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Begin New Search Topic Poverty Political Geography United States

1. A Role for Social Protection Investments to Support Food and Nutrition Security

Author:
Reid Hamel
Publication Date:
02-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Social protection programming, such as cash transfers and vouchers provided at the individual or household level, has become increasingly prominent as a tool to combat food insecurity worldwide. Advantages of a social protection approach include the ability to target and reach the most vulnerable segments of society and to provide direct support for basic needs without reliance on complex causal pathways.The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) invests relatively little in social protection despite its flagship initiative, Feed the Future, which seeks to mitigate food insecurity and to reduce the prevalence of stunting in 12 countries (formerly in 19). Ghana’s LEAP (Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty) program represents an exception to the U.S. investment pattern. In partnership with UNICEF, USAID/Ghana has made noteworthy investments in the expansion of the LEAP cash transfer program to add a new eligible group of beneficiaries: pregnant women and children under one year old. The intention to intervene during pregnancy and the first year of life is motivated by a growing understanding that good nutrition during this window is critical to physical and cognitive health and human development outcomes that last a lifetime. This report explores the development of Ghana’s LEAP program since 2008; its current coverage, successes, and challenges; and opportunities for both the government of Ghana and donor partners to spearhead continuous improvements for program outcomes and resource efficiency.
Topic:
Development, Poverty, Social Policy, and Development Aid
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, North America, and Ghana

2. Venezuela’s Crisis Is Now a Regional Humanitarian Disaster

Author:
Moises Rendon and Mark L Schneider
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The Issue Venezuela has been subjected to an unprecedented man-made humanitarian crisis, including extreme food and medicine shortages, thousands of children dying of malnutrition, and malnourished people contracting formerly eradicated diseases. While Venezuela’s dictatorial regime has repeatedly rejected humanitarian aid from the outside, the country’s humanitarian, economic, social, and institutional collapse, along with fierce political repression, have caused 1.2 million Venezuelans to flee the country over the past two years, with hundreds of thousands more and possibly millions expected to flee in the future. Our Recommendations Encourage the United States and other like-minded countries to provide leadership on the diplomatic and assistance fronts to help respond to this crisis. Work to build consensus within the international community on the urgency of the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis and to agree on steps to address the crisis, including convening a high-level task force. Develop a comprehensive policy response that includes immediate relief efforts on Venezuela’s border with Colombia and within Venezuela using innovative mechanisms due to the current limited humanitarian access. Provide immediate technical assistance to help estimate the level of need and identify available resources. Support and engage civil society and local actors, including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector, and entrepreneurs, as well as the Venezuelan diaspora community, to help limit the suffering of the Venezuelan people. Encourage host countries to grant temporary protected status to Venezuelans and create a broader burden-sharing arrangement in the region for processing those seeking refuge, following the recent guidelines by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Support the use of innovative technology tools, such as blockchain and digital currencies, to facilitate distribution of aid within and beyond Venezuela.
Topic:
Health, Poverty, United Nations, Food, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, South America, and Venezuela

3. Homelessness & Youth

Author:
Ally Walker
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on Human Rights Education, University of Denver
Abstract:
The experience of homeless individuals, youth or adults, is as multifaceted and unique as each person. There is not one type of young person who is homeless or one cause for their homelessness. COHRE had the pleasure of sitting down with Cheryl Secorski, Homeless Programs Specialist for Youth at the state of Colorado’s Office of Homeless Youth Services, to get a better understanding of youth homelessness, how the State of Colorado works to prevent homelessness and what people can do to help.
Topic:
Human Rights, Poverty, Youth, and Homelessness
Political Geography:
United States, North America, and Colorado

4. Homelessness & Women

Author:
Lauren Palarino
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on Human Rights Education, University of Denver
Abstract:
In the Denver Metro Area out of 3336 people who are homeless surveyed, 30.2% are women and nationally, single women are the fastest growing population of homeless in the United States and face unique challenges regarding healthcare, safety, and childcare. These needs are often unaddressed by shelters and instead can alienate women who are unable to find the help they need. The reasons women are homeless are as diverse, but one in four women report domestic violence as the main factor in their current homeless situation resulting in health disparities and trauma left unaddressed. Lack of education prevents women from finding employment and gaining income and rising costs of living. Understanding women’s specific problems associated with being homeless can help us empathize with them and to try and help.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Poverty, Gender Based Violence, and Homelessness
Political Geography:
United States, North America, and Colorado

5. On Love and Metamorphosis

Author:
Meg Murphy
Publication Date:
04-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Andrea Ortiz went down to the Charles River on the afternoon that she—victoriously—submitted her senior thesis. There she was, a girl born in Mexico City, an immigrant raised in Miami, a bright light, the first in her family line to get to Harvard. Yet she felt a wave of sadness, and that, she reasoned, made no sense. So she sat by the river to think until it came to her: this was yearning. “You never accomplish anything alone. I was feeling the absence of the people who were most influential in getting me to this point,” she said later. “I wished they could be here too.” Her grandmother is one of those people. She is a woman who created her own philosophy and humanities class in Mexico City for people, like herself at the time, without access to a college education. Later in rural Comitán de Dominguez, where Ortiz spent childhood summers, her grandmother mail-ordered hundreds of books. The family home became an informal library for rural housewives.
Topic:
Poverty, Social Services, Community, and Housing
Political Geography:
United States and North America

6. Govern LIke Us: U.S. Expectations of Poor Countries

Author:
Thomas M. A.
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
In the poorest countries, such as Afghanistan, Haiti, and Mali, the United States has struggled to work with governments whose corruption and lack of capacity are increasingly seen to be the cause of instability and poverty. The development and security communities call for "good governance" to improve the rule of law, democratic accountability, and the delivery of public goods and services. The United States and other rich liberal democracies insist that this is the only legitimate model of governance. Yet poor governments cannot afford to govern according to these ideals and instead are compelled to rely more heavily on older, cheaper strategies of holding power, such as patronage and repression. The unwillingness to admit that poor governments do and must govern differently has cost the United States and others inestimable blood and coin. Informed by years of fieldwork and drawing on practitioner work and academic scholarship in politics, economics, law, and history, this book explains the origins of poor governments in the formation of the modern state system and describes the way they govern. It argues that, surprisingly, the effort to stigmatize and criminalize the governance of the poor is both fruitless and destabilizing. The United States must pursue a more effective foreign policy to engage poor governments and acknowledge how they govern.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Corruption, Development, Poverty, Fragile/Failed State, and Governance
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Haiti, and Mali
Publication Identifier:
9780231171205
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

7. Income Inequality Developments in the Great Recession

Author:
Tomas Hellebrandt
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The Great Recession, which cost tens of millions of jobs, a collapse of asset values around the world, and threatened the global financial system, has generated renewed concern over the long-standing issue of the fairness of the distribution of wealth and income in many societies. Economic inequality has increased in the United States and many other advanced economies over the past 20 to 30 years. This trend generated less worry in the boom years, when unemployment rates were low and cheap credit enabled consumers to borrow and maintain higher standards of living, masking the impact of growing income disparity on consumption patterns and perceptions of well-being.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Poverty, Social Stratification, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Ireland

8. Do Trends in U.S. Inequality Matter for Norms of Global Governance? Concepts and Empirics for Debate

Author:
Carol Graham
Publication Date:
01-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
The United States has long been viewed as the "land of opportunity," where those who work hard get ahead. Belief in this feature of American national identity has persisted even though inequality has been rising for de¬cades. In recent years, the trend toward extremes of income and wealth has accelerated significantly, owing to demographic shifts, the skills bias of the economy and fiscal policy. From 1997 to 2007, the share of income accru¬ing to the top 1 percent of U.S. households increased by 13.5 percentage points, which is equivalent to shifting $1.1 trillion in total annual income to this group - more than the total income of the bottom 40 percent of households. The precise impact of inequality on individual well-being remains controversial, partly because of the complex nature of the metrics needed to gauge it accurately, but also because why it matters depends on what it signals. If inequality is perceived to be the result of just reward for individual effort, then it can be a constructive signal of future opportunities. However, if it is perceived to be the result of an unfair system that rewards a privileged few, inequality can undermine incentives to work hard and invest in the future. In this sense, current U.S. trends have been largely destructive. Economic mobility, for example, has declined in recent decades and is now lower than in many other industrialized countries. There is also a strong intergenerational income correlation (about 0.5) in the U.S.; children of parents who earn 50 percent more than the average are likely to earn 25 percent above the average of their generation. In a world in which individuals' fates are increasingly linked and effective gover¬nance depends on some kind of consensus on social and distributive justice norms, growing income differentials in one country - especially one that has long served as a beacon of economic opportunity - can affect behavior elsewhere, both in terms of investments in education and the labor market and the propensity to protest. More generally, declining economic mobility in the U.S. could undermine confidence in the principles of market econo¬mies and democratic governance that America has espoused for decades - principles that are fundamental to many countries' development strategies.
Topic:
Economics, Poverty, Social Stratification, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States and Germany

9. Speaking a Common Language with Latin America: Economics

Author:
Jose W. Fernandez
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
United States-Latin American relations have often suffered from a disconnect. While we stress security issues, the region's leaders speak of poverty reduction and trade. They resent being seen as afterthoughts to U.S. policies focused elsewhere. As a result, the region is sporadically open to new suitors, such as Spanish investors 15 years ago, or the Chinese today.
Topic:
Economics and Poverty
Political Geography:
United States, China, Latin America, and Spain

10. Saving Lives with Common Sense: The case for continued US support for the Arms Trade Treaty

Author:
Scott Stedjan
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
By signing the Arms Trade Treaty on September 25, Secretary John Kerry took an important step toward a safer and more secure world. The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is the first-ever multilateral treaty on the global trade in conventional arms. It is a common sense agreement that establishes standards for the $40 billion legal international weapons trade and seeks to reduce the illicit arms trade.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Arms Control and Proliferation, Poverty, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
United States