Campaigning against poverty: The local authority role

The Record increase in income inequality and poverty over the last 15 years have major implications for local government. Yet an anti-poverty agenda has been conspicuous by its absence until recently in local authority strategies and debates. A national political campaign with all party local authority support is now underway, linked to a growing awareness of the need for local authorities to adopt a truly strategic approach in addressing issues of poverty and social justice at the local level.     

A project management approach to the implementation of development programmes within the local government sphere: An empirical analysis

Local government constitutes that part of the public sector that is closest to the inhabitants and is therefore indispensable in its role of promoting their general welfare through, inter alia, undertaking various development initiatives. Furthermore, legislation imposes upon local authorities the obligation to promote the social and economic development of local communities and to participate in implementing national and provincial development programmes. The efficiency and effectiveness with which local government fulfils its developmental role will largely depend on the ability of local authorities to manage development projects. The purpose of this article is to investigate the application of a project management approach as a tool for implementing development programmes in the local government sphere. This is done by means of a comprehensive study of the relevant literature and empirical research based on a research questionnaire that was distributed among selected municipal officials in leadership posts throughout South Africa. The findings of the empirical study are utilised to make specific recommendations with respect to the application of a project management approach to service delivery and local government development initiatives.     

Persistent Poverty and the Failure of Area-Based Initiatives in the U.S.

Recent poverty statistics in the U.S. have raised fundamental questions regarding the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs over the last four decades. While discussing the historical backdrop against which many of the area-based initiatives were designed, this paper provides an analysis of changes in poverty rates in the U.S., particularly in California and Los Angeles County. The findings suggest that the changing nature of poverty, including its spatial diffusion over the last three decades, may require alternatives to the re-emerging spatial targeting practices of centrist governments in the U.S. and the U.K.     

中国农村贫困与反贫困制度研究

文章认为,新形势下农村贫困问题复杂：绝对贫困大有改善,相对贫困日益突出,返贫现象凸显严重,追根溯源权利贫困是导致农村贫困的根源。文章透过制度分析,通过重塑农村组织,深化市场体制,完善制度创新,强化运行机制,厉行执行监督系统化措施,构建农村反贫困长效治理机制,强化制度之间的联动效应,将农村贫困治理融入区域和整体社会、政治、经济、文化以及环境协调与可持续发展框架内,实现农村扶贫工作的良性发展。     

新疆扶贫资金投入及使用的绩效分析

本文概括了新疆农村的贫困现状、扶贫资金的投入情况及其变化,通过对新疆扶贫资金及其具体投向对农业总产值、农村贫困人口和农民人均纯收入的回归分析,来考察新疆扶贫资金使用的绩效,并提出相应的政策建议。     

Is There a Local Business Community? Explaining the non-participation of small business in local economic development

This article reports a study of the attitudes of small business owners to the localities in which their businesses are located and local economic development. The views of the owners contrasted strongly with those of representatives of local business bodies and economic agencies. The findings indicate small business owners tend to be detached from the locality and from local economic initiatives. This appears to be due to historical trends that have reduced the role of small business in local political and economic processes and the logic(s) of business practice within the sectors analysed. This has occurred despite trends soliciting more private sector involvement in local economic initiatives.     

Poverty,human rights law and socio-economic realities in South Africa†

South Africa is a nation of immense variety. It has rich cultural diversity, an enviable climate and an abundance of natural resources. However, it is also a nation with vast economic disparities and a highly unequal distribution of income. Hence, in spite of abundant resources and a seemingly vibrant economy, South Africa still faces an enormous poverty problem that is fundamentally no different from that of other African countries. As in many other African countries this problem of poverty is compounded by the HIV/AIDS pandemic; by high levels of unemployment; by low levels of education; and by a number of other factors. Today, South Africa has one of the best constitutions in the world and a Bill of Rights that contains an array of justiciable socio-economic rights. The South African government has also attempted to alleviate poverty and mitigate its effects through progressively developing and expanding a social welfare system and other programmes such as the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy. The purpose of this article is to analyse the role of human rights (specifically the Bill of Rights in the Constitution) and government efforts to alleviate poverty (through certain programmes and service delivery) in the face of adverse socio-economic realities in South Africa.     

Welfare receipt and the intergenerational transmission of work‐welfare norms

This article investigates the role of welfare receipt in shaping norms regarding work and welfare using unique Australian data from the Youth in Focus Project. We begin by incorporating welfare into a theoretical model of the transmission of work‐welfare norms across generations. Consistent with the predictions of this model, we find evidence that youths' attitudes toward work and welfare may be influenced by socialization within their families. Young people are more likely to oppose generous social benefits and to believe that social inequality stems from individual characteristics if (i) their mothers support these views; (ii) their mothers were employed while they were growing up; and (iii) their families never received welfare. Finally, youths' work‐welfare norms appear to be unrelated to their neighbors' welfare receipt suggesting that socialization occurs primarily within families rather than within neighborhoods.     

关于解决我国农村贫困问题的现时思考

面对我国农村贫困出现的脱贫难度增大、速度减缓、返贫率高、贫富差距扩大、贫困的代际传递增强以及经济风险增大等新问题，农村反贫困需要深入探索促进农村可持续发展的有效对策，及时调整社会制度、政策措施、扶贫战略，充分发挥政府和社会的力量，推进农村贫困问题的解决。     

Public assets and services delivery in South Africa: Is it really a success?

Poverty alleviation remains a pressing concern for South African policy-makers. Implementing effective anti-poverty policies requires a clear understanding of the nature and extent of poverty. The extant literature on South African poverty dynamics shows a decline in the headcount ratio over the first decade of the twenty-first century. However, the prior research largely adopts a narrow money-metric approach, or uses multi-dimensional indices that include welfare indicators based on private assets (e.g. television sets) or those that are provided publicly (e.g. access to water). This paper uses multiple correspondence analysis to measure non-income poverty trends for the period 2005–12. The novelty in this undertaking lies in an attempt to include a measure of the perceived quality of public assets and services to complement the standard indices. This provides some measure of ‘success’ of public service delivery, accounting for both changes in access and quality.     

Seebohm Rowntree and the postwar poverty puzzle

In his third social survey of York carried out in 1950, Seebohm Rowntree reported a steep decline since 1936 of the percentage of households in poverty. He attributed the bulk of this decline to government welfare reforms enacted during and after the war. This article re‐examines the survivingrecords from the 1950 survey, using a revised poverty line and looking more closely at the measurement of income. It also re‐assesses the impact of welfare reforms on working‐class poverty, and finds that poverty in York was significantly higher, and the contribution of welfare reform substantially less, than was originally reported.     

Building on Poor People's Capacities: The Case of Common Property Resources in India and West Africa

This article examines the relation between poor women and men and common property resources (cprs). It locates poor people's use of cprs within a wider focus on sustainable livelihoods, which argues that development initiatives need to build on people's assets and strengths, and identifies cprs as a crucial element of poor people's coping and adaptive strategies. The article considers evidence from India and West Africa with a particular focus on poverty reduction, equity, gender and management issues. Development agencies and governments which have re-focused their attention on poverty in recent years will find that cprs provide an entry point to understanding poor people's perceptions of poverty and for building on their capacities.     

Born to be different: The role of local political leaders in poverty reduction in China

By incorporating imprinting theory into a political–economic framework, this paper studies the role of local political leaders in poverty reduction. Exploiting exogenous turnovers of city-level party secretaries in China, I find that city secretaries with early-life poverty experiences are more likely to increase the incomes of poor families in their jurisdictions. I further find that the effect of city secretaries' poverty experiences on the income of the poor is more pronounced in the counties that are not officially categorized as impoverished by the central government and among the families living above the poverty line set by the Chinese government but below the international poverty line proposed by the World Bank. It is suggested that local political leaders affect poverty reduction outcomes by instilling their personal preferences, which can be shaped by their early experiences, into their economic decisions.     

Labouring and Learning towards Competitiveness: The Future of Local Labour Markets after Harker, Leitch and Freud

In 1999 Geddes and Newman highlighted five key tensions in New Labour's adoption of the 'new centrist' approach to Local Economic Development (LED). This article reflects on the continuing relevance of these tensions in relation local labour markets and in the light of the publication of three major independent reviews of policy in relation to child poverty, skills provision and welfare reform and the Government's response to these. It suggests that in the main the tensions identified by Geddes and Newman remain relevant, especially within the emerging national policy framework. However, it also ends optimistically, by suggesting that there is scope for LED actors to piece together an approach which can begin to move toward a resolution of the tensions through bringing together employment and skills policies at the local level, developing more effective models of partnership working (including with employers), and taking the sustainability agenda more seriously.     

法学视野中的反贫困问题研究

新的时期我国农村地区贫困出现了新的动向,传统的扶贫机制和方式已经不能适应形势的发展。溯根求源,是我们的制度设计出了问题。因此,必须将反贫困纳入法制化的轨道,进行制度的创新。     

我国城市贫困群体的权利现状分析——基于阿玛蒂亚.森的权利理论

经济贫困是权利贫困的折射和表现,"交换权利"不足或恶化就会导致贫困的产生。本文运用印度经济学家阿玛蒂亚.森的理论分析中国城市贫困群体的权利现状,可以发现:除以生产为基础的权利无法获取外,以贸易为基础的权利、自己劳动的权利、继承与转移的权利都在不同程度上恶化,这是城市贫困群体出现和扩大的根本原因。从权利理论的视角反贫困,政府的工作重点应当是采取多种手段和措施改善构成"交换权利"的四种权利。     

当前农村反贫困的问题与对策

20世纪90年代中期以来,我国反贫困的步伐明显放缓。这是因为在反贫困的运行过程中,无论是对贫困内涵的理论把握,贫困人员的结构改变,还是对因公共供给不足而返贫的现实认识以及反贫困的制度设计都存在着缺陷和误区。因此,要治理贫困恶性循环,就必须从多维角度出发,选择新的符合新发展观和和谐社会要求的综合反贫困路径。     

治边稳藏视域下援藏扶贫与西藏内源式发展研究——以西藏白朗县援藏产业扶贫调查为例

西藏作为深度贫困地区,脱贫攻坚任务艰巨。对口援藏扶贫作为一项重要的制度安排,对西藏全面小康目标的实现具有积极的作用。本文认为,援藏扶贫工作须置于习近平治边稳藏重要论述的指引之下,要以增强西藏自我发展为关键,实现西藏的内源式发展。文章在分析内源式发展理念基础上,以山东省济南市援助西藏日喀则白朗县扶贫为例,阐释了产业扶贫实现内源式发展的具体路径,并从可持续生计、体现长期性、力求科学性等方面探究援藏产业扶贫中蕴含的启示,为脱贫攻坚和乡村振兴有机衔接打下基础。     

Greater London enterprise board: Vision and reality

This article debates the innovative role in the private sector defined for GLEB by the London Industrial Strategy. It suggests that there are substantial problems at both the theoretical level and the level of implementation with the concept of municipal enterprise boards. It concludes that there is a need for further discussion on the objectives of municipal enterprise boards and more assessment of their role in relation to other possible economic initiatives at the local level.     

The Role of Race and Birth Place in Welfare Usage among Comparable Women: Evidence from the U.S.

There is evidence that women are more likely to live in poverty than men. Given the fact that the poor are more likely to use welfare, it becomes useful to consider welfare usage among women. A-priori welfare programs are set up in such a way that welfare usage should be based primarily on economic needs and health concerns. However, it is possible that an individual’s experiences could affect their perception and inclination for using government assistance. In this scenario, differences in welfare usage will exist for individuals with similar characteristics but different experiences. We explore this possibility among women and investigate if race/ethnicity and birthplace still have a role to play in the decision to use welfare even after controlling for income, health and other demographic factors like employment and household size, which are typical predictors of welfare usage. We find that race does not matter for welfare usage among comparable women. In addition, we do not find significant differences in welfare usage among women based on birthplace—suggesting that comparable naturalized and native born women share similar inclination for welfare.