Tag Archives: poverty

Despite growth reports, Africa mired in poverty

Despite continued reports of economic growth in Africa, much of the continent remains wracked by poverty, with roughly one in five citizens saying they frequently lack food, clean water and medical care, according to the largest survey of African citizens.

This suggests the growth is not trickling down to the poorest citizens or that actual growth rates are inflated, said Carolyn Logan, assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University and deputy director of the survey, called the Afrobarometer. (more…)

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Study of microcredit finds generally positive, but not transformative, impacts

Microcredit generally benefits borrowers, according to new research focused on Mexico’s biggest for-profit microlender — but it’s not lifting people out of poverty.

In a multi-year, randomized evaluation of microloans provided by Compartamos Banco, Yale University economist Dean Karlan, with collaborators Manuela Angelucci of the University of Michigan and Jonathan Zinman of Dartmouth College, show there are generally positive effects on average and find little evidence that some borrowers end up worse off while others end up better off. However, the canonical story that microcredit leads to higher enterprise income did not bear fruit. (more…)

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New Book Traces Black Panthers’ Evolution from Local Activists to Global Anti-Imperialists

History has long denied the political genius of the Black Panther Party. At worst, its members have been cast as unconscionable criminals. At best, such seminal figures as party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and early supporter Stokely Carmichael have been portrayed as outlaw folk heroes who, propelled by the progressive winds of the late 1960s, dared to take on the establishment.

But a UCLA graduate student in sociology who worked alongside former Panthers a decade ago as a community organizer in Oakland, Calif., didn’t buy the conventional wisdom. (more…)

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Biodiversity: The most common issues

Biodiversity can be considered as an imperative factor that plays a crucial role in poverty reduction owing to its basic goods and the ecosystem services it provides. Over three billion people rely on coastal and marine biodiversity and about 1.7 billion people depend upon non-timber forest products and forests for biodiversity.

Common issues relating to biodiversity can be classified as:

Biodiversity as a source of income and food

World’s poor population, especially living in rural areas are dependent on biological resources for meeting most of their needs. At least, 90 percent of their needs relating to fuel, shelter, medicines and food come from biological resources. (more…)

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Bel Ami

Synopsis

Georges Duroy, travels through 1890s Paris, from cockroach ridden garrets to opulent salons, using his wits and powers of seduction to rise from poverty to wealth, from a prostitute’s embrace to passionate trysts with wealthy beauties, in a world where politics and media jostle for influence, where sex is power and celebrity an obsession. (more…)

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Extreme Poverty: 2.8 Million Children in the U.S. Live on $2 per Day

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— One in five households with children in poverty are surviving on the cash equivalent of a half gallon of milk per person per day in a given month.

The National Poverty Center has released a new report that examines poverty trends between 1996 and 2011. The number of households with children who are in extreme poverty in a given month—living at $2 or less in income per person per day—in 2011 totaled roughly 1.46 million households, including 2.8 million kids. This number is up from 636,000 households in 1996, nearly a 130 percent increase. (more…)

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