from their difficult childhoods. This presents both challenges and opportunities. …

From "Poor" To "Not Poor": Improved Understandings And The Advantage Of The Qualitative Approach, Eleanor Wint, Christine Frank

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Re-analysis of qualitative data generated in six Country Poverty Assessments in the Caribbean, suggests that traditional ways of seeing the poor might well lead to unfair categorisation of a people who are unwilling to be seen as living in poverty. Use of qualitative data software was able to bring out new understandings of the conceptual difference between being poor and living in poverty. Wint and Frank suggest that this is a distinction which those responsible for designing and implementing poverty intervention strategies would be wise to bear in mind as it would allow for creative and timely use of community-based …

Children's Voice And Justice: Lawyering For Children In The Twenty-First Century, Annette R. Appell

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

To Protect And Defend: Assigning Parental Rights When Parents Are In Poverty, Karen Czapanskiy

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Maternal Welfare Receipt On Children’S Development, Nikolay O. Doskov

Gettysburg Economic Review

Over the past 25 years, welfare and other public policies for families living below the poverty line have developed a primary objective of promoting parents’ self-sufficiency. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), passed in 1996, was a milestone in this effort, limiting the number of years that families can receive federal cash welfare assistance and requiring most of them to participate in work-related activities to be eligible for such assistance. This new emphasis on work was one of the main reasons for the dramatic decline in welfare dependency during the late 1990s. The new legislation, however, also …

Imagine A World Without Hunger: The Hurdles Of Global Justice, Muna Ndulo

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Charles Dickens’ Hard Times And The Academic Health Center: A Tale Of The Urban Working Poor And The Violation Of A Covert Covenant, An American Perspective, Thomas J. Papadimos M.D., M.P.H.

Journal of Health Ethics

Charles Dickens’ novel “Hard Times” focuses on the struggles of urban workers in 19th century England. The situations of workers in 21st century America are not dissimilar thus making Dickens’ commentary and characters applicable to the contemporary socioeconomic scene. The number of uninsured or underinsured poor in America is rising. AHCs must go beyond their traditional mission of patient care, education and research and embrace the local neighborhoods they serve. The urban location, technical expertise, and educational mission of many AHCs make them ideally suited to assist urban populations that are at great health risk. Many Academic Health Centers (AHCs) …

Community Economic Development Under Protest, Ngai Pindell

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Land Use And Housing Policies To Reduce Concentrated Poverty And Racial Segregation, Myron Orfield

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article recommends that land use and housing policies be marshaled to reduce residential racial segregation and concentrated poverty. It argues secondly, that state legislatures must adopt a coordinated policy approach. This Article uses Oregon's comprehensive land use legislation as a paradigmatic example of policies that effectively promote affordable housing and decrease urban sprawl. Finally, the article discusses nine policies that the author believes are necessary to promote stable metropolitan living patterns.