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Demographic and socioeconomic composition changes in neighbourhoods are often the result of local factors (e.g., gentrification or disinvestment) that promote population growth of certain ethnoracial and socioeconomic groups over others, and regional demographic and economic trends that affect metropolitan areas as a whole. This exploratory analysis isolates the portion of poverty and ethnoracial composition change in suburbs that is attributable to regional trends from local factors. The analysis is conducted for the Chicago–Joliet–Naperville metropolitan area during the 2000s. The results show that processes such as suburban poverty and growing minority populations are to a large extent attributable to the shrinking nonpoor White population. This change in the number of nonpoor Whites in suburbs seems to be related to regional population trends, whereas much of the population change of nonpoor and poor minorities is linked to local neighbourhood conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interdisciplinary debate emerged in the 1990s about the nature of homeless governance in neoliberal cities. Contributions to this discussion have interrogated the form, function, and legitimacy of contemporary homeless management. Urban scholars have differentiated three techniques of homeless governance: punishment, support, and discipline. A subset of scholarship has defined punitive governance as an illegitimate act of repression that promotes urban revitalization by excluding the homeless from urban political economies, supportive governance as a legitimate act of voluntary or coercive care that helps the homeless survive a traumatic life experience, and disciplinary governance as an illegitimate act of production that fortifies urban political economies by including rather than excluding homeless individuals into bourgeois institutions. An emerging body of research demonstrates frontline workers coordinate these techniques of governance to pursue the aims of institutional elites. This article outlines the main points of contention in this debate, examines significant empirical findings that scholars have reported, and identifies salient knowledge gaps to be addressed in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes conceptual, methodological, and practical insights from a longitudinal social psychological project that aims to build cardiovascular disease (CVD) competence in a poor community in Accra, Ghana's capital. Informed by a social psychology of participation approach, mixed method data included qualitative interviews and household surveys from over 500 community members, including people living with diabetes, hypertension, and stroke, their caregivers, health care providers, and GIS mapping of pluralistic health systems, food vending sites, bars, and physical activity spaces. Data analysis was informed by the diagnosis‐psychosocial intervention‐reflexivity framework proposed by Guareschi and Jovchelovitch. The community had a high prevalence of CVD and risk factors, and CVD knowledge was cognitive polyphasic. The environment was obesogenic, alcohol promoting, and medically pluralistic. These factors shaped CVD experiences and eclectic treatment seeking behaviours. Psychosocial interventions included establishing a self‐help group and community screening and education. Applying the "AIDS‐competent communities" model proposed by Campbell and colleagues, we outline the psychosocial features of CVD competence that are relatively easy to implement, albeit with funds and labour, and those that are difficult. We offer a reflexive analysis of four challenges that future activities will address: social protection, increasing men's participation, connecting national health policy to community needs, and sustaining the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sport's transformative potential is known to support marginalised children, to deal with traumatic experiences and instil positive values; yet hosting mega sporting events (MSEs) can have negative impacts. Drawing on participatory research with favela‐based children during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, this article argues that MSEs bring a macro‐securitisation of urban life, which causes considerable harm. This paper also suggests that the inclusion of children's voices in advocacy debates can challenge top‐down securitisation and might allow MSEs to foster further positive social transformation. Therefore, juxtaposed with causing harm, macro‐securitisations can open opportunities for children to take action and have their voices heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article uses the city of Shanghai as a case study to analyze the changing institutional mechanisms for the new urban poverty stratum in China. Specifically, the article examines urban poverty in relation to economic restructuring and the transformation of the welfare provision system in three stages of market reforms. The article first examines the overall economic growth strategies at the national level, and then examines local government policy outcomes at the city level. The impacts of institutional changes on urban poverty and social inequality are subsequently. Finally, the article assesses the current poverty reduction policies and proposes a “social inclusion” framework to alleviate urban poverty in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant debate exists about whether the black urban poor rely on each other for support. Currently, two perspectives dominate: the pervasive solidarity perspective, which asserts that support is widespread in poor, black communities, and the distrust-individualism perspective, which claims that, in these communities, pervasive distrust undermines social cohesion and people use individualistic strategies for solving problems. Based on fieldwork in an African American public housing development, I present the concept of selective solidarity, which suggests that social life in these communities is neither as cohesive nor as individualistic as what past perspectives suggest. With selective solidarity, people rely on one another for support but selectively choose exchange partners, restricting exchange networks. Selective solidarity helps us understand how people manage sentiments of distrust while developing strategies for coping with material deprivation. Findings also have implications for the study of urban poverty. While my informants frequently stated that they 'stay by themselves,' which implies individualism, they actually have meaningful exchange relationships. I argue that this contradiction suggests that they have multiple frames for approaching social life. We must consider such frames to avoid drawing misinformed conclusions, such as that the urban poor do not have supportive relationship when in fact they do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This ethnographic study examines how and why Detroit-area credit-constrained members of the urban poor relied on owners/employees of corner convenience stores, known as 'party stores,' for accessing short-term, interest-free informal credit services. Findings indicate that informal credit at party stores functioned as a low- or no-cost alternative to formal credit and high-cost fringe banking services such as payday loans, both of which were inaccessible and/or cost prohibitive for informants. These data contribute empirically to a growing body of research on 'credit invisibility' by exploring these populations' use of informal credit mechanisms. Findings also make a theoretical contribution by highlighting the importance of resource exchange networks through which members of the urban poor build strong yet disposable social ties in order to respond to economic shocks, combat food insufficiency, and survive economic destitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use cross-sectional data to assess the impact of the programme on livelihood where propensity score matching technique has been adopted in analysing the data. Results show that programme participants' self-employment, income, food consumption, saving, health seeking behaviour, empowerment and social awareness have been increased significantly. However, we find that addressing sanitation and hygiene practices remains the key challenge. So to bring a sustainable solution to the issue, a collective effort of slum owners, dwellers and slum community people along with program is needed. These findings are potentially important for expansion and replication of this type of programme. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

General consensus exists concerning the relevance of networks and space in poverty situations, despite a considerable dispute on the prominence of each element. While social-support and poverty debates highlight the joint importance of space and networks, the research agenda on contemporary communities suggests that networks have recently started replacing space in social integration. These debates mainly consider networks and ties normatively and are restricted to the global North, hampering the formulation of comparative interpretations and more theoretical conclusions. This article discusses the relationship between space, sociability and poverty, based on research results on networks of poor individuals in two major Brazilian metropolises -Salvador and São Paulo. Research indicates the existence of great heterogeneity in the networks of poor individuals, although with substantial differences, on average, to middle-class individuals. Certain types of networks and sociability are systematically associated with better living conditions, employment and income. Additionally, network mobilization by individuals presents important regularities associated with social mechanisms, understood as regular patterns that trigger or cause certain results. These mechanisms explain to a great extent the heterogeneity of networks, and mediate the individual's access to opportunities and everyday assistance. They therefore contribute decisively to the production (and reproduction) of urban poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key challenges in the study of neighbourhood effects on work is to understand the pathways through which disadvantaged neighbourhoods impact the employment opportunities of residents. Endogenous explanations for neighbourhood effects focus on social life in these neighbourhoods, identifying mechanisms of social isolation, deviant work ethics and neighbourhood disorder. This article studies these mechanisms in a low-income neighbourhood in the Netherlands. The case study shows that unfavourable socioeconomic outcomes can be indirect and unintended consequences of actions and choices in everyday life that are not directly concerned with work. Nevertheless, these individual actions and choices reflect local social practices that are influenced by the marginalized context in which residents lead their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The installation of cable cars as part of slum beautification projects has begun to circulate among politicians, planners and residents as a magical solution that offers social and economic integration to historically marginalized urban areas. This paper analyzes the way in which a cable car project became a fetish for the inhabitants, politicians and planners of Cazucá, a very deprived, abandoned and stigmatized area on the outskirts of Bogotá, Colombia. The highly positive value given to the cable car project must be understood within the specific local context without judging its 'false promises' a priori. The promise of the cable car in Cazucá reveals at least two crucial political reasons for the current potency of such projects: a complex history of political failures and the political value cable cars have acquired nationally and internationally. We analyze how, for both residents and politicians, the mere possibility of a cable car awakened long neglected desires for visibility and created new ones, such as those related to tourism. They see the cable car as an 'engine for social change', a way to ensure the commitment of national and international funds, and a venue to brand the city on a global scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's social assistance programme ( dibao 低保) was introduced in Shanghai in 1993 and gradually extended to cover all urban areas by 1998. Due to massive economic restructuring, starting in the early 1990s, many urban dibao recipients were laid-off, that is, state-owned enterprise ( SOE) employees. Shanghai was the epicentre of SOE reform, and the dibao system was primarily introduced to provide a safety net for laid-off workers. In 2010, approximately 3 per cent of urban, permanent residents were on dibao, and 72 per cent of its recipients were working-age adults. We conducted longitudinal qualitative interviews five times over 2 years with 40 dibao families that contained adults of working age in a Shanghai district. The current study demonstrates how they managed their employment, income and the dibao system. Findings suggested that, for various reasons, there was insufficient motivation for recipients to gain reemployment and leave dibao. Furthermore, local cadres, which were responsible for assessing and recommending dibao applicants to the district government, likely just assumed the incomes of adults with working capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research suggests that community violence impacts mental health outcomes, but much of this research has not (a) distinguished between different types of community violence, (b) examined gender differences, and (c) focused on youth living in urban poverty. The current study addresses these questions. Participants were 306 youth (23 % girls) and one parent/guardian receiving outpatient psychiatric services for disruptive behavior disorders in a large urban city. Youth and parents reported on youth's experience of different types of community violence (being a direct victim, hearing reports, and witnessing violence), and whether violence was directed toward a stranger or familiar. Outcomes included youth externalizing, internalizing, and posttraumatic stress symptoms assessed via parent and youth reports. Being a direct victim of violence accords risk for all mental health outcomes similarly for both boys and girls. However, gender differences emerged with respect to indirect violence, such that girls who hear reports of violence against people they know are at increased risk for all assessed mental health outcomes, and girls who witness violence against familiars are at increased risk for externalizing mental health symptoms in particular. There are gender differences in violence-related mental health etiology, with implications for intervention assessment and design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between the difficult economic situation in Mexico over recent years and the increasing disadvantages in irregular settlements that are found on the periphery of the Federal District. The focus is on informal settlements in the Magdalena Contreras Delegation, a peripheral municipality where the research team applied 719 questionnaires to the inhabitants. The results offer an up-to-date socio-economic analysis of the population. We are also in a position to suggest answers to the following questions: to what extent communal lands with a high ecological value act as territorial reserves for irregular settlements?; how do poverty levels in these settlements affect the consolidation process in terms of housing quality and access to public services?; how much heterogeneity is there inside irregular settlements and what is the level of poverty in these settlements and how grave is the situation? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policies supporting market-oriented strategies to develop mixed-income communities have become ascendant in the United States and a number of other countries around the world. Although framed as addressing both market goals of revitalization and social goals of poverty deconcentration and inclusion, these efforts at 'positive gentrification' also generate a set of fundamental tensions - between integration and exclusion, use value and exchange value, appropriation and control, poverty and development - that play out in particular concrete ways on the ground. Drawing on social control theory and the 'right to the city' framework of Henri Lefebvre, this article interrogates these tensions as they become manifest in three mixed-income communities being developed to replace public housing complexes in Chicago, focusing particularly on responses to competing expectations regarding the use of space and appropriate normative behavior, and to the negotiation of these expectations in the context of arguments about safety, order, what constitutes 'public' space, and the nature and extent of rights to use that space in daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation, liberalisation and urbanisation have contributed to a rapid growth of urban informal economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Commerce has become a dominant feature of national economies, and street vending has become a prime source of employment for poor urban dwellers, yet most work illegally, and evictions and harassment are common. The paper examines the process and impacts of three pro-poor reform agendas in Tanzania, each representing a different ideology of reform, and draws on survey results from 2007 and 2011 to assess their potential to legitimate the activities of street vendors and to ameliorate their relations with the state. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY This paper reviews and documents a unique approach to poverty reduction targeting a segment of urban poor in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: the collectors of recyclable materials discarded by urban residences and businesses, along with their refuse. The approach is unique for Brazil because it combines assorted policy objectives at different governmental levels, two socially/security valued, two environmentally valued and one economically valued. The paper specifically seeks to (a) determine the current profile of collectors, both social and economic; (b) assess the current state of play of the dwindling collectors cooperatives programme, including perceptions of its performance by different stakeholders; (c) describe the current practices and players in the collection of recyclables, with its associated implications; (d) reconstruct the role of key players with a focus on the operational policies and administration of the programme by municipal departments; (e) assess the current priority among social and environmental objectives of the waste collection programme of the municipal government; (f) draw conclusions and recommendations on policies and administration for such programmes, to improve the social outcome for the collectors while still achieving the associated environmental objectives; and (g) draw some comparisons with other Latin American countries that have engaged in similar programmes. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies on urban poverty in Canadian cities suggest a growing spatial concentration of poor populations within metropolitan regions. This article assesses trends in the intra-urban distribution of the poor population from 1986 to 2006 in eight of Canada's largest cities. We consider five well-known dimensions of segregation, as identified by Massey and Denton (1988) , in order to examine changes in the spatial distribution of poor populations within metropolitan areas: evenness, exposure, concentration, clustering, and centralization. These indices were calculated for low-income populations at the census tract level using data from five Canadian censuses. Although each metropolitan area has distinctive characteristics, we were able to identify some general trends. The results suggest that, in 2006 compared to 1986, low-income populations lived in more spatially concentrated areas, which were, at the same time, socioeconomically more homogeneous and more dispersed throughout the metropolitan area. In addition, we observed that over the last twenty years areas of poverty have been located, for the most part, in neighbourhoods adjacent to downtown cores. Nevertheless, we found that poverty has mostly increased in suburban areas located outside inner-city neighbourhoods. Growing socioeconomic homogeneity and dispersion of low income areas in metropolitan areas reveal new spatial patterns of urban poverty distribution. These findings should be cause for concern as social isolation in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods could affect the life chances and opportunities for the residents of those areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Urban & Regional Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: This paper describes efforts to apply the principles and strategies of an empirically-supported treatment for children with disruptive behaviour problems to a park after-school program serving children in urban poverty. Method: Collaboration with staff proceeded in stages: (1) relationship building, needs assessment, and resource mapping; (2) intervention adaptation and implementation; and (3) implementation support, problem-solving, and sustainability. Results: Four tools capitalised on inherent strengths of the parks, accommodated child and staff needs, and emerged as feasible and effective: Group Discussion, Good Behaviour Game, Peers as Leaders, and Good News Notes. Conclusions: Recreational settings offer opportunities for mental health promotion for children in urban poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Within the development discourse, the narratives of the poor are a well utilized rhetorical tool to describe poverty and its causes. However, narratives can also reveal the beliefs and 'world-view' of the narrators. To explore this influence, the authors applied a discursive approach, to deconstruct the narratives of 101 slum dwellers in Kibera, Nairobi. The results revealed that poverty was largely attributed to external constraints, beyond an individual's control. Despite wanting a better life, participants held low expectations for the future. Hopes and dreams were placed on their children. While risk and uncertainty was a constant theme, large differences were found between genders as to the aspirations for the future. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban poverty is invariably linked to sociospatial dimensions of livelihood strategies. Gendered social relations, for example, have been seen to impact the ability of females to access resources, to gain assets, and to engage in viable income-generating activities. Focussing on the livelihood strategies of the urban poor as they intersect with neoliberal economic reforms in contemporary Ghana, this paper draws on a field-based survey of porters in Accra, mostly migrants from rural agricultural northern Ghana, whose primary livelihoods derive from transporting goods for clients in congested market areas of the urban industrial south. The paper highlights the gendered aspects of porters' livelihood experiences such as differences in migration patterns, reliance on physical labour and living conditions, which relatively few analyses have examined, especially as these relate to wider socioeconomic processes. The study illustrates how this perspective is important to understand the intersection of livelihood strategies, gender and national economic reforms in promoting both rural and urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the study which analyses the desisting process and its influencing factors in criminal offenders. It states that 28 criminal offenders who are enrolled in reentry programs were surveyed and interviewed on various issues including their past criminal actions, future selves, and social support. Result shows that the excuses for past actions offered the desistance decision to keep a self that is worthy of redemption, while the social support permitted hope for change.

This paper reports on the calculation of poverty rates for small areas in Australia using a spatial microsimulation model. The spatial microsimulation methodology used involves reweighting data from confidentialised unit record files (CURFs) from surveys conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to small area census data, also from the ABS. The method is described in this paper, and then maps of poverty using poverty rates derived from this small area estimation method are shown for the eastern coast of Australia and its capital cities. Further analysis of poverty rates in capital cities is then conducted. We find that areas of higher poverty risk can be clearly identified within Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane. We also find that areas of high poverty are frequently ‘buffered’ by areas of moderate poverty. This is not always the case since, in some areas, we find a high poverty area neighbouring a low poverty area but, generally, there appears to be a moderate poverty ‘buffer’ in most capital cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a story about community formation right along the sidelines of the streets. It traces the transitory movements of youth in South Africa, their sojourns from the streets to shelters and places of their own making. Blending personal narratives with ethnographic description and analyses, this article illustrates a crossing over of moments in which abandonment and abuse give rise to instances of companionship, care, and cohabitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is one of the first to examine the links connecting water insecurity, gender, and emotional distress. The article presents quantitative and qualitative analyses of interview data collected from randomly selected pairs of male and female household heads (n = 48) living under the same household-level conditions of water insecurity. The results provide partial confirmation of past findings that women are more likely than men to be burdened with everyday water responsibilities. However, there were no significant differences between men's and women's experiences in household water emergencies (i.e., water shortages and last-ditch attempts to buy water) and reports on some measures of emotional distress (i.e., worry, annoyance, and anger with family members). The results suggest that intrahousehold gender disparities may be mitigated in times of severe water scarcity. The discussion raises questions about the comparability of men's and women's expressions of emotional distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This paper aims to extend the knowledge of the psychosocial impact of orphanhood through a detailed description of child welfare outcomes; explore the relationship between child-, household- and neighbourhood-level characteristics and child welfare outcomes; and suggest potential points of intervention to support orphans and vulnerable children. Methods: Two indices of psychosocial welfare were developed: emotional well-being and perceived care. Multilevel regression models were applied to identify the sources of variability in these outcomes. Results: Vulnerability was associated more with poverty and neighbourhood characteristics, than with orphanhood. Conclusion: Targeted support for orphans should take into account the loss incurred, the age and gender of the child, and the characteristics of the community in which the child lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of government corruption and state monopolized industries on poverty and income disparity in urban China. Urban poverty and income disparity in China have increased sharply in recent years. The gap between the rich and poor has become so alarmingly wide that it has caused riots and violent protests in cities and towns across the country. While most studies on the roots of urban poverty and income disparity in China have focused on factors, such as unemployment, rural-to-urban migration, and lack of a social safety net, this study investigates the impact of government corruption and state-monopolized industries on urban poor and income inequality. This study argues that the root causes of the fast-growing gap between the rich and poor are the irrationally high income gained through the monopoly of state-owned industries, the legal gains derived from graft, corruption, and power-for-money transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a sample of 72 developing countries to estimate the change in the cost of alleviating urban poverty brought about by the recent increase in food prices. This cost is approximated by the change in the poverty deficit (PD), that is, the variation in financial resources required to eliminate poverty under perfect targeting. The results show that, for most countries, the cost represents less than 0.2% of gross domestic product. However, in the most severely affected, it may exceed 3%. In all countries, the change in the PD is mostly due to the negative real income effect of those households that were poor before the price shock, while the cost attributable to new households falling into poverty is negligible. Thus, in countries where transfer mechanisms with effective targeting already exist, the most cost-effective strategy would be to scale up such programs rather than designing tools to identify the new poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban poverty, ill health, and living in slums are intrinsically interwoven. Poverty is multidimensional and there is no agreement on a universal definition. UN-HABITAT has introduced an operational definition of slums that is restricted to legal aspects and excludes the more difficult social dimensions. The World Health Organization definition is more comprehensive and uses a health and social determinants approach that is strongly based on the social conditions in which people live and work. Health and improving the lives of people living in slums is at the top of international development agenda. Proactive strategies to contain new urban populations and slum upgrading are the two key approaches. Regarding the latter, participatory upgrading that most often involves the provision of basic infrastructure is currently the most acceptable intervention in developing countries. In urbanization of poverty, participatory slum upgrading is a necessary but not sufficient condition to reduce poverty and improve the lives of slum dwellers. Empowering interventions that target capacity development and skill transfer of both individuals and community groups—as well as meaningful negotiations with institutions, such as municipal governments, which can affect slum dwellers' lives—appear to be the most promising strategies to improve the slum dwellers' asset bases and health. Non-governmental organizations, training institutions, and international development partners are best placed to facilitate horizontal relationships between individuals, community groups, and vertical relationships with more powerful institutions that affect the slum dwellers' lives. The main challenge appears to be lack of commitment from the key stakeholders to upgrade interventions citywide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the new urban poverty in China since the deepening of market-oriented reform in the 1990s and argues that the institutional process goes beyond recent market-oriented reforms. Poverty generation is driven by broad economic restructuring and transformation of welfare provision. De-industrialisation and decline in state-owned enterprises have generated a significant number of laid-off workers, forming the new urban poor who are simultaneously confronted with the transformation of welfare provision. The loss of workplace-based entitlement is a direct cause of their poverty or exacerbates their underprivileged conditions. For at least a significant proportion of new urban poor without the hope of returning to the mainstream labour market, the minimum living standard support programme in fact captures them at the edge of survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper describes the current urban poverty situation, examines the factors affecting the probability of a household being in poverty and investigates how the urban minimum living standard guarantee (dibao) program helps poor people to get out of poverty. The targeting efficiency of the urban dibao program is discussed. The present study finds that the poverty rate of households with unemployed workers is much higher than that of households without unemployed workers. The urban dibao program is helpful in reducing poverty rates, but it does not reduce poverty rates too much. The government should place emphasis on helping laid-off and unemployed workers to become reemployed. The most urgent problem for the dibao program is improving the efficiency of targeting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I carried out ethnographic fieldwork among 153 married adolescent girls, aged 15-19, in a Dhaka slum from December 2001 to January 2003, including 50 in-depth interviews and eight case studies. I also held discussions with family and community members. In this article, I focus on popular understandings of vaginal discharge being caused by durbolota (weakness) and chinta rog (worry illness), as mentioned by young women. Eighty-eight young women reported that they had experienced white discharge, blaming it on a number of factors such as stress and financial hardships, tensions in the household, marital instability, hunger anxiety, and reproductive burdens. For married adolescent women in the urban slum, white discharge has many levels of meaning linked to the broader social, political, and material inequalities in their everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Families, primarily female-headed minority households with children, living in high-poverty public housing projects in five U.S. cities were offered housing vouchers by lottery in the Moving to Opportunity program. Four to seven years after random assignment, families offered vouchers lived in safer neighborhoods that had lower poverty rates than those of the control group not offered vouchers. We find no significant overall effects of this intervention on adult economic self-sufficiency or physical health. Mental health benefits of the voucher offers for adults and for female youth were substantial. Beneficial effects for female youth on education, risky behavior, and physical health were offset by adverse effects for male youth. For outcomes that exhibit significant treatment effects, we find, using variation in treatment intensity across voucher types and cities, that the relationship between neighborhood poverty rate and outcomes is approximately linear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines the development of China's social assistance programme, including its design, implementation and trends. The Chinese government has given high priority to the establishment and institutionalisation of this programme. To have an effective social assistance programme in the context of an increasingly pluralistic society, China is facing the profoundly challenging task of designing a coherent and over-arching social protection system that would cover retirement, medical care, unemployment and poverty alleviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the design of urban governance structures, there is an inherent tension between ‘scale’ and ‘voice’. Both aspects are important considerations if city government is to address the needs of the poor. Metropolitan-scale government offers the potential for resources (notably finance but also land, natural resources and skills) to be mobilised from across the city to provide services and infrastructure for all, including the poor. But the metropolitan scale can also mean remoteness of decision-makers from citizens and hence a weakened citizen ‘voice’, especially of the poor. This article explores this tension, using material from recent research on urban governance and poverty in ten cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The analysis covers issues of jurisdiction boundaries, responsibilities for services and infrastructure, resource bases and mobilisation, performance in service delivery and access to services, political representation and accountability and mechanisms of citizen participation. The conclusion is that the tension between scale and voice may be best addressed by a two-tier or multi-tier structure involving both a very local level, with statutory rights and a share of resources, accessible and accountable to the poor, together with an upper level, also democratically accountable, covering the whole metropolitan area. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We combine a historical case study approach with a multivariate time series analysis to examine one of the consequences of the decline of the steel industry in Lake County, Indiana, from 1964 to 1993. Specifically, we investigate how deindustrialization contributed to the county's impoverishment, measured by the percentage of the population receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). We find that the loss of manufacturing jobs, especially steel jobs, triggered a rise in AFDC recipiency rates. The growth in service jobs during the period does little to offset the negative impact of lost steel jobs. We further find that the deleterious impact of lost steel jobs on A FDC recipiency is greatest after 1980, the period of heaviest job loss in Lake County's steel industry These results persist even after including several control variables that represent plausible alternative explanations for Lake County's rise in AFDC recipiency. We discuss the implications of our analyses for better understanding the link between deindustrialization and poverty [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To many people, the problem of poverty in China was confined mainly to the rural areas, and the situation of urban poverty was regarded as insignificant. Yet in fact, market-orientated economic reforms have created an urban underclass, made up of poorly paid state workers, the unemployed, and migrants from the countryside. In attempting to respond to the mounting needs of the urban poor, the Chinese government has introduced a means-tested social assistance programme in the cities since the mid-1990s. This paper describes the basic philosophy, structure and operation of this programme, and provides a general assessment of its functions and shortcomings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]