Do The Poor Count

Author : Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 027105056X
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Do the Poor Count? written by Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin America’s flirtation with neoliberal economic restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s (the so-called Washington Consensus strategy) had the effect of increasing income inequality throughout the region. The aim of this economic policy was in part to create the conditions for stable democracy by ensuring efficient economic use of resources, both human and capital, but the widening gap between rich and poor threatened to undermine political stability. At the heart of the dilemma faced by these new democracies is the question of accountability: Are all citizens equally capable of holding the government accountable if it does not represent their interests? In this book, Michelle Taylor-Robinson investigates both the formal institutions of democracy (such as electoral rules and the design of the legislative and executive branches) and informal institutions (such as the nomination procedures of political parties and patron-client relationships) to see what incentives legislators have to pay attention to the needs of poor people and thereby adequately represent their interests.

Author : Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271076127
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Do the Poor Count? written by Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin America’s flirtation with neoliberal economic restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s (the so-called Washington Consensus strategy) had the effect of increasing income inequality throughout the region. The aim of this economic policy was in part to create the conditions for stable democracy by ensuring efficient economic use of resources, both human and capital, but the widening gap between rich and poor threatened to undermine political stability. At the heart of the dilemma faced by these new democracies is the question of accountability: Are all citizens equally capable of holding the government accountable if it does not represent their interests? In this book, Michelle Taylor-Robinson investigates both the formal institutions of democracy (such as electoral rules and the design of the legislative and executive branches) and informal institutions (such as the nomination procedures of political parties and patron-client relationships) to see what incentives legislators have to pay attention to the needs of poor people and thereby adequately represent their interests.

Author : Barbara Ehrenreich
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
ISBN 13 : 1429926643
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Nickel and Dimed written by Barbara Ehrenreich and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling work of undercover reportage from our sharpest and most original social critic, with a new foreword by Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job—any job—can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity—a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. And now, in a new foreword, Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, explains why, twenty years on in America, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.

Author : Kenan Heise
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781936863334
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Book of the Poor written by Kenan Heise and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Collecting dozens of interviews conducted over 50 years to give voice to the 16 percent that live below the poverty line, journalist Kenan Heise ... addresses unemployment, prison, nutrition needs and hunger, the lives of impoverished children, panhandling, health-care struggles, the role of race in poverty, and Dumpster diving"--P. [4] of cover.

Author : Michael Sherraden
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351530224
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Can the Poor Save? written by Michael Sherraden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many policymakers argue that the best poverty policy not only provides cash to the poor for subsistence but also incentives and structures that encourage long-term social and economic improvement. As part of this, they make the case for Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), a new policy proposal designed to help the poor save and to build assets. This book explores IDAs to determine their effectiveness. IDAs are matched savings accounts targeted on low-income, low-wealth individuals. Savings in IDAs are used for home ownership, post-secondary education, small business development, and other purposes. Do IDAs work? If they do, for whom? And does how an IDA is designed determine savings outcomes? This volume is the first analysis of matched savings by the poor to use data from monthly bank statements. It comes at a critical time, as debate rages over the merits of individual social security accounts. IDAs also respond to policy that is becoming more asset based and less inclusive of the poor. The authors argue for the efficacy of IDAs to counter this tendency. They find that while savings outcomes vary among participants, no characteristics (such as low income or public assistance) preclude saving. They examine effects of IDA design (the match rate, savings targets, and the use of automatic transfer) on savings results and analyze factors that influence varying rates of saving and spending over time. They conclude that financial education and other support services, though costly, improve savings performance. To address the issue of cost they suggest a two-tier system of IDA design, one with broad access and simple services and the other with targeted access and intensive services. Can the Poor Save? offers a wealth of lessons to those interested in saving and asset accumulation among the poor. It not only breaks new ground in the scientific study of savings behavior, but also offers concrete, evidence-based recommendations to improve policies designed to encourage the poor to save and how to make such policies more inclusive.

Author : Linda Tirado
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0425277976
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Hand to Mouth written by Linda Tirado and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The real-life Nickel and Dimed—the author of the wildly popular “Poverty Thoughts” essay tells what it’s like to be working poor in America. ONE OF THE FIVE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS OF THE YEAR--Esquire “DEVASTATINGLY SMART AND FUNNY. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief attempt, as a semi-undercover journalist, to survive on low-wage retail and service jobs. TIRADO IS THE REAL THING.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, from the Foreword As the haves and have-nots grow more separate and unequal in America, the working poor don’t get heard from much. Now they have a voice—and it’s forthright, funny, and just a little bit furious. Here, Linda Tirado tells what it’s like, day after day, to work, eat, shop, raise kids, and keep a roof over your head without enough money. She also answers questions often asked about those who live on or near minimum wage: Why don’t they get better jobs? Why don’t they make better choices? Why do they smoke cigarettes and have ugly lawns? Why don’t they borrow from their parents? Enlightening and entertaining, Hand to Mouth opens up a new and much-needed dialogue between the people who just don’t have it and the people who just don’t get it.

Author : Kristina C. Miler
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108473504
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Poor Representation written by Kristina C. Miler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The poor are grossly underrepresented in Congress both overall and by individual legislators, even those who represent high-poverty districts.

Author : Abhijit V. Banerjee
Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1610391608
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Poor Economics written by Abhijit V. Banerjee and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics upend the most common assumptions about how economics works in this gripping and disruptive portrait of how poor people actually live. Why do the poor borrow to save? Why do they miss out on free life-saving immunizations, but pay for unnecessary drugs? In Poor Economics, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two award-winning MIT professors, answer these questions based on years of field research from around the world. Called "marvelous, rewarding" by the Wall Street Journal, the book offers a radical rethinking of the economics of poverty and an intimate view of life on 99 cents a day. Poor Economics shows that creating a world without poverty begins with understanding the daily decisions facing the poor.

Author : Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674044647
Total Pages : 460 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Off the Books written by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revelatory book, Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's Southside, to explore the desperate and remarkable ways in which a community survives. The result is a dramatic narrative of individuals at work, and a rich portrait of a community. But while excavating the efforts of men and women to generate a basic livelihood for themselves and their families, Off the Books offers a devastating critique of the entrenched poverty that we so often ignore in America, and reveals how the underground economy is an inevitable response to the ghetto's appalling isolation from the rest of the country.

Author : Erik S Reinert
Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1541762886
Total Pages : 426 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor written by Erik S Reinert and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A maverick economist explains how protectionism makes nations rich, free trade keeps them poor---and how rich countries make sure to keep it that way. Throughout history, some combination of government intervention, protectionism, and strategic investment has driven successful development everywhere from Renaissance Italy to the modern Far East. Yet despite the demonstrable success of this approach, development economists largely ignore it and insist instead on the importance of free trade. Somehow, the thing that made rich nations rich supposedly won't work on poor countries anymore. Leading heterodox economist Erik Reinert's invigorating history of economic development shows how Western economies were founded on protectionism and state activism and only later promoted free trade, when it worked to their advantage. In the tug-of-war between the gospel of government intervention and free-market purists, the issue is not that one is more correct, but that the winning nation tends to favor whatever benefits them most. As Western countries begin to sense that the rules of the game they set were rigged, Reinert's classic book gains new urgency. His unique and edifying approach to the history of economic development is critical reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and what to do next, especially now that we aren't so sure we'll be the winners anymore.