Social Hierarchy and the Inequalities of Access: Evidence from Rural Southern Laos

The Asian Development Bank's rural road development scheme in Laos is designed to increase the opportunity for rural communities to participate in neighbouring emerging markets.Yet, this improved infrastructural strategy may result in increased social disparities betweenregions and within communities. This paper addresses the possible impact on intra-communityinequality using endowment and network data from a southern Lao commune. The objective is to analyse the way in which the village hierarchical social structure impedes individuals' ability to access emerging markets. The social hierarchy hinders the benefits of improved roads and marketisation trickling down to the poorest. Disruption to the trickledown effect means that existing rural development and anti-poverty strategies tend to favour the wealthy and well connected, and further marginalise the poor in the community. Therefore, it is crucial to recognise the importance of the village social hierarchy and define its contribution to the persistence of povertyand reinforcement of inequalities of opportunities for the rural poor. Policies need to directlytarget those of lower stratification by addressing underlying reasons for intergenerational inequalities of opportunity.     

Section 8 Renters in the Phoenix,Arizona, Foreclosure Crisis: Implications for Poverty Deconcentration

How the recent U.S. foreclosure crisis affected federal housing mobility programs has not been well studied. This article explores the crisis’s impact on low-income renters receiving Section 8 vouchers in Phoenix, Arizona. We find that (a) 8% of voucher holders lived in homes that underwent foreclosure, (b) they were in comparably affluent neighborhoods, and (c) most eventually moved after foreclosure. Yet, those who moved after foreclosure were not overtly disadvantaged in the housing market. This unexpected finding may be explained by the opening up of new housing opportunities for voucher holders as foreclosures in more affluent areas were converted to rentals. Overall, this research suggests that the foreclosure crisis did not adversely affect the Section 8 program’s goal of deconcentrating poverty in Phoenix and may have even advanced it—a dynamic potentially occurring in other formerly booming and economically distressed Sunbelt regions.     

Spaces of exception: governing fuel poverty in England’s multiple occupancy housing sector

Homes in multiple occupancy (HMOs) – residential properties containing common areas shared by several households – are a growing feature of the housing landscape across the UK. They have often been subject to political stigmatization as a result, in part, of comprising poor quality dwellings. This paper uses a “spaces of exception” framework to explore the juridical and material mechanisms involved in the rise of fuel poverty among people living in HMOs. Having analysed evidence from interviews, census data and the secondary literature pertaining to the English context, we highlight the processes that have led to the biopolitical othering of this housing stock in institutional and infrastructural terms. We argue that the expansion and persistence of fuel poverty in HMOs are promoted not only by the disproportionate concentration of low-income residents in relation to the rest of the private rented sector, but also by the socio-technical configurations that underpin this type of housing. Fuel poverty can thus be seen as the joint outcome of broader practices of legal, political and material delegitimization.     

Depressive Symptoms in Young,Urban Schoolchildren: Environmental,Social, and Cognitive Risk

This study examined relations among stressors, perceived social competence, attributional style, and depressive symptoms in young urban schoolchildren. Data were collected from 85 5- to 11-year-olds, mostly African American, who attended a public elementary school in a low-income urban area. Social competence was examined as a potential mediator, and attributional style was examined as a potential moderator of the relation between stressful life events and depressive symptoms. Separate analyses were conducted by age and gender. For older children and girls, main effects were found for stressful life events as predictors of depressive symptoms. Mediational analyses indicated that perceived peer acceptance served as a mediator of the relation between stressful life events and depressive symptoms for girls. In addition, attributional style moderated the relation between stressors and depressive symptoms in the older children. Together, findings suggest that significant relations exist among stressful life events, social and cognitive processes, and depressive symptoms in young urban children and that these relations are influenced by gender and development.     

市场导向下的山地农业区产业扶贫研究

产业扶贫作为解决山地农业区贫困的重要手段,通过开发符合市场需求的产业让农民脱贫致富。受市场发育不完善,产业发展供需不协调的影响,当前山地农业区扶贫产业市场导向不足、可持续性不强。从山地农业区的产业形态看,产业仍以传统种养殖业为主,重生产、轻销售,培育依靠行政主导。山地农业市场趋向弱、效益低与独特的自然地理环境、农业自身产业属性和社会组织条件相关。增强山地农业区扶贫产业市场导向需要解决好产品供需问题,优化发展环境,结合本地优势选择特色产业,注重拓宽销售渠道,完善产业保障体系,以产业的持续效益带动农民增收致富。     

GHETTOS,THRESHOLDS, AND CRIME: DOES CONCENTRATED POVERTY REALLY HAVE AN ACCELERATING INCREASING EFFECT ON CRIME?*

Theories make varying predictions regarding the functional form of the relationship between neighborhood poverty and crime rates, ranging from a diminishing positive effect, to a linear positive effect, to an exponentially increasing or even threshold effect. Nonetheless, surprisingly little empirical evidence exists testing this functional form. This study estimates the functional form of the relationship between poverty and various types of serious crime in a sample of census tracts for 25 cities, and it finds that a diminishing positive effect most appropriately characterizes this relationship whether estimating the models nonparametrically or parametrically. Only for the crime of murder does some evidence exist of an accelerating effect, although this occurs in the range of 20 to 40 percent in poverty, with a leveling effect on crime beyond this point of very high poverty. Thus, no evidence is found here in support of the postulate of scholars extending William Julius Wilson's (1987) insight that neighborhoods with very high levels of poverty will experience an exponentially higher rate of crime compared with other neighborhoods.     

基于空间治理视角的城市贫困研究综述

相较于农村贫困,城市贫困是一种在空间上集聚的相对贫困,明晰它的空间特征、演变规律及影响因素等对于城市贫困的精准治理有着重要作用。为此,应用Citespace科学文献可视化工具,对Web of Science数据库中1052篇城市贫困主题的英文文献(1995—2019年)和中国知网(CNKI)数据库中2912篇相关中文文献(1981—2019年)进行分析,可从空间视角总结国内外城市贫困的研究现状及研究热点。结果表明:研究趋势上,国外对于城市贫困研究的关注度总体呈现上升趋势,而国内城市贫困的研究起步较晚、增长幅度较大,但在关注度上出现倒U型结构;概念上,从空间视角定义城市贫困多是认为居住区内的人们遭受了不同类型的"剥夺";研究内容上,城市贫困空间的测量与识别、时空动态变化、影响因素分析及大数据的应用等是国内外城市贫困的研究热点;贫困空间的演变及成因上,受居住、种族和阶级隔离等多种经济文化因素的综合影响,国外的城市贫困呈现由内及外的郊区化现象,而国内城市贫困空间演化较为复杂多变。     

Modifying children's court care plans to acknowledge poverty and disadvantage

This think piece suggests that Children's Court Care Plans should include a new section that documents poverty and social disadvantage, especially of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, when they are under investigation for child abuse and neglect. New South Wales in Australia is used as the exemplar state, but this suggestion may find an echo elsewhere.

Points for practitioners

• As a general proposition social and economic circumstances should be considered in addition to parental dysfunction in child protection proceedings in Children's court.
• Care Plans prepared for hearings in the NSW Children's Court, often developed in response to serious harm report investigations, currently do not contain information about parents' poverty and social disadvantage and hence decontextualise family living circumstances.
• Consistent with international evidence, Care Plans should require information about parents' socioeconomic situation, including social disadvantage of residential neighbourhood, status and cost of household tenancy, and household income.
• Taking account of social and economic circumstances has the potential to generate savings in out-of-home care that can be re-allocated to support services to reduce poverty and social disadvantage and thereby reduce the need for removal of children from parental care.

     

Why are the highly educated more sympathetic towards welfare recipients?

Stigmatising stereotypes about welfare recipients play a crucial role in building public support for welfare retrenchment. Existing literature finds that the highly educated are more sympathetic towards welfare recipients. This is surprising given the economic advantage associated with educational attainment. Furthermore, educational attainment has increased even as sympathy for welfare recipients has declined. I address these puzzles using three decades of British survey data and find that it is the socially liberal attitudes rather than the economic advantage associated with higher education that explains why this group is sympathetic towards welfare recipients. These findings reveal an educational cleavage in stereotypes about welfare recipients, which is based on non-economic concerns, and has implications for support for welfare retrenchment and policies such as increased conditionality. This cleavage is weaker in more highly educated regions, implying that there are diminishing returns from increasing educational attainment in terms of sympathetic attitudes towards welfare recipients.