Solving Poverty

Poverty in Canada’s inner cities is deep, complex, racialized and often intergenerational. In this collection of essays published over the past decade, Jim Silver argues that urban poverty today includes not only low incomes, but in all too many cases also poor housing, poor health, low educational achievement, high levels of neighbourhood violence, racism, colonialism and social exclusion. As a result many poor people experience low levels of self-esteem and self-confidence and may blame themselves, which is reinforced by the dominant blame-the-victim discourse about poverty. Silver argues that today’s urban poverty is qualitatively different than the urban poverty of forty years ago, and that there are no quick, easy or one-dimensional solutions. In Solving Poverty, Jim Silver, a veteran scholar actively engaged in anti-poverty efforts in Winnipeg’s inner city for decades, offers an on-the-ground analysis of this form of poverty. Silver focuses particularly on the urban Aboriginal experience, and describes a variety of creative and effective urban Aboriginal community development initiatives, as well as other anti-poverty initiatives that have been successful in Winnipeg’s inner city. In the concluding chapter Silver offers a comprehensive, pan-Canadian strategy to dramatically reduce the incidence of urban poverty in Canada.

For a country as wealthy as Canada, poverty is utterly unnecessary. In About Canada: Poverty, Jim Silver illustrates that poverty is about more than a shortage of money: it is complex and multifaceted and can profoundly damage the human spirit. At the centre of this analysis are Canada's neoliberal economic policies, which have created conditions that make a growing number of people vulnerable to low income, vanishing public services and poor physical health. Silver also highlights the ways in which poverty is intimately connected to colonialism and racial and gender discrimination, and finds that the political and economic policies enacted by the Canadian government serve only a powerful minority, while producing a range of negative outcomes for the rest of us, especially the poor. Silver points out that the costs of poverty -- relating to health care, crime, education and unemployment -- are higher than the costs of solving poverty, and he lays out an achievable strategy for its dramatic reduction in Canada. When poverty is understood as resulting from political choices, its elimination requires putting pressure on governments to ensure that different choices are made.

The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.

Authors Paul Polak and Mal Warwick describe their Zero-Based Design of starting from scratch to create innovative products and services tailored for the very poor to show how their design principles and vision can enable unapologetic capitalists to supply the very poor with clean drinking water, electricity, irrigation, housing, education, health care, and other necessities at a fraction of the usual cost and at profit margins attractive to investors.

In "Broke but Unbroken," journalist Augusta Dwyer takes us on an inspiring journey through the slums and villages of Brazil, Indonesia, India and Argentina as she meets with organizers from some of the most successful grassroots social movements struggling against poverty. These organizers are not representatives from NGOs or aid organizations based in developed nations but the poor themselves people who know intimately the reality of struggling for land, food, housing and the right to control their own resources and means of production. It is these movements, built from the ground up by the very people affected by poverty, that have achieved the most successes in ameliorating the conditions of the poor and providing real solutions to global poverty.As we travel with Dwyer through rural and urban landscapes, too often devastated by the demands of development, we meet people who have risked their homes, families and even their lives to affect real change in the world. The stories they share so openly and warmly are not merely accounts of economic or political success but are stories of empowerment and hope that dramatically portray the potency of collective action.In the beautiful prose of an accomplished writer, this book introduces us to extraordinary grassroots movements and encourages us to learn the lessons they offer about successfully challenging power and changing the world.

One-in-seven adults and one-in-five children in the United States live in poverty. Individuals and families living in povertyÊnot only lack basic, material necessities, but they are also disproportionally afflicted by many social and economic challenges. Some of these challenges include the increased possibility of an unstable home situation, inadequate education opportunities at all levels, and a high chance of crime and victimization. Given this growing social, economic, and political concern, The Hamilton Project at Brookings asked academic experts to develop policy proposals confronting the various challenges of AmericaÕs poorest citizens, and to introduce innovative approaches to addressing poverty.ÊWhen combined, the scope and impact of these proposals has the potential to vastly improve the lives of the poor. The resulting 14 policy memos are included in The Hamilton ProjectÕs Policies to Address Poverty in America. The main areas of focus include promoting early childhood development, supporting disadvantaged youth, building worker skills, and improving safety net and work support.

Over half of all births to young adults in the United States now occur outside of marriage, and many are unplanned. The result is increased poverty and inequality for children. The left argues for more social support for unmarried parents; the right argues for a return to traditional marriage. In Generation Unbound, Isabel V. Sawhill offers a third approach: change "drifters" into "planners." In a well-written and accessible survey of the impact of family structure on child well-being, Sawhill contrasts "planners," who are delaying parenthood until after they marry, with "drifters," who are having unplanned children early and outside of marriage. These two distinct patterns are contributing to an emerging class divide and threatening social mobility in the United States. Sawhill draws on insights from the new field of behavioral economics, showing that it is possible, by changing the default, to move from a culture that accepts a high number of unplanned pregnancies to a culture in which adults only have children when they are ready to be a parent.

This book explores the efforts of collaborative groups in six different Canadian cities as they work to reduce poverty, as part of Vibrant Communities, a cross-Canada effort of many cities to reduce poverty in Canada by creating partnerships that make use of the most important assets -- people, organizations, businesses, and governments. The six groups in this group are: a project that seeks to get long-term unemployed job seekers trained and transported to jobs across the sprawling region of Niagara; a coalition pressing Calgary City Council to pass (and maintain) a subsidized bus pass for people with low incomes; a grassroots network of citizens' partnership clubs in Montréal working to turn around a forgotten neighbourhood; an unusual collection of local organizations in Surrey working to get homeless day labourers back into the mainstream; a high-level roundtable of civic leaders in Hamilton mobilizing the community to make it the best place to raise a child; and a business-led group in Saint John that aims to reduce that city's poverty rate by one half.