A timely, multidimensional view of poverty-related need
Driving into the nation’s capital along New York Avenue reveals an American social smash-cut. About three miles from the U.S. Capitol, women with umbrella strollers, heavy bags and a hand-chain of children in tow are dodging traffic to cross the busy Northeast Washington thoroughfare. Especially early in the morning, they walk in waves, with school-uniform […]
Jefferson County, Mississippi, is home to 7,297 people, and 2,870 of them are hungry. The county’s food insecurity rate, 38 percent, is the highest in the nation, according to the latest Map the Meal Gap report. The report, released last week by the hunger relief organization Feeding America, collates data from the U.S. Department of […]
When Representative Mo Brooks said it was unfair that healthy “people who lead good lives” should have to subsidize the insurance of unhealthier ones who presumably don’t, he bluntly raised an often unspoken question that runs through policy debates in Washington: Who deserves government aid and who does not?
Stephanie Land had next to nothing when she checked into a Port Townsend, Washington, homeless shelter with her baby daughter Mia almost nine years ago. Fleeing an abusive relationship, she had no family to turn to, no job and only about $200 to her name.
In the 1890s, sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois noticed something disturbing about how Americans viewed the plight of blacks in Philadelphia who had suffered through unsanitary living conditions, high rates of consumption and back-breaking labor. “The most difficult social problem in the matter of Negro health is the peculiar attitude of the nation toward the well-being […]
Iyoba Moshay had just started her shift when she got a text from Alvin, her 7th-grade son. His school was on lockdown after a shooting, he said. There was a body prone on the street outside, visible from his classroom window. Ms. Moshay gulped, and went back to her job tending bar downtown at the […]
Hunger in America can often seem invisible, but recent studies have shown that it is a problem that affects millions of people, many of them children. An estimated 13.1 million kids live in homes with insufficient food, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the number of college students […]
There’s nothing shocking, really, about Houston’s new law making it easier for homeless people to be arrested simply for being homeless. Not when over 100 American cities have effectively criminalized everyday life for the homeless, making crimes of things from sleeping outside to brushing teeth in public. Even as cities become more socially conscious about […]
“It’s pretty much life or death if you don’t have a degree for people like me,” says Brooke Evans. Most college students feel their degree is crucial, but the stakes are higher for Evans, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, because she’s been homeless for most of her college career. And she has dedicated […]
Most rich countries besides the US have hit on a surprisingly simple approach to reducing child poverty: just giving parents money. This idea, known as a child benefit or child allowance, exists in almost every EU country as well as in Canada and Australia. In many countries, the payments are truly universal; you get the […]