Related subject guides
Additional articles and databases
In addition to the resources on this guide's Databases and Indexes page, you might also find these databases to be useful for finding articles and book citations about wealth, poverty, and social class.
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Fed in Print: A Database of Federal Reserve System Economic Research This link opens in a new window
Encyclopedias and other reference resources
In addition to the reference resources listed on this guide's Encyclopedias, etc. page, other reference works and resources are listed below. Neither list is exhaustive; you can find even more reference material using OneSearch.
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The New Faces of American Poverty: A Reference Guide to the Great Recession [2 Volumes]
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The Great Recession (2007 to 2009) brought the United States--routinely touted as the richest country in the world--to historical levels of poverty. Rising unemployment, government budget crises, and the collapse of the housing market had devastating effects on the poor and middle class. This is one of the first books to focus on the impact of the Great Recession on poverty in America, examining governmental and cultural responses to the economic downturn; the demographics of poverty by gender, age, occupation, education, geographical area, and ethnic identity; and federal and state efforts toward reform and relief. Essays from more than 20 contributing writers explore the history of poverty in America and provide a vision of what lies ahead for the American economy.
Call Number: ONLINEPublication Date: 2014 -
Encyclopedia of World Poverty
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SAGE Reference is proud to announce the Encyclopedia of World Poverty. This encyclopedia is a collection of 750 articles in three volumes exploring the causes, history, and enduring effects of poverty. The scope of this encyclopedia encompasses the relative individual and societal aspects of poverty, from living on GBP486 a year in Nigeria to poverty-relief efforts in Appalacia. Additionally, the Encyclopedia examines the insitituions that focus on the alleviation of poverty, including religious charities and the global organizations such as the United Nations. This Three-Volume Set contains approximately 150 biographies; 200 profiles of nations and their respective poverty levels and social porgrams; 200 story, event or historical period descriptions; and 200 thematic essays. The Encyclopedia of World Poverty is an outstanding reference for academic and public libraries and is a welcome addition to any NGOs and charities resource centre.
Call Number: General Collection HV12 .E54 2006Publication Date: 2006 -
Reference Shelf: Food Insecurity and Hunger in the United States
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This volume of The Reference Shelf looks at America's food economy and food inequality. Though America is the world's wealthiest nation and has some of the most productive agricultural land in the world, it still has a serious problem with food availability and hunger.
Call Number: General Collection AC5 .R4 v. 93 no. 2Publication Date: 2021 -
Encyclopedia of Homelessness
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Homelessness is one of the major social problems and personal and family tragedies of the contemporary world. No community, city, or nation is immune and the lack of affordable housing and a decline in secure, well-paying jobs means that the problem will only get worse. The Encyclopedia of Homelessness is the first systematic effort to organize and summarize what we know about thus complex topic which impacts not only the homeless but all of society. The Encyclopedia whilst focussing on the current situation in the United States, ensures an international perspective by including a comparative sampling of homelessness from around the world. Articles cover: · Causes · Lifestyle Issues · Health Issues and Services · History · Legal Issues and Advocacy · Government Policies and Programs · Organizations · Research Approaches · Service Systems and Settings · Size and Characteristics of the Homeless Population · Public Perceptions of Homelessness · World Issues and Perspectives Additional descriptive articles cover homelessness today in a sample of American cities and a sample of cities and nations of the world, allowing for quick and easy comparisons. The Encyclopedia contains entries on Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, France, Guatemala, Japan, Nigeria, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe, Tokyo, Calcutta, London and others from around the world. The Encyclopedia of Homelessness meets the needs of a broad audience, offering a rich history and the data, views, and perspectives of experts from different disciplines and perspectives, including: · Sociologists; · Anthropologists; · Economists; · Historians; · Social Policy Analysts and Planners; · Program Administrators; · Physicians; · Social Workers; · Lawyers who provide advocacy and services; · Journalists; · Students of history, social studies, and the social sciences in high school through graduate school.
Call Number: General Collection HV4493 .E53 2004Publication Date: 2004
Books
Below are some recent books about wealth, poverty, social class, and related subjects. More can be found through OneSearch; see this guide's Books tab for tips on finding books.
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Capital in the Twenty-First Century
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What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again. A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.
Call Number: General Collection HB501 .P43613 2014Publication Date: 2014 -
A Century of Wealth in America
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Understanding wealth--who has it, how they acquired it, how they preserve it--is crucial to addressing challenges facing the United States. Edward Wolff's account of patterns in the accumulation and distribution of U.S. wealth since 1900 provides a sober bedrock of facts and analysis. It will become an indispensable resource for future public debate.
Call Number: ONLINEPublication Date: 2017 -
Poverty and Welfare in America: Examining the Facts
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Poverty and Welfare in America: Examining the Facts, like every book in the Contemporary Debates series, is intended to puncture rather than perpetuate myths that diminish our understanding of important policies and positions; to provide needed context for misleading statements and claims; and to confirm the factual accuracy of other assertions. This book clarifies some of the most contentious and misunderstood aspects of American poverty and the social welfare programs that have been crafted to combat it over the years. In addition to providing up-to-date data about the extent of American poverty among various demographic groups in the United States, it examines the chief causes of poverty in the 21st century, including divorce, disability, and educational shortfalls. Moreover, the book provides an evenhanded examination of the nation's social welfare agencies and the effectiveness of various social service programs managed by those agencies in addressing and reducing poverty.
Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 9781440856457Publication Date: 2019 -
Social Poverty: Low-Income Parents and the Struggle for Family and Community Ties
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How low-income people cope with the emotional dimensions of poverty Could a lack of close, meaningful social ties be a public--rather than just a private--problem? In Social Poverty, Sarah Halpern-Meekin provides a much-needed window into the nature of social ties among low-income, unmarried parents, highlighting their often-ignored forms of hardship. Drawing on in-depth interviews with thirty-one couples, collected during their participation in a government-sponsored relationship education program called Family Expectations, she brings unprecedented attention to the relational and emotional dimensions of socioeconomic disadvantage. Poverty scholars typically focus on the economic use value of social ties--for example, how relationships enable access to job leads, informal loans, or a spare bedroom.However, Halpern-Meekin introduces the important new concept of "social poverty," identifying it not just as a derivative of economic poverty, but as its own condition, which also perpetuates poverty. Through a careful and nuanced analysis of the strengths and limitations of relationship classes, she shines a light on the fundamental place of core socioemotional needs in our lives. Engaging and compassionate, Social Poverty highlights a new direction for policy and poverty research that can enrich our understanding of disadvantaged families around the country.
Call Number: General Collection HC110.P6 H34 2019Publication Date: 2019 -
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
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"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power--which groups have it and which do not." In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
Call Number: General Collection HT725.U6 W55 2020Publication Date: 2020 -
Wealth, Virtue, and Moral Luck: Christian Ethics in an Age of Inequity
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In a deeply unequal world, our economic status shapes our pursuit of virtue whether we have enough resources to live comfortably or struggle to survive Our understanding of inequality as a moral problem is incomplete. It is not enough to say that inequality is caused by moral failing. We must also see that influence runs in both directions. Inequality harms people's moral development. In Wealth, Virtue, and Moral Luck, Kate Ward addresses the issue of inequality from the perspective of Christian virtue ethics, arguing that moral luck ? our individual life circumstances ? affects our ability to pursue virtue. Economic status functions as moral luck and impedes the ability of both the wealthy and the poor to pursue virtues such as prudence, justice, and temperance, and extreme inequality exacerbates the impact of wealth and poverty on virtue. With these realities in mind, Ward shows how Christians and Christian communities should respond to the challenges inequality poses to virtue. Through working to change the structures that perpetuate extreme inequality ? and through spiritual practices, including contentment, conversion, encountering others, and reminding ourselves of our ultimate dependence on God ? Ward believes that we can create a world where all people can pursue and achieve virtue.
Call Number: General Collection BJ1275 .W36 2021Publication Date: 2021 -
The Moral Power of Money: Morality and Economy in the Life of Urban Poor
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Looking beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary social interactions, The Moral Power of Money investigates the forces of power and morality at play, particularly among the poor. Drawing on fieldwork in a slum of Buenos Aires, Ariel Wilkis argues that money is a critical symbol used to negotiate not only material possessions, but also the political, economic, class, gender, and generational bonds between people. Through vivid accounts of the stark realities of life in Villa Olimpia, Wilkis highlights the interplay of money, morality, and power. Drawing out the theoretical implications of these stories, he proposes a new concept of moral capital based on different kinds, or "pieces," of money. Each chapter covers a different "piece"--money earned from the informal and illegal economies, money lent through family and market relations, money donated with conditional cash transfers, political money that binds politicians and their supporters, sacrificed money offered to the church, and safeguarded money used to support people facing hardships. This book builds an original theory of the moral sociology of money, providing the tools for understanding the role money plays in social life today.
Call Number: General Collection HV4070.B84 W5513 2018Publication Date: 2018 -
Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor
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The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years--because a new computer system interprets any mistake as "failure to cooperate." In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect. Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems--rather than humans--control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lays dying to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile. The U.S. has always used its most cutting-edge science and technology to contain, investigate, discipline and punish the destitute. Like the county poorhouse and scientific charity before them, digital tracking and automated decision-making hide poverty from the middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhumane choices: which families get food and which starve, who has housing and who remains homeless, and which families are broken up by the state. In the process, they weaken democracy and betray our most cherished national values. This deeply researched and passionate book could not be more timely.
Call Number: General Collection HC79.P6 E89 2018Publication Date: 2018 -
Tracing the Consequences of Child Poverty: Evidence from the Young Lives Study of Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam
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Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. What matters most in how poverty shapes children's wellbeing and development? How can data inform social policy and practice approaches to improving the outcomes for poorer children? Using life course analysis from the Young Lives study of 12,000 children growing up in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam over the past 15 years, this book draws on evidence on two cohorts of children, from 1 to 15 and from 8 to 22. It examines how poverty affects children's development in low and middle income countries, and how policy has been used to improve their lives, then goes on to show when key developmental differences occur. It uses new evidence to develop a framework of what matters most and when and outlines effective policy approaches to inform the no-one left behind Sustainable Development Goal agenda.
Call Number: ONLINEPublication Date: 2019 -
Feeding the Other
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How food pantries stigmatize their clients through a discourse that emphasizes hard work, self help, and economic productivity rather than food justice and equity. The United States has one of the highest rates of hunger and food insecurity in the industrialized world, with poor households, single parents, and communities of color disproportionately affected. Food pantries--run by charitable and faith-based organizations--rather than legal entitlements have become a cornerstone of the government's efforts to end hunger. In Feeding the Other, Rebecca de Souza argues that food pantries stigmatize their clients through a discourse that emphasizes hard work, self help, and economic productivity rather than food justice and equity. De Souza describes this "framing, blaming, and shaming" as "neoliberal stigma" that recasts the structural issue of hunger as a problem for the individual hungry person. De Souza shows how neoliberal stigma plays out in practice through a comparative case analysis of two food pantries in Duluth, Minnesota. Doing so, she documents the seldom-acknowledged voices, experiences, and realities of people living with hunger. She describes the failure of public institutions to protect citizens from poverty and hunger; the white privilege of pantry volunteers caught between neoliberal narratives and social justice concerns; the evangelical conviction that food assistance should be "a hand up, not a handout"; the culture of suspicion in food pantry spaces; and the constraints on food choice. It is only by rejecting the neoliberal narrative and giving voice to the hungry rather than the privileged, de Souza argues, that food pantries can become agents of food justice.
Call Number: General Collection HV696.F6 D399 2019Publication Date: 2019 -
Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain
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We all define ourselves by our profession. But what if our job was demeaning, poorly paid, and tedious? Cracking open the gig economy, journalist James Bloodworth spends six months undercover working the most grueling low-wage jobs. He lives on the meagre proceeds and discovers the anxieties and hopes of those he encounters, including working-class men and women, young students striving to make ends meet, and Eastern European immigrants. From a harrowing Amazon warehouse to Uber taxi-cabs, Bloodworth uncovers horrifying employment practices and shows how traditional working-class communities have been decimated by the move to soulless service jobs with no security, advancement or satisfaction. But this is more than an exposé of unscrupulous employers; this is a gripping examination of a divided society which needs to understand the true reality of how other people live and work, before it can heal.
Call Number: ONLINEPublication Date: 2018
