Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) have two main objectives: reducing poverty and increasing the human capital of children. To reach these objectives, transfers are given to poor households conditioned on investments in their children's education, health, and nutrition. Targeting mechanisms used by CCTs have been generally successful in…

The first thing many learn about international poverty measurement is that European nations apply a "relative" poverty threshold and that they also do a better job of reducing poverty. Unlike the European model, the "absolute" U.S. poverty threshold does not increase in real value when the nation's standard of living rises,…

This paper addresses a key methodological challenge in the modeling of individual poverty dynamics--the influence of measurement error. Taking the US and Britain as case studies and building on recent research that uses latent Markov models to reduce bias, we examine how measurement error can affect a range of important poverty estimates. Our data…

This comparison of antipoverty strategies in Britain (Urban Programme) and the United States (War on Poverty) highlights their similar conceptions of the nature of the problem, differences in approach and implementation, and the contrasting political cultures of American community activism and British socialism. (SK)

Manpower resources, poverty, and unemployment in the Mississippi Delta region are the main features of the report. Data used were collected by 22 enumerators working in 16 counties scattered throughout Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The survey was conducted in the summer of 1966. Aspects surveyed and reported on are household…

Data from a stratified random sample of full-year 1967-1968 and summer 1968 Head Start programs were re-analyzed to compare centers operated by local educational agencies (LEA) and community action agencies (CAA). The analyses indicated that CAA-operated programs were more likely to report parent participation in decision making and as paid staff,…

The study described in this paper used data from two national samples of families with children to describe the home environments in which welfare children are being raised and to identify the children's health, learning, and behavior problems. The study compared children whose families had received Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)…

States have used variants of these three approaches to structure the welfare to-work component of welfare reform for single mothers: (1) put education or training first; (2) place job searching first; and (3) create a flexible program that allows staff and participants choice in the initial and subsequent activities. Research on these program…