Publications from ODSW Social Insights: Letters by DSW (Vol 1) | Page 75
Understanding Policy Issues in Poverty
Dear Students of Social Work,
By and large, we are fortunate that in a city-state with broadly speaking, good
housing means that we do not have to grapple as intensely with distressed
communities with intractable issues of poverty and worse still, persistent
intergenerational poverty. Any and every country will have people who are
poor but persistent intergenerational poverty is a complex and daunting
problem that requires sustained effort at multiple levels. The irony is that
despite the research being done, most countries still struggle for generations
with public policy making and testing out of strategies to eradicate
intergenerational poverty without clear success. What have these countries
which are usually very large tried? Many have tried strategies that focus on
the places where poor children live while others have tried moving children
out of poor neighbourhoods and communities. So what have these countries
learned about trying to eradicate intergenerational poverty?
Expand employment opportunities and boost
wages
Decades of experimentation and learning1 have led to an evolving set of
findings and principles for antipoverty efforts. These are aimed at a range of
strategies. These strategies include revitalising neighbourhoods and moving
families out of severely distressed urban neighbourhoods which undermine
the families’ capacities to meet their children’s developmental needs and trap
children especially of certain ethnicity in poverty. Research has also shown
that nationwide efforts to expand employment opportunities, boost wages,
strengthen systems of work support, and bolster the social safety net are
necessary. But they are insufficient for children living in severely distressed
neighbourhood environments. Dual-generation interventions aimed at
neighbourhood conditions that are most damaging to children’s healthy
development were also thought to be critical to “moving the needle” on
persistent, intergenerational poverty.
1 The Urban Institute; the Stanford Center for Poverty and Inequality; UC Davis Center for
Poverty Research; McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research; Institute for Research
on Poverty (Wisconsin)
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