Thinking about Poverty 4th edition

Thinking about Poverty provides a critical understanding of poverty in the global context: how global structures affect people in Australia and the way policy-makers respond. In the midst of waning public interest, the book fills an important gap in the current public discourse on poverty and covers: the extent of poverty and unprecedented wealth and income inequality across the world, including Australia; why neoliberalism remains at the heart of mainstream global discourse and continues to shape public policy; how a deregulated and speculative global economy creates massive private and public debt, undermining the real economy, employment and wage growth; why neoliberalism still influences national governments to implement further privatisation, deregulation and other neoliberal policies which implement corporate tax cuts, and re-distribution of wealth and income upwards, while at the same time reducing welfare provisions that exacerbate poverty, social disadvantage and inequality; the pivotal role and importance of the welfare state to alleviate some of the excesses of neoliberal capitalism; individualised and structural theories that try to explain the existence of poverty.

Poverty, Wealth and the Structures of Global Capitalism

Klaus Serr 

Looking at Inequality from a Political Economic Perspective

Frank Stilwell 

The Welfare State and Neoliberalism in Australia: An Historical Overview

Benno Engels and Sonia Martin 

Un(der)employment, Poverty and the Future of Work after the Global Financial Crisis

Andreas Cebulla and Ilan Katz 

Theories of Poverty: Power, Ideology and Disadvantage in Australia

Eric Porter 

Understanding Poverty: Conceptualising Human Needs

Klaus Serr 

Australia’s Broken Housing System: Homelessness and Poverty amidst Affluence

Ben SpiesButcher 

Poverty and Disadvantage Among Children and Families

Paul Harris 

Women’s Poverty: Risks and Experiences of Poverty for Australian Women

Ruth Phillips 

Living a Life of Value: Constraints Experienced by Older Australians

Helen Kimberley 

The Impoverishment of a People: The Aboriginal Experience in Australia

Sue Green 

Living with Mental Illness: Poverty and Psychosis

Robert Bland 

Poverty and People with a Disability

Karen Soldatic and David Sykes 

Poverty, Crime and Offenders

David Rose

Klaus Serr is a Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University and has held senior academic posts at Australian Catholic University and Addis Ababa University (AAU) in Ethiopia.