Child welfare workers’ constructions and causal explanations of poverty

Studying the perceptions of the causes of poverty is warranted because individual perceptions shape behavior toward poor people and actions related to poverty. Prior studies relying heavily on survey methodology fail to capture deeper and fuller meanings participants apply to poverty. This study explores how child welfare workers understand poverty by examining their definitions of, and what they see as causal explanations of, poverty. Individual interviews were conducted with 30 child welfare workers throughout a Midwestern state. Analysis indicated that workers all defined poverty as ‘not getting basic needs met,’ corresponding to the underlying assumptions of absolute poverty measures. Workers simultaneously augmented these definitions using other poverty constructions, namely the federal guidelines and more complex views – conceptually in line with relative poverty measures – that account for factors outside income or consumption. Workers’ causal explanations of poverty were multifaceted. Causal explanations included structural/systemic, individual, family/generational, and luck, with the first three being most prominent. These findings have implications for practice and training in the child welfare system as it relates to poverty.     

Change Makers? Women's Microenterprises in a Bolivian City

If entrepreneurs are society's innovators, what is the role of businesspeople in poor countries — particularly, the ‘micro’ businesspeople that make up the majority? What hope for decreasing poverty and improving livelihoods do microbusinesses offer? In particular, what is the role of women microentrepreneurs, whose incomes have been understood to contribute a great deal to the well‐being of poor households? This paper is based on case studies collected in the late 1990s in Sucre, Bolivia, a context in which many women are the owners of independent microenterprises. Women in Sucre control a range of microenterprises in the commerce, production and service sectors and are recognized as businesspeople by their spouses, families and people in their community. Under such conditions of ‘empowered’ business ownership, what is the potential of these businesses to decrease poverty? The study explores the business experiences of women microentrepreneurs, their priorities, entrepreneurial abilities and the obstacles they face. It suggests the kinds of business activities which women in Sucre are most likely to undertake and the income levels which these activities generally attract. Finally, it indicates that, while women in Sucre can control resources and take advantage of opportunities as businesswomen, other constraints mean that most women's businesses have only a limited ability to decrease poverty. ‘Microenterprise development’ alone is insufficient to address the complex relationships affecting how these women and their households access resources.     

相对贫困的理论与政策聚焦 ——兼论建立我国相对贫困的治理体系

贫困一直是世界各国首要解决的社会问题。本文基于我国全面进入小康社会,需要建立解决相对贫困长效机制这一战略转换背景,从相对贫困与绝对贫困关系入手,围绕相对贫困内涵的争论,聚焦我国相对贫困的表现形式,并基于我国国情,提出建立相对贫困治理体系的建议。在机制上,充分发挥基本公共服务的作用,建立相对贫困人口发展的基础性机制;形成"政府主导、社会参与、市场促进"的贫困治理的整体性机制;建立干预代际贫困传递的阻断性机制。在具体措施上,围绕低收入家庭,要建立生活负担减免制度;健全以生产帮扶和就业帮扶为主的专项援助制度;按需救助,对低收入户开展"救助会诊";建立相对贫困家庭陪伴式服务制度。     

Poverty talk: how people experiencing poverty deny their poverty and why they blame ‘the poor’

Drawing on life history interviews with sixty men and women in north‐east England who were caught up in ‘the low‐pay, no‐pay cycle’, this article describes how people living in poverty talk about poverty – in respect of themselves and others. Paradoxically, interviewees subscribed to a powerful set of ideas that denied poverty and morally condemned ‘the poor’. These findings are theorized in four ways: first, informants deployed close points of comparison that diminished a sense of relative poverty and deprivation; second, dissociation from ‘the poor’ reflects long‐running stigma and shame but is given extra force by current forms of ‘scroungerphobia’; third, discourses of the ‘undeserving poor’ articulate with a more general contemporary prejudice against the working class, which fuels the impetus to dissociate from ‘the poor’ (and to disidentify with the working class); and fourth, the hegemonic orthodoxy that blames ‘the poor’ for their poverty can more easily dominate in contexts where more solidaristic forms of working‐class life are in decline.     

Social exclusion or poverty individualisation? An empirical test of two recent and competing poverty theories

In recent years, two new theoretical perspectives on poverty in modern welfare societies have emerged: the perspective of ‘cumulative disadvantage’ and poverty individualisation. Both perspectives challenge traditional class-based poverty definitions. This article notes certain limitations that pertain to the relatively few empirical tests that have been performed to support these theories. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the results obtained depend largely on the type of poverty definition applied (income or deprivation), the actual data used (national or comparative) and the extent to which these data represent an observation period that is long enough to provide a reliable basis for testing the theories in question. The article concludes that because only few Danes experience long-term poverty and social exclusion, the combination of class and individual biography is important. In other words, structural conditions and, to a lesser degree, group risks drive individuals to the social margin.     

Understanding the link between poverty and food insecurity among children: Does the definition of poverty matter?

This paper examines the association between poverty and food insecurity among children, using two different definitions of poverty – the official poverty measure (OPM) and the new supplemental poverty measure (SPM) of the Census Bureau, which is based on a more inclusive definition of family resources and needs. Our analysis is based on data from the 2001–2011 Current Population Survey and shows that food insecurity and very low food security among children decline as income-to-needs ratio increases. The point estimates show that the associations are stronger as measured by the new supplemental measure of income-to-needs ratio than when estimated through the official measure. Statistical tests reject the hypothesis that poor households' odds of experiencing low food security are the same whether the SPM or OPM measure is used; but the tests do not reject the hypothesis when very low food security is the outcome.     

Poverty and disabled households in the People’s Republic of China: experiences with a new rural health insurance scheme

This article discusses what in international literature has commonly been termed the ‘vicious circle’ of poverty and disability. Our aim is to shed light on recent policies that attempt to break the vicious circle in rural areas in the People’s Republic of China. Drawing on data produced from fieldwork conducted in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China, our approach is to explore experiences that households with people with disabilities have had with a newly implemented rural health insurance reform. The introduction of this reform is significant as lack of insurance and high healthcare expenses are currently perceived as crucial to causing poverty in rural China. We show that people with disabilities have been able to access this new insurance. At the same time, as currently practised, the new insurance does not prevent poor households from sinking deeper into poverty when using healthcare services as healthcare expenses increase.     

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.     

Poverty,exclusion and child protection practice: the contribution of ‘the politics of recognition&respect’

The affective dimensions of poverty, including the impact of wider policy discourses and services that ‘other’ and shame people in poverty, are increasingly recognized. In response, Lister [(2013). Power, not Pity: Poverty and Human Rights. Ethics and Social Welfare, 7(2), 109–123] advocates for ‘a politics of recognition&respect’ that centralizes the voices, participation and lived experiences of those who live in poverty. This paper considers how applying Lister’s theory could improve child protection (CP) social work in England, from a human rights and social justice perspective. The paper draws on findings from an ATD Fourth World participatory research project aimed at updating the course content for a pre-existing social worker training module on poverty awareness. The project brings together families with experience of poverty and CP interventions, social work practitioners and academics.     

Exploring the relationship between poverty,childhood adversity and child abuse from the perspective of adulthood

A recent Australian study of people experiencing poverty, involving in‐depth interviews with 20 participants, suggests that a complex process leading to poverty in adult life can stem from abusive and adverse experiences in childhood. It is considered that these experiences of abuse and adversity may begin a process of ‘negative chain effects’ (Rutter, 2000) resulting in a pathway into poverty caused by ‘accumulated adversity’ (Seth‐Purdie, 2000). The development and maintenance of human capital, defined as the sum of a person's physical, psychological and economic capabilities, are strongly influenced by the extent of adversity experienced over a person's life course, particularly experiences of adversity in early childhood (Seth‐Purdie, 2000). In this paper, the experiences of childhood abuse and adversity reported by the interviewees will be outlined and discussed in the light of theory and research related to development during childhood and adolescence. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessment of multidimensional poverty and effectiveness of microfinance-driven government and NGO projects in the rural Bangladesh

This paper has developed a multidimensional model usable in assessing economic, social, political and cultural dimensions of poverty by utilizing primary data collected from 78 villages in Bangladesh using a participatory approach. Employing the developed model, a comparative analysis has been performed between microfinance-driven government (GO) and NGO (non-government organization) projects to explore their relative effectiveness in enhancing wellbeing of the poor in rural Bangladesh. It is observed that GO agencies are more effective in enhancing ‘economic wellbeing’ of the poor, whereas NGOs are contributing more in the ‘social’ aspects of wellbeing. Findings also revealed that, as whole, GO agencies perform 42% better than NGOs in improving living standards of the rural poor which contradicts with the existing literature of poverty reduction projects in developing countries.     

Politics by numbers: poverty reduction discourse,contestations and regime legitimacy in Ethiopia

There are contradictory statistics about the number of poor people and changes in number of poor people in Ethiopia with statistics ranging from 26 to 86% of the total population in 2013. This paper analyzed how such contradictory statistics feed into national politics focusing on who uses which statistics and based on what justifications of authoritativeness. Drawing from data collected from print newspapers, blogs, websites, published articles, party publications, and interviews with four key informants and combining an actor’s centered discourse analysis (ACDA) with Van Dick’s (1997) approach of identifying and analyzing political discourses, the paper deconstructed the poverty statistics debate in Ethiopia to understand the basic contestations. Synthesis of the data shows that poverty numbers are being used as tools for, and manifestations of, ongoing power struggles in Ethiopia whereby different actors selectively use poverty statistics that promote their political agenda. While doing so, the underlying rationale of actors for choosing one statistics over another was not based on the merit of their preferred set of statistics over the others but on the suitability of the data for their political purpose. As such, the government disregards statistics except its own which portray rapid poverty decline in the country while opposition groups actively use and promote statistics coming from international organizations that depict increasing poverty or a slow rate of reduction of poverty. The paper argues that the underlying cause of such politicization of numbers is linked with the developmental statism ideology of the ruling party in Ethiopia and how it tries to justify its rule in Ethiopia – claiming that it is reducing poverty and bringing development in Ethiopia and therefore should be allowed to continue in power. Therefore, in debating poverty numbers what is being debated is not just the statistics but the legitimacy of the government, hence politics by numbers.     

Theories of Global Poverty

ABSTRACT

In September 2000, participants in the United Nations Millennium Summit made a commitment to alleviating global poverty and inequality through the Millennium Development goals. This historical pledge has raised public and academic awareness of the issue of global poverty. In light of this interest, this literature review seeks to clarify the issues surrounding global poverty by focusing on the developed world and the developing world. Given the substantial amount of interdisciplinary research on global poverty, it can be organized into at least four areas: poverty definitions, units of measurement, theories concerning resources, and findings on effective interventions. It is clear that context influences these four areas and the resulting theories relate to: (1) inclusion, exclusion, and access; (2) individual rights and responsibilities versus community focus; (3) human capital theories, structural poverty, and resource inequality; and (4) theories of welfare versus theories of development. This analysis of these four theoretical domains concludes with a conceptual framework for understanding of global poverty and the influence of the social environment on human behavior.     

Low-income young people's problematic relationship with individualised policy in England

There is much debate within youth studies regarding whether or not, or to what extent, young people subjectively experience individualised life-pathways. This article suggests that alongside these debates, it might be fruitful to also explore if young people are being institutionally individualised ‘from above’. Using the current UK Government's child poverty policy as a case study, it explores the extent to which this policy individualises low-income young people, arguing that it strongly pushes them towards the project of self-making and choice-biographies. This is regardless of whether or not they subjectively see themselves as self-makers, or whether or not they are equipped for the task. Working with 38 young people around England, who were some of targets of this policy, this article then goes on to document how this individualisation ‘from above’ was actively rejected. Given the opportunity to write their own, ideal child poverty policy, created as part of this research, these young people instead underscored the importance of structural inequalities in shaping the problems of poverty as they saw them. Their policy highlighted a desire for collective, universalistic interventions to correct for these inequalities, rather than individualised solutions imposed ‘from above’.     

A Feminist Moral-Political Economy of Uneven Reform in Austerity Britain: Fostering Financial and Parental Literacy

Abstract

This article draws on two empirical case studies to draw out the way in which the causes of poverty in austere times in the UK are inverted, from their socio-economic causes to making the poor themselves responsible for their misery but also responsibilising them for fighting their way out of poverty. We particularly focus on how austerity policy in the UK has involved a return of moral language of the ‘undeserving poor’. We highlight the way in which this ‘moral-political economy’ has gendered effects, targeting single-mothers and their children and families, through the lens of ‘literacy’. The first case study show how promoting ‘financial literacy’ is seen to solve indebtedness of the poor and the second case study highlights how ‘parental literacy’ is employed to turn around ‘troubled families’. Indeed, these two studies demonstrate how the morality of austerity is shaped through deeply gendered practices of the everyday in which women’s morality is what ultimately needs reforming.     

Beneficiaries’ aspirations to permanent employment within the South African Working for Water Programme

The South African Working for Water (WfW) programme is a short-term public works programme (PWP) focused on clearing invasive alien plants, while training and empowering the marginalised poor to find employment. Furthermore, it aims to develop independent, entrepreneurial contractors who should ‘exit’ from the programme into the broader labour market. However, evidence indicates that many beneficiaries have become financially dependent on this employment, and find it difficult to search for alternatives. Understanding the reasons for this dependence from the perspective of the beneficiaries of this PWP is crucial to align such projects to the actual needs of the beneficiaries, but these have not yet been considered from a sociological perspective. This article reports on data collected, through face-to-face interviews, on WfW beneficiaries’ aspirations to permanent employment in four projects in the Winelands and Overberg districts of the Western Cape. It presents the novel finding that the social structures within projects themselves seem to create a need to remain in the WfW programme. In addition, a misalignment between these projects’ implementation and beneficiaries’ aspirations to financial stability (associated with permanent employment in WfW) is highlighted. The authors argue that WfW should respond to these aspirations, rather than pursue the ostensibly unrealistic aim of creating independent entrepreneurs. Finally, the implications of these findings for PWPs globally, and their concerns regarding the inadvertent creation of beneficiary dependence, are outlined.     

Urban Poverty,Ethnicity, and Personality Development

There are multiple factors which contribute to the development of the individual’s personality. Many of these factors have been amply discussed in traditional theories of personality Jonnation. An area that has been neglected in these discussions has been the role that poverty and ethnic and cultural factors may have in this regard. This paper offers a discussion of these issues with special emphasis on cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors which tend to characterize the lives of Latino and Black individuals. Recommendations are made for a re-evaluation of the traditional theories of personality when applied to poor and minority individuals.     

Displacement,integration and identity in the postcolonial world

Defining the relationship between displaced populations and the nation state is a fraught historical process. The Partition of India in 1947 provides a compelling example, yet markedly little attention has been paid to the refugee communities produced. Using the case of the displaced ‘Urdu-speaking minority’ in Bangladesh, this article considers what contemporary discourses of identity and integration reveal about the nature and boundaries of the nation state. It reveals that the language of ‘integration’ is embedded in colonial narratives of ‘population’ versus ‘people-nation’ which structure exclusion not only through language and ethnicity, but poverty and social space. It also shows how colonial and postcolonial registers transect and overlap as colonial constructions of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ fold into religious discourses of ‘pollution’ and ‘purity’. The voices of minorities navigating claims to belonging through these discourses shed light on a ‘nation-in-formation’: the shifting landscape of national belonging and the complicated accommodations required.     

A New Scale of Poverty: How the Officially Recorded Poor People in Turkey Perceive Themselves

Governments adopt policies to prevent and address the socioeconomic problem of poverty. This article examines how officially recorded poor people perceive themselves and the causes of their poverty. It is based on a sample of 531 officially recorded poor people living in the Turkish province of Çankiri. A questionnaire was administered comprising 69 characteristics of poverty. The findings suggest that there are four main causal explanations for poverty attributions: fatalism, discrimination, moral deficiencies and personal deficiencies. The measure developed for this research can be tested and applied to different cultural groups with a high level of validity and reliability.