Taylor & Francis

This study aims to assess availability, affordability, and accessibility of food items in a low-income Latino neighborhood within a small city using an on-site food store survey. Store locations were identified by on-site Global Positioning System. Results showed the Latino neighborhood had limited availability and above-average cost of high-fiber bread. Fresh vegetables were more expensive compared to the non-Latino neighborhood, and more stores in the Latino neighborhood participated in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Food Program.

Using the 1994–2004 waves of the Current Population Survey–Child Support Supplement, this article tracked child support outcomes, including child support orders, receipts, and payments, and examined the associations between state child support enforcement and child support outcomes. The results indicated moderate improvements in child support outcomes over the 1994–2004 period. The strength of state child support enforcement had positive effects on child support outcomes for young mothers under 35.

Some researchers are advocating an alternative approach to poverty research, one that recognizes people's lived experiences as major contributions to a comprehensive understanding of poverty and sustainable community solutions. This article describes a community-based participatory research project whose primary objective was to address local food insecurity in a northwestern community in the United States. Grassroots research design strategies informed by a steering committee of people with limited income and research findings are presented.

U.S. women have higher poverty rates than women in other affluent nations. In this paper I attempt to explain this disparity by examining the effect of single motherhood, employment, and social assistance on women's poverty. With cross-national comparisons of quantitative data, I find that the relatively high rate of single motherhood among U.S. women is not a main cause of their high poverty rates. Compared to their counterparts in other Western nations, U.S. women, mothers and single mothers are among the most likely to earn poverty wages. In addition, U.S.

The findings presented in this article come from a two-generation study exploring the psychological impact of trauma among American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN) families and its perceived relationship to substance abuse across generations. Psychological traumas and stressors found to be pervasive across generations included physical and sexual abuse as well as persistent discrimination and racism, such as fear of having children removed from the home. A noteworthy finding was a decrease in reports of childhood traumas across the two generations within this sample.

Our nation has turned its focus to personal responsibility and has subsequently formulated polices that have reformed welfare and strengthened child support enforcement. Teen fathers continue to present dilemmas for policy makers because of their status as minors, their lack of understanding of the policy implications for parenthood, their lack of skills, and their high unemployment status. African American teen fathers shoulder a larger burden in respect to the high unemployment rates and high drop out rates for African American males.

Given the emerging social stratification of post-agrarian small-towns, potential effects are apt to be exacerbated for rural poor families such as those residing in mobile home parks, a now characteristic rural neighborhood form. Although a mobile home park offers affordable access to rural residence, social costs are attached to such access. This paper examines the intersection between mobile home park residence and social disadvantage.

Standard measures of poverty concentration based on census tracts may not accurately reflect neighborhood conditions because they offer a weak link to the underlying geography of a neighborhood. Changes in the spatial configuration of land use within a census tract can have the effect of increasing or decreasing the density of poverty. This study uses a dasymetric mapping technique in a raster GIS environment to intersect population data in a block group layer with land use categories from a land use layer.

Past research suggests that poverty may negatively influence children's psychological and behavioral health by increasing their exposure to chaotic living conditions in the household. The present study provides a descriptive ‘snapshot’ of instability in low-income households, and examines the associations between exposure to major destabilizing events over the course of a year and three domains of poor urban children's self-regulation.

The policy assumption that it is necessary to place middle-income families into lower-income neighborhoods to disrupt a culture of poverty is deeply flawed. To demonstrate this flaw, a HOPE VI redevelopment project located in the Northwest is profiled. Collective efficacy, which includes social capital, social networks and social control, and self-sufficiency, existed in this multiethnic public housing before HOPE VI. The findings demonstrate that these families experienced a sense of place and a strong work ethic with similar societal values as other income groups in this society.