The Road to Poverty


Book Description

Kathleen Blee and Dwight Billings examine the social dynamics of persistently poor rural communities through the history of Clay County, an especially po or section of the Eastern Kentucky mountains in Appalachia. This book makes an important contribution to basic research on inequality pointing to the shortcomings of treating symptomatic problems of low income, while failing to address systemic ones at a time when American policymakers are struggling to design and implement effective programs to move people from welfare to work.




A Fork in the Road


Book Description

Make your dreams come true! A Fork in the Road is a handbook for a successful, satisfying life. This book will not just motivate and inspire you, but it gives you practical steps for growing in areas that are necessary for fulfillment and success. Using proven Biblical wisdom, it helps you understand the underlying thought processes and the mindset that produces growth. God wants each person to prosper so that we can all be contributors and producers in society. When we learn to enjoy enriching the lives of others, we will in turn be rewarded with a rich and satisfying life. The book covers practical areas like innovation, personal financial management, people skills, vision and goal setting. Each area is filled with practical advice and real life stories that illustrate the principles taught. FROM THE BACK COVER Have you ever wished your life was different? Do you dream of having a bigger purpose, a better job, or a more meaningful life? Or maybe you have a goal or a dream, but don't know how to make it happen. Just like there is a proven path to the top of a mountain, there is a proven way to win in life! Wishing, praying, believing, and expecting is good, but things will not happen unless you consistently and persistently keep working towards your goal. This book gives you the life lessons you were not taught in school and that the church did not tell you. You are at a fork in the road and have the power to choose poverty or prosperity! ABOUT THE AUTHOR Vidar Ligard has trained leaders and transformed people in East Africa since 1999. He has helped countless people grow into excellent leaders by teaching practical principles founded on the Word of God. Through Bible schools, seminars, character development, and coaching, Vidar's teaching is helping people come out of poverty, grow churches, build businesses, fight corruption, and mature leaders who reach thousands of people every day. Vidar and his wife, Cathrine, founded Safari Mission, a nonprofit mission organization based in Tulsa, OK. WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING "This teaching is empowering people" -Pastor Justus Kaloki "It's not only about spiritual matters. It's also about practical things. I was an overseer of less than 20 churches and today the churches have grown to over 100. The teaching is very practical, and it is helping people!" -Rev Titus Munuve "With this kind of teaching, people will understand what they are supposed to do" -Peter Kathuro




The American Way of Poverty


Book Description

Abramsky shows how poverty - a massive political scandal - is dramatically changing in the wake of the Great Recession.




From Poverty to Power


Book Description

Offers a look at the causes and effects of poverty and inequality, as well as the possible solutions. This title features research, human stories, statistics, and compelling arguments. It discusses about the world we live in and how we can make it a better place.




A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty


Book Description

The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.




The Other America


Book Description

Examines the economic underworld of migrant farm workers, the aged, minority groups, and other economically underprivileged groups.




How China Escaped the Poverty Trap


Book Description

WINNER OF THE 2017 PETER KATZENSTEIN BOOK PRIZE "BEST OF BOOKS IN 2017" BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS WINNER OF THE 2018 VIVIAN ZELIZER PRIZE BEST BOOK AWARD IN ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY "How China Escaped the Poverty Trap truly offers game-changing ideas for the analysis and implementation of socio-economic development and should have a major impact across many social sciences." ― Zelizer Best Book in Economic Sociology Prize Committee Acclaimed as "game changing" and "field shifting," How China Escaped the Poverty Trap advances a new paradigm in the political economy of development and sheds new light on China's rise. How can poor and weak societies escape poverty traps? Political economists have traditionally offered three answers: "stimulate growth first," "build good institutions first," or "some fortunate nations inherited good institutions that led to growth." Yuen Yuen Ang rejects all three schools of thought and their underlying assumptions: linear causation, a mechanistic worldview, and historical determinism. Instead, she launches a new paradigm grounded in complex adaptive systems, which embraces the reality of interdependence and humanity's capacity to innovate. Combining this original lens with more than 400 interviews with Chinese bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, Ang systematically reenacts the complex process that turned China from a communist backwater into a global juggernaut in just 35 years. Contrary to popular misconceptions, she shows that what drove China's great transformation was not centralized authoritarian control, but "directed improvisation"—top-down directions from Beijing paired with bottom-up improvisation among local officials. Her analysis reveals two broad lessons on development. First, transformative change requires an adaptive governing system that empowers ground-level actors to create new solutions for evolving problems. Second, the first step out of the poverty trap is to "use what you have"—harnessing existing resources to kick-start new markets, even if that means defying first-world norms. Bold and meticulously researched, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap opens up a whole new avenue of thinking for scholars, practitioners, and anyone seeking to build adaptive systems.




The Poverty Industry


Book Description

"Hatcher [posits that] state governments and their private industry partners are profiting from the social safety net, turning America's most vulnerable populations into sources of revenue"--




Poverty Safari


Book Description

“Savage, wise, and witty . . . It is hard to think of a more timely, powerful, or necessary book.”--J. K. Rowling International Bestseller! For readers of Hillbilly Elegy and Evicted, the Orwell Prize–winner that helps us all understand Brexit, Donald Trump, and the connection between poverty and the rise of tribalism in the United Kingdom, in the US, and around the world. Darren McGarvey has experienced poverty and its devastations firsthand. He grew up in a community where violence was a form of currency and has lived through addiction, abuse, and homelessness. He knows why people from deprived communities feel angry and unheard. And he wants to explain . . . So he invites you to come along on a safari of sorts. But not the kind where the wildlife is surveyed from a safe distance. His vivid, visceral, and cogently argued book—part memoir and part polemic—takes us inside the experience of extreme poverty and its stresses to show how the pressures really feel and how hard their legacy is to overcome. Arguing that both the political left and right misunderstand poverty as it is actually lived, McGarvey sets forth what everybody—including himself—could do to change things. Razor-sharp, fearless, and brutally honest, Poverty Safari offers unforgettable insight into conditions in modern Britain, including what led to Brexit—and, beyond that, into issues of inequality, tribalism, cultural anxiety, identity politics, the poverty industry, and the resentment, anger, and feelings of exclusion and being left behind that have fueled right-wing populism and the rise of ethno-nationalism.




The Locust Effect


Book Description

A Washington Post bestseller While the world has made encouraging strides in the fight against global poverty, the hidden plague of everyday violence silently undermines our best efforts to help the poor. Common violence like rape, forced labor, illegal detention, land theft, and police abuse has become routine and relentless. And like a horde of locusts devouring everything in its path, the unchecked plague of violence ruins lives, blocks the road out of poverty, and undercuts development. How has this plague of violence grown so ferocious? In one of the most remarkable social disasters of the last half century, basic public justice systems in the developing world have descended into a state of utter collapse, and there's nothing shielding the poor from violent people. Gary A. Haugen and Victor Boutros offer a searing account of how we got here and what it will take to end the plague. The Locust Effect is a gripping journey into the streets and slums where fear is a daily reality for billions of the world's poorest, where safety is secured only for those with money, and where much of our well-intended aid is lost in the daily chaos of violence. While their call to action is urgent, Haugen and Boutros provide hope, a real solution and an ambitious way forward. The Locust Effect will forever change the way we understand global poverty, and will help secure a safe path to prosperity for the global poor in the 21st century.




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