Food stamps. Unemployment benefits. Social security. Earned income tax credits. Do these social welfare programs work? Yes, according to a new study from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Safety nets like food stamps prevent millions more people from struggling to put food on the table, says Jake Grovum, who analyzed the data for the Pew Charitable […]
How big of an issue is poverty in America today, and what are the most effective ways to address it? Is America still the great land of opportunity — where if you work hard and play by the rules, you can make it? This week is the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration […]
The good news is that President Obama appears to have decided to devote the rest of his presidency to trying to tackle the forces behind the yawning inequities that have hamstrung social and economic mobility, eroding the living standards of the middle class. The bad news is that he may not be up to the […]
When people visit with friends and neighbors in southern West Virginia, where paved roads give way to dirt before winding steeply up wooded hollows, the talk is often of lives that never got off the ground. “How’s John boy?” Sabrina Shrader, 30, a former neighbor, asked Marie Bolden one cold winter day at what Ms. […]
It’s no secret that the American middle class has been on the ropes for a while now. The problem isn’t just a crippling recession and an economic “recovery” that has mostly gone to the richest one percent, but the larger shifting of wealth from the middle to the very top that’s taken place since the […]
