On the Shelf from CCBC Libraries
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Poverty and Welfare in America
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This book closely examines controversial claims and beliefs surrounding poverty and anti-poverty programs in the United States. It authoritatively dismantles falsehoods, half-truths, and misconceptions, leaving readers with an unbiased, accurate understanding of these issues. Poverty and Welfare in America: Examining the Facts, like every book in the Contemporary Debates series, is intended to puncture rather than perpetuate myths that diminish our understanding of important policies and positions; to provide needed context for misleading statements and claims; and to confirm the factual accuracy of other assertions. This book clarifies some of the most contentious and misunderstood aspects of American poverty and the social welfare programs that have been crafted to combat it over the years. In addition to providing up-to-date data about the extent of American poverty among various demographic groups in the United States, it examines the chief causes of poverty in the 21st century, including divorce, disability, and educational shortfalls. Moreover, the book provides an evenhanded examination of the nation's social welfare agencies and the effectiveness of various social service programs managed by those agencies in addressing and reducing poverty. Features an easy-to-navigate question-and-answer format Uses quantifiable data from respected sources as the foundation for examining every issue Includes extensive Further Reading sections for each entry, providing readers with leads to conduct further research Evaluates claims made by individuals and groups of all political backgrounds and ideologies to offer an inclusive examination of poverty and welfare
Call Number: HC110.P6 W226 2019 -
Maid
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Evicted meets Nickel and Dimed in Stephanie Land's memoir about working as a maid, a beautiful and gritty exploration of poverty in America. Includes a foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich. At 28, Stephanie Land's plans of breaking free from the roots of her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer, were cut short when a summer fling turned into an unexpected pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make ends meet, and with a tenacious grip on her dream to provide her daughter the very best life possible, Stephanie worked days and took classes online to earn a college degree, and began to write relentlessly. She wrote the true stories that weren't being told: the stories of overworked and underpaid Americans. Of living on food stamps and WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) coupons to eat. Of the government programs that provided her housing, but that doubled as halfway houses. The aloof government employees who called her lucky for receiving assistance while she didn't feel lucky at all. She wrote to remember the fight, to eventually cut through the deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor. Maid explores the underbelly of upper-middle class America and the reality of what it's like to be in service to them. "I'd become a nameless ghost," Stephanie writes about her relationship with her clients, many of whom do not know her from any other cleaner, but who she learns plenty about. As she begins to discover more about her clients' lives-their sadness and love, too-she begins to find hope in her own path. Her compassionate, unflinching writing as a journalist gives voice to the "servant" worker, and those pursuing the American Dream from below the poverty line. Maid is Stephanie's story, but it's not her alone. It is an inspiring testament to the strength, determination, and ultimate triumph of the human spirit.
Call Number: HD6072.2.U5 L36 2019 -
Social Poverty
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How low-income people cope with the emotional dimensions of poverty Could a lack of close, meaningful social ties be a public--rather than just a private--problem? In Social Poverty, Sarah Halpern-Meekin provides a much-needed window into the nature of social ties among low-income, unmarried parents, highlighting their often-ignored forms of hardship. Drawing on in-depth interviews with thirty-one couples, collected during their participation in a government-sponsored relationship education program called Family Expectations, she brings unprecedented attention to the relational and emotional dimensions of socioeconomic disadvantage. Poverty scholars typically focus on the economic use value of social ties--for example, how relationships enable access to job leads, informal loans, or a spare bedroom.However, Halpern-Meekin introduces the important new concept of "social poverty," identifying it not just as a derivative of economic poverty, but as its own condition, which also perpetuates poverty. Through a careful and nuanced analysis of the strengths and limitations of relationship classes, she shines a light on the fundamental place of core socioemotional needs in our lives. Engaging and compassionate, Social Poverty highlights a new direction for policy and poverty research that can enrich our understanding of disadvantaged families around the country.
Call Number: HC110.P6 H34 2019 -
The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality
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With the latest data on income, wealth, earnings, and residential segregation by income, The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality, Tenth Edition describes a consistent pattern of growing inequality in the United States since the early 1970s. Focusing on the socioeconomic core of the American class system, author Dennis L. Gilbert examines how changes in the economy, family life, globalization, and politics are contributing to increasing class inequality.
Call Number: HN90.S6 G54 2018 -
The Color of Money
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"Read this book. It explains so much about the moment...Beautiful, heartbreaking work." --Ta-Nehisi Coates When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than one percent of the United States' total wealth. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. The Color of Money pursues the persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the black community: black banks. Studying these institutions over time, Mehrsa Baradaran challenges the myth that black communities could ever accumulate wealth in a segregated economy. Instead, housing segregation, racism, and Jim Crow credit policies created an inescapable, but hard to detect, economic trap for black communities and their banks. The catch-22 of black banking is that the very institutions needed to help communities escape the deep poverty caused by discrimination and segregation inevitably became victims of that same poverty. Not only could black banks not "control the black dollar" due to the dynamics of bank depositing and lending but they drained black capital into white banks, leaving the black economy with the scraps. Baradaran challenges the long-standing notion that black banking and community self-help is the solution to the racial wealth gap. These initiatives have functioned as a potent political decoy to avoid more fundamental reforms and racial redress. Examining the fruits of past policies and the operation of banking in a segregated economy, she makes clear that only bolder, more realistic views of banking's relation to black communities will end the cycle of poverty and promote black wealth.
Call Number: E185.8 .B24 2017
Organizations Dedicated to Fighting Poverty
Streaming Videos
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Social Class, Stratification, and Mobility in the United StatesThis program explores the evolution of social classes from immigrant roots into the six social classes prevalent today. It discusses historical class stratification determinants of wealth, occupation, education, and prestige and presents modern paradigms of the new rich which accelerate social mobility. The program also considers social inequality due to geography, poverty, and lack of opportunity; intergenerational mobility; the government’s effect on social class division; effects of law and criminal justice; and the current realities of “The American Dream."
Databases
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SocINDEX This link opens in a new window
Articles on sociology topics including criminal justice, gender studies, racial studies, social services, and social work.
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Sociology Database This link opens in a new window
Articles on sociology topics including criminal justice, gender studies, racial studies, social services, and social work.
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Social Science Database
Articles on social science topics like communication, criminology, economics, education, political science, psychology, social work, and sociology.
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ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
Articles on any subject. This is a good place to start.
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Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Articles on any subject. This is a good place to start.
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SIRS Issues Researcher This link opens in a new window
Viewpoint essays, topic essays, and news and magazine articles on controversial issues. Browse for topics or search.
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Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window
Viewpoint essays, topic essays, and news and magazine articles on controversial issues. Browse for topics or search.
Other Useful Guides
Online from CCBC Libraries
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Invisible Americans
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By official count, more than one out of every six American children live beneath the poverty line. But statistics alone tell little of the story. In Invisible Americans, Jeff Madrick brings to light the often invisible reality and irreparable damage of child poverty in America. Keeping his focus on the children, he examines the roots of the problem, including the toothless remnants of our social welfare system, entrenched racism, and a government unmotivated to help the most voiceless citizens. Backed by new and unambiguous research, he makes clear the devastating consequences of growing up poor- living in poverty, even temporarily, is detrimental to cognitive abilities, emotional control, and the overall health of children. The cost to society is incalculable. The inaction of politicians is unacceptable. Still, Madrick argues, there may be more reason to hope now than ever before. Rather than attempting to treat the symptoms of poverty, we might be able to ameliorate its worst effects through a single, simple, and politically feasible policy that he lays out in this impassioned and urgent call to arms.
Publication Date: 2020-01-28 -
Poverty in the United States
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This collection of documents contextualizes the ways in which Americans have addressed the evolving challenges of poverty throughout U.S. history. Each document is accompanied by an analysis that both summarizes its content and considers its impact. Poverty has always been a part of the fabric of American life, and this installment in the Documentary and Reference Guides series fills the gaps left by most educational treatments of the subject, beginning with an examination of poverty at the state and local levels as it was during the early 19th century. A federal plan for addressing poverty was not devised until Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the New Deal in the 1930s. As these 70 chronologically arranged documents illustrate, the unfinished business of the New Deal, interrupted by World War II, culminated in new legislation during John F. Kennedy's New Frontier and Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty; progress, however, fell victim to the Vietnam War, ushering in decades of rollbacks under presidents of both parties. Noted scholar and librarian John R. Burch Jr. provides thorough coverage of these and contemporary events throughout which poverty has endured, including the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the minimum wage debate, and the Affordable Care Act and attempts to repeal it. Analyzes primary documents to provide useful context in such areas as labor law, health care, housing, and family assistance Emphasizes state and local responses to poverty from the Founding Fathers through the early 20th century Devotes a chapter to Native Americans and the Indian removal policies and reservation system Features legislation, reports, court cases, and speeches Includes sidebars that highlight individuals or events related to the relevant time period, a guide to related documents, a chronology, and a bibliography
Publication Date: 2018-04-02 -
Behind from the Start
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Today there are nearly six million children under the age of five living in poverty in the world's richest country. Blanket statements are often tossed around in the political arena, public debate sphere, and progressive rhetoric. But the statistic remains intangible for many Americans, likelybecause the root causes, effects, and implications are multifaceted and complex, and are often hard to understand for the average American living a much different reality. What is needed is a clear and thorough discussion of this epidemic, and Behind from the Start answers that call. Author LenetteAzzi-Lessing examines what lies behind the stubbornly high rate of poverty among young children in the U.S. and the resulting consequences, both for the children themselves and for America as a whole.Behind from the Start examines the link between America's shaming, blaming, and marginalizing of poor parents, and our punitive welfare policies that jeopardize the life chances of vulnerable young children, thereby maintaining the cycle of chronic poverty. Research has shown that the experience ofpoverty in the first years of life is particularly harmful, blunting physical and brain development, increasing the risk for chronic health issues and injury, and limiting a person's lifelong capacity for learning and success. In debunking the myths that help perpetuate the cycle of poverty in theworld's richest country, Lenette Azzi-Lessing reveals how negative public and political discourse regarding poor families impacts the poorly conceived and fragmented programs intended to support them, which have in turn failed to meet their aims. She considers the cultural and political forces thatcontribute to intergenerational poverty in the U.S., the consequences for the millions of young children in families stuck at the bottom of our economy, and the beneficial impacts that would be felt country-wide in fixing some of these persistent problems.Drawing upon knowledge from diverse fields, including neuroscience, media studies, and public policy, as well as the author's experiences on the front lines as a practicing social worker, Behind from the Start offers a fresh take on this shameful problem and its solutions.
Publication Date: 2017-01-02
Poverty Podcasts
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Poverty Research and Policy
The Poverty Research & Policy Podcast is produced by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) and features interviews with researchers about poverty, inequality, and policy in the United States.
