In this study, a cost function is used to estimate the costs for California districts to meet the achievement goals set out for them by the state. I calculate estimates of base costs (i.e., per pupil costs in a district with relatively low levels of student need) and marginal costs (i.e., the additional costs associated with specific student…

Adolescents living in poverty face numerous stressors that are toxic for their mental health and well-being. There are effective strategies for coping with poverty-related stress that have been shown to reduce psychological symptoms in the face of this stress. However, stress itself weakens an adolescent's ability to use these cognitively…

Purpose: Older adults are less likely than any other age group to use the federal Food Stamp Program. The personal and social costs of elderly diet insufficiency include disease exacerbation, depression, and increased hospitalization. In order to improve targeting and outreach efforts, this study identifies the characteristics of eligible older…

Social enterprise and fair trade are seen increasingly as redefining capitalist relationships through revaluing social impact and ownership in enterprise activities. One of the dilemmas in such activities is the tension between operating a viable and commercially-sustainable enterprise and maximising social and developmental impacts. This article…

In this article we evaluate to what extent between-country differences in the probability of being "multidimensional" poor can be explained by a range of "domain-specific" indicators of welfare regime arrangements. To this end, a so-called micro-macro model is estimated, testing the "independent" effect of…

This article uses a social justice framework to problematize national and local policies in housing and education which propose to reduce poverty and improve educational performance of low-income students through mixed-income strategies. Drawing on research on Chicago, the article argues mixed-income strategies are part of the neoliberal…

This article addresses the context and challenges of small island developing states, focusing particularly on Cape Verde. After a general discussion of the characteristics of small island developing states, several development challenges such as poverty, unemployment and migratory issues specific to Cape Verde are evoked. Despite a period of…

On October 4, 2007, a trial level court in New Jersey dismissed "Crawford v. Davy", a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of 60,000 schoolchildren throughout the state seeking the court's authority to leave schools that fail to educate their students. By filing suit, plaintiff schoolchildren had hoped to be transferred to an alternative…

This article argues that given its structural conditions, development aid bears a particularly heavy burden of learning and accountability. Unfortunately, however, the organization of evaluation guarantees that evaluations will be inconsistent and it creates incentives for positive bias. This article presents evidence from organizational studies…

This article explores the relationships between two key concepts that have defined recent social policy initiatives for children in the UK: participation and prevention from social exclusion. Drawing on the Children's Fund initiative as an example, the article traces the diverse and sometimes contradictory discourses of childhood and social…

The final report of the Texas Childhood Hunger Identification Project (Texas CHIP), this document describes the most comprehensive study of childhood hunger undertaken in Texas. Through enumeration and interviewing methods, low-income families from 27 counties in Texas were analyzed in the areas of income allocation, food frequency, homelessness,…

This World Bank (Washington, D.C.) kit is a case study designed to teach secondary school social studies students about an integrated rural development project in Mexico, and how it is helping to raise the standard of living for six million Mexicans in 131 microregions throughout Mexico. The kit contains a pamphlet, a booklet, a sound filmstrip,…

Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB) staff created an index of educational outcomes to compare results from state to state. This report is an analysis of that study. A list of the overall rankings is included on the back page of this report. The index is based on a combination of objective qualitative measures. The data comes from national…

New findings about child nutrition and cognitive development indicate that undernourished children are typically fatigued and uninterested in their social environments. Such children are less likely to establish relationships or to explore and learn from their surroundings. Undernourished children are also more susceptible to illness and, thus,…

The Aspen Institute's ongoing action-research program, Local Employment Approaches for the Disadvantaged (LEAD), assessed 60 programs nationally. Local initiatives fell into four general categories, with numerous subcategories: self-employment, job training and placement, job creation and retention, and community-based finance. A second breakdown…