Abstract
In today’s world, on a massive scale, we witness poverty of appalling magnitude. We associate absolute poverty with underdeveloped regions of the world stricken with disasters such as war, droughts, crop failures, pestilence, and starvation. Televised scenes of horribly emaciated bodies of young children in impoverished countries are only too vivid. And what television brings us from afar, we can see easily at home in a so-called first-world country. As we walk through the streets of our major cities in the United States, we cannot avoid the distressing sights of homeless people, often within view of conditions of wealth and luxury. We write checks to charitable organizations to aid the poor or vote for politicians who promise to support a government initiative to help alleviate poverty. However, seeing no apparent effects of our efforts or contributions, sooner or later we may find ourselves become increasingly frustrated and discouraged. Still the question remains: what to do about the problem of poverty?
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Ulman, J.D. (1996). Perspectives on the Problem of Poverty. In: Cautela, J.R., Ishaq, W. (eds) Contemporary Issues in Behavior Therapy. Applied Clinical Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9826-5_15
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