The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives (50 page)

To avoid cluttering my text with footnotes, I decided not to footnote these individual interviews. Endnotes are, thus, reserved for written sources and secondary sources. Where no sourcing is given, readers should assume that the interview was conducted by me, either in person or via telephone. At times, I have quoted both from the works of published authors and also from personal interviews with them. Where their work is being quoted, I cite with endnotes; where there is no endnote, readers should assume the quote is from an interview.

Many of the interviews for this book are archived in an oral history audio archive that I set up in 2011. Titled
The Voices of Poverty
, it is accessible online at
www.thevoicesofpoverty.org
.

The website contains detailed geographic information on poverty, as well as thematic lists of stories, thus allowing audiences to gain detailed information on such topics as housing and poverty, healthcare and poverty, and unemployment and poverty. Though most of the stories on the site are in the form of recorded interviews between me and interviewees, some are user-submitted stories. In my book, with one exception, I have only used the
Voices of Poverty
stories that I myself conducted the interviews for.

The American Way of Poverty
is divided into two parts. Broadly speaking, the first part of the book tells the stories of the impoverished people I met around the country, whereas the second part of the book maps out a broad set of policy discussions and connections between issues that any meaningful national-level attempt to tackle poverty will have to include. Themes include tax reform, the welfare system, wages, access to healthcare, changes that could be made in the criminal justice system, changes in how America deals with addiction and mental illness, reforms in the foster care system, and many other areas that overlap with poverty. My intent in this section was not to write a complete, in-depth policy analysis of all of these themes—such a project would run to many volumes and would, I fear, scare off most of my readers. Rather, my aim was to draw a series of sketches, first drafts of what I hope will develop out of this book as far more detailed conversations.

The two parts of the book are somewhat self-contained; readers who want to viscerally experience American poverty via stories from the poor themselves may read only the first section; those more interested in the policy side of the story might read the second part instead. My hope, of course, is that many of my readers will end up reading both.

Notes

PROLOGUE

1.
Michael Harrington,
The Other America: Poverty in the United States
(New York: Touchstone, 1997).

2.
Richard Parker,
John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 481.

3.
See
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/housedebt/
.

4.
Peter Edelman,
So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America
(New York: The New Press, 2012), 29.

5.
Jeannette Wicks-Lim, “The Great Recession in Black Wealth,” Amherst, Massachusetts, Political Economy Research Institute, January 29, 2012.

6.
See
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/aug/22/imperial-valley-unemployment-rate-tops-30-percent/
. For a good discussion of Imperial County’s economic condition and the prevalence of low-wage employment, see also
http://www.rohan.sdsu.edu/~jgerber/docs/Explaining_low_income.pdf
.

7.
Patricia Lesko,
Huffington Post
, August 22, 2012. Available at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patricia-lesko/detroit-childhood-poverty_b_1299269.html
.

8.
See
http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com/2011/10/poverty-skyrockets-in-new-orleans-65-of.html
. For a more general display of New Orleans’s poverty data, see
http://www.nationofchange.org/blogs/bill-quigley/katrina-painindex-2012-7-years-after-1346013999
.

9.
For a discussion of Philadelphia’s child poverty rates, based on U.S. Census Bureau data, see work done by Witnesses to Hunger:
http://www.witnessestohunger.org/News-Highlights/News-Highlights/72/vobId__285/
.

10.
See
http://www.in.gov/legislative/igareports/agency/reports/CCP02.pdf
.

11.
American Community Survey estimates, 2010. Northern St. Louis corresponds to Missouri’s Congressional District 1.

12.
Peter Adamson, UNICEF,
Measuring Child Poverty
, 2012. Available at
http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc10_eng.pdf
.

13.
Harrington,
The Other America
, 159.

PART ONE, CHAPTER ONE

1.
See
http://www.pusd.org/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectiondetailid=3188&
.

2.
Howard Friedman,
The Measure of a Nation: How to Regain America’s Competitive Edge and Boost our Global Standing
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012), 34. Friedman footnotes reports from the OECD and UN statistics to boost his case.

3.
Friedman credits this information to C. J. L. Murray et al., “Eight Americas: Investigating Mortality Disparities Across Races, Counties, and Race-Counties in the United States,”
Public Library of Science Medicine
3, no. 9 (2006): e260. For lists of life expectancy rates by race, gender, and state, see:
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/life-expectancy-AfricanAmerican-male
.

4.
See
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/us/23health.html
.

5.
For one example of the media coverage on this, see
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/21/science/black-scientists-study-the-pose-of-the-innercity.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
.

6.
S. Jay Olshansky, “Differences in Life Expectancy Due to Race and Educational Differences Are Widening, and Many May Not Catch Up,” available at
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/31/8/1803.abstract
. Olshansky is a professor of public health at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

7.
Kristin Lewis and Sarah Burd-Sharpes,
The Measure of America 2010–2011
(New York: NYU Press, 2010), 63.

8.
2010 U.S. Census Bureau data.

9.
Credit Suisse Research Network,
Global Wealth Report 2011
, 17.

10.
Merrill Lynch and Capgemini,
World Wealth Report
, 2011. Available at
http://www.us.capgemini.com/services-and-solutions/by-industry/financialservices/solutions/wealth/worldwealthreport
.

11.
See
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/20/us-incomes-falling-asoptimism-reaches-10-year-low_n_1022118.html
.

12.
This has been widely documented. For particularly good discussions of the problem, see
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-need/unemployed-need-not-apply/10736/
,
and also
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/business/help-wanted-ads-exclude-the-long-term-jobless.html
.

13.
John Rawls,
A Theory of Justice
(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971).

14.
Taskforce on Economic Growth and Opportunity, Chamber of Commerce,
The Concept of Poverty
(Washington, D.C., 1965), 2–3.

15.
Ibid. For the purposes of the Chamber’s study, 1929 incomes were translated to correspond to their value in 1963 dollars.

16.
See
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57343397/census-data-half-of-u.s-poor-or-low-income/
.

17.
Inflation calculators show that a dollar in 1963 converts to $7.52 in 2012, during the writing of this book. For Census information, see
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0692.pdf
.

18.
Edelman,
So Rich, So Poor
, 25.

19.
See
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0692.pdf
.

20.
See
http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105
.

21.
Thomas Picketty and Emmanuel Saez, “The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective,”
Working Paper
11955, National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2006. Available at
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups//files/04/37/65/f043765/public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN027111.pdf
.

22.
See
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2010.pdf
.

23.
See
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57343397/census-data-half-of-u.s-poor-or-low-income/
.

24.
See
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0908-06.htm
.

25.
Associated Press, “Labor Productivity Rises 1.6%,” August 8, 2012. Productivity numbers are calculated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

26.
See
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=POVERTY
.

27.
See
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_Politics/October_Poll.pdf
, particularly questions 29b and 30. Also se
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301–503544_162–20125515-503544/poll-43-percent-agree-with-views-of-occupy-wall-street/
.

28.
See
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/03/americans_inequality.html
.

29.
See
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/2011/07/26/sen-lee-obamas-class-warfare-wont-solve-debt-problem
.

30.
See
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/18/rep-ryan-accuses-obama-waging-class-warfare-with-millionaire-tax-plan/#ixzz1oCX81VoC
.

31.
See
http://www.newshounds.us/2011/09/21/multimillionaires_hannity_and_palin_lecture_warren_buffett_over_tax_increases_for_the_wealthy_.php
.

PART ONE, CHAPTER TWO

1.
See
http://www.census.gov/population/www/pop-profile/poverty.html
.

2.
See
http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p60-219.pdf
.

3.
The poverty rate was 22.4 percent in 1959; it began to go down in the early 1960s, as President Kennedy began implementing modest anti-poverty efforts. The decline accelerated under both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, reaching an all-time low of 11.1 percent in 1973.

4.
Randy Albelda, “Different Anti-Poverty Program, Same Single-Mother Poverty,”
Dollars and Sense
, February 2012.

5.
In 1991, Harvard University economist Juliet Schor reported that U.S. manufacturing employees worked, on average, 320 hours more per year than did their peers in Germany and France.
The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure
(New York: Basic Books, 1992).

6.
See
http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p60-229.pdf
.

7.
See
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33069.pdf
.

8.
See
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68729.html#ixzz1oIK1iA5Y
.

9.
See
http://www.mediaite.com/online/rush-limbaugh-is-upset-about-romney-not-caring-about-the-very-poor-but-for-a-different-reason/
.

10.
See
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/11/28/ny_times_democrats_not_interested_in_voters_who_work_target_losers_instead
.

11.
See
http://www.usnews.com/news/washington-whispers/articles/2011/10/18/tea-party-budget-cuts-9-trillion
.

12.
See
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/11/house_pell_grants.html
.

13.
See
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/12/19/v-print/133530/sen-demints-deficit-cutting-plan.html
.

14.
David Cay Johnston,
Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)
(New York: Penguin, 2007).

15.
Ibid., 277.

16.
For a fuller discussion of Detroit’s poverty rate, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/opinion/blow-santorum-exalts-inequality.html
.

17.
See Economic Hardship Reporting Project, interview with Peter Edelman, May 29, 2012.

18.
I first wrote about the situation in Longview here: Sasha Abramsky, “No Country for Middle-Aged Men,”
Mother Jones
, May/June 2009.

19.
See
http://livinglies.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/3-million-more-on-the-brink-of-foreclosure/
.

PART ONE, CHAPTER THREE

1.
Charles Booth, section on “The Church of England,”
Life and Labour of the People in London: Volume on Inner South London
(London: MacMillan, 1902), 65.

2.
For a broader discussion of Southern poverty and its implications for the tax system, see Katherine Newman and Rourke O’Brien,
Taxing the Poor: Doing Damage to the Truly Disadvantaged
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011).

3.
Ibid., 141–142.