World Poverty is part of the Information Plus Reference Series. The purpose of each volume of the series is to present the latest facts on a topic of pressing concern in modern American life. These topics include today’s most controversial and most studied social issues: abortion, capital punishment, care for the elderly, crime, health care, the environment, immigration, minorities, social welfare, women, youth, and many more. Although written especially for the high school and undergraduate student, this series is an excellent resource for anyone in need of factual information on current affairs.

Задача измерения уровня бедности и экономического неравенства в современном российском обществе рассматривается в контексте общей проблемы снижения социальной напряженности путем адресной социальной помощи малоимущим слоям населения. Индикаторы уровня бедности (типа индекса Фостера - Гриира - Тоорбека) строятся на основании распределения населения по расходам (а не по доходам, как это обычно делается), что обусловлено спецификой российского переходного периода. Эконометрический анализ модели распределения населения по среднедушевым расходам основан на одновременной обработке микро- и макроданных, что позволяет с большей точностью оценить соответствующие индикаторы. В модели используются специальные методы калибровки распределения, построенного на основе официальной статистики.

Интерес, который проявляет ЮНИСЕФ к изучению проблемы детской бедности, связан с тем, что невозможность для детей воспользоваться в жизни теми возможностями, которых они лишаются по причине бедности, приводит к необратимым изменениям как в их дальней жизни, так и в жизни того общества, где они живут. В практическом смысле для Российской Федерации определенный интерес представляет тот факт, что защита детей от самых уродливых проявлений бедности в раннем возрасте, когда развивается их молодой организм и формируется характер, является одновременно как признаком цивилизованного общества, так и средством решения некоторых из очевидных проблем, влияющих на качество жизни в экономически развитых странах.

Wow! What a tour de force! This timely, masterly work does everything, from broad empirical comparison to theory, quantitative correlation to case studies of neighborhoods and quotations from individual life histories. Its findings from 25 neighborhoods in six cities demonstrate convincingly that urban destitution is not homogeneous, is concentrated in and generated by location, and has patterned institutional roots that produced varying processes of pauperization. This superb book must put to rest once and for all references to Chinese poverty as a matter of just the rural areas and their residents. Dorothy J. Solinger, University of California, Irvine, US Market reform has brought new forms of poverty to urban China, even while the standard of living of most urban residents has greatly improved. This research uses interviews with people in six cities to document their situation and to show how poverty is rooted in the failure of support systems in their neighborhoods and communities. It offers a stark evaluation of a system of inequalities that is only beginning to be addressed by state policy. John R. Logan, Brown University, US Urban poverty is an emerging problem. This book explores the household and neighbourhood factors that lead to both the generation and continuance of urban poverty in China. It is argued that the urban Chinese are not a homogenous social group, but combine laid-off workers and rural migrants, resulting in stark contrasts between migrant and workers neighbourhoods and villages. The expert authors examine the new urban poor in China and the dynamics of their poor neighbourhoods, highlighting both household experience and neighbourhood changes affecting the urban poor. Urban Poverty in China is based upon a comprehensive household survey in six Chinese cities and provides insights into microscopic and neighbourhood-level poverty dynamics. The comprehensive study explores the spatial implications such as concentration of poverty as well as the differentiation within poor neighbourhoods. This informative book tells an insightful story about evolving urban poverty in Chinese cities that will be invaluable to researchers and postgraduate students within urban studies, geography, social policy and development studies as well as Chinese and Asian studies. It will also prove to be an invaluable read for researchers in urban and social development and international development agencies.

Most people have an idea of what it means to be poor. We think of conditions like hunger, homelessness, preventable diseases, unemployment, and illiteracy as elements of poverty. Those and other issues will be covered later in this book. However, from a social and economic standpoint, poverty is a complex topic that can be difficult to describe in objective terms. Most governments and social service agencies have their own definitions of poverty, including how it is measured and who is considered poor.

The sense that well-being remains elusive, transitory, and unevenly distributed is felt by the rich as well as the poor, and in all societies. To explore this condition of existential dissatisfaction, the anthropologist Michael Jackson traveled to Sierra Leone, described in a recent UN report as the “least livable” country in the world. There he revisited the village where he did his first ethnographic fieldwork in 1969-70 and lived in 1979. Jackson writes that Africans have always faced forces from without that imperil their lives and livelihoods. Though these forces have assumed different forms at different times—slave raiding, warfare, epidemic illness, colonial domination, state interference, economic exploitation, and corrupt government—they are subject to the same mix of magical and practical reactions that affluent Westerners deploy against terrorist threats, illegal immigration, market collapse, and economic recession. Both the problem of well-being and the question of what makes life worthwhile are grounded in the mystery of existential discontent—the question as to why human beings, regardless of their external circumstances, are haunted by a sense of insufficiency and loss. While philosophers have often asked the most searching questions regarding the human condition, Jackson suggests that ethnographic method offers one of the most edifying ways of actually exploring those questions.