In the News

(July 11) – Before worrying about the next recession, the sad quality of our current recovery deserves attention. Seven years since the National Bureau of Economic Research officially declared the Great Recession over, vast numbers of American families remain beset by deep economic insecurity — June’s surge in job numbers notwithstanding.

(July 10) – During their working years, women tend to earn less than men, and when they retire, they’re more likely to live in poverty. These are women who raised children and cared for sick and elderly family members, often taking what savings and income they had and spending it on things besides their own retirement […]

(July 8) – There are fundamental flaws in how issues of poverty and socio-economic mobility are being addressed in this country and the world. Over the next two months, I will post a series on HuffPo to share both my experiences growing up poor in America as well as what has been learned from hundreds of […]

(July 8) – David Garrett returned home from war to find he had no home. A disabled veteran from Maine who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Garrett soon fell into homelessness. After almost a year of camping out, he found an apartment he could afford by negotiating a deal in which he paid lower rent […]

(July 6) – America’s poor are increasingly shifting from the cities to the suburbs, the most recent Census data show – and that’s causing problems with the way the government delivers assistance to them. The prolonged economic recession forced millions of Americans into poverty, with nearly 15 percent of the population – or roughly 46.7 […]

(July 5) – Many posters on the blog have questioned the validity of using free and reduced lunch statistics to gauge the number of low-income students in a school, maintaining FRL is an imprecise and unreliable surrogate. Some posters contend it overestimates low-income students, while others say it undercounts them.

(July 4) – It’s no secret that we have a homelessness problem. And we’re never going to solve it if we keep ignoring one of the most vulnerable populations: domestic-violence survivors and their children.

(July 1) – One in six households struggled to buy food last year, according to a new report. While the figures are “unacceptable,” they mark the sharpest decline since such data has been made available. More than 170,000 households were surveyed last year and asked if they had trouble at any point gathering funds to […]

(July 1) – When he was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Paul Ryan was frustrated when decisions about tax and other legislation under his committee’s jurisdiction emanated from the House leadership offices rather than from his committee.

(July 1) – Here’s the good news After getting short shrift for years after the recession, families in the bottom 99% of earners finally saw some noticeable income growth in 2015. Even adjusted for inflation, average incomes across that huge swath of households grew 4.7% from 2014. But don’t break out the champagne (or boxed wine) […]