Poverty

Before it became a celebration of summer's end, Labor Day was a symbol of reform--a time, said labor activist Samuel Gompers, to discuss rights and wrongs and make the worker 'stronger for it.' In the true spirit of the holiday, Americans who care about children and families should first resolve to improve the imperiled state of the nation's child-welfare workers.

Sensational cases of child abuse and neglect have kept the spotlight on the failures of state child-welfare agencies… more

While consuming only a tiny fraction of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) budget, the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program is one of the nation’s largest programs designed to help working poor families increase their savings and build assets. The program has three primary components -- stable, affordable housing, asset-building escrow accounts and work-promoting case management -- that function together to help families build assets and increase their earnings. The program is open to families receiving federal housing assistance… more

In 1994, Republicans in California distributed a voter education pamphlet titled "The Welfare Mess." On its cover was a vivid montage of ghetto pathology: food stamps intermixed with hundred-dollar bills, drug paraphernalia alongside a snub-nosed pistol. Inside, the pamphlet catalogued welfare's pernicious effects. Teen pregnancy, runaway crime, moral decay, even falling SAT scores--all were blamed on a welfare system run amok. The pamphlet closed with a dire warning: "If You Don't Vote, THEY WIN."

Today the Republican Party… more

Despite advances in the field, the mechanics of drawing the national poverty line have not been significantly altered for forty years. Each September the Census Bureau releases its official calculation of the national poverty line and enumeration of the poor, intended to reflect the extent of economic hardship in the United States. The once-useful metric has, unfortunately, not worn well. Today the official poverty measure provides an incomplete and inaccurate representation of the poor.

This panel featured two pioneers of the… more

Each September the Census Bureau releases its official calculation of the national poverty rate, intended to reflect the extent of economic hardship in the United States. Despite advances in available data and methodological techniques, the mechanics of the official poverty measure have not been significantly altered for four decades. The once useful metric has, unfortunately, not worn well. Today the official poverty measure provides an incomplete and inaccurate representation of the poor. Perhaps most troubling is that it misses important… more

The World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico, has highlighted a surprising new cause, promoted by a surprising new alliance. The new cause is the campaign to reduce or eliminate agricultural subsidies in the United States, Europe and Japan, to make room for agricultural exports from poor nations. The alliance between idealists of the left, third world producers and traditional conservative promoters of free trade is equally unprecedented.

But the Cancun coalition is unlikely to last. It is bound to fray… more

One July morning last year in Oklahoma City, in a public-housing project named Sooner Haven, twenty-two-year-old Kin Henderson pulled a pair of low-rider jeans over a high-rising gold lamé thong and declared herself ready for church. Her best friend in the project, Corean Brothers, was already in the parking lot, fanning away her hot flashes behind the wheel of a smoke-belching Dodge Shadow. "Car's raggedy, but it'll get us from pillar to post," Corean said when Kim climbed… more

Nothing illustrates America's profound contradictions more starkly than a comparison with other advanced democracies: among these the United States is either the very best or the very worst performer on a wide range of social and economic criteria. We are simultaneously the leader and the laggard among our peers -- almost always exceptional, almost never in the middle.

Without question we are the richest, most powerful, and most creative nation on the planet. Our economic and military might stems from… more

Ten years ago shoe-leather urbanologists found their primary source material in the late-night crack market. Today they're better off rising early and divesting themselves of $1.10 in pocket change to ride the U8 bus, a leading economic indicator of the American inner city. The U8, which serves the easternmost corner of Washington, D.C., is what's known in public-transport parlance as a circuit bus. Its African-American riders are among the most isolated of the urban poor: those who not only can't… more