Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Remarital Chances, Choices, And Economic Consequences: Issues Of Social And Personal Welfare, Kevin Shafer, Todd M. Jensen

Kevin Shafer

Many divorced women experience a significant decline in financial, social, physical, and psychological well-being following a divorce. Using data from the NLSY79 (n= 2,520) we compare welfare recipients, mothers, and impoverished women to less marginalized divorcees on remarriage chances. Furthermore, we look at the kinds of men these women marry by focusing on the employment and education of new spouses. Finally, we address how remarriage and spousal quality (as defined by education and employment) impact economic well-being after divorce. Our results show that remarriage has positive economic effects, but that is dependent upon spousal quality. However, such matches are rare …

Effects Of Native American Geographical Location And Marital Status On Poverty, Tess Collett, Gordon Limb, Kevin Shafer

Kevin Shafer

This study examined the association between geographic location (urban, rural, and tribal) and marital status on poverty among the Native American community. A sample of 5,110 Native Americans in the 2008-2010 American Community Survey were used for analyses. Results indicated that Native Americans were similar with the general population in their geographic location, marital status, and poverty. We found that the protective characteristics of marriage in the Native American community varied according to geographic location. We also discuss the impact this may have on the Native American community and what practitioners and policy makers should consider when working with the …

Longer-Run Effects Of Antipoverty Policies On Disadvantaged Neighborhoods, David Neumark, Brian J. Asquith, Brittany Bass

Brian Asquith

We estimate the longer-run effects of minimum wages, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and welfare on key economic indicators of economic self-sufficiency in disadvantaged neighborhoods. We find that the longer-run effects of the EITC are to increase employment and to reduce poverty and public assistance. We also find some evidence that higher welfare benefits had longer-run adverse effects, and quite robust evidence that tighter welfare time limits reduce poverty and public assistance in the longer run. The evidence on the long-run effects of the minimum wage on poverty and public assistance is not robust, with some evidence pointing to reductions …

Parental Involvement Among Low-Income Filipinos: A Phenomenological Inquiry, Aileen S. Garcia

Aileen Garcia

Parental involvement in children’s education is an integral component of young children’s academic achievement. In the Philippines, a developing country with high rates of poverty and input deficit in basic education, school dropout rates are high especially among the poor. Given that many children from disadvantaged backgrounds do not get enough support (PIDS, 2012) and many parents are not equipped with skills to support their children’s education, it is essential to investigate how Filipino parents can help and contribute to their children’s academic success. In response to the lack of parental involvement literature situated in the Philippine context, the present …

Renaissance Fair, Richey Piiparinen

Richey Piiparinen

As Cleveland moves forward as a city on the rise, we risk leaving too many behind. Creating solutions for greater equity may be our best chance at a sustainable future.

Wood County Project Connect 2016, Melissa Burek, Mamta Ojha, Megan Schnell

Melissa Burek

Self-Employment And Poverty In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

A key way for the world’s poor—nearly half of humanity—to escape poverty is to earn more for their labor. Most of the world’s poor people are self-employed, but because there are few opportunities in most developing countries for them to earn enough to escape poverty, they are working hard but working poor. Two key policy planks in the fight against poverty should be: raising the returns to self-employment and creating more opportunities to move from self-employment into higher paying wage employment.

Challenges And Policy Lessons For The Growth-Employment-Poverty Nexus In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Productivity growth and structural change are generally considered to be important determinants of economic growth. However recent research revealed that they do not necessarily lead to higher growth and employment rates. Recent studies, drawing on data from developing countries, showed that only the “right” kind of productivity growth resulted in higher employment rates. Enterprises in Africa and Latin America caught up in matters of technology; however, this process resulted in a substitution of employment by technology. The same is true for structural change; only the “right” kind of structural change caused more growth and employment. Whereas in Asia, labour shifted …

Aid, Growth And Jobs, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Various development objectives are worthy, but one objective merits special attention: reducing the scourge of absolute economic misery in the world. This study focuses on an important but relatively underemphasized approach to poverty reduction: helping the poor earn more in the labour market for the work they do, so that they can buy the goods and services they need to move up out of poverty. The core of the study is divided into three sections: defining the global poverty challenge and the world’s employment problem, presenting policy options for improving employment outcomes for the poor, and suggesting ways of choosing …

Frontline Worker Responses To Domestic Violence Disclosure In Public Welfare Offices, Taryn Lindhorst, Erin A. Casey, Marcia Meyers

Erin Casey

Although substantial numbers of women seeking Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) report domestic violence, few receive mandated services through the Family Violence Option (FVO). This study used transcripts ofinterviews between welfare caseworkers and their clients to identify and classify the responses made by workers to client disclosures of abuse and to assess the match or mismatch of these responses with FVO policy requirements. Only 22 of 782 client interviews involved the disclosure of abuse to the welfare caseworker. A typology of worker responses was created, from least to most engaged. This typology shows that only half of those who …

Education, Emily C. Hannum, Yu Xie

Emily C. Hannum

Structural Reinterpretation Of Poverty By Examining Working Poverty: Implications For Community And Policy Practice, Philip Young P. Hong, Stephen Wernet

Philip Hong

This exploratory research focused on the structural context of working poverty, thereby transcending its individual or behavioral aspects. Two major questions guided this study: (1) How are the working poor different compared to the working nonpoor? (2) How do structural conditions affect the chances of one being working poor? Central findings of the study were that four primary sets of factors—demographic, human capital, employment barriers, and labor market positions—contribute to an individual's likelihood of being among the working poor. The structural factors—employment barriers and labor market positions—significantly contributed to the effects of human capital and demographic variables. All four factors …

A Participatory Action Research Pilot Study Of Urban Health Disparities Using Rapid Assessment Response And Evaluation, David Brown, Agueda Hernández, Gilbert Saint-Jean, Siân Evans, Ida Tafari, Luther Brewster, Michel Celestin, Carlos Gómez-Estefan, Fernando Regalado, Siri Akal, Barry Nierenberg, Elaine Kauschinger, Robert Schwartz, J. Page

David C. Brown

Healthy People 2010 made it a priority to eliminate health disparities. We used a rapid assessment response and evaluation (RARE) to launch a program of participatory action research focused on health disparities in an urban, disadvantaged Black community serviced by a major south Florida health center. We formed partnerships with community members, identified local health disparities, and guided interventions targeting health disparities. We describe the RARE structure used to triangulate data sources and guide intervention plans as well as findings and conclusions drawn from scientific literature and epidemiological, historic, planning, clinical, and ethnographic data. Disenfranchisement and socioeconomic deprivation emerged as …

Poverty, Agency And Resistance In The Future Of International Law: An African Perspective, Obiora Chinedu Okafor

Obiora Chinedu Okafor

This article enquires into the likely posture of future international law with respect to African peoples. It does so by focusing on three of the most important issues that have defined, and are likely to continue to define, international law’s engagement with Africans. These are: the grinding poverty in which most Africans live, the question of agency in their historical search for dignity, and the extent to which these African peoples can effectively resist externally imposed frameworks and measures that have negative effects on their social, economic and political experience. International law’s future posture in these respects is considered through …

Changing Labor Market Conditions And Economic Development In Hong Kong, The Republic Of Korea, Singapore, And Taiwan, China, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

In the newly industrializing economies (NIEs) of Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan (China), the entire working population has benefited from labor market institutions. The East Asian NIEs attained and maintained generally full employment, improved their job mixes, raised real earnings, and lowered their rates of poverty. This article reaches two principal conclusions. First, labor market conditions continued to improve in all four economies in the 1980s at rates remarkably similar to their rates of aggregate economic growth. Second, labor market repression was not a major factor in the growth experiences of these economies in the 1980s. …

The Dynamics Of Poverty, Inequality And Economic Well-Being: African Economic Growth In Comparative Perspective, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Two hundred and fifty million Africans (about 45% of the population) are poor. In rural areas, where most Africans live, there is, alas, a 'poor majority'. Rural poverty rates range from 37% in Madagascar and 41% in Kenya to 88% in Zambia and 94% in Ghana (Table 1). It is hard to imagine an issue in development economics that is of greater importance to humankind than the effects of economic growth on poverty and economic well-being. Yet there is remarkably little consensus on this vitally important issue, as illustrated by the following two polar positions: New patterns of growth will …

Changes In Poverty And Inequality In Developing Countries, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

This paper presents new data on poverty, inequality, and growth in those developing countries of the world for which the requisite statistics are available. Economic growth is found generally but not always to reduce poverty. Growth, however, is found to have very little to do with income inequality. Thus the "economic laws" linking the rate of growth and the distribution of benefits receive only very tenuous empirical support here.

Income Distribution In Developing Economies: Conceptual, Data, And Policy Issues In Broad-Based Growth, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] The aim of economic development is to raise the standard of living of a country's people, especially its poor. Economic growth, particularly when broadly based, is a means to that end. 'Underdevelopment' can be defined as a state of severely constrained choices. When one is choosing from among an undesirable set of alternatives, the outcome will itself be undesirable. Standards of living will be low. If standards of living are to be improved, people must have a better set of alternatives from which to choose. 'Economic development' is the process by which the constraints on choices are relaxed. Based …

Exoticizing Poverty In Bizarre Foods America, Casey R. Kelly

Casey R. Kelly

No abstract provided.

Politically Feasible Pro-Poor Livestock Policies In Andhra Pradesh And Orissa States, India, Robin Turner

Robin L Turner

The livestock sector has significant potential for improving the livelihoods of landless people and small and marginal farmers, who comprise the majority of India’s rural poor. However, resource and institutional constraints prevent poor producers from realizing the full potential of the animals they possess. Developing effective pro-poor livestock policies requires consideration of the political context and attention to the specific characteristics of poor livestock producers.

Livestock Production And The Rural Poor In Andhra Pradesh And Orissa States, India, Robin L. Turner

Robin L Turner

This paper analyzes the political economy of the livestock sector in two Indian states, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. The aim is to identify politically feasible interventions that could have broad positive effects on poor rural livestock producers in these states. To that end, the paper assesses the relationship between land, livestock, and poverty, describes the organization of the sector, and analyzes the political and bureaucratic interests shaping livestock policy.

Economic Development Recommendations That Focus On The "Working Poor": Lessons From Waco, George Erickcek, Don Edgerly, Brian Pittelko, Claudette Robey, Bridget Timmeney, Jim Robey

George A. Erickcek

No abstract provided.

Designing Inclusion: Tools To Raise Low-End Pay And Employment In Private Enterprise By Edmund S. Phelps, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Subsidizing Increased Employment For The Urban Poor: What Labor Market Problems Might Justify It?, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Long-Run Implications Of Employment At Different Wage Rates For The Disadvantaged, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Moving Up Or Moving On: Who Advances In The Low-Wage Labor Market? By Fredrik Andersson, Harry J. Holzer, And Julia I. Lane, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Generating Jobs: How To Increase Demand For Less-Skilled Workers, Richard B. Freeman, And Peter Gottschalk, Eds., Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

Fighting Poverty With Labor Demand Policies, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Local Labor Demand On Individual Labor Market Outcomes For Different Demographic Groups And The Poor, Timothy J. Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

The contribution of this paper is to use panel data on individuals (specifically, data from the Panel Survey on Income Dynamics) to examine how local demand conditions affect the economic well-being of disadvantaged groups and the poor. Previous research on local labor demand conditions uses data from a single cross-section of local economies, or a time-series of cross-sections of regions. With such data, estimated effects of local labor demand conditions on average labor market outcomes might be attributable to changes in local population composition, as we would expect local demand conditions to change in- and out-migration patterns. Because panel data …

The Distributional Effects Of Local Labor Demand And Industrial Mix: Estimates Using Individual Panel Data, Timothy Bartik

Timothy J. Bartik

No abstract provided.