A timely, multidimensional view of poverty-related need
(Nov. 3) – Poverty data generally comes from the Census Bureau, which bases its analysis on the Current Population Survey. But do poor people under-report or underestimate the value of the programs they participate in? They might, and it seems to me it’s pretty easy to figure this out. Add up the value of, say, […]
(Nov. 3) – Statistics about the health and wealth of Americans hold a vexing paradox. Steady signs of improvement are regularly reported on the news. Unemployment continues to decline. Consumer confidence is generally on the rise. The housing crisis appears to have stabilized. The price of oil has given many a freedom to go and […]
(Nov. 2) – The dramatic fall in global poverty over the past two decades is the best news in the world today. For the first time ever, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty – now defined as living on less than US$1.90 a day – is projected to fall below 10% this year, […]
(Nov. 2) – Working together and with an advisory board of scholars, the Salvation Army and the Lilly School have created a real-time Human Needs Index drawn from service provision tracking systems maintained by more than 7,000 Salvation Army sites nationwide. The index provides useful insight into consumption of an array of emergency services (e.g., […]
(Nov. 2) – The recent campaigns to push for an increase in minimum wage rates across the United States have attracted much media coverage. The state of New York is making moves to approve a $15 per hour floor, joining Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. There is growing support for ensuring minimal income levels […]
(Nov. 1) – You might expect a photo contest about poverty to be depressing. But it’s not. And if you’re a skeptic, all you need to do is look at entries in the annual contest about poverty that’s been run by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) for the past 10 years.
(Oct. 29) – In some political circles, it is automatically assumed that the War on Poverty was a failure. At the National Urban League conference in July of 2015, former governor of Florida and presidential candidate Jeb Bush described the War on Poverty as a “decades-long effort [that] while well intentioned, has been a losing […]
(Oct. 29) – Growing up poor has wide-ranging negative effects. Depending on where they live, America’s poor children are less likely to have access to good public schools and less likely to earn higher wages later in life. In children, poverty is also linked to slower brain development (which further worsens academic performance) and health […]
(Oct. 29) – According to an economic study released this month, poverty-reducing programs such as food stamps and housing vouchers are almost twice as effective as originally estimated. Using government administrative records for the state of New York, University of Chicago economist Bruce Meyer and CERGE-EI’s Nikolas Mittag were able to test the accuracy of […]
(Oct. 27) – It’s a concept as simple as it is harrowing: put poverty-stricken U.S. towns where everyone can see them. Through a series of black-and-white images, captured in sharp detail what numbers and statistics cannot, the embodied realness of a place, as it appears to those who live there.