Course Work:

• Class meetings include four distinct components: class discussions of reading, instructor presentations, class discussions of exercises and projects, and general Q&A.
• This course requires a lot of work. Detailed attention to reading, exercises, presentations, and discussions must inform final projects. All final projects must be linked explicitly to course reading.
• The final paper demands research and planning. Students must formulate a clear reseach question and compile and analyze data to answer that question. Here is the assignment.

HELP:

Van Pelt Reference Librarian: Laurie Allen <laallen@pobox.upenn.edu> will teach library research techniques in class on October 3.. She is available whenever students need help.

SAS Computing Specialist: Elizabeth Sheyder <scheydec@sas.upenn.edu> can answer all questions and solve most if not all problems concerning Blackboard..

Grading:

Grading is based on the accumulation of points for work in each week. Details of marks for each week are on the weekly schedule. Grading calculations convert numeric to letter grades.

1. to get full marks for each week, students must attend class and submit assignments by 12:00 noon on Tuesday.
2. All assignments must be submitted as Blackboard attachments in MS Word and Excel formats.
3. Do not cut and paste into Blackboard.
4. No email submissions will be accepted.
5. On mandatory attendance days marked with astericks* on the weekly schedule below, students lose all marks for that week if they miss class without official medical documentation.
6. Due dates for assignments will not be extended without medical documentation.
7. Late work will be accepted until Closing Time (5:00PM Tuesday, December 12)
8. Late work will be penalized in proportion to lateness (with some reward for brilliance).
9. The final paper grade includes all components (including prospectus, draft, presentation, class discussion, and final product).
10. No work received after Closing Time will be considered for grading..

Books to buy at House of Our Own bookstore, 3920 Spruce Street.

E.M.Young, World Hunger, Routledge 1997.

Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford U Press 1981.

Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, Anchor 2000.

Weekly Schedule: Week, Date, Topic. [full marks]. {reading} (class) ST = marks subtotal

1. Sept. 12. Introduction: Viewing Poverty Historically. (ppt1)

2. Sept. 19. Hunger[5] {Young} (ppt2)

3. Sept. 26. Poverty [5] {Sen}

*4. Oct. 3. Library Research Methods [10] Class meets in Van Pelt.

5. Oct. 10. Entitlement [10] {Sen}. Library Assignment. [ST = 30]

6. Oct. 17. Development [10] {Sen} (Fnal Project prospectus due).

7. Oct. 24. NO CLASS, Fall Break.

8. Oct 31. Famines [5] -- No Class. Private meetings.

*9. Nov. 7. Markets and Deprivation [10] {Sen} (film) [ST = 55]

*10. Nov. 14. The Inequality Predicament [10] FINAL PROJECT DRAFT DUE in CLASS

11. Nov. 21. No class.

*12. Nov. 28 student presentations [5]

*13. Dec. 5. LAST CLASS. presentations. [5] [ST = 75]

(14.) Dec. 12. CLOSING TIME Tuesday, Dec 12 5PM. [final project 25] [Total = 100]

Detailed Syllabus

1. Sept 12. Viewing Poverty Historically

Ideas about poverty have changed over time and are becoming more complex and diverse. There is no consensus on the best way to define and measure poverty. Statistics on poverty need to be read carefully with their technical attributes, strengths, and weaknesses in view.

Defining and measuring poverty: view HTML. download PPT

IFPRI measuring poverty slides. HTML. download PPT

2. Sept. 19. Hunger: History. Geography, and Health.

READ all of Liz Young.

Assignment (5):

•  In Blackboard H388 site,

submit short four paragraphs on four of what you consider the most important points in Liz Young's book. DO NOT cut and paste, quote, or paraphrase.

Remember: these points may well guide your own research.

Class:

The lack of sufficient food to live a healthy life is a measure of poverty. In addition, hunger and malnutrition are health issues amenable to medical analysis and policy interventions that do not deal with poverty. Thomas Malthus made statistical relationships between food supply and population central issues that pervade ecology and evironmentalism. Post-Malthusian thinking about hunger concentrates instead on explaning hunger amidst generalized plenty. Liz Young focuses on various levels of scale that each pose their own problems of analysis.

Malnutrition PPT2. view HTML. download PPT

Calculate your BMI

3. Sept. 26. Markets, Poverty, and Entitlement.

Read: Sen, Poverty and Famines, pp. 1-51 and Sen, Development as Freedom, pp.3-53

Assignment (5):

Identify online dataset. Where?

Some ideas:

• Data downloads in left frame.
• Search HungerWeb and Global Policy Forum, for "statistics."
• "Statistics" link in HDR2005.
• Links in World Bank PovertyNet.
• Google search e.g. "world poverty statistics."
• H388 Van Pelt Library Course Page.

1. Extract data from dataset, download.
2. Create Excel spreadsheet and simple data graph.
3. Write to explain origin and utility of data and message of graph.
4. Attach XLS and DOC file to BB assignment for this week.

NOTE: Purchasing power parity (PPP) is a method of measuring the relative purchasing power of different countries' currencies over the same types of goods and services. Because goods and services may cost more in one country than in another, PPP allows us to make more accurate comparisons of standards of living across countries. PPP estimates use price comparisons of comparable items but since not all items can be matched exactly across countries and time, the estimates are not always "robust."

Class:

The intertwined problems of hunger and poverty in market economies can be viewed usefully in terms of "entitlement" or security of access to goods and services and the means to acquire them within market systems based on private property rights. The roles of public and private sectors, of the state and the market, are interdependent.

Markets operate inside economies demarcated by national state borders. The world of market economies thus includes much more than markets: it embraces a huge variety of national systems and cultures as well as institional regimes of governance. The 1992 Human Development Report Global Dimensions of Human Development discusses "the workings of ... global markets and how they meet, or fail to meet, the needs of the world's poorest people" and endeavors "to place global markets in proper perspective." Its authors assert the following concerning the need for regulatory activity and non-market interventions to meet the needs of the poor:

Competitive markets are the best guarantee for efficient production. But these markets must be open to all the people. They require a skilfully crafted regulatory framework. And they must be supplemented by judicious social policy action. "It is not a question of state or market: each has a large and irreplaceable role," as the World Bank's World Development Report 1991 aptly summed up.

PPT3 World Development Report 2000-1 Attacking Poverty (OLR). HMTL download PPT

*4. Oct. 3. Library Research Methods.

Attendance Mandatory.

CLASS MEETS in Van Pelt Library, Room 114, Goldstein Electronic Classroom. The class will divide into two sessions to meet with Laurie Allen, 3-4:30 and 4:30-6. Everyone go directly to the library! Spend the remainder of the class time working on the library assignment.

Assignment due today (10):

Using the US Census Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates data at the US Census link in the left panel, produce an XLS file on the model of PApoor1993 for Pennsylvania in 2003.

Using this data, answer the following questions with brief prose statements and make one chart to represent your data analysis. Attach the data and chart in XLS and the prose in DOC formats in the BB assignment.

Which counties have respectively the highest and lowest percentage of poor people (poverty rate) in Pennsylvania?

What is the relationship between poverty rate and median income?

What proportion of the PA poor population live in Philadelphia?

How much poorer is Philadelphia than other counties by poverty rate and proportion of PA poor population?

Use the PA county map to locate richer and poorer PA counties geographically. What can you say about spatial patterns of poverty in southeastern Pennsylvania? What might be the political implications of this pattern?

Library Assignment due next week . Plan ahead. Prospectus due in two weeks.

1. Formulate general problem for your final research project.
2. Identify one scholarly treatment of that problem. Clarify exactly how the author defines and analyzes the problem.
3. Find a dataset to use for analyzing that problem.
4. Attach results to Blackboard assignment for week 5.

5. Oct. 10. Entitlements.

Read Sen, Development as Freedom, pp. 87-145

Library Assignment due today (10). Plan ahead. Prospectus due next week.

6. Oct. 17. Development.

Read Sen, Development as Freedom, pp. 160-226

Assignment 1 (5): Write out, bring to class, and be ready to discuss.

Review World Development Report 2000/1 (download PPT) -- full text for each chapter also in online reading. Explain in a few paragraphs how the ideas presented by Amartya Sen and Liz Young mesh with those of the World Bank. Where do they correspond? Where do they differ?

Assignment 2(5): PUT THIS IN BLACKBOARD Week6 slot.

Final Paper prospectus. Here is the full final project assignment.

What is a prospectus?

Briefly describe

(1) the problem you will address (formulate a few specific questions)

(2) scholarly treatments of the problem (provide link if available),

(3) data for addressing that problem (provide link if available),

(4) your analytical approach to the data.

7. Oct. 24. NO CLASS. FALL BREAK

8. Oct. 31. NO CLASS. PRIVATE MEETINGS.[5]

9. Nov. 7. Famine: Markets, Entitlement, and Vulnerability.

Read Sen, Poverty and Famines, pp. 52-166.

Film in Class: Satyajit Ray, "Distant Thunder." -- focus on gender

Assignment [10]:

Use data from Sen, Poverty and Famines, compare two famines -- one in Africa and the other in South Asia -- to identify the specific groups in each that were respectively most and least vulnerable to entitlement collapse. Explain why each set of famine victims were in each case most vulnerable. Use only data in this book.

Remember that vulnerability is not only social but also spatial: some regions and locations and types of places are more distressed than others; and famine relief is also uneven spatially. One spatial concern is the causative role of food shortage, which is more variable than Sen allows.

One useful analytical method is to combine data from different tables. One example here indicates, for instance, that food supplies varied across Bangladesh in 1974 much more than did government feeding activity, suggesting local food shortage might have been more salient in some areas than others. Sen datafiles are SendataXLS and SendataHTM.

10. Nov. 14. The Inequality Predicament.

DRAFT OF FINAL PROJECT DUE -- PRINT AND BRING TO CLASS [10]

Read Ludden, 2006 Wertheim Lecture, "History and the inequality predicament."

Read "Report on the World Social Situation, 2005," pp.9-29. cache . . on ILO site

Read: World Development Report 2006: EQUITY . . cache . . . online

Final Project Assignment:

(1) Define a problem with a specific question.

(2) Write a brief account of ONE piece of scholarly writing that deals with that question. (provide link if available).

(3) Identify and describe a dataset that helps to answer that question. (provide link if available),

(4) Describe the analytical approach you take to the data, and the methods that you use to use that data to answer your question.

(5) Answer the question the best you can, using graphic or other representations of data that best suit your purpose.

2100 words (7 pages double spaced with 12 pt font) will suffice. This will occupy more or less space depending on how you decide to present your data.

Your question might be purely descriptive -- e.g. How much poverty, how deep, etc -- or explanatory -- e.g. Why this trend or that?

Your problem question can be about the data -- How good is it, what does its mode of production tell us? or What does it obscure about its topic?"

You can question the use of data by some scholar or institution, like Amartya Sen or The World Bank, and consider how their data squares with others' or with interpretations that others (inlcuding you) might make of their very own data.

Grading on this assignment will be very strict. I want to see that you know how to find and use numbers to answer a question convincingly, that you are fully accountable for how you use numbers, and that you can use them responsibly and accurately to make a point they support and you can defend against refutation.

Consider your answer to your question as an argument and be prepared to defend yourself, using data. To get prepared, be aware of questoins about your data and/or argument that already exist.

The scholarly work you peg your assignment to should make those question apparent. If you find yourself relying on prose that does not indicate opposing positions, you should be able to generate them yourself. Ask yourself, "What are the problems with the way I am using the data, and with the data I am using?" You should be able to answer such questions.

11. Nov. 21. No class. Private student meetings take the place of class today.

*12. Nov. 28. Discussion of student papers. (5) slides PPT

INSTRUCTIONS FOR PRESENTATIONS

Each person has 12 minutes: 7 for presentation (with slides) and 5 for discussion.

Concentrate presentations on presenting PROBLEM and FINDINGS.

Send a few PP slides to me by email at dludden@sas.upenn.edu, by NOON on the day before your presentation.

START slides with ONE showing your name and title of project.

SLIDES should display data sources and method of empirical analysis

PLEASE NOTE: papers in each thematic section and in proximate groupings within each section have logical and substantive relationships. The payoff from this exercise will increase if students whose papers are connected communicate, share their drafts, and coordinate.

Students with the same symbols (* # $ %) in front of their names MUST coordinate their presentations to reduce unproductive redundancy. NOTE that some of these students are not listed in close proximity in the schedule. Survey the whole list to see where you fit.

Nov. 28

I. PEOPLE AND ENVIRONMENTS

A. Conditions among populations

1. Catie Broussard – Refugees.
2. Kris Van Voorhis – homeless.

$ 3. Jessica Bruno – women nutrition Bangladesh
$ 4. Elizabeth Schlossberg – dietary public health conditions US

B. Poverty and inequality

Americas

# 5. Amanda Graham – Bolivia – indigenous people
# 6. Melissa Teixeira –Inequality Brazil

Africa

7. Brian Kelly – oil economy – Nigeria
8. Yuehong Lei – AIDS and TB in South Africa

C. Mothers and children

C1. Maternal education

& 9. Michael Franklin – household/women education and children’s health
&$ 10. Manisha Thapa – mother education and child health Nepal

C2. Maternal health

$ 11. Susan Krissel – maternal malnutrition and children’s health
12. Ashlyn Murphy – mother’s mental health and children

*13. Dec. 5. Discussion of student papers. (5) MANDATORY ATTENDANCE

Dec 5 Presentations slides PPT

II. CAUSATION and INTERVENTION

A. International Markets

13. CJ Dreissen – free trade economic restructuring
14. Zachary Roberts – western trade policy impact
15. Trung van Truong – migration remittances poverty

B. Regime Types

16. Carlos Torres – regime type, inequality, and gender
* 17. Scott Johnson – corruption measurement
* 18. Benjamin Newton – corruption impact

C. Micro-economy

$ 19. Miles Hammond – micro-credit – Bangladesh
$ 20. Margaret Knowles – Microcredit and women’s health

D. Macro-economy

21. Alfonzo Salazar. Sanctions on Iraq
@ 22. Han Zhao – structural adjustment
@ 23. Bruno Valle – IMF guidelines and debt relief

(14.) Dec. 12. Tuesday, 5PM. Final Projects Due. CLOSING TIME.

END OF 2006 syllabus.

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