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Prior to the COVID–19 outbreak, food insecurity was already a serious public health problem in Canada, impacting 12.7 percent of households. In recent years, activists, practitioners and researchers from a range of health–related disciplines, have debated the legitimacy of food banks and other charitable food programs, contending that policy and programs at the federal level must be prioritized to address the underlying root causes of poverty. This paper challenges the discourse that charitable food programs prevent or distract from Canada's social equity goals. Alternatively, this paper argues that programs and initiatives at the local level can emerge to bring short–term stability and self–sufficiency to local communities while also advocating for longer–term structural change. Drawing upon structuration theory and critical ecologies of anti–Black racism, we examine the work of BlackFoodToronto, a food sovereignty initiative, to illustrate the negotiation of power and agency, and how groups and networks react to and reshape confining and enabling structures through collaborative practice. In addressing Canada's food security crisis, this paper offers an alternative perspective of community–based, nonprofit and charitable programs, which in practice, can help inform future food security policy and related health equity and community development strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on sociologists conceptualizing and studying hope along with several other papers on diverse topics. Topics include refection on the state of historical consciousness in U.S. sociology, and a discussion of the recent trend toward the pre-registration and registration of research designs; and study of "social pathology" such as poverty, illness, racial/ethnic discrimination.

Objective: the aim of this paper is to test a sociology of welfare; that is, two analytical tools are argued to gain an understanding of the sociological content of welfare: 1) the identification of the forms of social precariousness existing in Mexico; 2) the idea of the continuum of inequality of violence and its visibility. Methodology: in defending their theory, the authors use analytical and qualitative sociology as a methodological perspective, where classical concepts of sociology function as reflexive tools to promote the elaboration of a qualitative, critical and normative thinking around the forms of precariousness and their opposite, welfare. Results: presented in two sections: 1) The emergence of violence as a structure for the precariousness of life, a section that reflects on the increase in the forms of violence and their importance when addressing the issue of well-being; 2) Analysis of the forms of social precariousness, which proposes a matrix of the main forms of precariousness that actually exist in Mexico, where the elements of the continuum of inequality of violence are identified. Conclusions: it is proposed that a qualitative sociological knowledge of social precariousness and violence, of the forms and dynamics of social action is necessary to understand the substantive meaning of welfare; useful knowledge to guide public actions in favor of welfare in democratic societies, especially to test innovation in the design of social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Climate change and extreme temperatures pose increasing challenges to individuals and their health with older adults being one of the most vulnerable groups. The aim of this paper is to better understand the roles that tangible assets (e.g., physical or financial) and intangible assets (e.g., human or social) play in the way older adults adapt to extreme temperatures, the types of adaptive responses they implement, limits and constraints, as well opportunities for better adaptation. Rather than focusing exclusively on extremes of heat, or considering each type of asset in isolation, the important and novel contribution of this paper is to take an integrated and multi-seasonal qualitative and quantitative approach, that conjointly investigates all categories of assets in relation to the adaptations that independently-living older adults make to both extreme heat and extreme cold. Methods and findings: The paper examines the contribution of assets to adaptation to extreme temperatures among older adults living independently in their homes. An innovative mixed methods study with an inter-seasonal approach was implemented in Lisbon, Portugal with interviews and surveys during summer for extreme heat and winter for extreme cold. The ability of participants to adapt to extreme temperatures was found to be dependent on asset context and diversity, and the dynamics through which extreme temperatures enhanced or reduced the stock of assets available. As a result, participants engaged in activities of assets replacement, exchange or substitutions. Despite this, many participants recognised many constraints and limits to their ability to adapt and protect their health and well-being ranging from reduced income, high energy costs and lack of social networks. Opportunities for improving older adults’ adaptation were found to exist and strategies, action and investment have been identified by older adults which included life-long education, incentives to improve insulation and local activities. Conclusions: The paper suggests that the implementation of the proposed asset-based approach linking assets and adaptation to extreme temperatures, illustrates the key pathway that individuals, their families and carers, governments, policymakers, researchers and practitioners can follow to ensure effective adaptation and promote health and well-being. Supporting older adults’ adaptation to extreme temperatures is possible and can be complemented with efforts to reduce older adults’ vulnerability and building resilience to extreme temperatures. These findings pose concrete implications for policy and practice, including for example the need for implementation of measures and actions to reduce poverty, reduce energy costs, improve the quality of the housing stock and improve older adults’ social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The materialist thread within health sociology has observed a clear gradient linking inequalities in health with measures of social class and poverty. More recently, Bourdieu's approach to social class complemented the 'economic capital' of Marxist analysis with 'symbolic' capitals such as 'social' and 'cultural'. However, efforts to assess how symbolic capital interacts with health disparities reveal complex or contradictory effects. In this paper, we re‐materialise the study of health and social position via a new materialist focus on the interactions between humans and non‐human matter (NHM). We analyse empirical data to disclose the range of human/NHM interactions in daily life, and how these affect people's health status. These interactions establish physical, psychological and social opportunities and constraints on what human bodies can do, contributing to relative advantages and disadvantages. We argue for a revised materialist understanding of sociomaterial position as constituted by a 'thousand tiny dis/advantages', and suggest that health and wellbeing are inextricably linked to dis/advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obstetric violence is gaining recognition as a worldwide problem manifesting in a range of geopolitical contexts. While global public health attention is turning to this issue, there has been a lack of theoretical engagement by feminist psychologists with the phenomenon of obstetric violence. This paper contributes to the literature on obstetric violence via a feminist social constructionist analysis of “marginalized” and low-income South African women’s narratives of giving birth in public sector obstetric contexts. Drawing on interviews conducted in 2012 with 35 black, low-income women living in Cape Town, South Africa, the analysis focuses on obstetric violence as a relational, disciplinary, and productive process that has implications for the construction of women’s subjectivities and agency during childbirth. The findings focus on relational constructions of violence and agency in women’s narratives, including (a) the performance of docility as an act of ambiguous agency and (2) resistant bodies and modes of discipline. Framed within a Foucauldian approach to power and using the concept of assemblage, I argue that obstetric violence needs to be conceptualized as more than isolated acts involving individual perpetrators and victims. Instead, the analysis shows that obstetric violence functions as a mode of discipline embedded in normative relations of class, gender, race, and medical power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women are at special risk for HIV/AIDS infection and disease progression due to an inter-related set of biopolitical factors. Biological factors that contribute to women's special vulnerability include hormonal, developmental, and immunological characteristics. Social and political factors such as poverty, gendered power relationships, and violence interact with biological factors to create an HIV risk profile among women. The approach of this paper is to review literatures that describe components of women's risks for HIV in order to create an integrated model of vulnerability. We present a syndemic model that calls attention to the importance of understanding the pathways of adverse interaction among interacting diseases and the social and political environments of sufferers. This paper synthesises known risk factors and analyses them through the lens of syndemics theory in order to demonstrate the biopolitical vulnerability of women to HIV. Applying a syndemic approach offers important implications for prevention and treatment of HIV among women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Poor menstrual knowledge and access to sanitary products have been proposed as barriers to menstrual health and school attendance. In response, interventions targeting these needs have seen increasing implementation in public and private sectors. However, there has been limited assessment of their effectiveness. Objectives: Assess the impact of providing reusable sanitary pads and puberty education on girls’ school attendance and psychosocial wellbeing outcomes. Methods: A cluster quasi-randomised controlled trial was conducted across 8 schools, including 1124 girls, in rural Uganda. Schools were allocated to one of four conditions: the provision of puberty education alone; reusable sanitary pads alone; puberty education and reusable sanitary pads; and a control (no intervention). The primary outcome was school attendance. Secondary outcomes reflected psychosocial wellbeing. Results: At follow-up, school attendance had worsened for girls across all conditions. Per-protocol analysis revealed that this decline was significantly greater for those in the control condition d = 0.52 (95%CI 0.26–0.77), with those in control schools having a 17.1% (95%CI: 8.7–25.5) greater drop in attendance than those in any intervention school. There were no differences between the intervention conditions. High rates of school drop-out and transfer meant the trial suffered from substantial participant drop-out. Intention-to-treat analyses using two different imputation strategies were consistent with the main results, with mean differences of 5.2% attendance in best-case and 24.5% in worst-case imputations. Results were robust to adjustments for clustering. There was no impact of the interventions on girls’ self-reported shame or insecurity during menstruation. Conclusion: Results of the trial support the hypothesised positive impact of providing sanitary pads or puberty education for girls’ school attendance in a developing country context. Findings must be interpreted with caution in light of poor participant retention, intervention fidelity, and the attendance measures used. Trial Registration: Pan African Clinical Trials Registry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for the poor, the marginalised and socially excluded to live healthier and longer lives has in recent times become paramount in the development literature and policy discussions seeking to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In response to this, attempts are being made to redirect the research focus to examine socio-economic factors underpinning disease occurrence and ill health for health planning policies and practices to benefit the poor and vulnerable in society. Tliis paper explores the relationship between socio-economic conditions and health outcomes. It identifies and examines through participatory rural assessment techniques, basic socio- economic factors acting as significant pathways through which poverty increases the susceptibility of rural households to diseases. It seeks to address the reasons why the poor are poorer in health in rural communities of the Amansie West district of Ghana. This paper thus emphasises how social stratification and inequalities could affect quality of life of people in any given society, hence supporting the theory of social suffering and its implications on societal health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon literature from economics, and the human capital and equity fields in order to present a theoretical framework for a new multidimensional measure of poverty for Australia. Poverty is about having low living standards; but its measurement has traditionally focused only on an individual's income or on other dimensions of living standards that are not appropriate for contemporary Australian society, such as calorie intake. There are two additional capabilities individuals require for adequate living standards: health and education. Each of these is required for basic functioning within modern society, but have traditionally been ignored by measures of poverty. This paper argues that health is a basic capability people need for a fulfilling life, allowing individuals to participate in activities essential in modern society, and that education can also be seen in this light. As such it is vital that health and education be included in measures of poverty. In order to move Australian poverty measurement forward and build upon the work of the past, poverty measurement must move its focus away from only looking at low income, and take a holistic focus on the living standards of individuals by incorporating assessments of health and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor health and disease and the nature of interventions to ameliorate them typically generate opportunities and costs. What diseases are prevalent, which interventions are favoured and what factors fuel the nature of health interventions are recurrent concerns for political economists. This paper examines the prevailing viewpoints about what health policy works and what does not. Drawing on evidence from developing countries, it shows that there are many deficiencies in the prevailing orthodoxy which emphasises state, market, and civil society solutions. The paper suggests that health policy debate must be refrained around poverty and social inequality, constructs which are often subordinated to attaining grand ideological goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's poverty has long been a central concern for policy makers and policy researchers. The body of extant research conducted and the range of programmatic interventions undertaken by successive governments in this and other countries is extraordinary. Nevertheless, children remain in poverty. Clearly there are many reasons for this, not least of which is the maintenance and intensification of market capitalism with its attendant blatant inequalities. Even so, the moral, political, social and economic imperatives for developing workable responses to children's poverty remain. This paper argues that we, in Australia, should adopt an approach increasingly taken in the UK. Drawing on, among other things, the new sociology of childhood, this approach begins not with the expertise of adult researchers and policy makers, but with that of children. In doing so, the case is made for why children's perceptions and experiences of poverty are key concerns for policy. The paper outlines in theoretical terms why children's voices matter. Invoking the new sociology of childhood and the sociology of identity, a conceptual framework for understanding why policy scholars and makers should carefully attend to the voices of their subjects is sketched - in this case, the subjects are children. Finally, some methodological implications of this for undertaking policy research informed by this approach are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to explore the experiences of exclusion and inclusion of both low and higher-income people within a 'social determinants of health framework'. In the first phase of this research, individual interviews with 60 high-income and 59 low-income participants, and group interviews with 34 low-income participants were conducted. During the second phase, 1671 higher and low-income participants were surveyed by telephone. The findings revealed that inadequate financial resources, ill-health, and unwelcoming behaviours inhibited participation in community activities among low-income respondents. Higher-income earners were more likely to engage in social and group civic activities. Participants in the low-income category were less able to participate in desired activities due to user fees and poor health. Data revealed significant relationships between self-rated health and measures of exclusion and inclusion. Based on the responses of participants, the paper concludes that structural rather than interpersonal change contributes significantly to increased levels of social inclusion, and ultimately, improvements in health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents Midgley's theory on social development to an Australian social work audience. It explores the concept and theory of social development, examines the relationship between social work and social development, and discusses the relevance of social development to social work in Australia. The paper suggests that although social work and social development may share similar broad goals, their strategic approaches differ, with the former cast within a professional model concerned with welfare broadly conceived and the latter directly concerned with the alleviation of poverty in the less-developed parts of the world. The paper concludes with thoughts on the Australian face of social development and suggests changes that would need to be made if social work were to embrace social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Doctors, lawyers and criminal justice agencies need methods to assess vulnerability to violent radicalization. In synergy, public health interventions aim to prevent the emergence of risk behaviours as well as prevent and treat new illness events. This paper describes a new method of assessing vulnerability to violent radicalization, and then investigates the role of previously reported causes, including poor self-reported health, anxiety and depression, adverse life events, poverty, and migration and socio-political factors. The aim is to identify foci for preventive intervention. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of a representative population sample of men and women aged 18–45, of Muslim heritage and recruited by quota sampling by age, gender, working status, in two English cities. The main outcomes include self-reported health, symptoms of anxiety and depression (common mental disorders), and vulnerability to violent radicalization assessed by sympathies for violent protest and terrorist acts. Results: 2.4% of people showed some sympathy for violent protest and terrorist acts. Sympathy was more likely to be articulated by the under 20s, those in full time education rather than employment, those born in the UK, those speaking English at home, and high earners (>£75,000 a year). People with poor self-reported health were less likely to show sympathies for violent protest and terrorism. Anxiety and depressive symptoms, adverse life events and socio-political attitudes showed no associations. Conclusions: Sympathies for violent protest and terrorism were uncommon among men and women, aged 18–45, of Muslim heritage living in two English cities. Youth, wealth, and being in education rather than employment were risk factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how Black liberation theologies can respond to chronic poverty experienced by communities of color around the world. This article argues that while Black liberation theologies have performed the theological task by rereading the Gospels from the margins of society, these theologies would do well to couple the theological task with a political task in offering practical guidance toward a preferable future for poor communities of color. This offering of practical guidance is associated with exploring the dialectical interplay between structural transformation and the enlargement of human capabilities towards liberation and thriving for the global poor. This paper suggests that in order to address poverty at its symbolic and material levels, one should examine how structural transformation and the enlargement of human capabilities and freedoms interact in fostering flourishing and fulfillment for the "least of these." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concern over the reliability of conventional poverty studies has focused attention on the need to demonstrate that those identified as poor are actually experiencing hardship. This paper takes a step in this direction by examining poverty using a living standards approach derived from the literature on deprivation and social exclusion. Deprivation - defined as an enforced lack of socially perceived necessities - has emerged as a way of identifying who is missing out on what the community regards as the necessities (or essentials) of life. Social exclusion - which exists when individuals do not participate in key activities in society - has opened up new areas of inquiry relating to a lack of connectedness between individuals, the communities in which they live, and key economic and social processes. The findings indicate that many Australians face deprivation and exclusion in numerous aspects of their lives, and that those defined as poor in income terms are different from those who are deprived or excluded. The low overlap between the three indicators implies that they all have a role to play in documenting the extent of social disadvantage and helping to identify the factors that contribute to its various manifestations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using sibling data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics linked with US Census data, this paper examines the intergenerational nature of neighborhood quality. It is hypothesized that the quality of where one resides as an adult is a function of one's childhood neighborhood through the conditioning and constraining of adult residential choice. Further, it is posited that this relationship varies by race and is stronger for those living in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, especially blacks. Descriptively, the study finds that childhood neighborhood conditions of black and white children are vastly different. Few whites live in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, and few blacks live in the most advantaged neighborhoods. The sibling fixed effect regression results confirm the hypothesis that childhood neighborhood disadvantage has negative effects on adult neighborhood quality for those living in the lowest quality, race-specific neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the significant characteristics of many poor neighbourhoods is that the schools which serve them are characterised by poor performance in terms of attainment and other measures. This feature is seen as critical in the reinforcement of disadvantage, its transmission between generations, and as a barrier to social integration. Government policies in the UK have increasingly targeted improved school standards and performance, while other policies on urban regeneration and housing may interact with this issue. This paper examines the particular role of homeownership tenure alongside the other factors (notably poverty) which affect school attainment. After reviewing existing literature it presents new analyses of attainment based on linked pupil, school and small area-level datasets for selected areas in both England and Scotland. This provides some evidence to support the contention that homeownership has an additional effect on school attainment, beyond that explained by poverty and other associated variables, although there is some uncertainty about how separable these effects are at school or neighbourhood levels. It also points out the significant role of changing tenure mix in housing regeneration in transforming the overall profile of neighbourhoods and schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies attempting to estimate the relative importance of family, neighborhood, residential stability, and homeownership status characteristics of childhood environments on young adult outcomes have: (1) treated these variables as though they were independent, and (2) were limited in their ability to control for household selection effects. This study offers advances in both areas. First, it treats the key explanatory variables above as endogenously determined (sometimes simultaneously so). Second, to deal both with this endogeneity and the selection problem, instrumental variable estimates are computed for how childhood average values of neighborhood poverty rate relate to fertility, education and labor market outcomes in later life. The paper analyzes data from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) that are matched with Census tract data, thereby permitting documentation of a wide range of family background and contextual characteristics. For children born between 1968 and 1974, data are analyzed on their first 18 years and various outcomes in 1999 when they are between 25 and 31 years of age. The application of instrumental variables substantially attenuates the apparent neighborhood effects. Nevertheless, support is found for the proposition that cumulative neighborhood poverty effects averaged over childhood have an independent, non-trivial causal effect on high school attainment and earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Deep South has often been characterized as the poorest and most backward region in the United States. The Deep South is also unique in that it is the most racially diverse part of the United States and it has the powerful social history of chattel slavery. In this paper, we examine the relationship between race and poverty at the macro (rather than individual) level. Using county-level census data we examine the effects of social segregation on well-being. We find that indeed there is an extremely strong and significant relationship between the racial composition of a county and many measures of well-being (poverty, home ownership, educational attainment, infant mortality and so on). Second, our analysis tests for the effects of racial segregation for whites and African Americans separately. The poverty rate for whites varies little based on the racial composition of the county they live in whereas for African Americans, living in integrated or predominately white counties is significantly correlated with lower levels of poverty. Furthermore, the African American-white poverty gap is significantly lower in integrated and predominately white counties and significantly higher in counties that are racially segregated. Thus, our analysis demonstrates that racial segregation has a more negative and profound effect on the lives of African Americans than it does on whites. We conclude with a discussion of the illustration Hurricane Katrina provides of tins general pattern and we offer a set of suggestions for addressing this kind of structural poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to develop an alternative measure for relative poverty. The aim is to combine information both on the depth of poverty and the number of people living in poverty. We seek, moreover, to establish a yardstick that would be relatively simple and easy to understand, so as to facilitate the use of such a new method in sociological poverty research and political decision making. The Cumulative Poverty Index (CUPI) indicates how many times poorer on average the poor households are, compared to all households on average (or the other way round: the ratio of the mean income of poor households to the mean income of all households). The empirical analysis demonstrates that CUPI seem to reflect changes in the incomes of the poor more accurately than do head-count ratios based on median income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women with a disability continue to experience social oppression and domestic violence as a consequence of gender and disability dimensions. Current explanations of domestic violence and disability inadequately explain several features that lead women who have a disability to experience violent situations. This article incorporates both disability and material feminist theory as an alternative explanation to the dominant approaches (psychological and sociological traditions) of conceptualising domestic violence. This paper is informed by a study which was concerned with examining the nature and perceptions of violence against women with a physical impairment. The emerging analytical framework integrating material feminist interpretations and disability theory provided a basis for exploring gender and disability dimensions. Insight was also provided by the women who identified as having a disability in the study and who explained domestic violence in terms of a gendered and disabling experience. The article argues that material feminist interpretations and disability theory, with their emphasis on gender relations, disablism and poverty, should be used as an alternative tool for exploring the nature and consequences of violence against women with a disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there a difference between the social capital developed in faith-based and secular poverty-to-work programs? Comparative field research investigating five faith-based and secular poverty-to-work programs in southeastern America finds that values expressed by a secular non-profit organization and two faith-based programs correspond with more activities that develop social capital than the programs run by a for-profit organization and a reinvented government agency. In all the programs this social capital is both 'bridging,' by crossing barriers of race, gender, and class, and 'bonding' by tying participants and staff into at least a temporary supportive community. The programs see that this social capital is effective in supporting low-income persons through the transition to full-time employment. In addition, the faith-based programs seek to extend the social capital by developing long-term ties between clients and local religious congregations. This paper also specifies how social capital is developed in these programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do emigration rates vary across Latin America? Since more than three-quarters of Latin America’s emigrants go to the United States, the paper estimates a model of emigration to the United States to isolate the fundamentals driving Latin American emigration. The model is estimated separately for all sending countries and for Latin America, asking whether migrants from the two respond differently to fundamentals. They do not. The estimates are then used to identify the sources of Latin American emigration since the early 1970s and compares them with those of Africa and Asia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The last two decades have witnessed an explosion of empirical research on the role of space in group life at the same time scholars have lamented the under-theorization of space in sociology. In particular, mainstream poverty researchers have conceptualized space as a neutral backdrop against which action unfolds and viewed poor people's agency as passive and unreflexive. This article attempts to move beyond this space-as-container ontology and provide a more coherent view of how theorizing space and spatial issues can help us understand the actions of the urban poor. At the core of the paper is an attempt to theorize agency as a spatial phenomenon — with spatial attributes and spatial influences — and offer empirical insight into how different spatial meanings can enable or constrain particular forms of social action and behavior. My intent is to contribute to an understanding of the urban poor as spatial actors. I argue that the importance of space lies in understanding it as an object of political struggle, a constitutive component of human agency, and a facilitator as well as constraint upon action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accounts of poverty generally fall into either "individualist" or "structuralist" camps. Often these are seen as irreconcilable and incompatible competing perspectives. This paper integrates individualist and structuralist accounts of poverty by examining the relationship between "person poverty" and "place poverty" in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan labor markets, using a multilevel framework. I fashion a general model of poverty production and allocation, drawing on the labor market ecology perspective. After a discussion of this perspective, I develop a multilevel framework for analyzing data from the 1990 Census PUMS-L sample, STF-3c, and other sources to show how compositional and contextual factors affect households' likelihoods of being in poverty. These multilevel models also allow us to estimate the degree to which labor market conditions influence the magnitude of household labor supply characteristics. Results suggest that both compositional and contextual factors contribute to the metro-nonmetro difference in poverty rates, and that the effects of employment vary in accordance with labor market characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates a burgeoning literature on the effects of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Our goal is to shift the debate from the current preoccupation with declining caseloads to one focused on the social and economic well-being of fragile families, single mothers, and children. The welfare reform literature reveals many positive changes: reduced poverty rates, lower out-of-wedlock childbearing, greater family stability, and little indication of more spouse abuse or child neglect. But it is too early to claim success and many questions remain unanswered. Poverty remains high among single mothers and their children; welfare recipients experience serious barriers to stable employment; and poor women and children face an uncertain economic and social future as welfare eligibility is exhausted and the economy wanes. With the welfare debate shifting to family and child well-being, sociology has an important policy role to play as the next phase of welfare reform begins after the 2002 reauthorization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent poverty research based on analyses of panel data have highlighted the importance of income dynamics. In this paper we study mobility into and out of relative income poverty from one year to the next using data for twelve countries from the European Community Household Panel Survey (ECHP). The ECHP has unique potential as a harmonized data set to serve as the basis for comparisons of income and poverty dynamics across EU countries, and here we begin exploiting this potential by analysing income poverty transitions from Wave 1 to Wave 2. As well as describing the extent of these transitions, we analyse the pattern by fitting log-linear and linear by linear models commonly employed in the analysis of social mobility. Moving from general to specific models we show the relative impact of hierarchy, immobility and affinity effects. Our analysis shows that cross-national variation in short-term poverty dynamics is predominantly a consequence of 'shift' rather then 'association effects'. Variation across countries in patterns of poverty persistence is extremely modest. Models that assume that the processes underlying poverty dynamics are constant across countries perform almost as well as those that allow for cross-national variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the various debates surrounding harm reduction, a conceptual tension that perhaps has the most relevance for the provision of services is that of harm reduction as a technical solution versus a contextualized social practice. The aim of this paper was to examine this conceptual tension. First, the two perspectives will be presented through the use of examples. Second, philosophical drivers that serve to underpin and justify each perspective will be explicated at the level of the knowledge that we privilege; the ideologies that we subscribe to; and the interests that we stand to serve. In this paper, I argue that the existing tension between technical and social approaches to harm reduction is embedded within discord pertaining to ways of knowing, paradigms of inquiry, prevailing ideologies, and notions of harm and risk. Building on these sources of tension, I suggest a means of philosophical reconciliation between the two approaches and ways forward, namely through acknowledging multiple sources of knowledge, through embracing paradigmatic incommensurability, through considering alternative conceptions of people who use drugs as political subjects, through involving service providers and end‐users in shared decision‐making, and lastly through reaffirming people who use drugs as the intended beneficiaries of services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the discussions of the Beveridge Committee of 1942 about the ideas of need and measures of poverty to be used. The evidence shows that the Committee knew very well that its proposed benefit levels were not enough for social participation. The author of the article reviews the concepts of poverty and need used by Beveridge and the members of his committee and uses their detailed working papers to show how they arrived at the conclusions embodied in their report "Social Insurance and Allied Services." The issues are important for reasons beyond the political and academic. The word "poverty" has, of course, a great many meanings in common use. Writers on Beveridge have disagreed in their interpretations of the notions of poverty embodied in Beveridge's recommended benefit scales and one aim of this article is to see what the records themselves suggest. Some commentators have suggested that in 1942 Beveridge used more generous and participatory approaches to the definition of human needs than implied by the minimum subsistence level of "primary poverty."