This book presents an in-depth, systematic investigation of the reporting of poverty in Wales, discussing findings from a two-year research project funded by the ‘Exploring the Narrative Coalition’ (a group of 10 Wales-based third sector organisations), the ESRC, and Cardiff University. Examining how poverty news is covered in the English and Welsh languages across broadcast, print and online news, it provides a detailed insight into current journalistic and communications practices on a crucial issue facing Wales. In the wake of a decade of austerity policies, with official measures confirming experiences of poverty and destitution are increasing, the book offers a timely intervention, critically investigating mainstream media narratives on poverty and how these are shaped. The book is based on original research conducted in 2016-7, in a highly eventful period that included the Tata Steel crisis in Port Talbot, South Wales, the Welsh Government elections and the referendum campaign on the UK’s membership of the European Union. It addresses how poverty was framed in such nationally significant news about politics, business and economics, as well as more local, personal or community-focused stories about livelihoods and social issues. A quantitative analysis of the key characteristics of coverage across different media types provides a detailed evidence base for understanding how poverty news was represented. This includes examining the major contextualizing themes, social groups and geographical locations most frequently covered, the causes and consequences of poverty, and sourcing. It demonstrates how Wales-based media coverage differs from more negative reporting typical of some sections of the UK national press, especially in terms of stigmatizing discourses surrounding unemployment and welfare. However, important questions are identified about how news narratives convey meaning and, especially, disconnections between the coverage of macro-economic trends or events and their consequences in the lives of ordinary people. Additionally, the book explores why poverty news coverage is constructed in the way that it is, using findings from detailed interviews with journalists and editors about their practice. Through the lens of professional values and experiences, the book examines the challenges thought to affect poverty reporting. Key issues include the contraction of resources and specialist expertise allocated to social affairs journalism, the difficulties of identifying and reaching potentially vulnerable groups across Wales and representing case studies fairly and ethically. A parallel set of interviews conducted with third sector professionals about their engagement with news media and communications practices provides a further insight into the production of poverty news. Here, the pressures in reporting poverty are seen from a different perspective, where seeking to influence the coverage of poverty and respond to news demands can elicit professional tensions between journalists and the third sector and/or productive cooperative relationships positively impacting news narratives. In providing a detailed picture of how and why poverty news narratives are shaped as they are, the book aims to provide an evidence base informing more meaningful, representative and accurate poverty reporting in Wales.

The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.

The Mediation of Poverty: The News, New Media and Politics discusses the influence of the increasing use of digital technologies on media and political responses to poverty in the United Kingdom and Canada. Poverty politics are considered at symbolic and structural levels. Through a frame analysis of mainstream and alternative news content, the book identifies which narratives dominate poverty coverage, what is missing from mainstream news coverage, and what can be learned by looking at alternative sources of news and information. The Mediation of Poverty argues that news coverage privileges and embeds neoliberal approaches to the issue of poverty in Canada and the United Kingdom. Interviews with journalists, politicians, researchers, and activists enable discussion, on a micro level, of the changing nature of news, politics, and activism, and how these changes are influencing poverty politics. The book raises concerns about how the speed of digitally-mediated working environments is reshaping—even foreclosing—opportunities for communication, reflection, and contestation in a way that reinforces the dominance of market-based thinking, and limits political responses to poverty.

What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms—not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological—that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps—gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures—chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.

Poor News examines the way discourses of poverty are articulated in the news media by incorporating specific narratives and definers that bring about certain ideological worldviews. This happens, the authors claim, because journalists and news editors make use of a set of information strategies while accessing certain sources within specific social and political dynamics. The book looks at the case of the news media in Britain since the industrial revolution and produces a historical account of how these media discourses came into play. The main thesis is that there have been different historical cycles that reflect particular hegemonic ideas of each period. Consequently, the role of mainstream journalism has been a subservient one for existing elites when it comes to the propagation of dominant ideas.

More than 1.5 million North Carolinians today live in poverty. More than one in five are children. Behind these sobering statistics are the faces of our fellow citizens. This book tells their stories. Since 2012, Gene R. Nichol has traveled the length of North Carolina, conducting hundreds of interviews with poor people and those working to alleviate the worst of their circumstances. In an afterword to this new edition, Nichol draws on fresh data and interviews with those whose voices challenge all of us to see what is too often invisible, to look past partisan divides and preconceived notions, and to seek change. Only with a full commitment as a society, Nichol argues, will we succeed in truly ending poverty, which he calls our greatest challenge.

This edition of the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity report brings sobering news. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and its associated economic crisis, compounded by the effects of armed conflict and climate change, are reversing hard-won gains in poverty reduction and shared prosperity. The fight to end poverty has suffered its worst setback in decades after more than 20 years of progress. The goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, already at risk before the pandemic, is now beyond reach in the absence of swift, significant, and sustained action, and the objective of advancing shared prosperity—raising the incomes of the poorest 40 percent in each country—will be much more difficult. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune presents new estimates of COVID-19's impacts on global poverty and shared prosperity. Harnessing fresh data from frontline surveys and economic simulations, it shows that pandemic-related job losses and deprivation worldwide are hitting already poor and vulnerable people hard, while also shifting the profile of global poverty to include millions of 'new poor.' Original analysis included in the report shows that the new poor are more urban, better educated, and less likely to work in agriculture than those living in extreme poverty before COVID-19. It also gives new estimates of the impact of conflict and climate change, and how they overlap. These results are important for targeting policies to safeguard lives and livelihoods. It shows how some countries are acting to reverse the crisis, protect those most vulnerable, and promote a resilient recovery. These findings call for urgent action. If the global response fails the world's poorest and most vulnerable people now, the losses they have experienced to date will be minimal compared with what lies ahead. Success over the long term will require much more than stopping COVID-19. As efforts to curb the disease and its economic fallout intensify, the interrupted development agenda in low- and middle-income countries must be put back on track. Recovering from today's reversals of fortune requires tackling the economic crisis unleashed by COVID-19 with a commitment proportional to the crisis itself. In doing so, countries can also plant the seeds for dealing with the long-term development challenges of promoting inclusive growth, capital accumulation, and risk prevention—particularly the risks of conflict and climate change.