Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-90). Also available on the Internet.

The importance of education for individual well-being, social cohesion and economic growth is widely accepted by researchers and policymakers alike. Yet there exist vast numbers of people around the world, largely poor, who continue to lag behind wealthier people, often within their own nations. Conditional cash transfer programs were created to encourage investments in education and health by subsidizing their cost and changing household preferences. The programs increase short-term income as well as future wage potential, thus decreasing short-term and long-term poverty, as well as the poverty that is passed from generation to generation. Begun in Mexico and Brazil, the conditional cash transfer model is being replicated in many countries, but its replicability across socioeconomic and political contexts is far from clear. The present study adds to the research on conditional cash transfer programs through a comparative quantitative analysis of the effects of two programs on key educational outcomes in Nicaragua and Colombia. Using secondary panel data for the Nicaraguan Red de Proteccion Social and the Colombian Familias en Accion programs, a model reflecting demand constraints to education is used to determine the relative impacts of individual and household characteristics in the schooling decision, as well as to measure program impact in some of the most impoverished communities in the two countries. The empirical analysis is situated within a description of the historical, political and demographic contexts into which the programs were introduced. The results indicate that both programs increased enrollment and attendance, with lesser but still positive effects on retention. These effects were stronger for boys in Colombia, as was the importance of schooling expectations in determining enrollment. The study suggests that conditional cash transfer programs should be effective in other settings in which low educational attainment is caused largely by a lack of household resources. / text

Evidence linking poverty with poor mental and physical health outcomes is well documented, but until recently little research has focused on the underlying psychological factors that mediate these relationships. This report represents the first step toward exploring how two emerging theories, allostatic load and system justification theory, can be harmonized to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms that propagate poverty. Specifically, this report addresses the question of how poverty-related stress might moderate the degree to which an impoverished individual is inclined to justify a system that fundamentally does not favor them. Promising future research will be addressed. / text

The poor disproportionately bear the burden of diminished mental health. Despite the pronounced prevalence of these iniquitous disparities, researchers lack a comprehensive understanding of their origins and also the requisite knowledge to reduce or eliminate them. Past studies have largely focused on adult precursors and trajectories of change but have largely neglected the early-life origins, timing, and consequent chains of risk associated with mental health. This dissertation examines these elements and also considers the early-life origins of mental health in a novel way by integrating sociological-based frameworks with biosocial ones. More specifically, this dissertation examines the sensitive periods and chains of risk by which mental health problems develop or persist over time and provides clues as to when and how poverty exerts its noxious effect on mental health. This dissertation employs two national datasets: the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to assess these issues. Viewed in tandem these datasets span from approximately ages 0 to 30 and provide an especially apropos opportunity to examine the early-life origins of mental health. This dissertation found five particularly important results. First poverty experienced in infancy had lasting effects on awakening cortisol – a marker of hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis functioning. HPA dysregualtion, in turn, is thought to be related to a host of mental health disorders. Second poverty experienced in infancy had a pernicious effect on internalizing and externalizing behaviors in adolescence, net of poverty experienced at other points in time. Third, poverty experienced in adolescence was of particular importance compared to poverty exposure at other ages in shaping mental health in young adulthood. Fourth, poverty experienced during sensitive periods acted as a catalyst that set in motion a number of complex chains of risk that proliferated over time. Fifth there were meaningful gender differences in regards to both timing and chains of risk. Overall, these results underscore the need for both theoretical and empirical models that span from infancy to adulthood / text

This study examines the readiness of suburban towns in Austin for the potential development of affordable and low-income housing through their comprehensive plans and land use policies. The study consists of four sections: an overview of the greater Austin MSA and the developing poverty in the suburban areas, a literature review of the effects of local land use policies on affordable housing production and development, the establishment of a “best practices” metric for local land use policies amenable to affordable housing production, and application of the metric to four localities in the Austin MSA, including Elgin, Dripping Springs, Kyle, and Georgetown. The findings reveal primarily low scores overall for the four localities, and expose the challenges suburban jurisdictions in a high-growth MSA in Texas face when addressing the needs of increasing low-income residents, and display best practices that localities with successful methods use to address those needs. / text

Early childhood—a period of development that research has established as a critical period for establishing a foundation to support later development and well-being—is increasingly likely to take place in multiple contexts. Continuity and discontinuity in children’s exposure to environmental chaos across two important contexts for their early development: (1) the home and (2) the early learning and care (ELC) setting were examined using data from a large representative sample of low-income preschool children attending Head Start in order to determine how children’s exposure to chaos in each context combine to either promote or interfere with their social-emotional and cognitive development over a year of preschool. A series of multi-level models tested whether children’s experiences of chaos, operationalized in three ways: (1) as individual indicators of crowding, lack of routines, and instability in each setting; (2) as a cumulative index of chaos in each setting; and (3) as a profile that incorporated children’s experiences across setting, influenced children’s social-emotional and cognitive development. Both household and classroom chaos predicted children’s development, but children’s experiences in their home environments were the predominant influence, indicating that children who had non-chaotic home environments gained more over the preschool year than did children who had chaotic homes. These findings provide additional support that effective and high-quality early education and care settings must incorporate children’s home and family experiences. / text

Over the past three decades microfinance has become one of the most important policy interventions used by international development practitioners, offering loan opportunities to those who lack access to basic financial services. Women have been the primary targets of this poverty alleviation strategy as it was presumed that they would be empowered through increased control over their incomes. In Cambodia, these strategies are guided by a business-approach to development and enforce regulatory measures encouraging competition, marketization and commercialization, and in so doing, put more economic pressure on women borrowers. Through the concepts of debt and trust, the following thesis will argue against the motive of empowerment through microfinance programs. Since microfinance was not designed to address social inequalities, it will also argue that deeply embedded patriarchal power relations go unchallenged and the status of women within the household goes unchanged. In stark contradiction to the empowerment discourses lauded internationally, usurious moneylenders and unregistered microfinance institutions practicing predatory lending are actually encroaching upon Cambodian women’s domestic and work space. A feminist ethnography was employed in seeking to unearth participants’ understandings of their circumstances and giving them a voice, where the specific methodological tools included semi-structured interviews with Cambodian women who have taken loans. The analysis was guided by examining discourse in microfinance policy reports as well as interviews with employees of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The resulting research is positioned within the critical literature in human geography on neoliberalization by examining whether or not the integration of the poor into the “market” benefits them or places them in highly exploitative circumstances. / Graduate / 0453 / 0366 / 0733 / elaurin@uvic.ca

Despite a resurgence of qualitative research on the cultural aspects of poverty, very few studies have examined how low-income men find resilience in response to the risks of living in severe disadvantage. Moreover, virtually no research has compared how resilience strategies differ between low-income black and white men. These omissions are particularly surprising since low-income men disproportionately experience the life-altering risks of extreme disadvantage, such as criminal punishment, chronic unemployment, drug abuse, and poor physical health. To address these limitations, I draw on recent insights from developmental psychology and from cultural sociology to examine the sources of risk and resilience among black and white men living in severe poverty. Drawing on several years of ethnographic fieldwork, statistical analysis of qualitative data, and on over ninety in-depth interviews with low-income men in Greater Boston, I find striking racial differences in the sources of risk: while white men are more likely to report having a mental health diagnosis and an addiction to opiates, black men are more likely to report living in extremely poor, racially-segregated neighborhoods. Although exposed to different risk factors, I find surprising similarities across racial groups in the sources of resilience: both black and white men respond to the life-changing stressors of extreme poverty by constructing narratives around religious redemption, enduring romantic relationships, and work-related aspirations. Notwithstanding these similarities, I find that white men report greater disaffiliation from organized religion and black men a narrower range of entrepreneurial and athletic vocations. I show that these racial differences in resilience are due to the steep decline in religious affiliation with the Catholic Church among the white poor and enduring economic segregation of the black poor, respectively. In summary, black and white men cope with the risks of living in severe poverty in broadly similar ways: by appeals to religion, long-term romantic relationships, and work; that is, the very ideologically-dominant American institutions from which they are often claimed to be disconnected culturally. / Sociology

Childhood poverty is associated with a range of negative developmental consequences (Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997). Several well-known early childhood intervention programs have demonstrated success in supporting cognitive, language, and behavioural outcomes for children experiencing social disadvantage (Anderson et al., 2003; Barnett, 1995, Ramey & Ramey, 2004). Less known is the impact of naturally occurring centre-based child care programs on developmental outcomes of children living in poverty. A systematic review and meta-analytic inquiry was undertaken to shed light on the potential for child care programs to support developmental outcomes. Of the over 11,000 titles and abstracts reviewed, 226 full documents were subsequently retrieved and reviewed for possible inclusion, and 25 were ultimately included in the in-depth review. The large degree of heterogeneity in and across these studies, reflecting a variety of child care and outcome measures, precluded combination into a single average effect size. A reduced meta-analytic inquiry into the impact of high quality child care on cognitive-linguistic, social, and behavioural outcomes revealed average effect sizes of g=0.41, g=0.37, and g= -0.36 respectively. High quality child care was associated with improved cognitive-linguistic and social outcomes, and reduced behavioural concerns for children from impoverished backgrounds. Collectively, the systematic review, meta-analytic inquiry, and individual effect size data indicates that child care holds the potential to exert a meaningful and positive influence in the lives of children experiencing poverty under conditions of high structural and process quality. Findings are discussed through the lens of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecology of human development.

One in seven Canadian women lives in poverty. There is a considerable body of research on the factors that cause women’s poverty in Canada and on how poverty affects women’s lives. There are also a number of programs and organizations that help women living in poverty. However, there is a lack of research that examines the meanings and experiences women have with these programs and the role these programs may play in their lives. This study has attempted to fill this gap by examining an innovative training and employment program for women living in poverty. A qualitative approach was taken, which included in-depth, semi-structured interviews with eight women who had recently completed the program, as well as an informal interview with the program director. The interviews explored the women’s experiences with the program, the meanings they associated with the program, and the ways in which participation in the program had influenced their lives. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze the interview data, and socialist feminist theory provided a lens to guide the study as a whole. The analysis led to the development of a number of themes and sub-themes. Safety, stability and connections with others were found to be particularly meaningful and important components of the program. These features enabled the participants to discover a new sense of self through the development of skills, confidence and empowerment. These findings suggest the importance of providing a holistic program, and one that addresses the broad range of challenges and concerns that affect the lives of women in poverty. Programs that focus narrowly on employment and job training may be insufficient. The implications of this research are discussed in terms of the diverse needs of women living in poverty and the range of barriers that they face. Community programs such as the one studied can help women make significant gains in their lives, which can, in turn, contribute to overcoming poverty and achieving economic independence.