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Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / This study investigated the factors inhibiting learners from low socio- economic backgrounds from accessing higher education. The intention to investigate and identify these inhibiting factors was motivated by the growing body of evidence that suggests that there is a correlation between poverty and lack of education. The aim of the study was to investigate which pre-university factors have the most inhibiting impact on learners from low socio-economic backgrounds. The objective was to identify these factors in order to find ways in which they could be overcome and/or prevented. It was argued that, if the impact of the inhibiting factors could be minimised or eliminated, more learners would be able to access higher education successfully. The theoretical framework used in the study was based on Sen’s Capabilities approach. The list of capabilities applied to analyse the data were education and skill, economic resources, employment and working conditions, housing, and family and social integration. The study was positioned within a qualitative, interpretive research paradigm and used a case study design. The research site was a high school in Khayelitsha near Cape Town. Research participants were purposively selected and consisted of a total of twenty-nine learners from across Grade 10, 11 and 12, as well as three educators.The study used multiple sources of data instruments: secondary data (statistics and other census information about Khayelitsha), the participants’ June 2014 progress reports, a demographic information sheet, a reflective questionnaire and three focus group interviews (one per Grade).Content analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data through a three-stage open coding process. The list of inhibiting factors discussed in the literature, namely poor schooling, a lack of financial means, a lack of knowledge and information, and socio cultural factors was indeed confirmed by the data collected in this study. Other factors emerged from the data and these were regarded as new knowledge that this study contributes towards the body of knowledge. Lastly, the findings suggest that the inhibiting factor which had the greatest impact on learners from low socio-economic backgroundswas a lack of knowledge and information because this factor negatively impacted on all the capabilities listed above. Based on these findings, recommendations were proposed for the parents and community, school and educators, the Department of Basic Education, the Department of Higher Education and Training, and for higher education institutions.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / The historical patterns of access to water and other areas of public service delivery in South Africa predominantly favoured the white minority. There was inadequate distribution of water where townships and rural areas bore the brunt of the apartheid administration. Women are disadvantaged within the household and carry the burden of providing water for their families. This is particularly true in a water stressed environment, such as the Ehlanzeni District Municipality in Mpumalanga. This study considered the practical application of the Capability Approach and its key idea of human well-being. In particular, the idea of the Capability Approach that social arrangements should aim to expand people‟s capabilities and their freedom to promote or achieve what they value doing or being was considered. Sen‟s ideas were assessed and the study considered how these ideas help understand collective action and strategies adopted by women to cope in the face of water stress and poverty. The thesis examined how community involvement, in particular women‟s involvement in a group called Vukani, impacts on water related issues and helps them to cope with external stressors. The study also considered the links between group belonging and capabilities. The findings suggest that group belonging cultivates a unique set of capabilities such as hope and empowerment. Due to group belonging and the capabilities attained through collective action, Vukani was able to develop adaptive strategies through innovation, partnerships and knowledge sharing.

Magister Economicae - MEcon / From 1947-1994, South Africans were ruled under apartheid – a racially discriminatory political and economic system. As the name itself implies, apartheid is an Afrikaans name meaning “apartness”. The provision of education in South Africa during this regime was poor, particularly for the African (black) population and most especially those living in homelands. This led to under-investment in human capital development particularly in the rural areas which resulted in, low levels of skills that have persisted till today. This has hindered those lacking the required skills to obtain lucrative employment and earning prospects. This study aims at investigating the impact of a household head’s educational attainment level on the poverty status of the household in South Africa with case study of Limpopo province. This study sought to establish if education has an effect on the poverty status of households in Limpopo Province. The Income and Expenditure Survey (IES) data conducted by Statistics South Africa, for the period 1995, 2000, 2005/06 and 2010/11 were used to carry out this investigation. The official absolute income poverty lines of R3864 (lower bound) and R7116 (upper bound) per capita per annum in 2000 prices were used. In order to establish the relationship between education and the poverty status of an individual or a household, a probit regression model has been used. The results obtained revealed that, there is a strong tendency for lower educational attainment to be associated with a higher prevalence of household poverty. That is, households headed by someone with primary or no education are more likely to be poorer than those headed by someone with tertiary education. Rural and Black households are the most vulnerable in Limpopo Province. Although there is large allocation of resources towards education, educational outcomes have not improved. This raises questions regarding the lack of association between educational outcomes and resource allocation.

The South African government has introduced mechanisms and plans to alleviate poverty and to monitor and evaluate the impact of the policies and programmes to the reduction of poverty. In its quest to eradicate and alleviate poverty, the government has prioritized poverty alleviation in its development agenda. In efforts to fight poverty, the government has since 1994, implemented various programmes that are aimed at alleviating poverty through stimulating employment, developing skills and improving service delivery. The poverty alleviation programme is one of the strategies that was implemented by the government, as a means to eradicate poverty. At the community level, depending on the nature of the programme, efforts have been made to incorporate mechanisms which enable poor people to play an active role in deciding how the benefits from programmes are distributed. The study was based on the projects identified by the community of Amajuba district in Dannhauser area in KwaZulu Natal. The Dannhauser Municipality in partnership with the Department of Agriculture and Environmental affairs have played a vital role in this regard by supporting the establishment of the Thuthukani project in 2004. In an attempt to assess the impact of the poverty alleviation projects, this study investigated the role played by the Thuthukani project in local economic development of the Dannhauser community in the Dannhauser Municipality. Participants included the Thuthukani project members, and the extension officer from the Department of Agriculture and Environmental affairs. The study found that, indeed poverty alleviation projects play a role in local economic development since they contribute towards job creation and improvement of the socio-economic status of the local community.

This study was about the reaction of disadvantaged groups and persons to inequality and deprivation. Set in Badia, a low income community in Lagos, Nigeria, it investigates the main effects of community members’ attributions of causes of poverty in motivating or impeding their reaction to inequality. Relative Deprivation (RD) theory proposed that dissatisfaction with social outcomes depend on subjective feelings rather than objective criteria. However scholars found empirical difficulties in predicting collective action on the basis of RD. Resource Mobilization proponents argued on the contrary that feelings are not salient within the framework of action. The infusion of Social Identity Theory (SIT) into RD research however resolved the paradox of action with SIT’s argument that action was contingent upon the perception of permeability and legitimacy of inter-group structures. However, despite successes of SIT, scholars found that it was unable to predict the type of actions group members will take in response to injustice and the nature of possible actions. Propositions of RD and SIT were therefore suitable for integration into the proposition of Taylor & McKirnan’s (1984) Five Stage Model (FSM) of inter-group relations that reactions to RD feelings were predicated upon the dynamics of the social philosophy guiding stratification. Using an integrated RD, SIT and FSM framework, this study shows how disadvantaged group members’ responses to deprivation proceeded as predicted by the FSM from mutual acceptance to collective action mediated by their perception of causes of poverty. This complements the trend in the literature on reaction to inequality and it's almost ii exclusive focus on instrumental and affective concerns while neglecting the role of consensually shared beliefs in motivating or impeding action and willingness to act in response to injustice. The study hypothesized that the pattern of causal attributions of poverty of respondents will shape their ‘predisposition to act’ and the type of action they would engage in. The main hypothesis of the study therefore was that poverty attribution mediates the relationship between ‘feelings of injustice’ and ‘reaction to inequality’. For instance where respondents attribute poverty to individual or fatalistic factors they will adopt individual action whereas where attributions are structural, responses will be collective, where feelings of injustice were present. A survey was conducted using a five-level Likert scale to decipher respondents’ perceptions of feelings of injustice, their causal attribution of poverty, their levels of willingness to embark on collective action and actions taken in the preceding year. In the first stage of analysis, responses (n = 383) were reduced using Principal Components Analysis (PCA) to determine how questionnaire items contributed to variables under consideration. Subsequently, variables extracted were correlated and regressed. While bivariate correlation was used to test simple relationships between variables, a stepwise hierarchical regression analysis was used to decipher how sub-dimensions of poverty attribution mediate the relationship between respondents’ feelings of injustice and their willingness to embark on collective action entering variables in succession into the regression equation. Furthermore, a 1 x 3 x 5 Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) was used to test the mediation effects of poverty attribution sub-dimensions on the relationship between injustice feelings and actions. The results showed iii that structural attribution was the preferred explanation for poverty among Badia residents, as this explanation was preferred by a majority of the respondents. It was also shown that while 96.9% of respondents used more than one causal attribution, a majority of structural attributors adopted fatalistic attribution as second choice of explanation for poverty. On the basis of the above, and in line with previous studies (Mann, 1970; Bobo, 1991), it was deduced that the possibility for radical action would be diminished as a result of this ‘dual/split consciousness’. The result further confirmed as hypothesized, that fatalistic attribution had a negative correlation with willingness to embark on collective action as respondents in the fatalistic condition were not willing to embark on collective action. However, respondents in the structural conditions were more willing to engage in collective action. While attributions predicted willingness to embark on collective action, MANCOVA showed that action proceeded in a continuum as predicted by the FSM. For example, while the introduction of fatalistic and individual attribution to the equation hypothesizing the relationship between injustice feelings and action showed that resultant actions were predominantly individual normative, post-hoc inclusion of the structural dimension to the equation showed an addition variance to the equation for collective action. This indicated that structural attributions enhance collective normative action. However, consistent with most studies in the literature, the results did not predict collective non-normative action1. Results indicated low adherence of subject to items eliciting collective action suggesting that past studies which reported high preference of collective action by disadvantaged groups may have been influenced by ‘social desirability effects’, given Topf’s (1995) assertion that what people say they will do is often not what they do but what they perceive as right in the particular situation. 1 The only notable exception is Boen & Vanbeselaere (1998) 2 A full discussion of lay explanations of poverty is reserved for chapter 4 of this thesis. iv The study however proposed on the basis of the salience of structural attributions that poverty attributions may become useful for Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) interested in fostering social change. However, while the study showed that attribution influences willingness to embark on action it does not show how attribution becomes salient in group membership. Thus there is a need for future studies to investigate how attribution affects group identification. Similarly, given the dearth of studies of the attribution of the ‘actual poor’ of poverty, it is necessary for future studies to test the validity of the result from the present study indicating stronger adherence to fatalistic than individualistic attributions of poverty among the disadvantaged. While many past studies of attribution and those of reaction to injustice have been on samples of middle-class adults in developed countries, or artificially created deprived groups, the present study being of the ‘real life’ poor in a Third World setting, provides evidence of ‘real world’ actions and attributions of people experiencing poverty.

This study sought to find out the implications of poverty on schooling and management in the Centane Educational Unit. Centane Educational Unit is part of the Mnquma Local Municipality. The other Educational units that constitute the Mnquma are Butterworth and Ngqamakhwe. The Mnquma is one of the 7 local municipalities that form Amathole District Municipality. The other areMbhashe, Amahlathi, Great Kei, Ngqushwa, Nkonkobe and Nxuba. Quantitative and qualitative and research designs were used. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data from the principals, the school governing bodies parent members, educators and learners of 5 selected section 20 junior secondary schools. Participants were selected using a random sampling technique. The sample was made up of 5 principals, 20 SGB parent members (4 from each school), 10 educators (2 from each school) and 10 learners (2 from each school). Learners were selected from the senior phase. The total number of the sample was 45. The researcher analysed the data collected by means of Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The findings were that poverty- whether absolute or relative- had an adverse impact on schooling and management in the Centane Educational Unit. Its impact relates to parents’ inability to meet financial school requirements. This impact ranges from learners’ poor attendance to school, learners’ lack of concentration on studies, poor participation on extra-mural activities and parents’ failure to pay for school needs. On the basis of the negative effects of poverty on schooling and management recommendations were made in order to conscientise stakeholders on how best they could push back the frontiers of poverty and obviate its detrimental effects on our education system. The researcher encountered such limitations as the geographical location of schools which are scattered and far apart, working responsibilities and pressures, bad and impassable roads, financial commitments, negative attitudes of certain educators, principals and parent components of the School Governing Bodies (SGB) and officials of the Department of Education towards the researcher’s aims of undertaking this study. However, the researcher managed to work with the interviewees as she tried to address these challenges through interactions with her informants.

The thesis examines three issues related to Chinese rural households’ well-being and poverty status over the period of 1989-2006. Each of them corresponds to a substantive chapter (Chapter 3-5). Chapter 1 introduces the stages of poverty reduction in rural China following the reforms that started in 1978 and discusses some problems related to further poverty reduction and increases in welfare. Chapter 2 provides a general description of the data set used in the substantive chapters. It includes a discussion of the construction of the panel and the justification of the construction and use of the key economic variables. It also uses this panel to provide some preliminary explorations on households’ poverty status and inequality. Chapter 3 examines the welfare loss brought about by the increasing uncertainty attached to households’ consumption flows. Along with significant economic growth over more than three decades, rural households’ livelihood has become more uncertain in terms of greater volatility and inequality in their consumption. Our estimate is that households’ welfare would have risen up by approximately one third if there were no such uncertainties. Farmers and the chronically poor appear to suffer most among all sub-groups from the welfare loss associated with this uncertainty. Chapter 4 extends the existing literature on poverty in rural China from a perspective of households’ agricultural asset holdings. The analysis finds multiple equilibria in asset dynamics. In the presence of limited insurance, households’ exposure to various shocks and risk forces them to engage in conservative livelihood strategies: they may prefer low-risk low-return production to more profitable but riskier investment in asset accumulation. As a result, some households may be trapped into lower incomes in the long-term. Based on the findings in Chapter 4, Chapter 5 empirically identifies the dynamic asset threshold. It categorises households into either the downward or upward mobility group in the long-term. Then, this chapter measures to what extent falling below this asset threshold may affect households’ probabilities of being poor. Both static and dynamic estimates suggest that insufficient asset holdings substantially increase the chances of falling into poverty. Chapter 6 summarises policy implications indicated by the empirical analyses in three substantive chapters. Overall, education, health insurance and off-farm employment appear to be the key factors if there is to be a further improvement in Chinese rural households’ welfare and reduction in poverty.

Self-building of housing in informal settlements is a common phenomenon in much of the world. Often referred to as slums, squatter areas, or shanty towns, this type of development comes with a variety of social and physical problems. Many lack clean water and other basic amenities and protections. At the same time, informal settlements provide affordable housing: for many residents they are the only alternative to homelessness. Often considered a phenomenon exclusive to the developing world, informal settlements do in fact exist in the United States. The most salient examples are the colonias of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. These are neighborhoods found mostly along the U.S.-Mexico border, in rural counties just outside of border cities, where they developed thanks to a regulatory vacuum that existed prior to 1995. Built in peripheral areas without proper infrastructure, including water, sewer, and paved roads, colonias often have poor living conditions. On the other hand, they have allowed tens of thousands of families to achieve home ownership. This thesis explores the implications of building regulation and infrastructure on the creation of decent housing with limited means. It draws on the example of the colonias as well as other projects from the Americas and Europe. The design proposal centers on a question of bringing self-building to an urban area. It is cheaper in the long term to provide infrastructure up-front to a dense urban development than it is to retrofit it in a sprawling ex-urban colonia. Beyond density, however, architect Renzo Piano has proposed that cities be considered in terms of intensity: the spatial concentration of the conditions necessary for vibrant urban life. This thesis focuses on a former rail yard in Houston's Near Northside, a place where the right infrastructure could support an intensity of self-building and urban regeneration. The proposal is both a physical and conceptual framework for the self-building of an alternative colonia. It suggests a balance between public and private investment and individual and collective effort, creating a model that could promote social justice, support long-term development, and create lasting economic value. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / South Africa is paradoxically an interesting case study. On the one hand, it is characterised by widespread and persistent poverty and extra-ordinary levels of unemployment. On the other hand, South Africa is quintessentially a migration destination country, ranking among countries with the highest number of migrants from other African countries. While it currently hosts more than three million international migrants, which represents approximately 4.2% of the country’s entire population, nearly half of the South African black population live in poverty and grapple with income inequality, unemployment, food insecurity and hunger. Much like their South African counterparts, international migrants are not immune to the conundrum of poverty. Added to the poverty-related social challenges that confront the natives of South Africa, foreign nationals in South Africa endure the migration-specific risks, shocks, hardships, deprivation and vulnerabilities.