Food insecurity is a growing concern for Eau Claire County residents in Western Wisconsin. A community-academic partnership studied food insecurity through the voices of families struggling to access food and institutions that assist with hunger related problems. Data were collected through focus groups held in urban and rural parts of the county.…

In a given year, approximately 1.6 million children in the United States experience homelessness, and research shows that their living conditions generally place these children at risk for educational underperformance and failure at school (Hall, 2007; Love, 2009). Although lack of education or low levels of education on the part of a head of…

Families who live in poverty face disadvantages that can hinder their children's development in many ways, write Greg Duncan, Katherine Magnuson, and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal. As they struggle to get by economically, and as they cope with substandard housing, unsafe neighborhoods, and inadequate schools, poor families experience more stress in…

This study examined the prevalence of indicators of disability or potential disability among preschool-aged children enrolled in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Longitudinal Follow-Up. Three categories of indicators were established: received Part B services, developmental risk, and biological risk. The majority of participating…

Although a vast amount of literature on the characteristics of public assistance recipients exists, little is known about the characteristics of the clientele of nonprofits that provide material assistance. This study examines the question of who receives material assistance from nonprofits. Three panels of the Survey of Income and Program…

Over 21% of children in the United States today are poor, and the income gap between our nation's richest and poorest children has widened dramatically over time. This article considers children's self-regulation as a key mediating mechanism through which poverty has deleterious consequences for their later life outcomes. Evidence from field…

In September 2000, building upon a decade of major United Nations conferences and summits, world leaders came together at United Nations Headquarters in New York to adopt the United Nations Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets--with a…

Human Capital development through education is a long time investment made by the state to enhance the well being of her citizenry. By investing in education, well educated individuals bring to bear their talents, knowledge, skills and experiences as they function in the various sectors of the economy. Human Capital development is therefore a…

There is a growing optimism among international organizations such as United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can transform developing countries such as Nigeria to developed ones in a relatively short time. Experiences from Asian and European countries such as India, Bangladesh, Malaysia,…

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,…

Nearly one in five children under age 18 lived in poor families in 2008, according to poverty statistics released by the Census Bureau in September 2009. Though high, this statistic does not capture the full impact of the economic downturn, which is expected to drive poverty even higher in 2009. However, updated poverty statistics will not be…

The Millennium Development Goals launched in 2001 provide a worldwide agenda to reduce poverty by 2015. Though the eight goals provide synergies for the rapid reduction of poverty, the MDGs have come under criticism for being too narrow and sometimes leaving out critical aspects of human development and well-being. Although the MDGs address some…

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 document presents 2010 data from the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) program of the U.S. Census Bureau. The SAIPE program produces poverty estimates for the total population and median household income estimates annually for all counties and states. SAIPE data also produces single-year poverty estimates for the school-age…