Obesity costs our society billions of dollars a year in lost productivity and medical expenses, roughly half of which the federal government pays through Medicare and Medicaid. We know obesity plagues the poor more than the non-poor and poor women more than poor men. Poor women make up the majority of adult welfare recipients--coincidence or causal connection?This book investigates the controversial claim by welfare critics that public assistance programs like Food Stamps and the National School Lunch programs contribute to obesity among the poor. The author synthesizes empirical evidence from an array of disciplines--anthropology, economics, epidemiology, medicine, nutrition science, marketing, psychology, public health, sociology, and urban planning--to test this claim and to test whether other causal processes are at work.With a lucid presentation that makes it a model for applying research to questions of social policy, the book lays out the different hypotheses and the possible causal pathways within each. The four central chapters test whether "public assistance causes obesity," "obesity causes public assistance," "poverty causes both public assistance and obesity," and "Factor X causes both." The factors in the last category that may relate to both public assistance and obesity include stress, disability, and physical abuse.

When parents must rely on public assistance and family shelters to provide for their children's most basic needs, they lose autonomy. Within a system of public assistance that already stigmatizes and isolates its beneficiaries, their family lives become subject to public scrutiny and criticism. They are parenting in public.This book is an in-depth examination of the realities of life for parents and their children in family shelters. The author uses the Massachusetts family shelter system to explore the impact of asset and deficit-oriented help-giving approaches as they are experienced by mothers and service providers.The format of the book is unique. Following each chapter are the "reflections" of a mother who has parented in a shelter, a front-line worker, and a shelter director. The author and contributors propose a "Power With" policy and practice framework that runs counter to the prevailing "Power Over" cultural policy trends.Contributors include Rosa Clark, Brenda Farrell, Deborah Gray, Michele Kahan, Margaret A. Leonard, Mary T. Lewis, Nancy Schwoyer, and Elizabeth Ward.

Obesity costs our society billions of dollars a year in lost productivity and medical expenses, roughly half of which the federal government pays through Medicare and Medicaid. We know obesity plagues the poor more than the non-poor and poor women more than poor men. Poor women make up the majority of adult welfare recipients--coincidence or causal connection?This book investigates the controversial claim by welfare critics that public assistance programs like Food Stamps and the National School Lunch programs contribute to obesity among the poor. The author synthesizes empirical evidence from an array of disciplines--anthropology, economics, epidemiology, medicine, nutrition science, marketing, psychology, public health, sociology, and urban planning--to test this claim and to test whether other causal processes are at work. With a lucid presentation that makes it a model for applying research to questions of social policy, the book lays out the different hypotheses and the possible causal pathways within each. The four central chapters test whether "public assistance causes obesity," "obesity causes public assistance," "poverty causes both public assistance and obesity," and "Factor X causes both." The factors in the last category that may relate to both public assistance and obesity include stress, disability, and physical abuse.

When parents must rely on public assistance and family shelters to provide for their children's most basic needs, they lose autonomy. Within a system of public assistance that already stigmatizes and isolates its beneficiaries, their family lives become subject to public scrutiny and criticism. They are parenting in public.This book is an in-depth examination of the realities of life for parents and their children in family shelters. The author uses the Massachusetts family shelter system to explore the impact of asset and deficit-oriented help-giving approaches as they are experienced by mothers and service providers.The format of the book is unique. Following each chapter are the "reflections" of a mother who has parented in a shelter, a front-line worker, and a shelter director. The author and contributors propose a "Power With" policy and practice framework that runs counter to the prevailing "Power Over" cultural policy trends.Contributors include Rosa Clark, Brenda Farrell, Deborah Gray, Michele Kahan, Margaret A. Leonard, Mary T. Lewis, Nancy Schwoyer, and Elizabeth Ward.

From the almshouses of seventeenth-century Puritans to the massive housing projects of the mid-twentieth century, the struggle over housing assistance in the United States has exposed a deep-seated ambivalence about the place of the urban poor. Lawrence J. Vale's groundbreaking book is both a comprehensive institutional history of public housing in Boston and a broader examination of the nature and extent of public obligation to house socially and economically marginal Americans during the past 350 years. First, Vale highlights startling continuities both in the way housing assistance has been delivered to the American poor and in the policies used to reward the nonpoor. He traces the stormy history of the Boston Housing Authority, a saga of entrenched patronage and virulent racism tempered, and partially overcome, by the efforts of unyielding reformers. He explores the birth of public housing as a program intended to reward the upwardly mobile working poor, details its painful transformation into a system designed to cope with society's least advantaged, and questions current policy efforts aimed at returning to a system of rewards for responsible members of the working class. The troubled story of Boston public housing exposes the mixed motives and ideological complexity that have long characterized housing in America, from the Puritans to the projects. (20001015)

Public services touch the majority of people in advanced and developing economies on a daily basis: children require schooling, the elderly need personal care and assistance, rubbish needs collecting, water must be safe to drink and the streets need policing. In short, there is practically no area of our lives that isn't touched in some way by public services. As such, knowledge about strategies to improve their performance is central to the good of society. In this book, a group of leading scholars examine some of the most pressing issues in public administration, political science and public policy by undertaking a systematic review of the research literature on public management and the performance of public agencies. It is an important resource for public management researchers, policy-makers and practitioners who wish to understand the current state of the field and the challenges that lie ahead.

"Social Welfare: Politics and Public Policy, Seventh Edition, "emphasizes the current "political "aspects of policymaking and major social welfare programs, including public assistance, Social Security, disability, health insurance, and much more. The author also focuses on policies that affect issues as racism, sexism, gay rights, and immigration. In addition, a wealth of updated instructor and student supplements give this text its celebrated advantage as a leader in the social welfare policy textbook market. This book stands out from others because it does more than describe the major social welfare policies and programs. The book also tackles the conflict and controversies surrounding these programs. Social policy is not presented as solutions to social problems. Social policy is portrayed as public conflict over the nature and causes of social welfare problems, over what, if anything, should be done about them, over who should do it, and over who should decide about it.

From the almshouses of seventeenth-century Puritans to the massive housing projects of the mid-twentieth century, the struggle over housing assistance in the United States has exposed a deep-seated ambivalence about the place of the urban poor. Lawrence J. Vale's groundbreaking book is both a comprehensive institutional history of public housing in Boston and a broader examination of the nature and extent of public obligation to house socially and economically marginal Americans during the past 350 years. First, Vale highlights startling continuities both in the way housing assistance has been delivered to the American poor and in the policies used to reward the nonpoor. He traces the stormy history of the Boston Housing Authority, a saga of entrenched patronage and virulent racism tempered, and partially overcome, by the efforts of unyielding reformers. He explores the birth of public housing as a program intended to reward the upwardly mobile working poor, details its painful transformation into a system designed to cope with society's least advantaged, and questions current policy efforts aimed at returning to a system of rewards for responsible members of the working class. The troubled story of Boston public housing exposes the mixed motives and ideological complexity that have long characterized housing in America, from the Puritans to the projects. (20001015)

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Social Welfare: Politics and Public Policy, Seventh Edition, emphasizes the current political aspects of policymaking and major social welfare programs, including public assistance, Social Security, disability, health insurance, and much more. The author also focuses on policies that affect issues as racism, sexism, gay rights, and immigration. In addition, a wealth of updated instructor and student supplements give this text its celebrated advantage as a leader in the social welfare policy textbook market. This book stands out from others because it does more than describe the major social welfare policies and programs. The book also tackles the conflict and controversies surrounding these programs. Social policy is not presented as solutions to social problems. Social policy is portrayed as public conflict over the nature and causes of social welfare problems, over what, if anything, should be done about them, over who should do it, and over who should decide about it.

Bioprospecting--the exchange of plants for corporate promises of royalties or community development assistance--has been lauded as a way to develop new medicines while offering southern nations and indigenous communities an incentive to preserve their rich biodiversity. But can pharmaceutical profits really advance conservation and indigenous rights? How much should companies pay and to whom? Who stands to gain and lose? The first anthropological study of the practices mobilized in the name and in the shadow of bioprospecting, this book takes us into the unexpected sites where Mexican scientists and American companies venture looking for medicinal plants and local knowledge.Cori Hayden tracks bioprospecting's contentious new promise--and the contradictory activities generated in its name. Focusing on a contract involving Mexico's National Autonomous University, Hayden examines the practices through which researchers, plant vendors, rural collectors, indigenous cooperatives, and other actors put prospecting to work. By paying unique attention to scientific research, she provides a key to understanding which people and plants are included in the promise of "selling biodiversity to save it"--and which are not. And she considers the consequences of linking scientific research and rural "enfranchisement" to the logics of intellectual property.Roving across UN protocols, botanical collecting histories, Mexican nationalist agendas, neoliberal property regimes, and North-South relations, When Nature Goes Public charts the myriad, emergent publics that drive and contest the global market in biodiversity and its futures.

Bioprospecting--the exchange of plants for corporate promises of royalties or community development assistance--has been lauded as a way to develop new medicines while offering southern nations and indigenous communities an incentive to preserve their rich biodiversity. But can pharmaceutical profits really advance conservation and indigenous rights? How much should companies pay and to whom? Who stands to gain and lose? The first anthropological study of the practices mobilized in the name and in the shadow of bioprospecting, this book takes us into the unexpected sites where Mexican scientists and American companies venture looking for medicinal plants and local knowledge.Cori Hayden tracks bioprospecting's contentious new promise--and the contradictory activities generated in its name. Focusing on a contract involving Mexico's National Autonomous University, Hayden examines the practices through which researchers, plant vendors, rural collectors, indigenous cooperatives, and other actors put prospecting to work. By paying unique attention to scientific research, she provides a key to understanding which people and plants are included in the promise of "selling biodiversity to save it"--and which are not. And she considers the consequences of linking scientific research and rural "enfranchisement" to the logics of intellectual property.Roving across UN protocols, botanical collecting histories, Mexican nationalist agendas, neoliberal property regimes, and North-South relations, When Nature Goes Public charts the myriad, emergent publics that drive and contest the global market in biodiversity and its futures.

Too often, say its critics, U.S. domestic policy is founded on ideology rather than evidence. Take "Charitable Choice": legislation enacted with the assumption that faith-based organizations can offer the best assistance to the needy at the lowest cost. The Charitable Choice provision of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act -- buttressed by President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative of 2000 -- encouraged religious organizations, including congregations, to bid on government contracts to provide social services. But in neither year was data available to prove or disprove the effectiveness of such an approach. Charitable Choice at Work fills this gap with a comprehensive look at the evidence for and against faith-based initiatives. Sheila Suess Kennedy and Wolfgang Bielefeld review the movement's historical context along with legal analysis of constitutional concerns including privatization, federalism, and separation of church and state. Using both qualitative and, where possible, statistical data, the authors analyze the performance of job placement programs in three states with a representative range of religious, political, and demographic traits -- Massachusetts, Indiana, and North Carolina. Throughout, they focus on measurable outcomes as they compare non-faith-based with faith-based organizations, nonprofits with for-profits, and the logistics of contracting before and after Charitable Choice.Among their findings: in states where such information is available, the composition of social service contractor pools has changed very little. Reflecting their varied political cultures, states have funded programs differently. Faith-based organizations have not been eager to seek government contracts, perhaps wary of additional legal restraints and reporting burdens.The authors conclude that faith-based organizations appear no more effective than secular organizations at government-funded social service provision, that there has been no dramatic change in the social welfare landscape since Charitable Choice, and that the constitutional concerns of its detractors may be valid. This empirical study penetrates the fog of the culture wars, moving past controversy over the role of religion in public life to offer pragmatic suggestions for policymakers and organizations who must decide how best to assist the needy.

Too often, say its critics, U.S. domestic policy is founded on ideology rather than evidence. Take "Charitable Choice": legislation enacted with the assumption that faith-based organizations can offer the best assistance to the needy at the lowest cost. The Charitable Choice provision of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act -- buttressed by President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative of 2000 -- encouraged religious organizations, including congregations, to bid on government contracts to provide social services. But in neither year was data available to prove or disprove the effectiveness of such an approach. Charitable Choice at Work fills this gap with a comprehensive look at the evidence for and against faith-based initiatives. Sheila Suess Kennedy and Wolfgang Bielefeld review the movement's historical context along with legal analysis of constitutional concerns including privatization, federalism, and separation of church and state. Using both qualitative and, where possible, statistical data, the authors analyze the performance of job placement programs in three states with a representative range of religious, political, and demographic traits -- Massachusetts, Indiana, and North Carolina. Throughout, they focus on measurable outcomes as they compare non-faith-based with faith-based organizations, nonprofits with for-profits, and the logistics of contracting before and after Charitable Choice.Among their findings: in states where such information is available, the composition of social service contractor pools has changed very little. Reflecting their varied political cultures, states have funded programs differently. Faith-based organizations have not been eager to seek government contracts, perhaps wary of additional legal restraints and reporting burdens.The authors conclude that faith-based organizations appear no more effective than secular organizations at government-funded social service provision, that there has been no dramatic change in the social welfare landscape since Charitable Choice, and that the constitutional concerns of its detractors may be valid. This empirical study penetrates the fog of the culture wars, moving past controversy over the role of religion in public life to offer pragmatic suggestions for policymakers and organizations who must decide how best to assist the needy.

The essays in this volume present the latest beliefs of some leading contemporary moral and political philosophers on the issue of assisting the foreign poor. Topics focus around the themes of political responsibility of governments of affluent countries to relieve poverty abroad and the personal responsibility of individuals to assist the distant needy. This timely volume will interest scholars in ethics, political philosophy, political theory, international law and development economics, as well as policy makers, aid agency workers, and general readers interested in the topics.

Throughout Europe income support for the poor has become highly controversial. It is often assumed to be not the answer to, but the cause of social exclusion, and is increasingly believed to give rise to welfare dependency. This book contributes to a more complex understanding of welfare state regimes and welfare recipients in contemporary Europe. Describing social assistance "careers" in different national and urban contexts, it documents the strong interplay between personal biographies and policy patterns - a particularly useful perspective which compliments the more structural, top-down approach of much international work in social policy. "Social Assistance Dynamics in Europe" compares: a range of northern and southern European countries (Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal); focuses on the actual working of their policies: their set of actors; cultural background; implementation; and uses a methodological approach, which combines longitudinal analysis with qualitative research. Academics and students of welfare and poverty, policy makers and social policy evaluators in the public, private and non profit sectors should find this book useful.

Study! Organize! Succeed! Our S.O.S Edition for Mastering Public Speaking, 5/e, offers a personalized study and review system that helps students efficiently master the "how's" and "why's" of public speaking, save time studying, and perform better on exams. Our well-rounded program includes a paperback text with built-in, perforated Practice Tests, live tutoring assistance from our Tutor Center service, and access to our diagnostic testing and review system. Designed specifically to help enhance performance, this S.O.S. Edition's diagnostic testing system gauges students' prior knowledge of content and creates a unique Individualized Study Plan to help each student pinpoint exactly where additional study and review is needed. Students can follow the plan as a guide to focus their efforts and improve upon their areas of weakness with one-on-one assistance from our qualified tutors and/or by utilizing the printed Practice Tests. Additional testing features in this program help students assess their progress with the textbook material to reach their ultimate goal of success in your course. Mastering Public Speaking, 5/e, provides an ideal balance of theory and skills while placing an important emphasis on critiquing, ethics, and critical thinking. With the S.O.S. Edition tools, you have a powerful combination to help your students test with confidence--and complete your course with greater comprehension and higher grades.

Atkins eloquently portrays the extreme hardships of Minnesota farmers during the grasshopper plagues of the 1870s. She examines local, state, and national relief efforts, which she reviews in the context of 19th-century social welfare philosophy.

The essays in this volume present the latest beliefs of some leading contemporary moral and political philosophers on the issue of assisting the foreign poor. Topics focus around the themes of political responsibility of governments of affluent countries to relieve poverty abroad and the personal responsibility of individuals to assist the distant needy. This timely volume will interest scholars in ethics, political philosophy, political theory, international law and development economics, as well as policy makers, aid agency workers, and general readers interested in the topics.

Atkins eloquently portrays the extreme hardships of Minnesota farmers during the grasshopper plagues of the 1870s. She examines local, state, and national relief efforts, which she reviews in the context of 19th-century social welfare philosophy.

Each year's poverty figures are anxiously awaited by policymakers, analysts, and the media. Yet, questions are increasing about the 30-year-old measure as social and economic conditions change. In "Measuring Poverty", a distinguished panel provides policymakers with an up-to-date evaluation of: concepts and procedures for deriving the poverty threshold, including adjustments for different family circumstances; definitions of family resources; and procedures for annual updates of poverty measures. The volume explores specific issues underlying the poverty measure, analyzes the likely effects of any changes on poverty rates, and discusses the impact on eligibility for public benefits. In supporting its recommendations the panel provides insightful recognition of the political and social dimensions of this key economic indicator. "Measuring Poverty" will be important to government officials, policy analysts, statisticians, economists, researchers, and others involved in virtually all poverty and social welfare issues.

Every day the American government, the United Nations, and other international institutions send people into non-English speaking, war-torn, and often minimally democratic countries struggling to cope with rising crime and disorder under a new regime. These assistance missions attempt to promote democratic law enforcement in devastated countries. But do these missions really facilitate the creation of effective policing? Renowned criminologist David H. Bayley here examines the prospects for the reform of police forces overseas as a means of encouraging the development of democratic governments. In doing so, he assesses obstacles for promoting democratic policing in a state-of-the-art review of all efforts to promote democratic reform since 1991. Changing the Guard offers an inside look at the achievements and limits of current American foreign assistance, outlining the nature and scope of the police assistance program and the agencies that provide it. Bayley concludes with recommendations for how police assistance could be improved in volatile countries across the world. This book is required reading as an instruction manual for building democratic policing overseas.

Each year's poverty figures are anxiously awaited by policymakers, analysts, and the media. Yet, questions are increasing about the 30-year-old measure as social and economic conditions change. In "Measuring Poverty", a distinguished panel provides policymakers with an up-to-date evaluation of: concepts and procedures for deriving the poverty threshold, including adjustments for different family circumstances; definitions of family resources; and procedures for annual updates of poverty measures. The volume explores specific issues underlying the poverty measure, analyzes the likely effects of any changes on poverty rates, and discusses the impact on eligibility for public benefits. In supporting its recommendations the panel provides insightful recognition of the political and social dimensions of this key economic indicator. "Measuring Poverty" will be important to government officials, policy analysts, statisticians, economists, researchers, and others involved in virtually all poverty and social welfare issues.

This collection offers a new rationale and framework for international development cooperation. Its main argument is that in actual practice, development cooperation has already moved beyond aid (i.e. assistance to poor countries) and onto issues such as the ozone hole, global climate change, HIV, drug trafficking, and financial volatility. These issues are not poverty-related but instead concern global housekeeping, which helps to ensure an adequate provision of global public goods. Contributors include Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Jeffrey Sachs of the Harvard Institute for International Development, Joseph Stiglitz of the World Bank, and many others.

This collection offers a new rationale and framework for international development cooperation. Its main argument is that in actual practice, development cooperation has already moved beyond aid (i.e. assistance to poor countries) and onto issues such as the ozone hole, global climate change, HIV, drug trafficking, and financial volatility. These issues are not poverty-related but instead concern global housekeeping, which helps to ensure an adequate provision of global public goods. Contributors include Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Jeffrey Sachs of the Harvard Institute for International Development, Joseph Stiglitz of the World Bank, and many others.