Poverty and Progress

Poverty and Progress PDF Author: Stephan THERNSTROM
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674044312
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Embedded in the consciousness of Americans throughout much of the country's history has been the American Dream: that every citizen, no matter how humble his beginnings, is free to climb to the top of the social and economic ladder. Poverty and Progress assesses the claims of the American Dream against the actual structure of economic and social opportunities in a typical nineteenth century industrial community--Newburyport, Massachusetts. Here is local history. With the aid of newspapers, census reports, and local tax, school, and savings bank records Stephan Thernstrom constructs a detailed and vivid portrait of working class life in Newburyport from 1850 to 1880, the critical years in which this old New England town was transformed into a booming industrial city. To determine how many self-made men there really were in the community, he traces the career patterns of hundreds of obscure laborers and their sons over this thirty year period, exploring in depth the differing mobility patterns of native-born and Irish immigrant workmen. Out of this analysis emerges the conclusion that opportunities for occupational mobility were distinctly limited. Common laborers and their sons were rarely able to attain middle class status, although many rose from unskilled to semiskilled or skilled occupations. But another kind of mobility was widespread. Men who remained in lowly laboring jobs were often strikingly successful in accumulating savings and purchasing homes and a plot of land. As a result, the working class was more easily integrated into the community; a new basis for social stability was produced which offset the disruptive influences that accompanied the first shock of urbanization and industrialization. Since Newburyport underwent changes common to other American cities, Thernstrom argues, his findings help to illuminate the social history of nineteenth century America and provide a new point of departure for gauging mobility trends in our society today. Correlating the Newburyport evidence with comparable studies of twentieth century cities, he refutes the popular belief that it is now more difficult to rise from the bottom of the social ladder than it was in the idyllic past. The "blocked mobility" theory was proposed by Lloyd Warner in his famous "Yankee City" studies of Newburyport; Thernstrom provides a thorough critique of the "Yankee City" volumes and of the ahistorical style of social research which they embody.

Poverty and Progress

Poverty and Progress PDF Author: Stephan THERNSTROM
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674044312
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
Embedded in the consciousness of Americans throughout much of the country's history has been the American Dream: that every citizen, no matter how humble his beginnings, is free to climb to the top of the social and economic ladder. Poverty and Progress assesses the claims of the American Dream against the actual structure of economic and social opportunities in a typical nineteenth century industrial community--Newburyport, Massachusetts. Here is local history. With the aid of newspapers, census reports, and local tax, school, and savings bank records Stephan Thernstrom constructs a detailed and vivid portrait of working class life in Newburyport from 1850 to 1880, the critical years in which this old New England town was transformed into a booming industrial city. To determine how many self-made men there really were in the community, he traces the career patterns of hundreds of obscure laborers and their sons over this thirty year period, exploring in depth the differing mobility patterns of native-born and Irish immigrant workmen. Out of this analysis emerges the conclusion that opportunities for occupational mobility were distinctly limited. Common laborers and their sons were rarely able to attain middle class status, although many rose from unskilled to semiskilled or skilled occupations. But another kind of mobility was widespread. Men who remained in lowly laboring jobs were often strikingly successful in accumulating savings and purchasing homes and a plot of land. As a result, the working class was more easily integrated into the community; a new basis for social stability was produced which offset the disruptive influences that accompanied the first shock of urbanization and industrialization. Since Newburyport underwent changes common to other American cities, Thernstrom argues, his findings help to illuminate the social history of nineteenth century America and provide a new point of departure for gauging mobility trends in our society today. Correlating the Newburyport evidence with comparable studies of twentieth century cities, he refutes the popular belief that it is now more difficult to rise from the bottom of the social ladder than it was in the idyllic past. The "blocked mobility" theory was proposed by Lloyd Warner in his famous "Yankee City" studies of Newburyport; Thernstrom provides a thorough critique of the "Yankee City" volumes and of the ahistorical style of social research which they embody.

Progress and poverty

Progress and poverty PDF Author: Henry George
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description


Poverty and Progress

Poverty and Progress PDF Author: Deepak Lal
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1938048857
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
In his new book, Poverty and Progress: Realities and Myths about Global Poverty, renowned development economist Deepak Lal draws on 50 years of experience around the globe to describe developing-country realities and rectify misguided notions about economic progress. Unique among books that have emerged in recent years on world poverty, Poverty and Progress directly confronts intellectual fads of the West and dismantles a wide range of myths that have obscured an astounding achievement: the unprecedented spread of economic progress around the world that is eliminating the scourge of mass poverty.

The Essence of Progress and Poverty

The Essence of Progress and Poverty PDF Author: Henry George
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 048684207X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 83

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Book Description
In this concise text, the distinguished American philosopher John Dewey compiled excerpts from the massive Progress and Poverty to provide those unfamiliar with Henry George's work with the essence of the author's thinking on economics. In his Foreword, Dewey noted, "It would require less than the fingers of the two hands to enumerate those who from Plato down rank with [George]. No man, no graduate of a higher educational institution, has a right to regard himself as an educated man in social thought unless he has some first-hand acquaintance with the theoretical contribution of this great American thinker." Fifteen brief chapters feature passages from George's highly influential book and examine why poverty persists throughout periods of economic and technological progress as well as the basis for economic cycles of boom and bust.

Progress Against Poverty

Progress Against Poverty PDF Author: Santiago Levy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0815752229
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
In 1997, Mexico launched a new incentive-based poverty reduction program to enhance the human capital of those living in extreme poverty. This book presents a case study of Progresa-Oportunidades, focusing on the main factors that have contributed to the program's sustainability, policies that have allowed it to operate at the national level, and future challenges.

Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality

Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality PDF Author: Edward O'Donnell
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231539266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
America's remarkable explosion of industrial output and national wealth at the end of the nineteenth century was matched by a troubling rise in poverty and worker unrest. As politicians and intellectuals fought over the causes of this crisis, Henry George (1839–1897) published a radical critique of laissez-faire capitalism and its threat to the nation's republican traditions. Progress and Poverty (1879), which became a surprise best-seller, offered a provocative solution for preserving these traditions while preventing the amassing of wealth in the hands of the few: a single tax on land values. George's writings and years of social activism almost won him the mayor's seat in New York City in 1886. Though he lost the election, his ideas proved instrumental to shaping a popular progressivism that remains essential to tackling inequality today. Edward T. O'Donnell's exploration of George's life and times merges labor, ethnic, intellectual, and political history to illuminate the early militant labor movement in New York during the Gilded Age. He locates in George's rise to prominence the beginning of a larger effort by American workers to regain control of the workplace and obtain economic security and opportunity. The Gilded Age was the first but by no means the last era in which Americans confronted the mixed outcomes of modern capitalism. George's accessible, forward-thinking ideas on democracy, equality, and freedom have tremendous value for contemporary debates over the future of unions, corporate power, Wall Street recklessness, government regulation, and political polarization.

The Economics of Poverty

The Economics of Poverty PDF Author: Martin Ravallion
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190212772
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 737

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Book Description
"An overview of the economic development of and policies intended to combat poverty around the world"--Provided by publisher.

The Poverty of Progress

The Poverty of Progress PDF Author: E. Bradford Burns
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520342437
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
From the Preface by Bradford Burns:If this essay succeeds, it will open an interpretive window providing a different perspective of Latin America's recent past. At first glance, the view might seem to be of the conventional landscape of modernization, but I hope a steady gaze will reveal it to be far vaster and more complex. For one thing, rather than enumerating the benefits accruing to Latin America as modernization became a dominant feature of the social, economic, and political life of the region, this essay regards the imposition of modernization as the catalyst of a devastating cultural struggle and as a barrier to Latin America's development. Clearly if a window to the past is opened by this essay, then so too is a new door to controversy. After most of the nations of Latin America gained political independence, their leaders rapidly accelerated trends more leisurely under way since the closing decades of the eighteenth century: the importation of technology and ideas with their accompanying values from Western Europe north of the Pyrenees and the full entrance into the world's capitalistic marketplace. Such trends shaped those new nations more profoundly than their advocates probably had realized possible. Their promoters moved forward steadfastly within the legacy of some basic institutions bequeathed by centuries of Iberian rule. That combination of hoary institutions with newer, non-Iberian technology, values, and ideas forged contemporary Latin America with its enigma of overwhelming poverty amid potential plenty. This essay emphasizes that the victory of the European oriented ruling elites over the Latin American folk with their community values resulted only after a long and violent struggle, which characterized most of the nineteenth century. Whatever advantages might have resulted from the success of the elites, the victory also fastened two dominant and interrelated characteristics on contemporary Latin America: a deepening dependency and the declining quality of life for the majority.

Progress, Poverty and Exclusion

Progress, Poverty and Exclusion PDF Author: Rosemary Thorp
Publisher: IDB
ISBN: 9781886938359
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
A comprehensive Statistical Appendix provides regional and country-by-country data in such areas as GDP, manufacturing, sector productivity, prices, trade, income distribution and living standards."--BOOK JACKET.

Progress, Poverty, and Population

Progress, Poverty, and Population PDF Author: John Avery
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780714647500
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This book follows that debate, which also involved people such as Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Ricardo, Mill and Darwin. In the final chapter, the question of who was right is examined from the vantage-point of our own times, while particular attention is given to the close connection between population pressure and war.