Editor's Letter

Abstract

Editor-in-Chief Max J. Skidmore announces a forthcoming book and discusses an anticipated special issue of the journal, with the theme of childhood poverty in the Middle East. He also describes this current issue, Volume 9, Issue 3, of Poverty and Public Policy, the third quarterly issue of 2017, which continues the ninth year of the journal's publication. I am pleased to announce a forthcoming book that presents original essays by scholars from around the world, each from a different country, examining the first 100 days of the administration of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. The volume will be co-edited by Dr. John Dixon, and by me. Dr. Dixon is familiar to readers of Poverty and Public Policy, both as a contributor and as Board member/Editor-at-Large. The Dixon-Skidmore volume should be in print early in 2018, and the publisher will be Westphalia Press, the publishing arm of the Policy Studies Organization. We also anticipate that we soon will be issuing a special issue of Poverty and Public Policy on the subject of “Child Poverty and Youth Unemployment in the Middle East.” Dr. Dixon will be the Special Editor for that issue. This current issue, volume 9, issue 3, begins with a Public Policy Report that I prepared with regard to the issuance on 13 July of the 2017 Report of the Trustees of the Social Security Administration. Poverty and Public Policy presents this as a public service to facilitate better understanding of the Social Security system in the United States. Next comes an article from Ethiopia, by Bekele Melese of the University of Gondar, who studies “Micro and Small Enterprises as an Anti-Poverty and Employment Generation Strategy in Bahir Dar City, North-Western Ethiopia.” Consistent with our conviction that education is among the most important anti-poverty factors, our next article, by Laura D. Ullrich of Winthrop University, considers “Differing Responses to School Finance Reform: The Haves Versus the Have-Nots.” This issue's next article also deals with children. Diana Rosales Mitte of the University of Wisconsin–Madison contributes “The Effects on Children's Well-Being of Ecuador's Conditional Cash Transfer ‘Bono de Desarrollo Humano’.” Yet another important article, “Poverty in Europe: Sociodemographics, Portfolios, and Consumption of Wealth Poor Households,” by Philip Müller of the University of Göttingen in Germany, analyzes microdata from three European studies to look at wealth-poor as opposed to income-poor households. In recognition of the importance of family planning to broad issues of poverty, we are proud to present as the final article in this issue, “The Relational Experience of Poverty: Challenges for Family Planning and Autonomy in Rural Areas,” by Elizabeth Seale of the State University of New York Oneonta. Book Reviews— This issue has three book reviews, each coming from the University of South Dakota. Sarah R. Deming reviews Intersectional Inequality: Race, Class, Test Scores, and Poverty, by Charles C. Ragin and Peer C. Fiss. Peter A. Kindle and Elena Delavega review Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Victoria Varland reviews Richard Schweid's Invisible Nation: Homeless Families in America. We welcome their contributions. Reviews of relevant books are vital to the scholarly process. Thus, as always, we seek thoughtful reviews of such books, and we invite those who are interested in becoming reviewers to communicate with our Book Review Editor, Dr. Virginia Beard, at [email protected]. Max J. Skidmore Editor-in-Chief University of Missouri-Kansas City