This article examines how anti-poverty policy has considered the role of culture and how it ought to do so. While some have explained poverty as a function of the presumed cultural deficiency or distinctiveness of the poor, we suggest that these explanations have not been convincing and that policy requires a broader and more sophisticated…

Despite more than 40 years of legislation to improve the outcomes of children and youth with disabilities and those growing up in poverty, vast numbers of adults with severe disabilities are unemployed or underemployed and living in poverty. This article suggests that one of the factors maintaining the problem is our failure to acknowledge the…

Because of the present, increasing economic circumstances, poverty is fast becoming a crisis, and teacher preparation programs must begin to prepare teachers to explicitly address the needs of poor children. The inclusion of poverty in this discourse is in no way intended to discount the issues of race, ethnicity, and gender. The intention here is…

The first thing many learn about international poverty measurement is that European nations apply a "relative" poverty threshold and that they also do a better job of reducing poverty. Unlike the European model, the "absolute" U.S. poverty threshold does not increase in real value when the nation's standard of living rises,…

The Millennium Development Goals launched in 2001 provide a worldwide agenda to reduce poverty by 2015. Though the eight goals provide synergies for the rapid reduction of poverty, the MDGs have come under criticism for being too narrow and sometimes leaving out critical aspects of human development and well-being. Although the MDGs address some…

Nearly one in five children under age 18 lived in poor families in 2008, according to poverty statistics released by the Census Bureau in September 2009. Though high, this statistic does not capture the full impact of the economic downturn, which is expected to drive poverty even higher in 2009. However, updated poverty statistics will not be…

Opportunity NYC-Family Rewards, an experimental, privately funded, conditional cash transfer (CCT) program to help families break the cycle of poverty, was the first comprehensive CCT program in a developed country. Launched in 2007 by New York City's Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO), Family Rewards offered cash assistance to low-income…

This document presents 2010 data from the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) program of the U.S. Census Bureau. The SAIPE program produces poverty estimates for the total population and median household income estimates annually for all counties and states. SAIPE data also produces single-year poverty estimates for the school-age…

Current U.S. policy initiatives to improve the U.S. education system, including No Child Left Behind, test-based evaluation of teachers and the promotion of competition, are misguided because they either deny or set to the side a basic body of evidence documenting that students from disadvantaged households on average perform less well in school…

This paper addresses a key methodological challenge in the modeling of individual poverty dynamics--the influence of measurement error. Taking the US and Britain as case studies and building on recent research that uses latent Markov models to reduce bias, we examine how measurement error can affect a range of important poverty estimates. Our data…

This contribution suggests that if we are serious about adult education in the context of poverty eradication we require some shifts away from neo-liberal assumptions and values. Women and/in the informal economy should become the central focus, and livelihood studies would better allow us to understand the complex daily struggle for food and the…

This commentary asks some critical questions concerning the article "Management Education and the Base of the Pyramid" included in this special issue. Are "bottom of the pyramid" (BOP) multidisciplinary action project (MAP) students prepared to critically assess the impact of their interventions beyond a narrow definition of profit in complex and…

This commentary contrasts "Piercing the Bubble" by proposing "pull" (rather than "push") strategies as a way for business schools to more meaningfully engage poverty and social exclusion. By reframing poverty issues in such a manner that they connect with core business student interests of career opportunities, current management practices, and…

Two discussion papers, commenting on the main article, are included: (1) "Community Action: The Limits of a Developmental Framework by Martin Rein, and (2) "For the Advocate and the Innovator by Franklin M. Zweig.