child poverty

A new book has arrived in my mailbox that deserves some attention. It's called Child Poverty and Inequality and is written by Duncan Lindsey.  Duncan is a professor at the UCLA School of Public Affairs and for years has been one of the country's leading voices on child welfare . He is not only a notable historian of the evolution of family policy in the U.S., but has particularly focused on the plight faced by vulnerable children, such as those growing up in foster care and poor families. What also distinguishes Duncan's approach and what comes through in this book is his ongoing search for policy ideas that have the potential to transform what is for many children a pretty bleak landscape.

Before he gets there, he reviews the data on inequality in its various manifestations and recounts the experience since welfare reform was enacted in the mid-1990s. One of the highlights here is how declining case loads are somewhat offset by rises in food assistance. The bottom line result has been rising child poverty since the early years of the decade despite being a time of modest economic expansion.