By Matthew Desmond
Why America perpetuates its own poverty
Subject
Themes
Nearly one in nine Americans live in poverty, more than 38 million people in the richest country on earth. The question is not simply why so many are poor but how the rest of us are connected to their deprivation. American poverty persists not because the nation has stopped spending on it; spending on the thirteen largest means-tested programmes rose by 237 percent between 1980 and 2017. It persists because much of that money never reaches the poor (for every TANF dollar budgeted, families receive just 22 cents), because common explanations like immigration and single parenthood collapse under scrutiny, and because poverty is actively produced through three interlocking mechanisms.
Nearly one in nine Americans live in poverty, more than 38 million people in the richest country on earth. The question is not simply why so many are poor but how the rest of us are connected to their deprivation. American poverty persists not because the nation has stopped spending on it; spending…
Poverty, by America arrived at a moment of intense national reckoning with economic inequality, published in March 2023 as pandemic-era relief programmes that had cut child poverty by more than half were being allowed to expire. The expanded Child Tax Credit, Emergency Rental Assistance, and…
Poverty in America is not merely an absence of resources but an active taking. Three forms of exploitation reinforce one another across labour, housing, and financial markets, each constraining the choices of the poor while enriching those who are not poor. Labour exploitation operates through the…
The American welfare state is not small. When measured as a share of GDP, it is the second largest in the world, after France's. But this figure is deceptive. It includes employer-sponsored health insurance, student loans, 529 college savings plans, mortgage interest deductions, and retirement…
Race does not merely correlate with poverty in America; it structures the very mechanisms that produce and sustain it. The Black-white wealth gap is as wide today as in the 1960s. The median white household holds $188,200 in net worth; the median Black household holds $24,100. A white household…
A recurring claim shapes American politics: that there are simply not enough resources to address poverty. Legislators, academics, and pundits routinely begin their remarks with the phrase "In a world of scarce resources," as though scarcity were a natural law rather than a political choice. This…
The concept of "poverty abolitionism" reframes the fight against poverty as both a political movement and a personal practice. It draws an explicit parallel with the abolition of slavery, insisting that poverty is not an inevitable feature of capitalism but a human-made condition that can be unmade…
On the tenth floor of Newark's courthouse, a fifty-five-year-old warehouse worker faces an impossible choice. He has stayed up all night pulling double shifts, sometimes snorting speedballs to stay awake, and now the state wants to take his three children. Toxicology reports make him look like a…
In 1970, 12.6 percent of Americans were poor. Two decades later, 13.5 percent. By 2010, 15.1 percent. In 2019, 10.5 percent. Graphed over half a century, the poverty rate resembles gently rolling hills, curving slightly up and slightly down but never truly improving. Smallpox was eradicated, infant…
Julio Payes, a Guatemalan immigrant living in Emeryville, California, worked eighty hours a week in 2014, splitting time between a graveyard shift at McDonald's and a temp service called Aerotek. Each job paid minimum wage. To stay awake, he loaded up on coffee and soda. His eight-year-old brother…
Consumer exploitation operates alongside labour exploitation. When people lack property or credit, they become dependent on those who have both, and a bad deal for one becomes a good deal for the other. Nowhere is this more visible than in the rental housing market. Slum exploitation has deep roots…
When COVID-19 struck, the economy lost millions of jobs, but government relief (expanded unemployment, stimulus cheques, rental assistance, the expanded Child Tax Credit) cut child poverty by more than half. There were roughly 16 million fewer Americans in poverty in 2021 than in 2018. Yet critics…
In 2020, Americans bought over 310,000 powerboats, spent more than $100 billion on their pets, and devoted $550 billion to leisure travel. The average new American home could fit three newly built English homes inside it. More than one in eight families own property besides their primary residence.…
When Leo Tolstoy moved to Moscow in 1881, he was stunned by urban poverty. He visited houses of prostitution, questioned police, and even adopted a boy who eventually ran away. The problem, he decided, was not the poor but himself and his fellow affluents. "I sit on a man's back, choking him and…
Choice is the antidote for exploitation. In 2020, 1.1 million American workers earned at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, a rate unchanged for over a decade. Nearly 5 million workers survived on the subminimum wage of $2.13, a vestige of slavery: after emancipation, restaurant…
Each year that poor children spend in a high-opportunity neighbourhood increases their income in adulthood, with younger siblings benefitting more than older ones simply from the additional time. In Montgomery County, Maryland, the housing authority randomly assigned families to different public…
By Matthew Desmond
Subject
Themes
Nearly one in nine Americans live in poverty, more than 38 million people in the richest country on earth. The question is not simply why so many are poor but how the rest of us are connected to their deprivation. American poverty persists not because the nation has stopped spending on it; spending on the thirteen largest means-tested programmes rose by 237 percent between 1980 and 2017. It persists because much of that money never reaches the poor (for every TANF dollar budgeted, families receive just 22 cents), because common explanations like immigration and single parenthood collapse under scrutiny, and because poverty is actively produced through three interlocking mechanisms.