Newsblaze.com recently published an article that says child hunger costs Central America billions of dollars annually. I include an excerpt: Child undernutrition cost the economies of Central America and the Dominican Republic almost $7 billion – or 6.4 per cent of the region’s gross domestic product (GDP) – in 2004, according to a new joint […]
Author Archives: Scott Hughes
Flawed Definition of Poverty
Carl Bialik recently wrote about the flaws in the way that the World Bank calculates poverty levels. I include an excerpt: [T]o some economists, the World Bank’s definition of poverty is flawed, arbitrary and tends toward suppressing the numbers. Sanjay Reddy, a Columbia University economist and longtime critic of the bank’s counts, says, “If their […]
No More Homeless Veterans, Please!
Stephen Funk recently blogged about the cost of war regarding not only financial expenses and body counts, but also the loss of humanity. He even quotes the common adage: “In war there are no winners, only losers.” He expresses the trouble many veterans face after the trauma of war, including homelessness. I include an excerpt: […]
Eating on $3 a Day
Randolph T. Holhut recently wrote an article about the shame of the federal food stamp program in the United States: The federal food stamp program has never been known as being particularly generous, but the combination of budget cuts and inflation has made it even less so. For all the talk you hear from economists […]
40% Poverty Rate in the United States?
The following quote demonstrates a major way in which official poverty statistics understate the poverty epidemic: “While in any given year 12 to 15 percent of the population is poor, over a ten-year period 40 percent experience poverty in at least one year because most poor people cycle in and out of poverty; they don’t […]
Poor School Parents vs. Affluent School Parents
Pnnonline.org recently reported that parents’ educational values differ depending on the financial poverty of the school: When it comes to teachers, what do parents value most — high student test scores or the ability to keep students satisfied? The answer depends in part on what kind of school you go to, according to a new […]