Few Americans see poverty as a normal state of affairs. Yet most will experience poverty and will use welfare at some point in their lives. How can this be, and how does (or should) it change the way we look at poverty in the United States?
References
1.
BartikTimothy H.“Poverty, Jobs, and Subsidized Employment.”Challenge45, 3 (2002): 100–111. An argument for the importance of labor demand policies that encourage job growth and improved wages for low-income workers.
2.
BlankRebecca. It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty.New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997. A review of the characteristics, nature and current strategies for addressing American poverty.
3.
EhrenreichBarbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001. A first-hand account of trying to survive on low-wage work in three different settings.
4.
O'ConnorAlice. Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. O'Connor critiques the dominant social science emphasis in the past 40 years on analyzing individual attributes as the primary cause of poverty.
5.
PattersonJames T.America's Struggle Against Poverty in the Twentieth Century.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. An historical overview of American social policy directed at the alleviation of poverty.
6.
RankMark R.One Nation, Underprivileged: How American Poverty Affects Us All. New York: Oxford University Press, in press. A new perspective on understanding and addressing U.S. poverty.
7.
RankMark R.HirschlThomas A.. “Rags or Riches? Estimating the Probabilities of Poverty and Affluence Across the Adult American Life Span.”Social Science Quarterly82, 4 (2001):651–669. An examination of the likelihood that Americans will experience poverty or affluence at some point during their adulthood, which suggests a new conceptualization of social stratification.
8.
RitakallioVeli-Matti. “Trends of Poverty and Income Inequality in Cross-national Comparison.” Luxembourg Income Study Working Paper, No. 272. Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, 2001. Ritakallio uses the Luxembourg Income Study to assess the effectiveness of government policy in reducing poverty among nine developed countries.
9.
SmeedingTimothy M.RainwaterLeeBurtlessGary. “U.S. Poverty in a Cross-national Context.” Pp. 162–189 in Understanding Poverty, ed. DanzigerSheldon H.HavemanRobert H.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. The authors compare the extent of poverty in the United States and other developed countries.
10.
WesternBruceBeckettKatherine. “How Unregulated Is the U.S. Market? The Penal System as a Labor Market Institution.”American Journal of Sociology104 (January 1999):1030–1060. This study shows the role that incarceration plays in lowering overall U.S. unemployment rates.
