A timely, multidimensional view of poverty-related need
(Jan. 26) – The United Nations recently claimed that the Millennium Development Goal that focused on primary education increasing global enrollment from 83 percent to 91 percent. Despite these gains, today it is estimated that 124 million children do not attend school and 757 million adults are illiterate.
(Jan. 19) – “Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty”: That was the headline of a Washington Post article published almost exactly a year ago. The main point of the article was that, “For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to […]
(Jan. 19) – The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is celebrated for his enormous achievements in advancing civil rights for African Americans, yet King’s more radical calls for economic justice are all too often ignored. While his early career focused on ending segregation and violence against African Americans and securing voting and other legal rights, particularly […]
(Jan. 19) – Greed knows no bounds, and it defies all expectations. It seems only yesterday when we denounced the fact that 85 affluent individuals shared a combined wealth equivalent to that shared by 3.5 billion of the world’s population. Today, this number has dropped to 62 individuals, and their wealth is comparable to that of […]
(Jan. 8) – Are we on the verge of World War III? Is global suffering actually at an all-time high? Is the planet spiraling into chaos and taking a once-great America down with it? If the nightly news or those 20-hour-long Sturm und Drang Republican debates are any guide, you could be forgiven for thinking […]
(Jan. 7) – The first day back from winter break can be restless. Many children are still coming down from the excitement of the holidays. Two unstructured weeks away from school — with strange food, rituals and relatives — can be overwhelming for many children, especially when it grinds to a halt after the new year […]
(Jan. 7) – The Great Recession delivered a body blow to our country’s financial equilibrium, and only after years of painfully slow recovery have housing prices begun to stabilize and the unemployment rate steadily fallen. But while the economic crisis has abated, it remains a devastating morass for many, especially young adults, ethnic and racial minorities, […]
(Jan. 5) – Of the five Republican debates and of the three Democratic debates, not one moderator has asked a question involving the words “poverty” or “poor.” While the subject has been touched upon by some of the Democratic candidates, namely Bernie Sanders and briefly Jim Webb, the topic has been entirely unmentioned by the moderators […]
(Dec. 30) -A back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests that the number of elderly Americans in poverty will increase substantially in the coming decades. In 2010, 46.6 million Americans were over 65. Using the OECD’s measure of impoverishment, which takes into account food insecurity and chronic material need, about 8.9 million of those Americans were poor or near-poor. […]
(Dec. 30) – Increasing the minimum wage is an inefficient way to reduce poverty, according to a Fed research paper that comes amid a national clamor to hike pay for workers at the low end of the salary scale.