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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Notes On Poverty Traps And Appalachia, Steven Durlauf
Notes On Poverty Traps And Appalachia, Steven Durlauf
University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series
In these notes, I provide some general ideas on how to conceptualize poverty traps and speculate on their applicability to understanding Appalachian poverty. My goal is to stimulate thinking on Appalachia that exploits contemporary perspectives in economics on the sources of persistent poverty and inequality. To do this, I focus on both the theory of poverty traps as well as issues in the econometric assessment of their empirical salience.
Family Change And Poverty In Appalachia, Daniel Lichter, Lisa Cimbulak
Family Change And Poverty In Appalachia, Daniel Lichter, Lisa Cimbulak
University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series
The current economic and political climate provides a vivid contrast with the circumstances of the 1990s, when the passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) ushered in welfare reform during a period of unprecedented economic expansion and job growth (Blank 2002; Ziliak 2009). This legislation sought to “end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage.” Among PRWORA’s goals were to reduce out-of-wedlock births and encourage the formation of two-parent families. For most states, much of the initial emphasis on self-sufficiency was placed on “work first” programs (i.e., …