The Political Economy Of Urban Poverty

Charles Sackrey analyzes the problem of urban poverty, pointing out the severe limitations of all existing data. He explains the different theories of the principal causes of urban poverty, in particular the poverty among urban blacks. Considerable attention is devoted to different methods of studying poverty and the important role each plays in determining the solutions finally offered for public consideration. There have been two basic kinds of antipoverty solutions over the past four decades: "liberal reform" and "revolutionary change." Having been at different times strongly sympathetic to both camps, Professor Sackrey has particular insights into the strengths and weaknesses of each. In the final chapters of his book he contrasts the past performance of each camp and evaluates what they have to offer for the future.-Amazon.

The income of blacks in most northern industrial states today is lower relative to the income of whites than in 1949.Fusfeld and Bates examine the forces that have led to this state of affairs and find that these economic relationships are the product of a complex pattern of historical development and change in which black-white economic relation­ships play a major part, along with pat­terns of industrial, agricultural, and technological change and urban develop­ment. They argue that today's urban racial ghettos are the result of the same forces that created modern Amer­ica and that one of the by-products of American affluence is a ghettoized racial underclass. These two themes, they state, are es­sential for an understanding of the prob­lem and for the formulation of policy. Poverty is not simply the result of poor education, skills, and work habits but one outcome of the structure and func­tioning of the economy. Solutions re­quire more than policies that seek to change people: they await a recognition that basic economic relationships must be changed.

This wide-ranging and innovative book synthesises the findings of a major international study of the political economy of poverty, equity, and growth. It is based primarily on analytical economic histories of 21 developing countries from 1950 to 1985, but also takes account of the wider literature on the subject. The authors take an ambitious interdisciplinary approach to identify patterns in the interplay of initial conditions, instiuttions, interests, and ideas which can help toexplain the different growth and poverty alleviation outcomes in the Third World.Three different types of poverty are distinguished, based on their causes, and a more nebulous idea of equityin contrast to egalitarianismis shown to have influenced policy. Since growth is found to be the major means of alleviating mass structural poverty, much of the book is concerned with discovering explanations for policies which are found to be the most important influences on the proximate causes of growth. Lal and Mynt also consider the available evidence on the role of directtransferspublic and privatein alleviating destitution and conjunctural poverty.The Political Economy of Poverty, Equity, and Growth develops a novel framework for the comparative analysis of different growth outcomes. This framework distinguishes between the different relative factor endowments of land, labour, and capital, and between the different organizational structures of pesent versus plantation and mining economies. It also differentiates between the polities of 'autonomous' and 'factional' states in the countries studied, breaking the analysis down intofurther typological subdivisions and providing important new insights into the differing behaviour of economies that are rich in natural resources and those with abundant labour. These insights constitute a richer explanation for the divergent developmental outcomes in East Asia compared with Latin Americaand Africa.The evidence collated is used to argue for the continuing relevance of the classical liberal viewpoint on public policies for development, and to show why, even so, nationalist ideologies are likely to be adopted and lead to cycles of interventionism and liberalism. The evidence is also used to provide an explanation for the surprising current worldwide Age of Reform.

Here is a book that makes sense of the L.A. riots, homelessness, tax giveaways, and the other big urban issues that are back in the national spotlight. In this streamlined and updated new edition of his classic book, The Dependent City, Paul Kantor now focuses on economic development and social welfare policies to reveal the key dilemmas of American urban politics. Returning to a political economy theme, Kantor explores how city governments have struggled to escape and accommodate the reality of their economic dependency in the policies that they've pursued.Revisiting cities across the nation, Kantor finds not only that they have become more dependent but also that the character of this dependency has changed and deepened. Exploring local regimes in the Frostbelt and Sunbelt and in suburbia, he finds that they frequently act more like captives of big business rather than as representatives of citizens. Local attempts to promote social justice increasingly run up against a wall of economic dependency created by federal policies and business power.This book signals how American cities can find ways of overcoming this dependency by working together with states and the federal government to promote healthy, democratic urban politics. The Dependent City Revisited is an accessible, provocative supplement for a wide variety of courses in urban studies and political economy as well as stimulating reading for anyone who is interested in understanding America's urban mosaic.

This book brings forth debates on the production and eradication of poverty from experiences in the global South. It collects a set of innovative articles concentrating on the way in which poverty, as a social process, has been tackled by popular movements and the governments of various states across the globe. Providing new insights into the limitations of traditional strategies to confront poverty, it highlights how social organizations are working to transform the livelihoods of people through bottom-up struggle and more participatory approaches rather than passively waiting for top-down solutions.

Many countries in the developing world are facing a rapid acceleration in population ageing. To date, this problem has generated little interest either from academics or policy-makers. Studies which focus exclusively on social security are of little relevance for the majority of elderly in these regions, for whom the possibilities of saving or making pension contributions are remote. This book takes a more comprehensive approach, combining analysis of social security issues in all developing countries with micro-level case studies of poor urban elderly survival strategies in Buenos Aires.

In April 1992, the world witnessed a renewal in South Central Los Angeles of the urban violence that exploded over a quarter of a century earlier. As in 1965, the spark that ignited the firestorm was Black rage over police brutality. But in both eras the tinder was prepared by decades of social neglect and political disenfranchisement that have left the predominantly non-white urban poor trapped and virtually without hope. Race, Politics, and Economic Development strips away the veneer of mass-media images to examine the underlying causes of Black urban poverty and to recommend means to escape the seemingly endless cycle of retributive violence that it spawns. The book brings together Black activists and scholars, including two former mayors of American cities, to analyse the theoretical and practical problems currently facing the Black community in the United States. The essays collected here are dominated by three key themes: that political influence, power, and wealth are major factors in determining social welfare policies directed at Blacks, the poor and the working class; that both liberal and conservative policies over the last fifty years are no longer effective in alleviating a growing human service crisis among Blacks; and that the political mobilization of impoverished sectors of the Black community is absolutely critical in resolving the problem of poverty in urban America. Drawing on new work in the social sciences, political theory, and economics, and also on the contributors' activist experiences, these essays represent a pathbreaking new agenda for the participation of grassroots Black leaders in developing and implementing urban policy. Contributors: Jeremiah Cotton, Julianne Malveaux, Mack H. Jones, Charles P. Henry, Walter Stafford, William Fletcher Jr., Eugene Newport, Sheila Ards, Jacqueline Pope, Keith Jennings, Lloyd Hogan, Richard Hatcher.