The not-so-great aid debate

The ‘Great Foreign Aid Debate’ raged in the 2000s yet there are few overviews of it. This paper builds on heuristic classifications of the debate not to simply classify it, but rather to explore how it is perhaps not as ‘great’ as claimed and, in fact, is contributing to a narrowing of thinking about development possibilities. The paper explores the debate through the books released in the 10 years from 2001 that made both an academic and a media impact. It analyses what gets discussed and why and, equally importantly, what does not get discussed. In terms of what is missing, the paper posits that ‘left’ has disappeared and the progressive critique and support for aid has been left to scholars like Jeffrey Sachs and Jonathan Glennie.     

Democratization as liberation: competing African perspectives on democracy

Do Africans tend to view democracy in more procedural or more substantive terms? This article argues that African endorsements of liberal and procedural understandings are not as pervasive as much of the literature on democratization suggests. Drawing upon Afrobarometer survey results as well as extensive fieldwork and interviews conducted over the past decade in South Africa, it demonstrates both the historical development and significance of these definitional understandings. By employing a substantive approach and thereby bringing questions of poverty and material inequality to the centre of the analysis, this article seeks to offer a perspective on democratization that helps to explain many of the challenges to the institutionalization of democratic regimes that procedural understandings fail to capture.     

“贫”与“富”的辩证思考

贫困与富裕是一对古老的矛盾,贫困与富裕的矛盾处理得好,国泰民安,欣欣向荣;处理得不好,危机四伏,民怨四起。我国目前的区域贫困和部分贫困,已构成了我国建设和谐社会的瓶颈,要实现全面建设小康社会的目标,就必须充分认识"贫"与"富"的辩证关系,全方位建立由"贫"到"富"的长效机制。     

高校贫困生的"心理贫困"问题探析

目前,在我国高等教育迅速发展的过程中,高校中经济贫困学生也呈逐年增加趋势.虽然政府、教育部门、高校和社会都对贫困生在经济层面给予了相应的帮助,但对他们心理问题却较少关注,因此,应从贫困生"心理贫困"表现的原因和危害入手,在思想与精神上给予引导和鼓励,以期寻找到促进贫困大学生心理健康成长的有效途径.     

A METHODOLOGICAL ADDITION TO THE CROSS‐NATIONAL EMPIRICAL LITERATURE ON SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND HOMICIDE: A FIRST TEST OF THE POVERTY‐HOMICIDE THESIS*

Dozens of cross‐national studies of homicide have been published in the last three decades. Although nearly all these studies test for an association between inequality and homicide, no studies test for a poverty—homicide association. This absence is disconcerting given that poverty is one of the most consistent predictors of area homicide rates in the abundant empirical literature on social structure and homicide in the United States. Using a sample that coincides closely with similar recent studies, applying a proxy for poverty (infant mortality) that is commonly employed in noncriminological cross‐national research, and controlling for several common covariates (including inequality), this study provides the first test of the poverty—homicide hypothesis at the cross‐national level. The results reveal a positive and significant association between a nation's level of poverty and its homicide rate. The findings also suggest that we may need to reassess the strong conclusions about an inequality—homicide association drawn from prior studies, as this relationship disappears when poverty is included in the model.     

Growing Up Poor: Examining the Link Between Persistent Childhood Poverty and Delinquency

Findings from aggregate-level and ethnographic research suggest that poverty and delinquency are related. The inability of individual-level quantitative research to demonstrate consistent evidence of this relationship, however, has been used to call into question whether poverty is indeed related to an increased propensity for delinquent involvement. This may be due to the difficulty individual-level analyses have in identifying the group most important in uncovering the relationship of poverty to delinquency—those individuals that experience persistent childhood poverty. This paper provides an assessment of the effects of both the level of exposure to poverty and its timing on delinquent involvement using fourteen years of longitudinal data for a national sample of younger adolescents. Findings indicate that exposure to poverty and the timing of such exposure are indeed related to an increased likelihood of involvement in delinquency.     

Housing Choice Voucher Location Patterns a Decade Later

In 2003, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) prepared a study of the location patterns of the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program. This study became an important baseline for the evaluation of the HCV program and its ability to serve the goal of poverty deconcentration. The study examined the ability of HCV households in the 50 largest metropolitan areas to make entry to a broad array of neighborhoods and to locate in high-opportunity neighborhoods with low levels of poverty.

New data from HUD and the American Community Survey permit the study to be replicated. We find that vouchers continue to consume only a small portion of the housing stock, with relatively small amounts of spatial concentration. Unfortunately, only about one in five voucher households locate in low-poverty neighborhoods, and this share is rising only very slowly. If the nation wants to pursue poverty deconcentration through the HCV program, we cannot rely on the program, as it is now structured, to accomplish this goal. Additional incentives and constraints will be needed, similar to those that were part of the Gautreaux and Moving to Opportunity programs.     

The Significance of Location: Patterns of School Exclusionary Disciplinary Practices in Public Schools

An exploratory analysis is conducted across 3 years on school exclusionary disciplinary practices from all 56 high schools in one district. Using geographical information systems mapping and other statistical analysis, this study analyzes how socioeconomic status, racial composition, and geographical region relate to a school’s usage of exclusionary discipline. Results show that opportunity transfer, suspension, and expulsion rates vary within the district with the lowest exclusionary practices in high income areas and highest in low income areas. Findings suggest that suspensions are correlated with opportunity transfers and expulsions. However, there is no linear relation between opportunity transfers and expulsions. Poverty, student race/ethnic composition at school site, and school year are found to be predictors of exclusionary practices. Implications for future research are considered.     

宁夏扶贫开发体制改革的历程及前瞻

宁夏扶贫开发工作始于20世纪80年代初，经历了“三西”专项建设、扶贫攻坚和综合扶贫开发三个阶段，绝对贫困人口数量和贫困发生率都有了大幅下降。回顾和总结扶贫开发工作的历程，有助于更好地推进宁夏的扶贫开发事业。