Economic and Social Development

Right now, the nation is falling behind other leading countries in the number of adults with a postsecondary credential and the skills needed by employers. If the United States does not significantly increase the number of credentialed adults, the country stands to leave hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue on the table. /p pbr / CLASP and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) have released a interactive tool for the nation and all 50 states to calculate the federal, state and personal revenues at stake. The Return on Investment Dashboard tool allows stakeholders to calculate the short- and long-term effects of either maintaining the status quo or increasing postsecondary participation and credential attainment. To remain globally competitive, the United States will need to produce 24 million additional degrees by 2025 to achieve a 60 percent degree attainment rate among adults 25 to 64. At current attainment rates, the U.S. is on track to produce just 278,500 additional degrees by 2025 — a significant shortfall. Using the tool, we estimate that under the status quo, additional national revenues from the 278,500 additional credentials will be about $6 billion. On the other hand, additional national revenue from meeting the 24 million credential mark would top $600 billion.

The past decade has seen a radical remaking of direct food security interventions and an expanded understanding of preventing undernutrition. Today, there are more food assistance choices; researchers have identified the first 1000 days as a critical window for life-long cognitive development and health outcomes; and our understanding of the value of more tailored, nutritionally-specific interventions has expanded. The opportunities resulting from these findings can generate more effective food assistance programs. However, benefits from these findings will only be achieved if policymakers and practitioners clarify and prioritize among objectives and seek ways to build greater programming flexibility into the current system.

pThis paper builds on an earlier (2004) Urban Studies paper that presented data from a major household survey in 2002 comprising a form of ldquo;natural experimentrdquo; on the impact of title regularization intervention among low-income homeowners in ten colonias in Starr County, Texas. In 2011 the research team returned to those same low-income households oversampling more than half of them in order to compare and analyze: the extent and nature of housing improvement; levels of overcrowding and access to home amenities; and the methods of financing for home improvement and extension. Significant improvements and investments are observed totaling an average of almost $9,000, mostly financed out of income and savings, although an increasing trend to seek loans from the formal market was observed. Correlation and case-study analysis explore the ways in which the self-help and self-managed dwelling environments are adapted to the family and household dynamics over the life course.nbsp;/p

Insights from a major cross-national study of low income consolidated irregular settlements in Latin America (www.lahn.utexas.org) reveals a reversion to informality as previously regularized (legal) property titles become clouded by household and home owner practices such as: informal inheritance and succession of home disbursal; as dwellings and lots are subdivided; and as informal house sales occur without the transfer and recording of title change. Such a reversal to title informality and irregularity appears to be quite logical, given inheritance laws and practices, householder expectations (especially among first and second generations) amid ongoing poverty, and the existence of poorly performing land and housing markets.

The author's ongoing research in low income neighborhoods in the USA reveals similar and parallel contemporary processes of informality and reversion to informality. Home building in ex-urban colonias and associated informal subdivisions, as well as home improvement and urban regeneration in inner-city (first suburb) neighborhoods demonstrate informality in a number of dimensions such as: land titling practices, financing mechanisms for home construction and improvement, non-code compliance, lot and dwelling subdivisions and infilling, and inheritance practices – all conceived as highly rational responses to poverty and poor market performance. Data presented in this chapter come primarily from Mexican and Mexican American communities in South and Central Texas and draw upon three major datasets compiled by the author. The realms of informality discussed are: forms of land acquisition; types of title and proof of ownership; financing of home building and improvements; compliance with codes; lot subdivision among kin or petty landlord-tenant arrangements; practices of servicing and solid waste disposal; health practices to deal with chronic morbidity and mobility problems and aging; inheritance and disposition of property to heirs. In addition to identifying the myriad processes leading to informality in such U.S. neighborhoods, the chapter will outline policy directions and sensitivities that, if adopted might improve housing conditions and property transactions, and avoid the often unanticipated consequences that lead to further cycles of informality.

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138776869/
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=47476
http://www.lahn.utexas.org/Texas%20Colonias/TDHCA.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421514003085
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/transportation/207565-highway-rob…
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2013.06.011
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.01.016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.01.017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.01.018
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.01.019
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.01.020
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220388.2012.685719
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12571-012-0177-0

Most existing literature focuses on the benefits of establishing basic drinking water access for unserved populations, the extensive water supply margin. In contrast, this article examines the intensive margin.

Drawing on a rich set of interviews and surveys, this book shows how the global AIDS treatment advocacy movement helped millions in the developing world gain access to life-saving medication. The movement achieved this by transforming the market for AIDS drugs from one which was 'low volume, high price' to one based on access for all. The authors suggest that a movement's ability to transform markets depends upon whether: (1) markets are contestable; (2) they have framed their arguments to resonate across their target audiences; (3) the movement itself has a coherent goal; (4) the costs are low, or the benefit-to-cost ratio is favourable; and, finally, (5) institutions are present to reward continued achievement of the new market principle. These insights are applied to a range of other cases including malaria, maternal mortality, water/diarrheal disease, non-communicable diseases, education, climate change, the ivory trade, sex trafficking and the Atlantic slave trade.