HNRS 2013 MIDTERM

rugged individualism

Rugged individualism was a phrase used often by Herbert Hoover during his time as president. It refers to the idea that each individual should be able to help themselves out, and that the government does not need to involve itself in people's economic lives nor in national economics in general.

supplemental poverty measure

Although Orshansky developed her measure of poverty based on the best data available at that time, the question is if it provides a clear picture of how economic, social, and policy changes affect economic need in the United States today. The official poverty rates may in fact lead us to believe that "public spending on the poor had little effect" (Blank, 2008, p. 238). In the early 1990s, Congress commissioned a panel of experts from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to address key shortcomings of the official measure. In early 2010, the Obama administration adopted the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) that largely follows the methods recommended by the NAS Panel. Following the Panel's recommendations, the SPM defines poverty as the lack of economic resources for consumption of basic needs such as food, housing, clothing, and utilities (FCSU). To determine family resources, gross money income from private and public sources is supplemented with benefits such as food stamps, housing subsidies, and tax credits. Deducted from family income are medical out-of-pocket expenses including health insurance premiums, income and Social Security payroll taxes, child support payments, work-related expenses and child care costs. Instead of using a food plan, the SPM poverty thresholds are based on expenditures on FCSU plus a small amount to allow for additional expenses. These thresholds are further adjusted for different family sizes and compositions, housing status, and geographic differences in housing costs (Short, 2012).

social structuralism

Another important theoretical approach to the concept of social structure is structuralism (sometimes called French structuralism), which studies the underlying, unconscious regularities of human expression—that is, the unobservable structures that have observable effects on behaviour, society, and culture. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss derived this theory from structural linguistics, developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. According to Saussure, any language is structured in the sense that its elements are interrelated in nonarbitrary, regular, rule-bound ways; a competent speaker of the language largely follows these rules without being aware of doing so. The task of the theorist is to detect this underlying structure, including the rules of transformation that connect the structure to the various observed expressions.

ACE

Childhood experiences, both positive and negative, have a tremendous impact on future violence victimization and perpetration, and lifelong health and opportunity. As such, early experiences are an important public health issue. Much of the foundational research in this area has been referred to as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

Concentrated poverty

Concentrated poverty refers to a spatial density of socio-economic deprivation. In the US, it is commonly used in fields of policy and scholarship in reference to areas of "extreme" or "high-poverty" defined by the US census as areas with "40 percent of the tract population living below the federal poverty threshold." A large body of literature argues that these areas of concentrated poverty place additional burdens on poor families that live within them, beyond what the families' own individual circumstances would dictate. The research also indicates that areas of concentrated poverty can have wider effects on surrounding neighborhoods that are not classified as "high-poverty," thus limiting overall economic potential and social cohesion.

david ellwood

David T. Ellwood is an American educator and university administrator. He served as the Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government and as the Scott M. Black Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. David T. Ellwood, the Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy, served as Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government from July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2015. He began his appointment as Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy on July 1, 2016. Ellwood joined the Kennedy School faculty in 1980 and served two separate terms as the School's Academic Dean. In 1993, he was named Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) where he served as co-chair of President Clinton's Working Group on Welfare Reform, Family Support and Independence. At HHS, Ellwood played a key role in the Administration's development and implementation of critical social policy. Recognized as one of the nation's leading scholars on poverty and welfare, Ellwood's work has been credited with significantly influencing public policy in the United States and abroad. A labor economist who also specializes in family change, low pay and unemployment, his most recent research focuses on the changing structure of American families. Ellwood is the author of numerous books and articles, including Welfare Realities: From Rhetoric to Reform, co-authored with Mary Jo Bane. His book, Poor Support: Poverty in the American Family, was selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the notable books of 1988 and by the Policy Studies Organization as the outstanding book of the year. Ellwood was recipient of the David N. Kershaw Award, given by the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management to outstanding individuals under the age of 40 who have made a distinguished contribution to the field of public policy. He also received the Morris and Edna Zale Award for Outstanding Distinction in Scholarship and Public Service from Stanford University. Ellwood is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Senior Research Affiliate of the National Poverty Center at University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He is also a Faculty Affiliate of the Joint Center for Poverty Research at Northwestern University/University of Chicago and serves on the Board of Abt Associates and the Malcolm Hewitt Wiener Foundation.

executive function

Executive functions (collectively referred to as executive function and cognitive control) are a set of cognitive processes - including attentional control, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, as well as reasoning, problem solving, and planning - that are necessary for the cognitive control of behavior: selecting and successfully monitoring behaviors that facilitate the attainment of chosen goals.[1][2][3] Executive functions gradually develop and change across the lifespan of an individual and can be improved at any time over the course of a person's life.[2] Similarly, these cognitive processes can be adversely affected by a variety of events which affect an individual.[2] Neuropsychological tests (e.g., the Stroop test) and rating scales (e.g., the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function) are used to measure executive functions. They are usually performed as part of a more comprehensive assessment to diagnose neurological and psychiatric disorders. Cognitive control and stimulus control, which is associated with operant and classical conditioning, represent opposite processes (i.e., internal vs external or environmental, respectively) that compete over the control of an individual's elicited behaviors;[4] in particular, inhibitory control is necessary for overriding stimulus-driven behavioral responses (i.e., stimulus control of behavior).[2] The prefrontal cortex is necessary but not solely sufficient for executive functions;[2][5][6] for example, the caudate nucleus and subthalamic nucleus also have a role in mediating inhibitory control.[2][7] Cognitive control is impaired in both addiction and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.[2][7] Stimulus-driven behavioral responses that are associated with a particular rewarding stimulus tend to dominate one's behavior in an addiction

extreme poverty

Extreme poverty, absolute poverty, destitution or penury, was originally defined by the United Nations in 1995 as "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services." In 2008, "extreme poverty" widely refers to earning below the international poverty line of $1.25/day (in 2005 prices), set by the World Bank. This measure is the equivalent to earning $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices, hence the widely used expression, living on "less than a dollar a day." The vast majority of those in extreme poverty - 96% - reside in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, The West Indies, East Asia and the Pacific; nearly half live in India and China alone.

fatalism

Fatalism is a philosophical doctrine stressing the subjugation of all events or actions to fate. Fatalism generally refers to any of the following ideas: 1. The view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do.[1] Included in this is that man has no power to influence the future, or indeed, his own actions.[2] This belief is very similar to predeterminism. 2. An attitude of resignation in the face of some future event or events which are thought to be inevitable. Friedrich Nietzsche named this idea with "Turkish fatalism"[3] in his book The Wanderer and His Shadow.[4] 3. That acceptance is appropriate, rather than resistance against inevitability. This belief is very similar to defeatism.

feminization of poverty

Feminization of poverty is the phenomenon that women represent disproportionate percentages of the world's poor.[1] UNIFEM describes it as "the burden of poverty borne by women, especially in developing countries".[2] This phenomenon is not only a consequence of lack of income, but is also the result of the deprivation of capabilities and gender biases present in both societies and governments.[1] This includes the poverty of choices and opportunities, such as the ability to lead a long, healthy, and creative life, and enjoy basic rights like freedom, respect, and dignity.[3] Women's increasing share of poverty is related to the rising incidence of lone mother households.[1] The term feminization of poverty itself is controversial and has been defined in many different ways. In 1978, Diana Pearce coined the term, "the feminization of poverty" after doing much research and seeing how many women struggled with poverty within the United States, as well as globally. According to Pearce's research, two-thirds of the poor who were over age 16 were women

national housing trust fund

Housing trust funds are established sources of funding for affordable housing construction and other related purposes created by governments in the United States (U.S.). Housing Trust Funds (HTF) began as a way of funding affordable housing in the late 1970s. Since then, elected government officials from all levels of government (national, state, county and local) in the U.S. have established housing trust funds to support the construction, acquisition, and preservation of affordable housing and related services to meet the housing needs of low-income households. Ideally, HTFs are funded through dedicated revenues like real estate transfer taxes or document recording fees to ensure a steady stream of funding rather than being dependent on regular budget processes. By 2009, 700 trust funds in states, cities and counties existed across the U.S. and allocated nearly $1 billion for housing-related needs.

worthy/unworthy poor

In American Society, we have divided the poor into two classes, the "worthy" poor and the "unworthy" poor. The "worthy" poor are those we feel are worth being on state/federal aid and do not complain about assisting. The "unworthy" poor are those are receive aid as well but for some reason society feels they could take care of themselves and not depend on the aid. Society feels that those in the "unworthy" class are capable of providing for themselves financially. The reason being that most of the people who fall into this class are younger then the people who fall into the "worthy" class. Many who fall into the "worthy class" are the elderly who are beyond working age, and find it hard to support their selves without some form of a fixed income. Although the majority of the "worthy" class is made up of the elderly, there are certain situations where the "worthy" class also includes some of a younger generation. Many of those come from the deeply impoverished corners of the United States Society. Many don't have a chance of surviving and living a better life then they are being given unless the someone, whether it be the government or a small organization, step up and find some way to show them the way to improve themselves. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/163028

reservation wages

In labor economics, the reservation wage is the lowest wage rate at which a worker would be willing to accept a particular type of job. A job offer involving the same type of work and the same working conditions, but at a lower wage rate, would be rejected by the worker. An individual's reservation wage may change over time depending on a number of factors, like changes in the individual's overall wealth, changes in marital status or living arrangements, length of unemployment, and health and disability issues. An individual might also set a higher reservation wage when considering an offer of an unpleasant or undesirable job than when considering a type of job the individual likes (see compensating differential). Just as a worker has an incentive to search for a high wage when looking for a job, a consumer has an incentive to search for a low price when purchasing a good. The highest price the consumer is willing to pay for a particular product is that consumer's reservation price.

living wage

In public policy, a living wage is the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs.[1] This is not necessarily the same as subsistence, which refers to a biological minimum, though the two terms are commonly confused. These needs include shelter (housing) and other incidentals such as clothing and nutrition. In some nations such as the United Kingdom and Switzerland, this standard generally means that a person working forty hours a week, with no additional income, should be able to afford the basics for quality of life, such as, food, shelter, utilities, transport, health care, minimal recreation, one course a year to upgrade their education, and childcare. However, in many cases education, saving for retirement, and less commonly legal fees and insurance, or taking care of a sick or elderly family member are not included. It also does not allow for debt repayment of any kind. In addition to this definition, living wage activists further define a living wage as the wage equivalent to the poverty line for a family of four. This is two adults working full-time with one child age nine and another of age four.[citation needed] The living wage differs from the minimum wage in that the latter is set by law and can fail to meet the requirements to have a basic quality of life and leaves the family to rely on government programs for additional income.[1] It differs somewhat from basic needs in that the basic needs model usually measures a minimum level of consumption, without regard for the source of the income. A living wage is defined as the wage that can meet the basic needs to maintain a safe, decent standard of living within the community.[2] The particular amount that must be earned per hour to meet these needs varies depending on location. In the 1990s the first living wage campaigns were launched by community initiatives in the US addressing increasing poverty faced by workers and their families. They argued that employee, employer, and the community win with a living wage. Employees would be more willing to work, helping the employer reduce worker turnover, and it would help the community when the citizens have enough to have a decent life.[3] The poverty threshold is the income necessary for a household to be able to consume a low cost, nutritious diet and purchase non-food necessities in a given country. Poverty lines and living wages are measured differently. Poverty lines are measured by household units and living wage is based on individual workers. A related concept is that of a family wage - one sufficient to not only support oneself, but also to raise a family.

self-selection bias

In statistics, self-selection bias arises in any situation in which individuals select themselves into a group, causing a biased sample with nonprobability sampling. It is commonly used to describe situations where the characteristics of the people which cause them to select themselves in the group create abnormal or undesirable conditions in the group. It is closely related to the non-response bias, describing when the group of people responding has different responses than the group of people not responding. Self-selection bias is a major problem in research in sociology, psychology, economics and many other social sciences.[1] In such fields, a poll suffering from such bias is termed a self-selected listener opinion poll or "SLOP".[2] The term is also used in criminology to describe the process by which specific predispositions may lead an offender to choose a criminal career and lifestyle. While the effects of self-selection bias are closely related to those of selection bias, the problem arises for rather different reasons; thus there may be a purposeful intent on the part of respondents leading to self-selection bias whereas other types of selection bias may arise more inadvertently, possibly as the result of mistakes by those designing any given study.

medicare

In the United States, Medicare is a single-payer, national social insurance program administered by the US federal government since 1966, currently using about 30-50 private insurance companies across the United States under contract for administration. United States Medicare is funded by a payroll tax, premiums and surtaxes from beneficiaries, and general revenue. It provides health insurance for Americans aged 65 and older who have worked and paid into the system through the payroll tax. It also provides health insurance to younger people with some disabilities status as determined by the Social Security Administration, as well as younger people with end stage renal disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In 2015, Medicare provided health insurance for over 55 million—46 million people age 65 and older and nine million younger people. On average, Medicare covers about half of the health care charges for those enrolled. The enrollees must then cover their remaining costs either with supplemental insurance, separate insurance, or out-of-pocket. Out-of-pocket costs can vary depending on the amount of health care a Medicare enrollee needs. They might include the costs of uncovered services—such as for long-term, dental, hearing, and vision care—and supplemental insurance premiums. The Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee (or Relative Value Update Committee; RUC), composed of physicians associated with the American Medical Association, advises the government about pay standards for Medicare patient procedures performed by doctors and other professionals under Medicare Part B, according to news reports. A similar but different CMS system determines the rates paid acute care and other hospitals—including skilled nursing facilities—under Medicare Part A

redlining

In the United States, redlining is the practice of denying services, either directly or through selectively raising prices, to residents of certain areas based on the racial or ethnic composition of those areas. While the best known examples of redlining have involved denial of financial services such as banking or insurance,[2] other services such as health care[3] or even supermarkets[4] have been denied to residents (or in the case of retail businesses like supermarkets, simply located impractically far away from said residents) to result in a redlining effect.[5] The term "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by John McKnight, a sociologist and community activist.[6] It refers to the practice of marking a red line on a map to delineate an area where banks would not make loans; later the term was applied to discrimination against a particular group of people (usually on the basis of race or sex) irrespective of geography. During the heyday of redlining, the areas most frequently discriminated against were black inner city neighborhoods. For example, in Atlanta in the 1980s, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles by investigative-reporter Bill Dedman showed that banks would often lend to lower-income whites but not to middle- or upper-income blacks.[7] The use of blacklists is a related mechanism also used by redliners to keep track of groups, areas, and people that the discriminating party feels should be denied business or aid or other transactions. In the academic literature, redlining falls under the broader category of credit rationing. Reverse redlining occurs when a lender or insurer targets nonwhite consumers, not to deny them loans or insurance, but rather to charge them more than could be charged to a comparable white consumer

individualism

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that emphasizes the moral worth of the individual.[1][2] Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance[3] and advocate that interests of the individual should achieve precedence over the state or a social group,[3] while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government.[3] Individualism is often defined in contrast to totalitarianism, collectivism and more corporate social forms.[4][5] Individualism makes the individual its focus[1] and so starts "with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation."[6] Classical liberalism, existentialism, and anarchism are examples of movements that take the human individual as a central unit of analysis.[6] Individualism thus involves "the right of the individual to freedom and self-realization".[7] It has also been used as a term denoting "The quality of being an individual; individuality"[3] related to possessing "An individual characteristic; a quirk."[3] Individualism is thus also associated with artistic and bohemian interests and lifestyles where there is a tendency towards self-creation and experimentation as opposed to tradition or popular mass opinions and behaviors[3][8] as so also with humanist philosophical positions and ethics

mechanization of agriculture

Mechanised agriculture is the process of using agricultural machinery to mechanise the work of agriculture, greatly increasing farm worker productivity. In modern times, powered machinery has replaced many farm jobs formerly carried out by manual labour or by working animals such as oxen, horses and mules. The entire history of agriculture contains many examples of the use of tools, such as the hoe and the plough. But the ongoing integration of machines since the Industrial Revolution has allowed farming to become much less labour-intensive. Current mechanised agriculture includes the use of tractors, trucks, combine harvesters, countless types of farm implements, aeroplanes and helicopters (for aerial application), and other vehicles. Precision agriculture even uses computers in conjunction with satellite imagery and satellite navigation (GPS guidance) to increase yields. Mechanisation was one of the large factors responsible for urbanisation and industrial economies. Besides improving production efficiency, mechanisation encourages large scale production and sometimes can improve the quality of farm produce. On the other hand, it can displace unskilled farm labour and can cause environmental degradation (such as pollution, deforestation, and soil erosion), especially if it is applied shortsightedly rather than holistically.

medicaid

Medicaid in the United States is a social health care program for families and individuals with limited resources. The Health Insurance Association of America describes Medicaid as a "government insurance program for persons of all ages whose income and resources are insufficient to pay for health care".[1] Medicaid is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for people with low income in the United States. It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the state and federal governments and managed by the states,[2] with each state currently having broad leeway to determine who is eligible for its implementation of the program. States are not required to participate in the program, although all have since 1982. Medicaid recipients must be U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, and may include low-income adults, their children, and people with certain disabilities. Poverty alone does not necessarily qualify someone for Medicaid. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") significantly expanded both eligibility for and federal funding of Medicaid. Under the law as written, all U.S. citizens and legal residents with income up to 133% of the poverty line, including adults without dependent children, would qualify for coverage in any state that participated in the Medicaid program. However, the United States Supreme Court ruled in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius that states do not have to agree to this expansion in order to continue to receive previously established levels of Medicaid funding, and many states have chosen to continue with pre-ACA funding levels and eligibility standards.

promises i can keep: why poor women put motherhood before marriage

Millie Acevedo bore her first child before the age of 16 and dropped out of high school to care for her newborn. Now 27, she is the unmarried mother of three and is raising her kids in one of Philadelphia's poorest neighborhoods. Would she and her children be better off if she had waited to have them and had married their father first? Why do so many poor American youth like Millie continue to have children before they can afford to take care of them? Over a span of five years, sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas talked in-depth with 162 low-income single moms like Millie to learn how they think about marriage and family. Promises I Can Keep offers an intimate look at what marriage and motherhood mean to these women and provides the most extensive on-the-ground study to date of why they put children before marriage despite the daunting challenges they know lie ahead.

mollie orshansky

Mollie Orshansky (January 9, 1915 - December 18, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who, in 1963-65, developed the Orshansky Poverty Thresholds, which are used in the United States as a measure of the income that a household must not exceed to be counted as poor. In 1958, Orshansky joined the Social Security Administration as a social science research analyst in the Office of Research and Statistics. In this capacity, she was responsible for analytical studies to measure income adequacy, family welfare and patterns of family income. In 1963, Orshansky developed the official measurement of poverty used by the U.S. government (see Poverty in the United States). She used the cost of a nutritionally adequate diet as the basis for a cost-of-living estimate; and to calculate a cost of living for families of different sizes and composition.

orlando patterson

Orlando Patterson (born 5 June 1940) is a Jamaican-born American historical and cultural sociologist known for his work regarding issues of race in the United States, as well as the sociology of development. His book Freedom, Volume One, or Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (1991), won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction.[1] Earlier in his career, Patterson was concerned with the economic and political development of his home country, Jamaica. He served as special advisor to Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica, from 1972 to 1979. Patterson is known for his work on the relationship between slavery and Social death, which he has worked on extensively and written several books about. Patterson has appeared on PBS and has been a guest columnist in The New York Times. A recent article in the latter, "The Real Problem With America's Inner Cities," used the lens of developmental sociology to analyze recent protests and looting in West Baltimore.[4] Patterson currently holds the John Cowles chair in Sociology at Harvard University. In October 2015 he received the Gold Musgrave Medal in recognition of his contribution to literature Social death is the condition of people not accepted as fully human by wider society. Used by sociologists like Zygmunt Bauman and historians of slavery and the holocaust to describe the part played by governmental and social segregation in that process.[1][2] Examples of social death are: Racial and gender exclusion, persecution, slavery, and apartheid.[3][4][5] Governments can exclude individuals or groups from society. Examples: Protestant minority groups in early modern Europe; ostracism in Ancient Athens; criminals; prostitutes, outlaws[6][7] Institutionalization and segregation of those labeled with a mental illness. Change in the identity of an individual. This was a major theme during the Renaissance.

mothers' pensions

Proponents of the original plan for mothers' pensions (also referred to as mothers' aid) intended to provide a universal subsidy to families with dependent children but without an adult male income. Using the model of military pensions, they argued that a mother deserved a government pension in exchange for her service to the state through child rearing. Child welfare reformers, women's clubs, and juvenile court judges supported pensions as a vast improvement over existing options that sent families to the poorhouse, forced mothers to give up their children, or turned children into wage earners. The Illinois state legislature passed the first statewide mothers' pension law in the United States in 1911. Only Kansas City and a few private charities scattered across the country had previously tried similar plans. The law did not mandate counties to implement mothers' pensions, but it legitimated the use of public funds for this purpose. Cook County's program became the largest and best-developed program in the state, as well as an important test case for other states to study. The Cook County Juvenile Court administered the mothers' pension program and established its guidelines for operation. Early in its history, the administrators insisted that able-bodied mothers had to work for wages to qualify for a pension. Over half of all mothers who received a pension also worked for wages, thus defeating the program's original goal. Limited local revenues in the early years of the Great Depression led to the decline of mothers' pensions, but they reappeared as the prototype for the Social Security Act's Aid to Dependent Children program.

just-in-time scheduling

So-called "just-in-time" scheduling practices, where employees are asked to come and go depending on how much work there is to do, are highly prevalent in the District. Company policies can force employees to maintain open availability for full-time hours when they are only assigned and compensated for part-time hours. Supervisors commonly send staff home before their shift ends without compensation. High variance in schedules from week to week can make it difficult to arrange childcare, let alone pursue additional employment or education. Other key findings of the report include: Low Pay Common: The typical employee works 32 hours per week at a pay rate of $10 per hour, well below $13.80, the living wage for D.C. government contractors. Second Jobs Required: Nearly one-quarter of individuals work at least one additional job. Lack of Advance Notice: Nearly half of employees reported first learning of their work schedules less than one week in advance; one-third receive initial work schedules with less than three days' notice; and nearly one-third of retail and restaurant/food service employees reported receiving less than 24 hours' notice of schedule changes. Life On Hold For On-Call Shifts: Individuals assigned on-call/call-in shifts appear to have a 50/50 chance of getting paid to work, despite holding time for their employers. Shortened Shifts: Half of those working in the restaurant/food service industry reported being sent home before working their full shifts. Part-Time Work, Full-Time Availability: 60 % of individuals said they must always be available to fulfill any assigned work schedule—regardless of the days or hours—in order to be considered for full-time hours or the best shifts available. "Just-in-time scheduling practices are not working for D.C. families," said Ed Lazere, Executive Director of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute. "Almost all service sector workers in D.C. say they need more hours, given their very low wages, to make ends meet." Employees surveyed in the report said they might not request changes to their schedules out of fear, or direct experience of employer retaliation. Former PMI employee Fikirte Atlaw believes she was fired for asking for a different schedule after 25 years of working as a parking attendant for the company. After her husband passed away, she requested starting her job one hour later in the morning so she could manage dropping her son off at school. Atlaw's experience mirrors results from the survey that found women in the service sector were far more likely to face retaliation when asking for a schedule change than men.

job spatial mismatch

Spatial mismatch is the mismatch between where low-income households reside and suitable job opportunities. In its original formulation (see below) and in subsequent research, it has mostly been understood as a phenomenon affecting African-Americans, as a result of residential segregation, economic restructuring, and the suburbanization of employment. Spatial mismatch was first proposed by John F. Kain in a seminal 1968 article, "Housing Segregation, Negro Employment, and Metropolitan Decentralization".[1] That article did not specifically use the term "spatial mismatch", and Kain disclaimed credit.[2] In 1987, William Julius Wilson was an important exponent, elaborating the role of economic restructuring, as well as the departure of the black middle-class, in the development of a ghetto underclass in the United States 1. Commuting cost is seen as an obstacle for inner city people to be present for job interviews and furthermore to arrive to work everyday on time. In other words, cars may be too expensive for some workers and they may have to rely heavily on public transportation. Public transportation is problematic in a sense that it is not always prompt and may not stop at all job location sites. 2. Information access to jobs decreases as distance increases away from the job center. People who are living away from the job center are generally less knowledgeable about potential openings than individuals who live closer to the job center. Therefore, networking and information spillovers are of a major advantage in accessing information about potential openings. 3. There seems to be a lack of incentive for distance workers to search intensively for a job that is relatively far away. Gobillion, Selod and Zenou believe that minorities, more or less, do a tradeoff between short term loss and long term benefits. The short term loss involves making frequent search trips to distant work centers. However, the long term benefit involves obtaining a stable job and thus a higher wage rate. Unfortunately, minorities tend to weigh the short term loss higher than the long term benefits and as a result decreases their opportunity at obtaining a job in the suburbs. 4. There also seems to be a high search cost involve for urban workers looking for a job in the suburbs. It might be associated with paying a job agency to expand their search beyond the urban residential area or locating an agency in the suburbs.

structural violence

Structural violence refers to systematic ways in which social structures harm or otherwise disadvantage individuals. Structural violence is subtle, often invisible, and often has no one specific person who can (or will) be held responsible (in contrast to behavioral violence). I also hold that behavioral violence and structural violence can intertwine — some of the easiest examples of structural violence involve police, military, or other state powers committing violent acts; of course one can blame the individual soldier, but the factors that lead to a soldier killing a civilian are far more complex than that explanation would imply. Let me quote Dr. Paul Farmer, "Structural violence is one way of describing social arrangements that put individuals and populations in harm's way... The arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the political and economic organization of our social world; they are violent because they cause injury to people ... neither culture nor pure individual will is at fault; rather, historically given (and often economically driven) processes and forces conspire to constrain individual agency. Structural violence is visited upon all those whose social status denies them access to the fruits of scientific and social progress."

supplemental security income

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a United States government program that provides stipends to low-income people who are either aged 65 or older, blind, or disabled. Although administered by the Social Security Administration, SSI is funded from the U.S. Treasury general funds, not the Social Security trust fund

cool-pose culture

THE aloof swagger and studied unflappability projected by young black men from inner-city urban areas is a "cool pose," a bit of posturing that insulates them from an otherwise overwhelming social reality, a new report holds. While the cool pose is often misread by teachers, principals and police officers as an attitude of defiance, psychologists who have studied it say it is a way for black youths to maintain a sense of integrity and suppress rage at being blocked from usual routes to esteem and success. Indeed, black inner-city youths are so besieged that they seem "an endangered species," in the words of Dr. Richard Majors, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, who has written on the cool pose.

pathways to poverty

The CSJ is best known for its major Breakthrough Britain reports which identified the five Pathways to Poverty - family breakdown, educational failure, worklessness and dependency, addiction and serious personal debt as pathways to entrenched poverty. All of these pathways are inter connected and many of those trapped in poverty have experienced more than one of these problems. Through our work in each of these areas the CSJ seeks to move the poverty debate away from a simple fixation with a single 'poverty line' and instead look carefully at the lives of those living in poverty and what can be done to change those lives and eradicate poverty for good.

the great recession

The Great Recession—which officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009—began with the bursting of an 8 trillion dollar housing bubble. The resulting loss of wealth led to sharp cutbacks in consumer spending. This loss of consumption, combined with the financial market chaos triggered by the bursting of the bubble, also led to a collapse in business investment. As consumer spending and business investment dried up, massive job loss followed. In 2008 and 2009, the U.S. labor market lost 8.4 million jobs, or 6.1% of all payroll employment. This was the most dramatic employment contraction (by far) of any recession since the Great Depression. By comparison, in the deep recession that began in 1981, job loss was 3.1%, or only about half as severe.

wagner-steagall housing act of 1937

The Housing Act of 1937 (Pub.L. 75-412, 50 Stat. 888, enacted September 1, 1937), formally the "United States Housing Act of 1937" and sometimes called the Wagner-Steagall Act, provided for subsidies to be paid from the U.S. government to local public housing agencies (LHAs) to improve living conditions for low-income families. The act created the United States Housing Authority within the US Department of the Interior. The act builds on the National Housing Act of 1934, which created the Federal Housing Administration. Both the 1934 Act and the 1937 Act were influenced by American housing reformers of the period, with Catherine Bauer Wurster chief among them. Bauer drafted much of this legislation and served as a Director in the United States Housing Authority, the agency created by the 1937 Act to control the payment of subsidies, for two years. The sponsoring legislators were Representative Henry B. Steagall, Democrat of Alabama, and Senator Robert F. Wagner, Democrat of New York. Although initially controversial, it gained acceptance and provisions of the Act have remained, but in amended form. The Housing Act of 1949, enacted during the Harry Truman administration set new postwar national goals for decent living environments; it also funded "slum clearance" and the urban renewal projects and created many national public housing programs. In 1965, the Public Housing Administration, the US Housing Authority, and the House and Home Financing Agency were all swept into the newly formed and reorganized United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 was a United States federal law, which, among other provisions, amended the Housing Act of 1937 to create Section 8 housing,[1] authorized "Entitlement Communities Grants" to be awarded by HUD, and created the National Institute of Building Sciences.

human development index

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores higher HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, and the GDP per capita is higher. The HDI was developed by the Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq working alongside Indian economist Amartya Sen, often framed in terms of whether people are able to "be" and "do" desirable things in their life, and was published by the United Nations Development Programme. The 2010 Human Development Report introduced an Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI). While the simple HDI remains useful, it stated that "the IHDI is the actual level of human development (accounting for inequality)," and "the HDI can be viewed as an index of 'potential' human development (or the maximum IHDI that could be achieved if there were no inequality)."

TANF

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program provides grant funds to states and territories to provide families with financial assistance and related support services. State-administered programs may include childcare assistance, job preparation, and work assistance.

thrifty food plan

The Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) is one of four USDA-designed food plans specifying foods and amounts of foods to provide adequate nutrition. It is used as the basis for designing Food Stamp Program benefits. It is the cheapest food plan and is calculated monthly using data collected for the consumer price index (CPI). However, it is not the same as the food components of the CPI. The monthly cost of the TFP used for the Food Stamp Program represents a national average of expenditures (four-person household consisting of an adult couple and two school-age children) adjusted for other household sizes through the use of a formula reflecting economies of scale. For food stamp purposes, the TFP as priced each June sets maximum benefit levels for the fiscal year beginning the following October.

food insecurity with hunger

The USDA defines food insecurity as a state in which "consistent access to adequate food is limited by a lack of money and other resources at times during the year." Good shorthand terms for food insecurity are "struggling to avoid hunger," "hungry, or at risk of hunger," and "hungry, or faced by the threat of hunger."

earned income tax credit

The United States federal earned income tax credit or earned income credit (EITC or EIC) is a refundable tax credit for low- to moderate-income working individuals and couples, particularly those with children. The amount of EITC benefit depends on a recipient's income and number of children. For a person or couple to claim one or more persons as their qualifying child, requirements such as relationship, age, and shared residency must be met. In the 2013 tax year, working families, if they have children, with annual incomes below $37,870 to $51,567 (depending on the number of dependent children) may be eligible for the federal EITC. Childless workers that have incomes below about $14,340 ($19,680 for a married couple) can receive a very small EITC benefit. U.S. tax forms 1040EZ, 1040A, or 1040 can be used to claim EITC without qualifying children. To claim the credit with qualifying children, forms 1040A or 1040 must be used along with Schedule EITC attached. EIC phases in slowly, has a medium-length plateau, and then phases out more slowly than it was phased in. Since the credit phases out at 21% (more than one qualifying child) or 16% (one qualifying child), it is always preferable to have one more dollar of actual salary or wages (although technically, since the EIC table moves by fifty-dollar increments, it is always preferable to have an extra fifty-dollar increment of salary or wages) considering the EITC alone. (If EITC is combined with multiple other means-tested programs such as Medicaid or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, it is possible that the marginal tax rate approaches or exceeds 100% in rare circumstances depending on the state of residence; conversely, under certain circumstances, net income can rise faster than the increase in wages because the EITC phases in.) For tax year 2013, the maximum EITC benefit for a single person or couple filing without qualifying children is $487. The maximum EITC with one qualifying child is $3,250, with two children, it is $5,372, and with three or more qualifying children, it is $6,044. These amounts are indexed annually for inflation. On December 4, 2014, The Atlantic reported that the EITC will reduce revenue to the federal government by about $70 billion in 2015. The earned income tax credit has been part of political debates in the United States regarding whether raising the minimum wage or increasing EITC is a better idea. In a random survey of 1,000 members of the American Economic Association in 2000, more than three-quarters of economists would generally agree that the Earned Income Tax Credit program should be expanded.

war on poverty

The War on Poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent. The speech led the United States Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty. As a part of the Great Society, Johnson believed in expanding the federal government's roles in education and health care as poverty reduction strategies.[1] These policies can also be seen as a continuation of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, which ran from 1933 to 1935, and the Four Freedoms of 1941. Johnson stated "Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it".[2] The legacy of the War on Poverty policy initiative remains in the continued existence of such federal programs as Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), TRiO, and Job Corps. The popularity of a war on poverty waned after the 1960s.[citation needed] Deregulation, growing criticism of the welfare state, and an ideological shift to reducing federal aid to impoverished people in the 1980s and 1990s culminated in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which President Bill Clinton claimed, "ended welfare as we know it."

works progress administration

The Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest and most ambitious American New Deal agency, employing millions of unemployed people (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads.

culture of poverty

The culture of poverty is a concept in social theory that expands on the idea of a cycle of poverty. It attracted academic and policy attention in the 1970s, survived harsh academic criticism (Goode and Eames, 1996; Bourgois, 2001; Small M.L., Harding D.J., Lamont M., 2010), and made a comeback at the beginning of the 21st century.[1] It offers one way to explain why poverty exists despite anti-poverty programs. Critics of the early culture of poverty arguments insist that explanations of poverty must analyze how structural factors interact with and condition individual characteristics (Goode and Eames, 1996; Bourgois, 2001; Small M.L., Harding D.J., Lamont M., 2010). As put by Small, Harding, and Lamont (2010), "since human action is both constrained and enabled by the meaning people give to their actions, these dynamics should become central to our understanding of the production and reproduction of poverty and social inequality."

informal economy

The informal sector, informal economy, or grey economy is the part of an economy that is neither taxed, nor monitored by any form of government. Unlike the formal economy, activities of the informal economy are not included in the gross national product (GNP) and gross domestic product (GDP) of a country.

federal poverty threshold/federal poverty guidelines

The poverty thresholds are the original version of the federal poverty measure. They are updated each year by the Census Bureau. The thresholds are used mainly for statistical purposes — for instance, preparing estimates of the number of Americans in poverty each year. (In other words, all official poverty population figures are calculated using the poverty thresholds, not the guidelines.) Poverty thresholds since 1973 (and for selected earlier years) and weighted average poverty thresholds since 1959 are available on the Census Bureau's Web site. For an example of how the Census Bureau applies the thresholds to a family's income to determine its poverty status, see "How the Census Bureau Measures Poverty" on the Census Bureau's web site. Following the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Statistical Policy Directive 14, the Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is in poverty. If a family's total income is less than the family's threshold, then that family and every individual in it is considered in poverty. The official poverty thresholds do not vary geographically, but they are updated for inflation using Consumer Price Index (CPI-U). The official poverty definition uses money income before taxes and does not include capital gains or noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps).

code of shady dealings, code of the street

This is because the street culture has evolved what may be called a code of the streets, which amounts to a set of informal rules governing interpersonal public behavior, including violence. The rules prescribe both a proper comportment and a proper way to respond if challenged. They regulate the use of violence and so allow those who are inclined to aggression to precipitate violent encounters in an approved way. The rules have been established and are enforced mainly by the street-oriented, but on the streets the distinction between street and decent is often irrelevant; everybody knows that if the rules are violated, there are penalties. Knowledge of the code is thus largely defensive; it is literally necessary for operating in public. Therefore, even though families with a decency orientation are usually opposed to the values of the code, they often reluctantly encourage their children's familiarity with it to enable them to negotiate the inner-city environment. At the heart of the code is the issue of respect--loosely defined as being treated "right," or granted the deference one deserves. However, in the troublesome public environment of the inner city, as people increasingly feel buffeted by forces beyond their control, what one deserves in the way of respect becomes more and more problematic and uncertain. This in turn further opens the issue of respect to sometimes intense interpersonal negotiation. In the street culture, especially among young people, respect is viewed as almost an external entity that is hard-won but easily lost, and so must constantly be guarded. The rules of the code in fact provide a framework for negotiating respect. The person whose very appearance-- including his clothing, demeanor, and way of moving--deters transgressions feels that he possesses, and may be considered by others to possess, a measure of respect. With the right amount of respect, for instance, he can avoid "being bothered" in public. If he is bothered, not only may he be in physical danger but he has been disgraced or "dissed" (disrespected). Many of the forms that dissing can take might seem petty to middle-class people (maintaining eye contact for too long, for example), but to those invested in the street code, these actions become serious indications of the other person's intentions. Consequently, such people become very sensitive to advances and slights, which could well serve as warnings of imminent physical confrontation. This hard reality can be traced to the profound sense of alienation from mainstream society and its institutions felt by many poor inner-city black people, particularly the young. The code of the streets is actually a cultural adaptation to a profound lack of faith in the police and the judicial system. The police are most often seen as representing the dominant white society and not caring to protect inner-city residents. When called, they may not respond, which is one reason many residents feel they must be prepared to take extraordinary measures to defend themselves and their loved ones against those who are inclined to aggression. Lack of police accountability has in fact been incorporated into the status system: the person who is believed capable of "taking care of himself" is accorded a certain deference, which translates into a sense of physical and psychological control. Thus the street code emerges where the influence of the police ends and personal responsibility for one's safety is felt to begin. Exacerbated by the proliferation of drugs and easy access to guns, this volatile situation results in the ability of the street oriented minority (or those who effectively "go for bad") to dominate the public spaces.

toxic stress

Toxic stress response can occur when a child experiences strong, frequent, and/or prolonged adversity—such as physical or emotional abuse, chronic neglect, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, exposure to violence, and/or the accumulated burdens of family economic hardship—without adequate adult support. This kind of prolonged activation of the stress response systems can disrupt the development of brain architecture and other organ systems, and increase the risk for stress-related disease and cognitive impairment, well into the adult years.

work loading

Workload is the amount of work an individual has to do. There is a distinction between the actual amount of work and the individual's perception of the workload. Workload can also be classified as quantitative (the amount of work to be done) or qualitative (the difficulty of the work).

shadow economy

the part of an economy involving goods and services which are paid for in cash, and therefore not declared for tax. The fact that the shadow economy, or the black market or underground economy, is on the rise in the middle of a global financial crisis should be no surprise to economists. A recent post on Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's Freakonomics blog discussed the growth of the shadow economy across the world. The post claims that the shadow economy is the second largest in the world. Freakonomics: "In 2009, the OECD concluded that half the world's workers (almost 1.8 billion people) were employed in the shadow economy. By 2020, the OECD predicts the shadow economy will employ two-thirds of the world's workers. This new economy even has a name: 'System D'." In a recent article for Foreign Policy magazine, Robert Neuwirth argues that "the $10 trillion global black market is the world's fastest growing economy -- and its future". Neuwirth discusses that the phrase "System D" comes from a slang phrase used in French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean. The "D" stands for the French word "debrouillard". Neuwirth: "To say a man is a debrouillard is to tell people how resourceful and ingenious he is." Thus, self-starting entrepreneurs who go out on their own for business purposes without being regulated by bureaucracy and/or without paying taxes are part of "l'economie de la debrouillardise", or "Systeme D" on the street. According to Neuwirth, System D was once small with simple street merchants. In time, trade within System D has globalized and expanded. Neuwirth claims that System D is now where the jobs are. Though being the black market, System D is not limited to the likes of Tony Soprano, Michael Corleone, and Rico Bandello. In comparing System D to the US market, Neuwirth claims that "kids selling lemonade from the sidewalk in front of their houses are part of System D". As are vendors at flea markets, roadside farm stands, and swap meets. Neuwirth writes that System D is a global phenomenon, transporting products across the planet ranging from machinery to computers to mobile phones.

soft evictions

Manifest Destiny functions differently today. Instead of taking land from indigenous peoples by armed force, today national governments, hand-in-glove with select environmental conservationists, take indigenous peoples from their lands (which are re-christened "protected areas") in procedures collectively known as "soft eviction." The so-called higher good here is to conserve the environment.

underground economy

the part of a country's economic activity that is unrecorded and untaxed by its government.

non-standard work schedule

"...nonstandard is often defined as either part-time work, temporary and on-call work, contract work, and self-employment (e.g. Kalleberg, et al., 1997), ignoring shift work entirely...I define persons as working nonstandard hours when they work other than fixed-day schedules in the previous week" (Presser, 2003, p. 414, ...

covenant

agree, especially by lease, deed, or other legal contract.

daniel patrick moynihan

Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan (March 16, 1927 - March 26, 2003) was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times (in 1982, 1988, and 1994). He declined to run for re-election in 2000. Prior to his years in the Senate, Moynihan was the United States' Ambassador to the United Nations and to India, and was a member of four successive presidential administrations, beginning with the administration of John F. Kennedy, and continuing through that of Gerald Ford. He is currently the longest serving Senator from the State of New York; if Chuck Schumer completes his current term, he will tie Moynihan for the record. Kennedy and Johnson Administrations; controversy over the War on Poverty[edit] Moynihan was special (1961-1962) and executive (1962-1963) assistant to Labor Secretaries Arthur J. Goldberg and W. Willard Wirtz before serving as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy, Planning and Research from 1963 to 1965 under Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In this capacity, he did not have operational responsibilities, allowing him to devote all of his time to trying to formulate national policy for what would become the War on Poverty. He had a small staff including Paul Barton, Ellen Broderick, and Ralph Nader. They took inspiration from the book Slavery written by Stanley Elkins. Elkins essentially contended that slavery had made black Americans dependent on the dominant society, and that that dependence still existed a century later. This supported the concept that government must go beyond simply ensuring that members of minority groups have the same rights as the majority but must also "act affirmatively" in order to counter the problem. Moynihan's research of Labor Department data demonstrated that even as fewer people were unemployed, more people were joining the welfare rolls. These recipients were families with children but only one parent (almost invariably the mother). The laws at that time permitted such families to receive welfare payments in certain parts of the United States. Moynihan issued his research under the title The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, now commonly known as The Moynihan Report. Moynihan's report[8] fueled a debate over the proper course for government to take with regard to the economic underclass, especially blacks. Critics on the left attacked it as "blaming the victim",[9] a slogan coined by psychologist William Ryan.[10] Some suggested that Moynihan was propagating the views of racists[11] because much of the press coverage of the report focused on the discussion of children being born out of wedlock. Despite Moynihan's warnings, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program included rules for payments only if no "Man [was] in the house."[12] Critics said that the nation was paying poor women to throw their husbands out of the house. Moynihan went on to formulate Richard Nixon's idea of a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) and conducted significant discussions concerning a Basic Income Guarantee with Russell B. Long and Louis O. Kelso. After the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress, Moynihan agreed that correction was needed for a welfare system that possibly encouraged women to raise their children without fathers: "The Republicans are saying we have a helluva problem, and we do."[13] Local New York City politics and ongoing academic career[edit] By the 1964 presidential election, Moynihan was recognized as a political ally of Robert F. Kennedy. For this reason he was not favored by then-President Johnson, and he left the Johnson Administration in 1965. He ran for office in the Democratic Party primary for the presidency of the New York City Council, a position now known as the New York City Public Advocate. However, he was defeated by Queens District Attorney Frank D. O'Connor. During this transitional period, Moynihan maintained an academic affiliation as a fellow at Wesleyan University's Center for Advanced Studies from 1964 to 1967. In 1966, he was appointed to the faculties of Harvard University's Graduate School of Education and Graduate School of Public Administration as a full professor of education and urban politics. After commencing a second extended leave because of his public service in 1973, his line was transferred to the University's Department of Government, where he remained until 1977. From 1966 to 1969, he also held a secondary administrative appointment as director of the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies.[7] With turmoil and riots in the United States, Moynihan, "a national board member of ADA incensed at the radicalism of the current anti-war and Black Power movements", decided to "call for a formal alliance between liberals and conservatives,"[14] and wrote that the next administration would have to be able to unite the nation again. Nixon Administration[edit] Connecting with President-elect Richard Nixon in 1968, Moynihan joined the Executive Office of the President in January 1969 as Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and executive secretary of the Council of Urban Affairs (later the Urban Affairs Council), a forerunner of the Domestic Policy Council intended to be a domestic analog to the United States National Security Council. As one of the few people in Nixon's inner circle who had done academic research related to social policies, he was very influential in the early months of the administration. However, his disdain for "traditional budget-conscious positions" (including his proposed Family Assistance Plan, a "negative income tax or guaranteed minimum income" for families that met work requirements or demonstrated that they were seeking work which ultimately stalled in the Senate despite prefiguring the later Supplemental Security Income program) led to frequent clashes (however rooted in an unwavering mutual respect) with Nixon's principal domestic policy advisor, conservative economist and Cabinet-rank Counselor to the President Arthur F. Burns.[15] Although Moynihan was promoted to Counselor to the President for Urban Affairs with Cabinet rank shortly after Burns was nominated by Nixon to serve as Chair of the Federal Reserve in October 1969, it was concurrently announced that Moynihan would be returning to Harvard (a stipulation of his leave from the University) at the end of 1970. Accordingly, operational oversight of the Urban Affairs Council was given to Moynihan's nominal successor as Domestic Policy Assistant, former White House Counsel John Ehrlichman, a decision instigated by White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman[16] (a close friend of Ehrlichman since college and his patron in the administration) that ultimately repositioned Moynihan in a more peripheral context as the administration's "resident thinker" on domestic affairs for the duration of his service.[17] In 1969, on Nixon's initiative, NATO tried to establish a third civil column, establishing a hub of research and initiatives in the civil area, dealing as well with environmental topics.[18] Moynihan[18] named acid rain and the Greenhouse effect as suitable international challenges to be dealt by NATO. NATO was chosen, since the organization had suitable expertise in the field, as well as experience with international research coordination. The German government was skeptical and saw the initiative as an attempt by the US to regain international terrain after the lost Vietnam War. The topics gained momentum in civil conferences and institutions.[18] In 1970, Moynihan wrote a memo to President Nixon saying, "The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of 'benign neglect'. The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over to hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades."[19] Moynihan regretted that critics misinterpreted his memo as advocating that the government should neglect minorities.[20] US Ambassador[edit] Following the reorganization of the White House domestic staff, Moynihan was offered the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations (then held by career diplomat Charles Woodruff Yost) on November 17, 1969; after initially accepting, he decided to remain in Washington when the Family Assistance Plan stalled in the Senate Finance Committee.[21] On November 24, 1970, he refused a second offer from Nixon due to potential familial strain and ongoing financial problems; depression stemming from the repudiation of the Family Assistance Plan by liberal Democrats; and the inability to effect change due to static policy directives in a tertiary role behind Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Henry Kissinger and United States Secretary of State William P. Rogers.[21] Instead, he commuted from Harvard as a part-time member of the United States delegation during the ambassadorship of George H.W. Bush.[21] In 1973, Moynihan (who was circumspect toward the administration's "tilt" to Pakistan) accepted Nixon's offer to serve as United States Ambassador to India, where he would remain until 1975. The relationship between the two countries was at a low point following the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Ambassador Moynihan was alarmed that two great democracies were cast as antagonists, and set out to fix things. He proposed that part of the burdensome debt be written off, part used to pay for US embassy expenses in India, and the remaining converted into Indian rupees to fund an Indo-US cultural and educational exchange program that lasted for a quarter century. On February 18, 1974, he presented to the Government of India a check for 16,640,000,000 rupees, then equivalent to $2,046,700,000, which was the greatest amount paid by a single check in the history of banking.[22] The "Rupee Deal" is logged in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's largest check, written by Ambassador Moynihan to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.[23] In June 1975, Moynihan accepted his third offer to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, a position (including a rotation as President of the United Nations Security Council) that he would hold until February 1976. As ambassador under Gerald Ford, Moynihan took a hardline anti-communist stance, in line with the agenda of the White House at the time. He was also a strong supporter of Israel,[24] condemning UN Resolution 3379, which declared Zionism to be a form of racism.[25] In response, Permanent PLO Observer to the UN Zehdi Terzi threatened his life.[26] But the American public responded enthusiastically to his moral outrage over the resolution; his condemnation of the "Zionism is Racism" resolution brought him celebrity status and helped him win a US Senate seat a year later.[27] In his book, Moynihan's Moment, Gil Troy posits that Moynihan's 1975 UN speech opposing the resolution was the key moment of his political career.[28] Perhaps the most controversial action of Moynihan's career was his response, as Ambassador to the UN, to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. Gerald Ford considered Indonesia, then under a military dictatorship, a key ally against Communism, which was influential in East Timor. Moynihan ensured that the UN Security Council took no action against the larger nation's annexation of a small country. The Indonesian invasion caused the deaths of 100,000-200,000 Timorese through violence, illness, and hunger.[29][30] In his memoir, Moynihan wrote: The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.[31] Later, he said he had defended a "shameless" Cold War policy toward East Timor.[32] Moynihan's thinking began to change during his tenure at the UN. In his 1993 book on nationalism, Pandaemonium, he wrote that as time progressed, he began to view the Soviet Union in less ideological terms. He regarded it less as an expansionist, imperialist Marxist state, and more as a weak realist state in decline. He believed it was most motivated by self-preservation. This view would influence his thinking in subsequent years, when he became an outspoken proponent of the then-unpopular view that the Soviet Union was a failed state headed for implosion. Nevertheless, Moynihan's tenure at the UN marked the beginnings of a more bellicose, neoconservative American foreign policy that turned away from Kissinger's unabashedly covert, détente-driven realpolitik.[33] In particular, the condemnation strained his relationship with Kissinger (by now Secretary of State), who furtively accused him of conflating "foreign policy" with a "synagogue." Although it was never substantiated, Moynihan initially believed that Kissinger directed Ivor Richard, Baron Richard (then British Ambassador to the United Nations) to publicly denounce his actions as "Wyatt Earp" diplomacy. Demoralized, Moynihan resigned from what he would subsequently characterize as an "abbreviated posting" in February 1976. In Pandaemonium, Moynihan expounded upon this decision, maintaining that he was "something of an embarrassment to my own government, and fairly soon left before I was fired." Career in the Senate[edit] In 1976, Moynihan was elected to the U.S. Senate from the State of New York, defeating U.S. Representative Bella Abzug, Ramsey Clark, Paul O'Dwyer and Abraham Hirschfeld in the Democratic primary, and Conservative Party incumbent James L. Buckley in the general election. Shortly after election, Moynihan analyzed the State of New York's budget to determine whether it was paying out more in federal taxes than it received in spending. Finding that it was, he produced a yearly report known as the Fisc (from the French[34]). Moynihan's strong support for Israel while UN Ambassador inspired support for him among the state's large Jewish population.[35] Moynihan's strong advocacy for New York's interests in the Senate, buttressed by the Fisc reports and recalling his strong advocacy for US positions in the UN, did at least on one occasion allow his advocacy to escalate into a physical attack. Senator Kit Bond, nearing retirement in 2010, recalled with some embarrassment in a conversation on civility in political discourse that Moynihan had once "slugged [Bond] on the Senate floor after Bond denounced an earmark Moynihan had slipped into a highway appropriations bill. Some months later Moynihan apologized, and the two occasionally would relax in Moynihan's office after a long day to discuss their shared interest in urban renewal over a glass of port."[36] Moynihan continued to be interested in foreign policy as a Senator, sitting on the Select Committee on Intelligence. His strongly anti-Soviet views became far more moderate, as he emerged as a critic of the Ronald Reagan Administration's hawkish Cold War policies, such as support for the Contras in Nicaragua. Moynihan argued there was no active Soviet-backed conspiracy in Latin America, or anywhere. He suggested the U.S.S.R. was suffering from massive internal problems, such as rising ethnic nationalism and a collapsing economy. In a December 21, 1986, editorial in the New York Times, Moynihan predicted the replacement on the world stage of Communist expansion with ethnic conflicts. He criticized the Reagan Administration's "consuming obsession with the expansion of Communism - which is not in fact going on." In a September 8, 1990, letter to Erwin Griswold, Moynihan wrote: "I have one purpose left in life; or at least in the Senate. It is to try to sort out what would be involved in reconstituting the American government in the aftermath of the cold war. Huge changes took place, some of which we hardly notice."[37] In 1981 he and fellow Irish-American politicians Senator Ted Kennedy and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill co-founded the Friends of Ireland, an bi-partisan organization of Senators and Representatives who opposed the ongoing sectarian violence and aimed to promote peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Moynihan introduced Section 1706 of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which cost certain professionals (like computer programmers, engineers, draftspersons, and designers) who depended on intermediary agencies (consulting firms) a self-employed tax status option, but other professionals (like accountants and lawyers) continued to enjoy Section 530 exemptions from payroll taxes. This change in the tax code was expected to offset the tax revenue losses of other legislation that Moynihan proposed to change the law of foreign taxes of Americans working abroad.[38] Joseph Stack, who flew his airplane into a building housing IRS offices on February 18, 2010, posted a suicide note that, among many factors, mentioned the Section 1706 change to the Internal Revenue Code.[39][40] As a key Environment and Public Works Committee member, Moynihan gave vital support and guidance to William K. Reilly, who served under President George H.W. Bush as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.[41] In the mid-1990s, Moynihan was one of the Democrats to support the ban on the procedure known as partial-birth abortion. He said of the procedure: "I think this is just too close to infanticide. A child has been born and it has exited the uterus. What on Earth is this procedure?" Earlier in his career in the Senate, Moynihan had expressed his annoyance with the adamantly pro-choice interest groups petitioning him and others on the issue. He challenged them saying, "you women are ruining the Democratic Party with your insistence on abortion."[42][43] Moynihan broke with orthodox liberal positions of his party on numerous occasions. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in the 1990s, he strongly opposed President Bill Clinton's proposal to expand health care coverage to all Americans. Seeking to focus the debate over health insurance on the financing of health care, Moynihan garnered controversy by stating that "there is no health care crisis in this country." He voted against the death penalty; the flag desecration amendment;[44] the balanced budget amendment, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act; the Defense of Marriage Act; the Communications Decency Act; and the North American Free Trade Agreement. He was critical of proposals to replace the progressive income tax with a flat tax. Moynihan surprised many in 1991 when he voted against authorization of the Gulf War. Despite his earlier writings on the negative effects of the welfare state, he surprised many people again by voting against welfare reform in 1996. He was sharply critical of the bill and certain Democrats who crossed party lines to support it.

SNAP

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides benefits to low-income individuals and families and provides economic benefits to communities. SNAP is the largest program in the domestic hunger safety net. The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) works with state agencies, nutrition educators, and neighborhood and faith-based organizations to ensure that those eligible for nutrition assistance can make informed decisions about applying for the program and can access benefits.

on-call shifts

On-call scheduling, sometimes referred to as on-call shifts are processes used in business where employee work schedules are intentionally unpredictable. Employees assigned to such shifts must call their employer, typically an hour or two before a scheduled shift, to find out if they will be assigned to work that day.

housing act of 1949

The American Housing Act of 1949 (Title V of P.L. 81-171) was a landmark, sweeping expansion of the federal role in mortgage insurance and issuance and the construction of public housing. It was part of President Harry Truman's program of domestic legislation, the Fair Deal. The main elements of the Act included:[1] providing federal financing for slum clearance programs associated with urban renewal projects in American cities (Title I), increasing authorization for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance (Title II), extending federal money to build more than 800,000 public housing units (Title III) fund research into housing and housing techniques, and permitting the FHA to provide financing for rural homeowners.

moving to opportunity/Gautreaux program

The Gautreaux Project is a US housing-desegregation project initiated by court order. It is notable both for being one of the only social programs based in a randomized experiment, and the only anti-poverty housing program endorsed by the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations. The ACLU-initiated 1966 class action lawsuit Dorothy Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) alleged that the CHA engaged in racial discrimination in public housing policy, as prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The lawsuit alleged that the CHA built public housing solely in areas with high concentrations of poor minorities, in violation of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guidelines and the Civil Rights Act. The goal of the lawsuit was to begin building public housing in predominantly white neighborhoods. HUD entered as a party to the lawsuit, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 as Hills v. Gautreaux (425 U.S. 284). In a consent decree, the court ordered the CHA to provide scattered-site housing for public housing residents currently residing in isolated public housing projects in concentrated areas of poverty. The CHA distributed Section 8 housing vouchers to 7500 African American families on welfare in either suburban or urban locations. The Chicago Housing Authority designated a day on which Section 8 vouchers are distributed to the first several hundred callers. Applicants were screened by two standards--basic apartment maintenance and lack of a serious criminal record--and two-thirds of the applicants were accepted. Successful applicants were offered placement in private market apartment units in either city or suburban locations chosen at random by the CHA, and most accepted the placement. The program was intentionally low-profile: only a few participants are moved into each suburb in order to prevent white flight, and because the residents moved into private units, they had no external markers of being on welfare. The suburban and urban participants started out identical: all were selected from the same pool of callers, and were randomly placed into private apartments in either suburban or urban locations. After several years, the suburban and urban participants had very different outcomes. The urban participants were likely to remain on the welfare rolls, but their suburban counterparts were very likely to find employment and leave welfare. The urban participants' children were likely to drop out of high school, but their suburban counterparts are likely to graduate from high school and even college. The program participants' children were initially below the academic level of their classmates, but because only a few families were moved to each suburbs, the suburban teachers could take time with each new child and tutor each child individually until the children were at the same level as their classmates. The sociologist James Rosenbaum who studied the Gautreaux project testified before the US Congress on the success of the program, and it has become a model for similar programs in 33 metropolitan areas and inspired the national Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program. Some housing departments misinterpreted the results of the Gautreaux project, and used it as justification for emptying and demolishing public housing, as a result of which thousands of public housing residents at a time moved to the same suburbs and overwhelmed the suburbs' resources with urban problems. Gautreaux intentionally moved only a few public housing residents to each suburb.

The great migration

The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million African-Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that occurred between 1910 and 1970. Until 1910, more than 90 percent of the African-American population lived in the American South.[1] In 1900, only one-fifth of African-Americans living in the South were living in urban areas.[2] By the end of the Great Migration, 53 percent of the African-American population remained in the South, while 40 percent lived in the North, and 7 percent in the West,[3] and the African-American population had become highly urbanized. By 1970, more than 80 percent of African-Americans lived in cities,[4] and by 1960, of those African-Americans still living in the South, half now lived in urban areas.[2] In 1991, Nicholas Lemann wrote that the Great Migration: was one of the largest and most rapid mass internal movements in history—perhaps the greatest not caused by the immediate threat of execution or starvation. In sheer numbers it outranks the migration of any other ethnic group—Italians or Irish or Jews or Poles—to [the United States]. For blacks, the migration meant leaving what had always been their economic and social base in America, and finding a new one.[5] Some historians differentiate between a first Great Migration (1916-1930), which saw about 1.6 million people move from mostly rural areas to northern industrial cities, and a Second Great Migration (1940-1970), which began after the Great Depression and brought at least 5 million people—including many townspeople with urban skills—to the north and to California and other western states.[6] Since 1965, a reverse migration has gathered strength. Dubbed the New Great Migration, it has seen many African-Americans move to the South, generally to states and cities where economic opportunities are the best. The reasons include economic difficulties of cities in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, growth of jobs in the "New South" and its lower cost of living, family and kinship ties, and improved racial relations. As early as 1975 to 1980, seven southern states were net African-American migration gainers.[which?] African-American populations have continued to drop throughout much of the Northeast, especially the state of New York[7] and northern New Jersey,[8] as they rise in the South.