With so much poverty hidden in plain sight, you have to ask: is this still America?

(Mar. 21) – Last week, in America, I was in one of the country’s most celebrated tourist spots – renowned for it’s natural beauty, swanky resorts and marine life. I spent the first part of the week in what could be kindly termed as a service hub. Let’s call it Depresso. On my morning walk – instead of the vista of palm trees, beaches, gelato shops and yachts I was expecting, the footpaths stopped abruptly, or crumbled, the roads buckled, people were searching for food in bins, buildings were vacant with the paint and signs peeling and there was rubbish everywhere.

The odds of your falling into poverty in America are truly sobering

(Mar. 18) – Nobody dreams of falling into poverty in the future. But for too many, poverty is a doom-filled nightmare that all too often comes true. To help people who don’t have a realistic sense of just how financially vulnerable they are, sociologists Thomas Hirschl  and Mark Rank of Cornell and Washington University respectively, have come up with the poverty probability calculator.

Calculate Your Economic Risk

(Mar. 18) – Two economic issues loom especially large in the United States today: widespread economic insecurity and soaring levels of income inequality. These are not just issues of interest to academics and policy makers; they are a prime concern of ordinary citizens. “How much economic risk do I face in the future?” you may wonder. “How does my risk differ from that of others?”

Why the poorest kids quit high school

(Mar. 18) – “Kids at the bottom of the income distribution are discouraged by higher levels of income inequality as opposed to being driven by it,” Kearney says. “Low income kids are more likely to drop out of high school than high income kids. But conditional to being low income, kids who are growing up in states or cities characterized by high levels of lower tail income inequality—a greater gap between the bottom and the middle—are more likely to drop out of high school.”

To Fight Poverty, Cut Regulations

(Mar. 17) – When policymakers create or expand regulations, they often assume that the cost of compliance falls on businesses. While businesses do shoulder many of the burdens of regulation, consumers ultimately end up paying for regulations through higher prices or decreased competition. But these costs do not affect all consumers equally—they disproportionately fall on low-income households. Mercatus Center senior research fellow Patrick McLaughlin testified on this point last month for the House Judiciary Committee.

America, the Unaffordable

(Mar. 17) – In the most recent season of Shameless, the long-running Showtime series about the dysfunctional, poverty-stricken Gallagher family in Chicago, a new story line develops. Unlike the drug- and crime-filled narratives of past seasons, this one hits closer to home for the average viewer: gentrification.

Is the IRS Ready for a ‘Tax War on Poverty’?

(Mar. 16) – While Republicans and Democrats tend to disagree on most things related to combating poverty, both parties have found common ground on one measure: the Earned Income Tax Credit. The budget passed by Congress last December made permanent several extensions and improvements to both the EITC and the Child Tax Credit.

House Budget Would Mean More Poverty, Inequality, and Hardship

(Mar. 16) – In an apparent attempt to appeal to archconservative members, the House Republican budget is a highly ideological document that proposes extreme policies in several areas. It would decimate large swaths of the federal government, shrinking spending outside Social Security, Medicare, and interest payments to 7 percent of GDP by 2026 — less than three-fifths of its average of the past 40 years (see chart) and only a little more than half its average level under President Reagan. It features particularly severe cuts in programs to help poor families and others of limited means.