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521. Microcredit and Households Coping with HIV/AIDS: A Case Study from Zimbabwe

Author:
Carolyn Barnes
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The National Academy of Public Administration
Abstract:
This study seeks to better understand the ways chronic illness and death, possibly associated with HIV/AIDS, negatively affect households and the impact of microcredit in helping affected households. This is achieved through analysis of data from clients of Zambuko Trust and non-client micro entrepreneurs, using proxy indicators of HIV/AIDS affected households. It also investigates the vetting of members by loan guarantee groups and the ways these groups deal with individuals affected by illness and death. Since members of loan groups serve as gatekeepers to loans, the internal dynamics of these groups as well as the MFI's policies and loan term s and conditions are important to understanding any push factors that might exclude HIV/AIDS infected and affected individuals. Suggestions from clients and other key stakeholders are provided on changes that might assist microfinance institutions and their clients to address the negative effects of HIV/AIDS.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Zimbabwe

522. The Rhetoric of Hegemony

Author:
Daniel Heradstveit and David C. Pugh
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
This paper looks at the rhetorical extension of the word “terrorism” to cover what used to be called guerrilla war, separatism, civil war, armed resistance and all other forms of political violence, down to and including non-lethal sabotage and vandalism. It begins by reflecting on how political power must be buttressed by legitimacy, which in turn involves the de-legitimisation of challengers. This is often achieved by assimilating political dissent to the “criminality” that by definition governments are created to combat. When governments use the term “order” to mean their own convenience, and the converse, this can effectively evoke the individual citizen's fear of personally suffering violence, even when he is in fact more at risk from the government itself than from its critics. In much the same way, “terror” no longer means government violence against citizens (as in the 19th century), nor solely violence against civilians by dissident groups; it has recently mutated to mean any armed resistance to the party deploying the rhetoric, even in conventional military forms. The terrorist label is the ultimate delegitimising technique, which may be employed to mobilise metropolitan populations to support a globally-coordinated suppression of resistance to the new world order.
Topic:
Crime, Human Welfare, Politics, and Terrorism

523. Disability programmes in need of reform

Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
OECD countries spend at least twice as much on disability-related programmes as they spend on unemployment. Disability benefits on average account for more than 10 percent of total social spending. In the Netherlands, Norway and Poland they reach as much as 20 percent.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Government, Human Welfare, and Non-Governmental Organization
Political Geography:
Norway, Poland, and Netherlands

524. The Underground Railroad In South Central Pennsylvania

Author:
Matthew Pinsker and Scott Hancock
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues
Abstract:
"Among historians," one scholar suggested just a few years ago, "the underground railroad has become a dead issue." As if to confirm that judgment, the most important recent study of runaway slaves contains only two index entries for the Underground Railroad. The authors of that widely acclaimed monograph, John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, are candid about the reasons for this decision. "Although historians continue to disagree about various aspects of the Underground Railroad," they write, "few deny that even today it is shrouded in myth and legend."
Topic:
Human Rights and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
United States

525. Living at the Edge: America's Low-Income Children and Families

Author:
Hsien-Hen Lu, Younghwan Song, Mary Clare Lennon, and J. Lawrence Aber
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
By analyzing data from the Current Population Survey March Supplements, Living at the Edge explores the following questions about children in low-income families in the United States: What are the overall changes in the low-income and poverty rates for children over the past quarter century? How has the population of children in low-income families changed over the past decade? Which children are more likely to live in low-income families? How have changes in parental employment status affected the likelihood of children living in low-income families? What are the state by state variations in child low-income and poverty rates, and how have these changed in the last decade? How does a more inclusive definition of family income and expenses affect our understanding of the poverty and near-poverty rates of children in low-income families? This report helps document significant improvements in the child lowincome rate as well as the significant decrease in the proportion of children who relied on public assistance during the 1990s. However, Living at the Edge also finds a notable increase in the share of children who lived in near-poor families (those with incomes between 100 and 200 percent of the poverty line) among children in low-income families during the 1990s. Many disadvantaged groups of children, including those with young parents, minority parents, parents with limited education, or unmarried parents, were less likely to live in poor or lowincome families in the late 1990s than such children a decade earlier. The improvement in the child low-income rates of these disadvantaged groups was closely related to an increase in parental employment during the late 1990s. However, the low-income rate worsened for children whose more educated parent had a high-school diploma but no college education. For children of many disadvantaged social groups, parental employment appears to do less to protect them from economic hardship then it did a decade earlier. The groups that suffered the most in reduced economic security given parental employment status were those in the medium risk ranks (children in families with at least one parent between ages 25 to 39, children whose more educated parent had only has a high school diploma, and in father-only families). The report also notes that the official measure of poverty ignores the burden of medical and work related expenses as well as taxes and therefore tends to underestimate the share of children in near-poor and low-income families facing economic insecurity. Finally, we discuss the policy implications for our findings.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and Poverty
Political Geography:
United States

526. Active Patients' in Rural African Health Care: Implications for Welfare, Policy and Privatization

Author:
Kenneth L. Leonard
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
The 'active patient' is introduced in this paper. She is the same person as the rational peasant that we have known for at least three decades. She is a rational agent seeking health care in an environment characterized by market failures (particularly agency in the supply of medical quality) and imperfect institutional responses to these failures. We show evidence that patients significantly increase their welfare by choosing between various different providers and matching their illnesses to the resources that are available at these different providers. This paper suggests that continuing to view patients as passive participants in the health care market gives way to misleading policy suggestions and may in fact reduce the welfare of patients.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa

527. Factional Politics and Credit Networks in Revolutionary Vermont

Author:
Henning Hillmann
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
Studies of state formation tend to emphasize the demise of localism through centralization. This article specifies empirically the social structural conditions that strengthen localism understate formation. The historical case is the creation of Vermont during the Revolutionary War and the local factionalism it involved. Probate records are used to reconstruct credit networks that provided the relational foundation for localism and factional identities. The evidence demonstrates that network segregation between factional regions intensified over time, and was supported by strong cohesion within these regions. Local brokers who forged cohesion within factions consistently attained important political offices while mediators between opposing factions increasingly failed to obtain offices. This structural process coincided with the shift of Vermont's domestic politics into national level conflicts between Federalists and Jeffersonians. Within this escalation local and national factions crystallized around equivalent pairs of binary categorical oppositions. T h e evocation of national politics directly resonated with local lines of conflict, and reinforced factional identities and localism.
Topic:
Government, Human Welfare, Politics, and War
Political Geography:
United States

528. The Plasticity of Participation: Evidence from a Participatory Governance Experiment

Author:
Subham Chaudhuri and Patrick Heller
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
Under the “People's Campaign for Decentralised Planning,” initiated by the government of the Indian state of Kerala in 1996, significant planning and budgetary functions that had previously been controlled by state-level ministries, were devolved to the lowest tier of government—municipalities in urban areas, and gram panchayats (village councils) in ural areas. A key element of the campaign was the requirement that every gram panchayat organize open village assemblies—called Gram Sabhas—twice a year through which citizens could participate in formulating planning priorities, goals and projects. Using data from the first two years of the campaign, on the levels and composition of participation in the Gram Sabhas in all of Kerala's 990 gram panchayats we empirically assess the explanatory power of the dominant existing paradigms of participation—social capital, rational choice, and social-historical. The basic patterns we document, as well as our more detailed analyses of the impact that a range of spatial, socioeconomic and political factors had on the levels and social depth of participation, provide broad support for a dynamic and contingent view of participation, a perspective that recognizes the “plasticity of participation.”
Topic:
Economics, Government, Human Welfare, and Governance
Political Geography:
Asia

529. Data Sheet on Coalition Fatalities in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Subsequent Occupation

Author:
Eli Jellenc
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Defense Information
Abstract:
For the most “official” figures: As of July 21, the Department of Defense's “Defend America” site acknowledges the following fatalities. (Note: the DoD's figures lag behind most major news sources by a few days but details tend to be more accurate overall)
Topic:
Demographics, Human Welfare, and War
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, and Arabia

530. A First-hand Report: Cuban Biotechnology

Author:
Glenn Baker
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Defense Information
Abstract:
John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, triggered a furor when on May 6, 2002, he stated, “The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort.” Two days later, I was meeting with a representative from the Cuban Interests Section on an unrelated matter when I posed the question, “How would Cuba respond if CDI asked to bring a group of experts down to learn more about these charges?” I had no expectations of hearing any more about it. But less than two weeks later, I was told that not only was there an interest, but that we were invited to bring anyone, come anytime, and visit anywhere we wanted. Clearly, Bolton's comments had struck a nerve in Havana.
Topic:
Security, Human Welfare, Science and Technology, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States, Caribbean, and Havana