How parents decide to participate and save in their children's asset-building accounts: Implications for practice, policy, and theory

Asset-based social welfare programs focus on helping low to moderate income citizens accumulate wealth in the form of home ownership, savings, small businesses, and higher education. Individual development accounts, savings accounts in which account holders' deposits are matched, are a vehicle often used in these programs. In a national demonstration of children's savings accounts (individual development accounts for children) parents participated in focus groups to discuss how they decided to enroll in this asset-building program, how they decided to open accounts for their children, and how they saved in these accounts. Findings from this study have implications for assetbuilding policy and practice, and institutional theories of saving.     

Political Science Perspectives on Poverty

ABSTRACT

The social science discipline of political science focuses on the study of political systems and political behavior. While political science has not developed a comprehensive theory of poverty, this article reviews political science perspectives related to the causes of poverty (culture of poverty and neo-Marxist theories of class), the role of government in addressing poverty (theories of distributive justice and public support for antipoverty policies), and political participation. The article concludes with recommendations for future research and implications for Human Behavior and the Social Environment curriculum.     

Age Differences in Perceptions of Rich and Poor People: Is It Skill or Luck?

To gain new perspective on the development of understandings and perceptions of income inequality, this study compared the reactions of six, eight, and 10‐year‐olds to a rich man and a poor man and the winners and losers of a contest of skill and a game of chance. Age differences in attributions for outcomes reflected a strengthening with age of the skill–luck distinction and of equity thinking about wealth. Although men with good outcomes were generally perceived more positively than men with bad outcomes, and likeability was affected only by outcome, 10‐year‐olds differentiated most sharply among different types of ‘winners’ or ‘losers’, viewing the rich and poor men as more like the winner and loser of a contest of skill than like the winner and loser of a game of chance. Overall, the findings suggest that differential evaluation of rich and poor people may begin as affective tagging based on good or bad life outcomes and later be associated with justifications grounded in an equity perspective on income inequality that emphasizes the role of personal qualities such as ability in wealth accumulation.     

Net effects of poverty on welfare use and dependency among children by family immigration and citizenship statuses

The fact that immigrant families used welfare at a disproportionately high level called for national welfare and immigration reforms in the mid-1990s. This study examined the net effects of poverty on welfare use and dependency among U.S.-born children by family immigration and citizenship statuses in pre- and post-welfare reform years. The analyses found that children in poor immigrant families were less likely to use welfare than children in poor native-born families in 1995, 2000, and 2005. In 2010, however, children in poor immigrant families and poor native-born families had similar likelihoods of welfare use. Children in poor noncitizen families were in general less likely to be dependent on welfare than children in poor naturalized families. Although children in poor naturalized families had a lower likelihood of welfare dependency in a pre-welfare reform year, they had similar or higher likelihoods of dependency in post-reform years, compared to children in native-born families.     

Poverty, Social Exclusion and Social Policy in the Czech Republic

This article analyses the pattern of poverty and social exclusion in the Czech Republic and the impact of social policy on this pattern. The analysis is mostly based on data from the Czech Survey on Social Conditions of Households (2001; 27,000 respondents); Eurostat data provide a benchmark for making international comparisons. The poverty rate in the Czech Republic is among the lowest in Europe. On the other hand, material deprivation, as well as concentration of poverty within specific population groups, is high, with the unemployed facing the highest risk of poverty. Social policy measures in effect reinforce this pattern: while the benefit system is highly redistributive and effectively eliminates income poverty among households of employed persons and among pensioners, incomes of persons outside paid employment are protected less effectively. Labour market policy measures are insufficient in scope and inadequate in targeting groups which are facing the highest risk of labour market exclusion and poverty. We argue that although this practice is effective at present, it is not sustainable in the long term.     

关于巩固我国农村地区扶贫成果的若干思考

“九五”期间我国农村地区扶贫开发工作取得了历史性的伟大成就。但应看到 ,从脱贫到实现小康和更为富裕的目标 ,仍有相当长的奋斗历程 ,薄弱的经济基础、脆弱的生态环境、不良的人口状况是影响巩固扶贫成果的主要因素。为此 ,必须认定优化人口状况、持续经济增长和实现可持续发展是巩固扶贫成果的基本途径     

关于新疆生态移民的意义和形式的初步探索

本文分析以生态移民对消除贫困、保护生态环境、促进城市化趋势、发展旅游业事业的推进作用,对生态移 民安置的途径、方式方法进行了初步的探索,最后针对加快生态移民进程提出了一些建议。     

The Meaning of Globalization for Development Policy

The Secretary of State for International Development reviews the Government's development strategy. The core commitment is to help mobilize the international political will to meet the aims of the UN international poverty eradication strategy. This will require resource transfers in the form of aid as investment, if the poorest countries are to be enabled to develop more trade and become part of the global economy. Globalization increases wealth creation, yet there is a danger that some countries could become marginalized from the world economy. To avoid this, developing countries must become full participants on the global economic stage, shaping and influencing the global rules in line with their interests and needs. There are three key challenges at the top of the Government's agenda: (1) the mainstreaming of development issues in the formation of UK and EU policy, (2) encouragement and active support for the efforts of developing countries themselves to become active players on the world economic stage, (3) the building of partnerships to make this happen—with governments, with global economic institutions, with the business sector, with donors and with NGOs. Globalization is characterized by the pace of technological change, the emergence of a more sophisticated system of global economic rules—with the World Trade Organization now at centre stage alongside the IMF and the World Bank—and the increasingly important role of multinational companies. Responding to globalization is not an optional extra. The old models of development need to be rethought. The Department for International Development has a key role to play in this, by ensuring that policy-makers in the UK, within the EU and internationally take full account of development aspects from the outset.     

创新是四川藏区扶贫开发的新选择

在我国进入全面建设小康社会的新形势下,四川藏区如何持续推进扶贫开发工作,乃是当前四川省经济社会发展进程中急需研究和解决的一个重大问题。首先阐述四川藏区的地位及扶贫开发的历程,然后分析四川藏区扶贫开发工作的现状,并明确新阶段扶贫开发工作的模式选择,最后提出新阶段四川藏区扶贫开发工作应采取的对策措施。     

Uniform Convergence of the Non-Weighted Poverty Measures

We consider in this note the weak convergence, in the frame of the empirical processes theory, of the nonweighted poverty measures viewed as stochastic processes defined on some space of bounded functions and indexed by real numbers or monotone functions. The results include the asymptotic behavior of the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke process of poverty indices. We use them to follow up the poverty evolution in poor countries between two periods with appropriate curves.