Jerry Buckland

Community-based disaster management during the 1997 red river flood in Canada

This paper examines the relationship between community preparedness and response to natural disaster and their level and pattern of community development. This is done by investigating preparation and response to the 1997 Red River Flood by three rural communities in Manitoba, Canada. The communities were selected because of their different ethnic mix and associated level and pattern of community development. The hypothesis was supported that the level and pattern of community development affect community capacity to respond to flooding. Communities characterised by higher levels of physical, human and social capital were better prepared and more effective responders to the flood. However, where the pattern of community development was characterised by high levels of social capital, decision-making processes were complicated.

Are Low-Income Canadians Financially Literate? Placing Financial Literacy in the Context of Personal and Structural Constraints

This article argues that financial literacy varies across socioeconomic groups and their neighborhoods, in part because of the adult learning that occurs within a local context. The study begins by explaining that financial literacy needs vary across socioeconomic groups and that there are important structural factors affecting the financial well-being of low-income people. Drawing on data from qualitative field research undertaken in three Canadian inner cities, it then moves to examine low-income respondents’ financial literacy. The results show that many low-income respondents evidenced financial literacy in that many learned to cope with strict budgets, used diversified activities to raise their income, constrained their credit, and were reasonably knowledgeable about relevant government programs and banking services. Where particular constraints were noted in financial literacy, they related to detailed knowledge about institutional policies and attitudes about deeper financial and life goals.

Banking on the Margin in Canada

This article analyzes the socioeconomic characteristics of the financially excluded in Canada using the 1999 Statistics Canada Survey of Financial Security and two surveys sponsored by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada in 2001 and 2005. The authors find that financial exclusion is more concentrated among low-income Canadians; low-income, low-level of assets, and single-parent statuses are correlated with being unbanked. A review of banking preferences of low-income people indicates that economically disadvantaged households are more concerned about convenience and not as interested in new banking technologies.

THE DISTRIBUTIONAL IMPACT OF INCOME-GENERATION PROGRAMMES IN BANGLADESH

ABSTRACT Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly relied upon to deliver a variety of services in rural Bangladesh to improve the income and employment position of the poor. The “minimalist credit” approach has gained particular support recently, seemingly at the expense of a more integrated sector approach. This paper presents results from a household survey that compares the distributional performance of credit and sector programmes—irrigation and sericulture—maintained by three indigenous Bangladeshi NGOs: Association for Social Advancement, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, and Proshika MUK. It was found that while NGOs work with a poor section of the population, their participants are not from the very poorest. However, there was little evidence of uneven distribution of benefits among participants.

Struggling to Make Ends Meet: Using Financial Diaries to Examine Financial Literacy Among Low-Income Canadians

Concern about financial literacy is rising. But national surveys of financial literacy are not very helpful regarding the literacy characteristics of the poor. This case study uses the financial diary method to examine the financial literacies of 13 poor Canadians. The results found that most participants kept their spending in line with their income and tracked their spending, and several demonstrated financial resilience. Many participants appreciated involvement in the study because it further developed their skills in tracking their expenses and articulating financial goals. Approximately 40% of the participants had reasonably healthy finances, many of them newcomer Canadians.

Qualitative Assessment of Income-Generation Growth Linkages: A Case Study from Bangladesh

ABSTRACT The scaling-up of credit extension schemes is seen as an effective means to empower the poor. Although evaluations of the direct impact on beneficiaries indicate significant improvement in income and assets, they generally fail to consider the important second-round effects. This paper qualitatively compares the second-order impact of credit and sector schemes of various development agencies in Bangladesh. It finds that credit-based activities face more market constraints than sector activities. If production displacement occurs in scaled-up credit schemes, growth and equity objectives may be compromised.

Dynamics of the Location of Financial Institutions

Cities are a significant source of economic growth and prosperity, but they may also contribute to social and economic problems, including unemployment, poverty, and inaccessible financial institutions. The authors have gathered a unique panel data set for Toronto that locates financial institutions by census tract and links this information to census public use microdata from 1981 to 2006 to show that mainstream financial institutions have migrated to the suburbs and that, simultaneously, so-called fringe financial institutions, especially payday lenders, have expanded their operations in the inner city. The authors then use panel regression models and, among other results, find that census tracts with low income are less attractive to mainstream institutions over time and more attractive to fringe institutions, which provide more limited and expensive services. The results imply that the dynamics of the location of financial institutions may present an additional barrier to upward economic mobility for inner-city residents.

Barriers to Improved Capability for Low-income Canadians

This article examines barriers to improved well-being for low-income Canadians. It uses the capability approach to explore how personal, institutional and banking factors interact to create obstacles to improved capability. It does this by relying on financial life histories from 15 low-income people living in inner-cities in Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg. The financial life histories are a qualitative method in which respondents were recruited using a snowball sampling method, and asked to share personal stories about their life and financial goals. Respondents are, by Canadian standards, acutely poor and several faced multiple personal barriers including mental illness and substance abuse. The results indicate that participants experienced many more periods of declining, as compared with improving, capability. Respondents identified a series of personal (e.g., illness and addiction), structural (e.g., poorly funded education and low-levels of social assistance support), and banking (e.g., high banking fees and limited appropriate services) obstacles to their improved capability. Most respondents noted that they faced several obstacles at once that created powerful unfreedoms to improved capability. Weak banking services in the neighbourhoods was an important factor in limiting the capability of the respondents.

A Socio-economic Examination of Payday Loan Clients: Why and How People Use Payday Loans

This chapter reports on a small-scale mixed methods research project in Winnipeg, Canada, that explored what lower income consumers think about payday loans, why they use payday loans, and asked them to compare the typical Canadian payday loan with two alternatives. Respondents reported that various push factors, such as declining income and employment, and pull factors, such as opening of payday lender outlets and closing of bank branches in the neighbourhood, have led them to rely more on payday lenders. Some respondents had found themselves in a repeat payday loan cycle in which they needed a new loan to pay off the existing one. Other respondents used payday loans more strategically and did not get overwhelmed by payday loan fees. Respondents were then asked to compare the standard Canadian payday loan with two alternatives and this led to some very interesting results.

Derivatives and development: a political economy of global finance, farming, and poverty, by Sasha Breger Bush

role of the survivor since 2000, particularly in relation to developments in post-transitional justice and the renewed commitment on the part of the Argentine government to support judicial proceedings. The emergence of the AEPCC and members’ lobbying of the victims for recognition and reparation are thus placed within this more favourable context. In-depth analysis of the Kirchnerista era vis-à-vis the former political prisoner is neglected, which is rather unfortunate because the vindication of the militante has been a notable feature of the post-crisis period and Kirchnerista discourse. The uses to which the past is put are perpetually changing, a feature that merits further discussion. Indeed, the book’s short epilogue is an important reminder of the shifting terrains of memory and justice and the rapid developments in state policy and civic action that characterise the post-dictatorship period. Drawing on exhaustive anthropological research, particularly participant observation and semistructured interviews, the author assumes a certain amount of prior knowledge of Argentine history, particularly the dictatorship period, from the reader and there is limited space dedicated to historical contextualisation, which tends to be interwoven with the personal accounts of survivors. For this reason, the book will be of great interest to scholars with prior knowledge of the dictatorship period, while its concise and straightforward style makes it a particularly suitable text for inclusion in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. By blurring the boundaries between individual and collective, local and national, Park not only illuminates the crucial differences between those who were temporarily disappeared with those whose disappearance became permanent, but reveals the divergent dictatorship and post-dictatorship survivor experiences, arguing for a more nuanced approach to former political prisoners specifically and victims of state repression more generally.