The Escape from Poverty: Breaking the Vicious Cycles Perpetuating Disadvantage

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The perpetuation of poverty across generations damages lives. It weakens social cohesion and the economy and undermines environmental sustainability. This book examines why poverty is carried on from one generation to the next and what needs to be done to eradicate it.

This book draws on a wide variety of sources and academic disciplines (social sciences, economics, law, community development, neuroscience and developmental psychology) along with the lived experience of people in poverty. Challenging the myths and prejudices about poverty that hinder progress, it calls for a comprehensive approach based on ensuring real equality of opportunity for all. It stresses the need to intervene early to combat child poverty and break the vicious cycles that perpetuate poverty and disadvantage.

Olivier De Schutter is Professor at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium and the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

Hugh Frazer is Adjunct Professor at Maynooth University, Ireland, a former Director of the Irish Government’s Combat Poverty Agency and an expert on child poverty and European Union (EU) social policy.

Anne-Catherine Guio is Senior Researcher at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) and ensured the scientific coordination of the first two EU’s Feasibility Studies for a ‘European Child Guarantee’.

Eric Marlier is International Scientific Coordinator at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) and manages the 38-country ‘European Social Policy Analysis Network’ funded by the EU.