Many laboratories focus their attention on topics like Alzheimer's research, but this laboratory at MIT focuses on poverty. The objective of their work at the Poverty Action Lab is "to improve the effectiveness of poverty programs by providing policy makers with clear scientific results that help shape successful polices to combat poverty." The Lab was started in June 2003 by a group of...

This short yet interesting report, written by Caroline Ashley, Charlotte Boyd, and Harold Goodwin for the Overseas Development Institute(ODI), considers "how tourism affects the livelihoods of the poor and how positive impacts can be enhanced." Divided into brief sections, each consisting of about a paragraph, the paper begins with six policy conclusions which outline the main points of the paper....

Since John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson declared war on rural poverty during their time in the White House, there has been an overriding concern with alleviating the persistently high levels of poverty in the American South. A number of organizations have developed to provide assistance to the region, and the Southern Rural Development Center (SRDC), located at Mississippi State University is one...

Social science instructors, researchers, and students should take note of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality (CPI) Research page. The CPI was founded in 2006 with the aim of conducting research and developing policy relating to a number of issues poverty- and inequality-related issues. Today, CPI staff and collaborators include sociologists from around the country. Together, they have...

Published earlier this year, this report from Oxfam "sets out the scale of the worldwide education crisis, identifies the causes, and sets out an agenda for reform." Divided into seven sections that examine data concerning education worldwide, the report discusses the critical connection between education and poverty globally, the progress made in achieving the goals set out at the 1990 UN...

This excellent report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI), found that, in 1999, 790 million people in the Third World are undernourished, and 34 million in First and Second World nations also do not have enough to eat. Although the number of undernourished people has dropped by 40 million since 1996, a decline of 8...

This United Nations Children's Fund report on the world's children focuses on nutrition. The report contains a forward by UN Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan and sections addressing the scale of malnutrition, successful approaches to combatting child hunger, and scientific breakthroughs in nutrition. Additional features include statistical tables, special issue panels, spotlights, text figures,...

About one billion people, two-thirds of them women, will enter the next century unable to read or write according to this year's UNICEF State of the World's Children report (described in the December 19, 1997 Scout Report). The report focuses on education and predicts that illiteracy levels will continue to rise, primarily because only one in four children in impoverished countries are in school....

This UNICEF State of the World's Children report (last reviewed in the December 11, 1998 Scout Report) includes an appeal for a new international coalition on behalf of children. The report also summarizes progress made since the 1990 World Summit for Children and the challenges that remain. Included in the report are a number of photographs, maps, tables, and a glossary. A summary, features (a...

UNICEF has released this year's State of the World's Children report (the 2000 report is discussed in the December 17, 1999 Scout Report). As with previous reports, this year's covers progress made since the 1990 World Summit for Children and goals that have yet to be met. UNICEF tells us, for example, that since the summit, under-five mortality has dropped fourteen percent, but in sub-Saharan...