The world's perplexing challenge in the 21st Century is empowering people to eradicate poverty. Poverty in its many forms and dimensions undermines, subdues, and diminishes human agency. Research on education and poverty has concluded that what the poor people need most is empowerment. This qualitative case study research focused on the…

States require a measure of poverty that captures all family resources net of taxes and nondiscretionary expenses and uses thresholds reflecting current needs in the state to assess the well-being of families under current and alternative policies. This paper describes the implementation of a poverty measure for the State of Connecticut based on…

Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) have two main objectives: reducing poverty and increasing the human capital of children. To reach these objectives, transfers are given to poor households conditioned on investments in their children's education, health, and nutrition. Targeting mechanisms used by CCTs have been generally successful in…

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…

Effective poverty reduction programs require careful measurement of poverty status. Commonly used consumption or income-based classifications of poverty aggregate together households that are persistently poor with those who are only in poverty due to passing conditions. They also classify as non-poor households that are at risk of falling into…

This paper provides a detailed analysis of the differential impact of alternative allocation procedures for Title I funds provided for under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and including the impact on both selected states and all states of changing the poverty definition, the impact of updating the poverty count, the impact of changing…

This technical paper summarizes what is known about the receipt of in-kind income; that is, benefits that take a non-cash form. These benefits may be provided by the government (food stamps, Medicare, etc.), or the private sector (health insurance, free housing, etc.). The problem addressed in the paper is the development of a theoretically…

Compares paternalism toward clients among employees in social agencies which serve the poor with agencies which serve the middle class. Findings indicate that paternalism is stronger among employees who serve the poor. Possible reasons for this paternalism are given and further research into motives and attitudes of social agency employees is…

This article discusses the theoretical underpinnings of different types of income poverty measures--absolute, relative, and a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) "quasi-relative" one--and empirically assesses them by tracking their performance over time and across demographic groups. Part of the assessment involves comparing these measures to…

DESCRIBED ARE THE COMPONENTS OF PROJECT KNOW HOW (PKH), AN OFFICE OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM. DESIGNED TO ATTACK INDIVIDUAL FAMILIAL POVERTY, PKH INVOLVES A PRESCHOOL TRAINING PROGRAM BEGINNING IN THE FIRST YEAR OF LIFE AND CONTINUING TO SCHOOL AGE, A SALARIED ASSISTING MOTHERS PROGRAM, A FATHER'S PROGRAM, AND A FAMILY HEALTH…