Children navigating rural poverty: Rural children's use of wild resources to counteract food insecurity in the Eastern Cape,South Africa

This paper analyzes the role of natural resources in the lives of rural children experiencing heightened vulnerability to poverty and the impact of HIV/AIDS, a subject that previously has been unexplored. The authors highlight wild-food use by rural children as a regular activity that supplements their domestic diets. Over the course of 18 months in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, the authors used a broad quantitative and qualitative methodology to explore the food acquisition and consumption patterns for 850 children. They found that the quality of children's domestic diets was, on average, 60% lower than the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) guidelines. This occurred in a population where 62% of the children surveyed were supplementing their diets with wild foods; and 30% with over half their diet supplemented in this way. Significantly, dietary diversity increased by 13% when wild food supplementation occurred. Another result was the commercialization of wild foods (observed among 47% of the children), wherein significantly more vulnerable children sold these foods. Considering the heightened nutritional and energy needs of children, combined with the impact of poverty and HIV/AIDS on household food access, wild foods represent the last freely attainable food sources available to them.     

Children with serious emotional disturbance: the impact of poverty and receipt of public assistance on behavior, functioning, and service use

The present study examines the associations between poverty status, receipt of public assistance, service use, and children's mental health. Using a sample of children with serious emotional disturbances, findings from logistic regressions indicated that although no significant associations were found between poverty status and emotional or behavioral problems, families living below the poverty threshold were more likely to receive fewer services, even after controlling for receipt of Medicaid or SSI. Significant associations were also found for child's age, race/ethnicity, caregiver education, Medicaid and TANF receipt, child and family mental-health-risk factors. Poor families were more likely to have older children, be non-white, have fewer years of education, receive public assistance, and have more family mental-health-risk factors, but less child mental-health-risk factors. While a higher percentage of nonpoor families received medication management and residential treatment services, more poor families received support services such as transportation and flexible funds. Implications for the findings are discussed.     

CHILD LABOR AND SCHOOLING RESPONSES TO ACCESS TO MICROCREDIT IN RURAL BANGLADESH

Microcredit has been shown to be effective in reducing poverty in many developing countries. However, less is known about its effect on human capital formation. In this article, we examine the impact of access to microcredit on children's education and child labor using a new and large data set from rural Bangladesh. The results show that household participation in a microcredit program may increase child labor and reduce school enrollment. The adverse effects are more pronounced for girls than boys. Younger children are more adversely affected than their older siblings and the children of poorer and less educated households are affected most adversely. Our findings remain robust to different specifications and methods, and when corrected for various sources of selection bias. (JEL H43, I21, J13, J24, L30, O12)     

The Changing Spatial Concentration of America's Rural Poor Population*

Abstract This paper documents changing patterns of concentrated poverty in nonmetro areas. Data from the Decennial U.S. Census Summary Files show that poverty rates—both overall and for children—declined more rapidly in nonmetro than metro counties in the 1990s. The 1990s also brought large reductions in the number of high‐poverty nonmetro counties and declines in the share of rural people, including rural poor people, who were living in them. This suggests that America's rural pockets of poverty may be “drying up” and that spatial inequality in nonmetro America declined over the 1990s, at least at the county level. On a less optimistic note, concentrated poverty among rural minorities remains exceptionally high. Roughly one‐half of all rural blacks and one‐third of rural Hispanics live in poor counties. Poor minorities are even more highly concentrated in poor areas. Rural children—especially rural minority children—have poverty rates well above national and nonmetro rates, the concentration of rural minority children is often extreme (i.e., over 80% lived in high‐poverty counties), and the number of nonmetro counties with high levels of persistent child poverty remains high (over 600 counties). Rural poor children may be more disadvantaged than ever, especially if measured by their lack of access to opportunities and divergence with children living elsewhere. Patterns of poverty among rural children—who often grow up to be poor adults— suggest that recent declines in concentrated rural poverty may be short‐lived.     

Context matters: The state of racial disparities in mental health services among youth reported to child welfare in 1999 and 2009

Upwards of 50% of youth reported to the child welfare system (CWS) do not receive mental health services, despite need. While children of color are less likely to receive services than Caucasians, the mechanisms through which disparities are sustained remain largely unknown. Data come from two nationally representative cohorts of youth who were referred to the CWS in 1999 and 2009. Results showed that while need for mental health services decreased, significant differences in the number of children who received services was not detected between cohorts. African American youth were less likely to receive services compared to their Caucasian counterparts, even after controlling for age, gender, type of maltreatment, and placement instability. However, after taking into account urbanicity, poverty, and the organizational-social context, the disparity between African American and Caucasian youth dissipated. Service disparities between Latino and Caucasian youth were not detected. The odds of service receipt were lower among youth nested within stressful organizational climates and urban (versus rural) counties, and the organizational-social context did not moderate the relationship between race and service receipt. Findings underscore the need to develop and implement strategies to increase access to services in urban counties and to promote an organizational climate conducive to reducing racial disparities.     

Children in poverty in germany: reflections on recent social work research

This project focuses on children growing up in impoverished life circumstances, originating from an increasing level of poverty in Germany. There are two perspectives in social work research on children living in poverty: first, current research on childhood recognises that children are social agents in their own practices of life; second, research on poverty draws attention to the issue of social inequality, and broaches the question of the structural constraints and limitations of daily life. We report on current German research on children living in poverty, and focus on the role of peer relationships in coping with discrimination. This research is substantiated with the results of our own research project. We find that children develop strategies to mitigate the effects of poverty. The family can also help by providing the child with an interpretation of their poverty, and through daily coping mechanisms. Additionally, children can gain support from their peers. However, bridging social capital and gaining access to other social milieus is seldom successful. We conclude with a discussion of strategies that point the way out of child poverty. Such an optimistic goal, however, would require an alliance of practice, research and policy in the field of social work.     

Symbiosis of Microcredit and Private Moneylending in Cambodia

Microcredit's potential for poverty reduction is a highly contested issue. In Cambodia, the dramatically increasing commercial microcredit coexists with widespread private moneylending. These two practices are rooted in different economic world views: neoliberalism on the one hand, and the traditional Khmer economic sociality permeated by patronage on the other. The ethnography shows that far from competing with each other, microcredit and private lending have adapted to form a symbiotic relationship, and much private lending is financed through microcredit. While microcredit is often beneficial to people living well above the poverty line, the widespread access to credit, through microloans as well as private lending, is threatening the livelihoods of the economically most vulnerable and precipitating their social, economic and spatial exclusion from their local communities. In contrast to the social and economic exclusion caused by land grabbing and forced evictions, which has received a fair amount of public attention, exclusion as a consequence of indebtedness has, for sociocultural reasons, remained much less visible.     

Access to Mental Health Services: The Struggle of Poverty Affected Urban Children of Color

It is estimated that, in the United States, one in ten children and adolescents suffer from illness severe enough to cause some level of psychosocial dysfunction. Urban children, and in particular low-income children of color, are at greater risk of developing mental health problems, and are less likely to receive effective child mental health services. Prompt and effective access to mental health services by urban children of color is a critical direct practice and social policy concern. This article provides an overview of significant barriers to mental health care experienced by poverty affected urban children of color and their families. It also addresses a broad range of practice and policy issues that need to be raised in order to ensure competent delivery of mental health services for children living in urban environments. The role of social work in assisting poor urban children of color to access and benefit from mental health services is stressed. Manny John González, D.S.W., is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service.     

Doing research with children and young people who do not use speech for communication

Despite emphasis in policy on participation of disabled children,¹ we still know relatively little about how to obtain the views of disabled children with significant communication impairment and their views are often overlooked in planning and service provision. This article describes how the views of children who do not use speech were accessed in research aiming to identify disabled children and young people's priorities regarding outcomes of social care and support services. The main challenge was to develop a method that was reliable, non‐threatening, enjoyable and relevant to individual children, as well as enabling children to think beyond their everyday life and express what they aspire to.     

Correlates of perceived effectiveness of the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative

A three-level growth-curve model was applied to estimate perceived impact growth trajectories, using multi-year data from project and school surveys on outcome and program implementation collected from 59 sites and approximately 1165 participating schools in the Safe Schools and Healthy Students Initiative. Primary interest is to determine whether and how project-level and school-level correlates affect schools’ perceptions of the Initiative's effectiveness over time when the effects of the pre-grant environmental conditions, grant operations, and near-term outcomes are considered. Coordination and service integration, comprehensive programs and activities for early childhood development, and change in school involvement were found to be significant predictors of school-perceived overall impact when the effect of poverty was considered. Partnership functioning, perceived importance of school resources, and school involvement were found to be significant predictors of school-perceived impact on substance use prevention when the effect of poverty was considered.     

The multifaceted nature of poverty and differential trajectories of health among children

The relationships between poverty and children’s health have been well documented, but the diverse and dynamic nature of poverty has not been thoroughly explored. Drawing on cumulative disadvantage and human capital theory, we examined to what extent the duration and depth of poverty, as well as the level of material hardship, affected changes in physical health among children over time. Data came from eight waves of the Korea Welfare Panel Study between 2006 and 2013. Using children who were under age 10 at baseline (N?=?1657, Observations?=?13,256), we conducted random coefficient regression in a multilevel growth curve framework to examine poverty group differences in intra-individual change in health status. Results showed that chronically poor children were most likely to have poor health. Children in households located far below the poverty line were most likely to be in poor health at baseline, while near-poor children’s health got significantly worse over time. Material hardship also had a significant impact on child health.     

How would cash transfers improve child welfare in Viet Nam?

This paper was aimed to estimate how cash transfer to children could help increase access to education and health services as well as to reduce their poverty. To pursue these objectives, we first applied fixed-effect regression models with a panel data from Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) in 2010 and 2012, and then used the predicted results to simulate how welfare indicators would have been changed if children were provided benefits at different levels. We found that cash transfers would have a positive effect on school enrolment and poverty. However, cash transfers would have no significant effects on both impatient admissions and outpatient visits as well as out-of-pocket spending on health care, but a significant effect on the probability of having health insurance. From these findings, we proposed some policy recommendations such as promoting cash transfer program for more vulnerable groups of children would provide opportunities for them to further reduce poverty and increase access to education and health. More importantly, the research emphasized that quality of services to be provided along with cash transfers should also be guaranteed, so as to make sure that the current benefits will be fully translated into socio-economic development of Viet Nam.     

School Meals and Food Poverty: Children’s Views,Parents’ Perspectives and the Role of School

This paper addresses the importance of school meals in balancing food budgets and diets among 45 low‐income families in Portugal. Drawing on interviews with both parents and children (aged 11–15 years) we found that children’s views on the quality of school meals affect their willingness to eat at school and heighten parental concerns with health, food and resources. For parents, school meals are crucial to ensure children’s dietary variety and balancing tight food budgets. Schools’ role in food poverty alleviation is also critically addressed, contributing to current and future sociological studies of children, school meals and food poverty.     

The Unnecessary Nudge: Education and Poverty Policy in a Cairo Slum

Drawing on data collected from 2008 to 2013 in a low‐income Cairo neighborhood, this article examines the impact of a poverty alleviation program, a conditional cash transfer (CCT ) that attempted to incentivize poor mothers, through a direct cash transfer, to send their children to school. The program met its goal. The mothers did send their children to school. I argue that only observing this outcome of school access, however, black‐boxes the causal pathway of how mothers sent their children to school in the Egyptian context, and how the program mattered. Public schools in Egypt are free on paper but expensive in practice due to an informal system of “private lesson” and “study group” fees imposed by teachers. Mothers had always managed this expense, using scarce gendered household resources, before, during, and after the program. Through ethnographic, interview, and survey data, this article shows that while the cash—transferred to the mothers and labeled for education—enabled the mothers to send their children to school, the program conditions were unnecessary. The mothers did not need to be nudged to send their children to school. This Egyptian case study has implications for the use of behavioral incentives and for the importance of qualitative methods to the study of policy impacts.     

Children and anti-poverty strategies

This paper discusses how far local authority anti-poverty strategies consider the impact of poverty on children. After outlining some findings on child poverty and linking these with current debates on children's rights, it examines a selection of anti-poverty strategies. Although examples of good practice are highlighted, the paper concludes that in general issues affecting children living in poverty are insufficiently addressed and that anti-poverty strategies should be refocused to take account of the needs and rights of children.     

Connected for Development? Theory and evidence about the impact of Internet technologies on poverty alleviation

Based on the assumption that increased access to internet services boosts economic growth and improves the well‐being of the poor, governments in both developed and emerging regions are heavily investing in internet connectivity projects. This article reviews the existing evidence as to the impact of internet technologies on various development dimensions, and articulates the empirical evidence into an analytical framework that seeks to identify the micro‐linkages between internet adoption and poverty alleviation. The review suggests that the development pay‐offs of internet technologies are ambiguous due to two interrelated effects. First, because effective appropriation requires a range of skills as well as complementary investment in human capital and organizational changes. This tends to favour well‐educated workers and firms with more innovative capacity and access to finance. Second, because the positive effects of internet dissemination on market co‐ordination and political institutions grow exponentially with adoption levels. As a result, while the evidence indicates that advanced economies are reaping significant benefits from internet investments, the returns for less advanced economies, and in particular for the fight against poverty in these regions, remain uncertain.     

More than just nickels and dimes: a cross-national analysis of working poverty in affluent democracies

Despite its centrality to contemporary inequality, working poverty is often popularly discussed but rarely studied by sociologists. Using the Luxembourg Income Study (2009), we analyze whether an individual is working poor across 18 affluent democracies circa 2000. We demonstrate that working poverty does not simply mirror overall poverty and that there is greater cross-national variation in working than overall poverty. We then examine four explanations for working poverty: demographic characteristics, economic performance, unified theory, and welfare generosity. We utilize Heckman probit models to jointly model the likelihood of employment and poverty among the employed. Our analyses provide the least support for the economic performance explanation. There is modest support for unified theory as unionization reduces working poverty in some models. However, most of these effects appear to be mediated by welfare generosity. More substantial evidence exists for the demographic characteristics and welfare generosity explanations. An individual's likelihood of being working poor can be explained by (a) a lack of multiple earners or other adults in one's household, low education, single motherhood, having children and youth; and (b) the generosity of the welfare state in which he or she resides. Also, welfare generosity does not undermine employment and reduces working poverty even among demographically vulnerable groups. Ultimately, we encourage a greater role for the welfare state in debates about working poverty.     

Understanding service provision and utilization for vulnerable youth: Evidence from multiple informants

Research has demonstrated that the ability of children to cope well with risk exposure can be partly attributed to the social ecology that surrounds them, including their access to resources. Few studies however have explored the interaction of services that many vulnerable children receive in relation to surrounding risks and available resources. This study reviews data of a paired sample of 166 Canadian multiple service using youth (at least using two of five public service systems) and a youth-nominated person most knowledgeable (PMK) focused on the contextual risk factors, service use variables, and pscychosocial outcomes of youth participants. Despite low to moderate correlations between youth and PMK (the person who is most knowledgeable about youth's lives) reports, findings showed that both PMKs and youth perceive service provision as a mediator between risk and pscychosocial outcomes. For youth however, better quality of service provision is key to improved developmental outcomes. Furthermore, the more risk factors youth face at home and at school, the less likely they are to perceive their services as helpful or appropriate to their needs. Youth data also reflects far more complex interactions between risks, service provision and outcomes than PMK data. Greater sensitivity is needed to both an adult and youth's perceptions of risk and related service needs if service access is to be provided optimally.     

Mothers’ ideals and experiences of raising children in inner and outer suburban Melbourne,Australia

Parents’ perceptions of their neighbourhoods are important for child health outcomes. This study compared views among mothers in inner versus outer suburbs of Melbourne, Australia using a mixed methods approach. Mothers of preschool-aged children were recruited via playgroups, mother’s groups and preschools and interviewed face-to-face regarding their local area as a good place to raise a family, with a second open-ended interview focussing on mothers’ ideals and experiences of raising children in their current location. Findings demonstrated that mothers had different ideals for, and experiences of, raising their children in their neighbourhoods. Inner suburban mothers valued a manageable work/family balance and access to public transport over the size of their homes. However, access to childcare, secondary schooling and heavy traffic were issues, with the latter two being reasons for moving from the municipality. In contrast, outer suburban mothers preferred a larger home in neighbourhoods that they perceived as low crime, over accessibility to work. Access to a car and activities for their children were also important. Findings suggest no ‘one size fits all’ in respect to what features mothers expect from a good place to raise a family, or how they experience these features. This has implications for service delivery and social planning of suburbs.