Poverty and Culture

Most antipoverty programs aim only to give the poor more income or benefits. The best of them, however, also produce positive changes in attitudes. This book shows that youth who go through these programs often emerge more hopeful about their futures. They think they can achieve more in school or at work than they thought before, and they are more committed to avoiding personal problems such as crime or drugs. These shifts empower them to escape poverty and go on to better lives. These cultural effects have never before been studied. This book includes assessments by experts of several different types of program: charter schools, training programs, after school programs, and others. Results also show that antipoverty policies that ignore these psychic effects, such as welfare reform and immigration, are less able to reach the seriously poor. So promoting cultural change matters.

Lawrence M. Mead is Professor of Politics at New York University, USA. The author of many books on poverty and welfare, he has long been a leading expert on these problems in the United States and other rich countries. Among academics, he was the principal advocate of requiring employable welfare recipients to work as a condition of aid. His early works provided the main basis for the radical national welfare reform of 1996, in which work requirements were greatly strengthened. Results shLawrence M. Meadarply reduced poverty and dependency. He is also an expert on the implementation of welfare reform at the local level. Government Matters, his in-depth study of welfare reform in Wisconsin, was a co-winner of the 2005 Louise Brownlow Book Award, given by the National Academy of Public Administration.