I recently saw a great documentary film at the Seattle International Film Festival called Waste Land. It's about an art project of Brazilian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Vik Muniz, which took place at the biggest landfill in the world, Jardim Gramacho, just outside of Rio de Janeiro.

I recently read an interesting book by James Tooley called The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves, published by the Cato Institute.

The city that I live in (Shoreline, a suburb just north of Seattle) closed two elementary schools this year, and the city of Seattle has also been talking about closing schools, in both cases because the number of children enrolled in school has declined. Yet the population of both Seattle and Shoreline must be increasing, as houses are replaced by condo buildings and apartments, so I had been somewhat confused about this...

In my last article, I wrote about poverty, especially among people who have jobs. Many of the workers living in poverty around the world are working in the clothing industry; most of the clothing available for sale in the US is produced in sweatshops (which we can define as places where basic worker rights are lacking or where the workers do not earn a wage that allows them to support themselves and their families). But there are alternatives.

I have some more thoughts as a follow-up to my previous post about poverty and the economy -- about solutions to the problem of poverty. First, the basics. Since poverty occurs when there is an imbalance between earnings and the cost of living, to move an individual out of poverty, either the person's earnings must be increased, or his/her cost of living reduced. There are several ways we could consider doing that for the working poor segment of the population (whether here or overseas).

I have been thinking lately about the U.S. economy, and how it is related to poverty. Here are some thoughts:

I just read an interesting report by the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) about the real causes of homelessness in the United States. The main findings of the report, called Without Housing, are:

The United Nations measures the level of human development of its member countries in its "Human Development Index" (HDI). This index is regarded as the standard measure for the well-being of people (especially children), and it incorporates measures of poverty, literacy, education, life expectancy. It is published regularly as part of the Human Development Report. Presumably, countries with a low HDI would be the ones in most need of humanitarian aid, and those with high HDI numbers would not need much, if any.