Shortly after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Daniel Patrick Moynihan authored a government report titledThe Negro Family: A Case for National Actionthat captured the attention of President Lyndon ...Johnson. Responding to the demands of African American activists that the United States go beyond civil rights to secure economic justice, Moynihan thought his analysis of black families highlighted socioeconomic inequality. However, the report's central argument that poor families headed by single mothers inhibited African American progress touched off a heated controversy. The long-running dispute over Moynihan's conclusions changed how Americans talk about race, the family, and poverty.
Fifty years after its publication, the Moynihan Report remains a touchstone in contemporary racial politics, cited by President Barack Obama and Congressman Paul Ryan among others.Beyond Civil Rightsoffers the definitive history of the Moynihan Report controversy. Focusing on competing interpretations of the report from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, Geary demonstrates its significance for liberals, conservatives, neoconservatives, civil rights leaders, Black Power activists, and feminists. He also illustrates the pitfalls of discussing racial inequality primarily in terms of family structure.Beyond Civil Rightscaptures a watershed moment in American history that reveals the roots of current political divisions and the stakes of a public debate that has extended for decades.
The geography of American retail has changed dramatically since the first luxurious department stores sprang up in nineteenth-century cities. Introducing light, color, and music to dry-goods emporia, ...these "palaces of consumption" transformed mere trade into occasions for pleasure and spectacle. Through the early twentieth century, department stores remained centers of social activity in local communities. But after World War II, suburban growth and the ubiquity of automobiles shifted the seat of economic prosperity to malls and shopping centers. The subsequent rise of discount big-box stores and electronic shopping accelerated the pace at which local department stores were shuttered or absorbed by national chains. But as the outpouring of nostalgia for lost downtown stores and historic shopping districts would indicate, these vibrant social institutions were intimately connected to American political, cultural, and economic identities.
The first national study of the department store industry,From Main Street to Malltraces the changing economic and political contexts that transformed the American shopping experience in the twentieth century. With careful attention to small-town stores as well as glamorous landmarks such as Marshall Field's in Chicago and Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, historian Vicki Howard offers a comprehensive account of the uneven trajectory that brought about the loss of locally identified department store firms and the rise of national chains like Macy's and J. C. Penney. She draws on a wealth of primary source evidence to demonstrate how the decisions of consumers, government policy makers, and department store industry leaders culminated in today's Wal-Mart world. Richly illustrated with archival photographs of the nation's beloved downtown business centers,From Main Street to Mallshows that department stores were more than just places to shop.
Food is fundamental to health and social participation, yet food poverty has increased in the global North. Adopting a realist ontology and taking a comparative case approach, Families and Food in ...Hard Times addresses the global problem of economic retrenchment and how those most affected are those with the least resources. Based on research carried out with low-income families with children aged 11-15, this timely book examines food poverty in the UK, Portugal and Norway in the decade following the 2008 financial crisis. It examines the resources to which families have access in relation to public policies, local institutions and kinship and friendship networks, and how they intersect. Through ‘thick description’ of families’ everyday lives, it explores the ways in which low income impacts upon practices of household food provisioning, the types of formal and informal support on which families draw to get by, the provision and role of school meals in children’s lives, and the constraints upon families’ social participation involving food. Providing extensive and intensive knowledge concerning the conditions and experiences of low-income parents as they endeavour to feed their families, as well as children’s perspectives of food and eating in the context of low income, the book also draws on the European social science literature on food and families to shed light on the causes and consequences of food poverty in austerity Europe.
Inspired by the political interventions of feminist women of color and Foucauldian social theory, Anna Marie Smith explores the scope and structure of the child support enforcement, family cap, ...marriage promotion, and abstinence education measures that are embedded within contemporary United States welfare policy. Presenting original legal research and drawing from historical sources, social theory, and normative frameworks, the author argues that these measures violate the rights of poor mothers. Drawing on several historical precedents the author shows that welfare policy has consistently constructed the sexual conduct of the racialized poor mother as one of its primary disciplinary targets. The book concludes with a vigorous and detailed critique of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's support for welfare reform law and an outline of a progressive feminist approach to poverty policy.
The Pico Gardens housing development in East Los Angeles has a high percentage of resident families with a history of persistent poverty, gang involvement, and crime. In some families, members of ...three generations have belonged to gangs. Many other Pico Gardens families, however, have managed to avoid the cycle of gang involvement. In this work, Vigil adds to the tradition of poverty research and elaborates on the association of family dynamics and gang membership. The main objective of his research was to discover what factors make some families more vulnerable to gang membership, and why gang resistance was evidenced in similarly situated non-gang-involved families. Providing rich, in-depth interviews and observations, Vigil examines the wide variations in income and social capital that exist among the ostensibly poor, mostly Mexican American residents. Vigil documents how families connect and interact with social agencies in greater East Los Angeles to help chart the routines and rhythms of the lives of public housing residents. He presents family life histories to augment and provide texture to the quantitative information. By studying life in Pico Gardens, Vigil feels we can better understand how human agency interacts with structural factors to produce the reality that families living in all public housing developments must contend with daily.
Poverty is often cited as the main problem experienced by developing countries, and Timor-Leste is no exception. Timor-Leste is a country that is still struggling with poverty. This indicates that ...poverty alleviation programs must continue to be promoted to create sustainable community welfare. Efforts and cooperation of various parties are needed to find ways for the community to get out of poverty and realize the welfare they want. This research aims to obtain an in-depth picture of low-income families' welfare and study poverty reduction strategies in Timor-Leste. The research method used in this study is a literature review. The results show that there are still many poor families in Timor-Leste, and the unequal distribution of public facilities and infrastructure in each district in Timor-Leste indicates that family welfare has not been fully realized. The poverty alleviation strategies that the Government can implement can be divided into two major parts, namely first protecting families and community groups that experience temporary poverty, and second helping people who experience chronic poverty by empowering and preventing new poverty. The strategy is then outlined in three programs that are directly directed at the poor, namely: (1) provision of basic needs; (2) development of a social security system, and (3) development of a business culture.
The long shadow Alexander, Karl; Entwisle, Doris; Olson, Linda
Russell Sage Foundation,
2014, 20140531, 2014-06-00
eBook, Book
Contents: - The long shadow and urban disadvantageUrban disadvantage at the outset : the Baltimore backdrop. - Urban disadvantage as family disadvantage. - Stepping outside : urban disadvantage in ...neighborhood and school. - Transitioning to adulthood. - Socioeconomic destinations : the BSSYP a quarter century later. - The long shadow realized : status attainment in the BSSYP. - Race and gender stratification in urban disadvantage. - The reproduction of urban disadvantage.
Fragile families, unmarried parents who struggle emotionally and financially are one of the primary targets of the Healthy Marriage Initiative, a federal policy that has funded marriage education ...programs in nearly every state. These programs, which encourage marriage by teaching relationship skills, are predicated on the hope that married couples can provide a more emotionally and financially stable home for their children. Healthy marriage policy promotes a pro-marriage culture in which two-parent married families are considered the healthiest. It also assumes that marriage can be a socioeconomic survival mechanism for low-income families, and an engine of upward mobility. Through interviews with couples and her own observations and participation in marriage education courses, Jennifer M. Randles challenges these assumptions and critically examines the effects of such classes on participants. She takes the reader inside healthy marriage classrooms to reveal how their curricula are reflections of broader issues of culture, gender, governance, and social inequality. In analyzing the implementation of healthy marriage policy, Randles questions whether it should target individual behavior or the social and economic context of that behavior. The most valuable approach, she concludes, will not be grounded in notions of middle-class marriage culture. Instead, it will reflect the fundamental premise that love and commitment thrive most within the context of social and economic opportunity.
Grassroots Social Security in Asia investigates the role of mutual associations in providing income protection to low-income people in Asia and in particular the region's developing countries. ...Historically, these associations have consisted of small groups of people with common interests who save regularly to support, maintain and supplement their incomes. Members make regular contributions to a communal fund which is used to provide income protection when they experience financial hardship.
This book is the first to comprehensively document the activities of mutual associations and their microinsurance programs in Asia where these programs are especially well developed. It provides a number of important case studies that provide detailed information about mutual associations in different parts of the region, covering South Asia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Mongolia, Indonesia and the Philippines. The case studies offer important insights into the potential of mutual associations to offer effective income protection and how their activities can contribute to the formulation of comprehensive and effective grassroots social security strategies in the developing world that make a tangible contribution to the goal of poverty eradication and the improvement of standards of living.
This book will be of interest to policy makers, academics and students in the fields of Asian studies, Social security studies and development studies.
