Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

The Barricades of Michoacán’s Bandito Alley

July 28, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
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Location: At Rio Nexpa, in the southern end of Michoacán, where muddy water from recent rainstorms dirties the turbulent ocean. Under coconut trees, palm thatch huts line the perimeter of the riverbank. Conditions: The northerly breeze covers everything in salt spray. The air is pleasantly cool after the sporadic downpours. Discussion: As I drove south, the landscape kept changing in surprising ways. Around Puerto Vallarta, the dense jungle and verdant coastal mountains rising out of Banderas Bay is like a perfect capsule of the tropics. It inspired Hollywood producers to shoot movies ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Voyage of Kiri
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Microfinance: Back to the Drawing Board

July 18, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Yohane Mdeme owns a food market in Tanzania. Though poor and with little to no collateral, he applied for a loan of $850 through Kiva.org to expand his small business. Twenty years ago in such a place and for such a client, Mdeme would never obtain the capital to increase his business. No bank would have given out such a small loan, much less to a person without collateral. Yet Mdeme is well on his way to receiving his requested amount in full. This process, called microfinance, has been put on a pedestal by development economists thanks to its high repayment rates and ability to provide ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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The Poverty Solution: Cash

July 2, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Who's responsible for the poor? Back in the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth, English lawmakers said it was the government and taxpayers. They introduced the compulsory "poor tax" of 1572 to provide peasants with cash and a "parish loaf." The world's first-ever public relief system did more than feed the poor: It helped fuel economic growth because peasants could risk leaving the land to look for work in town. By the early 19th century, though, a backlash had set in. English spending on the poor was slashed from 2 percent to 1 percent of national income, and indigent families were ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, July-August 2010, Views Reviews and Interviews
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Making a Poor Measure Better

March 19, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Academics for decades have been pushing to rewrite the way the federal government measures poverty, a movement repeatedly stymied by both political reality and the sheer difficulty of the task. A new poverty measure, for example, would require not only setting an updated threshold, but reconsidering every way in which a family might fall under it. Should the measure account for out-of-pocket medical expenses? The difference between families who pay rent, own homes or have no housing expense at all? What about the income derived from food stamps or the money saved by the earned income tax ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Politics, The Idea Lobby
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The True Cost of Tobacco

February 18, 2010 • By • 1 Comment

The World Health Organization estimates that almost 5 million people die each year from tobacco-related causes, a figure that is expected to double in the next 20 years, especially among the poor in the developing world. Smoking in the developing world is rising by 3.4 percent every year, and with aggressive marketing by tobacco companies there, that growth is likely to be sustained. By 2030, approximately 70 percent of smoking-related deaths worldwide will occur in developing countries. But the cost of smoking isn't only measured in mortality — it can be measured in dollars or yuan or ... Read More

More like this: CAROUSEL, Health
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Review: The Importance of Being Not So Earnest

November 17, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

As far as Philippe Diaz is concerned, the issue of world poverty is a simple mathematical problem. "If we consume 30 percent more than the planet can regenerate, it means for us in the Northern Hemisphere to maintain our lifestyle, we have to plunge more people in the Southern Hemisphere into poverty. We have [an economic] system that is digging a bigger hole every year." Diaz is the writer-director of The End of Poverty? a documentary that opens throughout the country over the next several months. His film spends 104 minutes attempting to explain how this all happened. In this case, that ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Culture, Culture & Society, Media, Moving Pictures
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Shining a Light on India’s Rural Poor

May 11, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

About 2 billion people in developing countries worldwide lack electricity, which in turn impacts the health, ecology and safety of rural households. Many are forced to rely on inefficient and environmentally damaging kerosene lamps: Developing nations alone burn 470 million barrels of oil and release about 400 billion pounds of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as a result of using kerosene. Other sources of light fuel include cow dung, precious forest firewood or crop residue. But in a massive new study carried out in Gujarat, one of Western India's poorest states, hit hard by drought ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Science, Science & Environment
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Suburban Poverty, Served Chicago Style

April 9, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

"The suburban dream often fades for poor families because old support systems are severed, and access to programs and services — day care, after-school programs, job training, drug treatment and counseling — are greatly hampered by shear distance." Those are the thoughts of Ed Goetz, a housing policy specialist at the University of Minnesota interviewed for David Villano's recent Miller-McCune.com piece, "The Slumming of Suburbia." A new report conducted for The Chicago Community Trust backs up the gist of that depressing scenario, at least in America's Second City and its ... Read More

More like this: Findings
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Just Cause for Great Alarm

February 20, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

Today in America, 1 in 6 children lives in poverty, and nearly 9 million lack proper medical insurance. Of all the world's industrialized nations, the United States has the largest gap between its rich and poor, lowest birth weight average and highest number of incarcerations. Marian Wright Edelman doesn't think the United States has a money problem right now, but a values problem. As the stock market rose over the past decades, she watched the number of American children living in poverty grow, too. Now, despite the recession, she's fighting to make sure these children and their families ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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The Slumming of Suburbia

February 14, 2009 • By • 1 Comment

The financial meltdown has produced a vast patchwork of foreclosed and abandoned single-family homes across America, accelerating the decades-long migration of our nation's poor from cities to the suburban fringe. In 2005, as rising property values reduced affordable-housing stock in inner-city neighborhoods, suburban poverty, in raw numbers, topped urban poverty for the first time. The trend will continue. By 2025, predicts planning expert Arthur C. Nelson, America will face a market surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (a sixth of an acre or more), attracting millions of low-income ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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