Description:  Rodgers (political science, University of Houston), the well-regarded author of a multitude of writings on poverty and social welfare programs, examines results of the welfare reform plan that was enacted in 1996.  He considers every aspect of welfare reform in a clear, concise, and well-documented manner, examining income and expenditure data broken down by age group, sex, educational level, number of children, marital status, and specific location.   He imparts the good news that not only does welfare reform appear to be working to reduce welfare rolls but across the boards each state has seen a more rapid decline that anticipated.  However, he validly cautions that this phenomenon is still far from understood as too little is known about what has happened to the people who are no longer on welfare.  He maintains that the bigger question is not whether we can make welfare reform work, but whether we can eliminate poverty.

The second unique aspect of the work is the fact that it takes seriously the moral arguments that have been proposed by the various religious denominations.  It is rare to find an author with the economic background and expertise necessary to confront the world situation who takes seriously the ethical positions that have been brought forth by the various church and religious bodies.  De Vries engages that theological discourse and does so in a way that is unique and most stimulating.  He also does not limit himself to one group but gives a fair and unbiased presentation of positions taken by various different religious bodies.  The book is unique in this respect not only because it takes the ethical approach seriously, but also because it brings together thinking from various ethical and religious sources.

The relationship between welfare caseloads and the economy is one of the key issues addressed in this new book edited by Sheldon H. Danziger.  Using the most current data available, a group of the nation's leading researchers examines the effects of welfare reform prior to and after enactment of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA).  What they find is a mixed picture.

Description: On August 22, 1996 President Bill Clinton signed legislation that signaled the end of welfare as we had known it.  Aid to Families with Dependent Children (ADFC), which had its origins in the Social Security Act of 1935, was replaced by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), ushering in a new policy era of block grants, work requirements, and time limits.  The contributors to this book offer critical assessments of the current wave of welfare reform and its implications for families in poverty.  Chapters focus on federal poverty policies, welfare reform efforts in Illinois, the dynamics of welfare receipt, the transition from welfare to work, state waiver demonstrations, the effects of poverty on children and families, and the politics of welfare reform.

Description:   January 26, 2000  Reviewer, A reader from Wyoming:  "So useful!  A "must read" for educators!  As an educator, I found Dr. Payne's book to be one of the most useful and practical books I've ever read.  Just as the title reads, she offers a framework for understanding an issue that is influencing not only our schools but also our society.   Her definition of poverty as related to the eight resources she describes rather than being solely defined by one's lack of finances is especially helpful for educators.   In addition, Dr. Payne offers concrete strategies for working with some of our most misunderstood students.  I found her explanation of the registers of language and issues surrounding them to be particularly useful in understanding some of the problems in schools today that are related to both cognition and behavior.  I highly recommend this book for educators and believe also that anyone who works with individuals from poverty will also find it helpful.  It makes so much sense!"

What emerges from these stories is a glimpse of the cultural imagination of class and gender as it revolves around the lives of mostly white homeless mothers.  Attending to both every day lives and cultural norms, while exploring and interpreting their interdependencies and tensions, Connolly makes these mothers and their plight as real for us as the headlines and stereotypes and the cultural paranoia that so often displace them and consign them to silence.

But students of social security, no less than policy-makers and claimants, have a right to expect appreciation of the prevailing debates and proposals.   It is arguable that the pace of reform within those departments and agencies responsible for social security policy in the UK has never been greater:  indeed, 'the management of change' and 'active modern service' are the central themes.  But capturing the locus of reform, describing the process and doing justice to the complexity of administrative innovation are far from easy.

Description:   Thirty years ago President Johnson convened the Kerner Commission to examine the reasons why race riots were rampant.   The commission concluded that the U.S. was "moving towards two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal."  Today, poverty in America is worse than in 1968.  In the midst of a U.S. economic boom, the country is re-segregating, and poor African Americans and Hispanics continue to be concentrated in urban environments.  With contributors including best-selling author William Julius Wilson, this book shows what works and what doesn't in dealing with these problems and offers practical policy recommendations.

Description:   This collection of 17 essays examines poverty and its causes from a variety of angles.  The common thread is a concern for the structural causes of poverty; the book therefore offers a welcome alternative to the dominant ideological views that portray poverty as a result of individuals' decisions, attributes and/or moral failings.   The authors show the connections between capitalism, slavery and the development of state policies and ideologies that maintained the oppressed and exploited status of African Americans after the Civil War and constituted the basis for the emergence of white identity and privilege to the detriment of working class identities based on a recognition of the common plight of workers, regardless of skin color.

Student review by Kevin Zeck

IDescription: n this collection of essays, sixteen evangelical scholars and teachers consider the dilemma of poverty in modern America.  Brought together by a Bauman Foundation grant under Evangelicals for Social Action sponsorship, they address the historical, political, and economic issues involved in this pervasive social problem.   The authors also bring Christian principles to bear on their analysis of poverty's root causes, on their consideration of policies that have been adopted or proposed, and on their solutions.

In spite of an unprecedented period of growth and prosperity, the poverty rate in the United States remains high relative to the levels of the early 1970s and relative to those in many industrialized countries today. Understanding Poverty brings the problem of poverty in America to the fore, focusing on its nature and extent at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Looking back over the four decades since the nation declared war on poverty, the authors ask how the poor have fared in the market economy, what government programs have and have not accomplished, and what remains to be done. They help us understand how changes in the way the labor market operates, in family structure, and in social welfare, health, and education policies have affected trends in poverty. Most significantly, they offer suggestions for changes in programs and policies that hold real promise for reducing poverty and income inequality.  

Description: Dr. Ambert successfully links the social structures that cause poverty with the personal implications of being poor.  She shows the devastating impacts of poverty across generations and makes clear that those impacts are not due to inherited factors but environmental ones.   Her excellent presentation of the interaction of genetics and environment shows how individuals can overcome their environment or be overcome by it.  Embedding the impacts of poverty within the family, the family in the neighborhood, and the neighborhood in larger economic configurations presents an important and insightful view of poverty.   By contextualizing individual impacts of growing up and living in poverty, the reader is easily able to grasp the economic costs to society as well as those to the family and the individual.  Poverty truly is a web, which, she argues, can only be broken by confronting the concentration of wealth and the society-wide mentality that favors it, yet blames the poor for their conditions.  Current literature is well-integrated into a critical understanding of the intersection of social and economic structures and personality, as mediated by genetic potential and family setting. 

What Government Can Do argues, on the contrary, that federal, state, and local governments can and should do a great deal.  Benjamin I. Page and James R. Simmons detail what programs have worked and how they can be improved, while introducing the general reader to the fundamentals of social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicaid, tax structures, minimum wage laws, educational programs, and the concept of "basic needs."  Through their discussions of high-profile campaign plans, proposals, successes, and failures, they have written a readable, optimistic, and clear-headed book on government and poverty.   And they find that, contrary to popular belief, government policies already do, in fact, help alleviate poverty and economic inequality.  Often these policies work far more effectively and efficiently than people realize, and in ways that enhance freedom rather than infringe on it.  At the same time, Page and Simmons show how even more could be - and should - accomplished.