A Fundamental Barrier

Rich Kids Stay Rich, Poor Kids Stay Poor

By Ben Casselman and Andrew Flowers

 

On Friday, a team of researchers led by Stanford economist Raj Chetty released a paper on how growing up in poverty affects boys and girls differently. Their core finding: Boys who grow up in poor families fare substantially worse in adulthood, in terms of employment and earnings, than girls who grow up in the same circumstances. (The Washington Post has a good write-up of the paper and its implications.)

But beyond its immediate conclusions, the paper, like much of Chetty’s recent work as part of his Equality of Opportunity Project, points to a deeper truth: In the U.S., where you come from — where you grow up, how much your parents earn, whether your parents were married — plays a major role in determining where you will end up later in life.

 

Take, for example, the chart below. . .read more here.

1 in 7 continue to limp along

[Improved economy doesn't lift low-income Americans.  Harsh fact:  This economy doesn't' work the same for everyone.  We don't need more charity.  We need structural changes that reform systems.]

4 Metros Show Lower Poverty Rates, Higher Incomes

By Malcolm Burnley | September 17, 2015

 

Houston is one of four big metros where there was a notable drop in the poverty rate in 2014. (Photo by Eflon)

The national poverty rate and median income level both went unchanged in 2014, despite the economy posting better job growth than any year since Y2K. That’s one of the ominous takeaways from new figures released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau in its Current Population Survey (CPS). Those worrisome signs were then redoubled with the Bureau’s annual American Community Survey (ACS) numbers, released this morning. Essentially, the duo of data dumps portrays an economy recovering strongly from the Great Recession and yet leaving lower-income people behind.

Read entire report here.

Love defined by action

Truly Growing

If we truly are growing in love with our neighbors who are suffering at the hands of unjust systems—if that love is deep enough and authentic enough—then finding ourselves opposing those unjust systems will follow as naturally as the morning follows the night…. I don’t think we go out looking for oppressive systems to confront, like Don Quixote went out looking for windmills to attack. Our doing must flow naturally out of our being. Our doing for justice must flow naturally out of our being in love with those for whom there is no justice.

K. Killian Noe
Source: Finding Our Way Home

Add your thoughts at inward/outward

Battling poverty--the complexity

Policy makers find it very hard, if not impossible to talk to one another across the widening socio-political chasm.  This appears especially the case when it comes to poverty and its alleviation. This inability to talk in light of largely unrecognized complexities makes the following compelling for me. 

So, how do we explain and understand why people are poor in the United States?  How about this as a starting point in answering this important question?

"Despite the conflicting nature of these left and right analyses, there is a strong case to be made that they are, in fact, complementary and that they reinforce each other. What if we put it together this way? Automation, foreign competition and outsourcing lead to a decline in well-paying manufacturing jobs, which, in turn, leads to higher levels of unemployment and diminished upward mobility, which then leads to fewer marriages, a rise in the proportion of nonmarital births, increased withdrawal from the labor force, impermanent cohabitation and a consequent increase in dependence on government support."

Read Thomas B. Edsall's opinion in his complete essay, "What Makes People Poor?"