Rich Democracies, Poor People

"With this book, David Brady punctures a number of American myths about the causes of poverty in a sophisticated and highly accessible way. Brady finds that welfare state generosity and its political antecedents ultimately drive variations in levels of poverty--thus, poverty, he argues, is a result of political choice. Brady's book is essential reading for scholars and policy makers interested in poverty in the United States and other affluent democracies."--John D. Stephens, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill "David Brady has written a masterful book on understanding how such a wide variation in poverty can exist in rich, democratic societies. This is indeed an abundant resource for understanding and explaining the institutions and politics that perpetually affect differing levels of poverty and inequality across multiple welfare states. It will stand as the definitive explanation of institutional variation in poverty for political economists and sociologists for a long time to come."--Timothy Smeeding, University of Wisconsin-Madison "Rich Democracies, Poor People uses a comprehensive framework to explain variations in poverty across developed societies. It makes an important contribution toward understanding the linkage between welfare state politics and poverty." --International Journal of Social Welfare "Brady's book sits squarely in the mainstream of current poverty research and is the most incisive, most informative, and most comprehensive treatment of that research published to date. This book belongs in every academic library and in as many classrooms as possible." --International Journal of Comparative Sociology "Rich Democracies, Poor People is a carefully-conceived adroitly-executed, and emintely-accessible piece of scholarship that will shape the fields of poverty studies and political sociology for years to come." --Contemporary Sociology