Myths about poverty can have serious consequences for real people. In the 11th week of this class, we examine and debunk some of those myths. If you are concerned about poverty and inequality in this country, we invite you to go through the practice with us. If you think you already know enough about poverty in this country, you may realize that there is still so much about it you don’t know. If you fear that more facts about poverty will only make you more frustrated (because you don’t think there is anything you can do), think again. You may scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and check out stories of the 2018 MacArthur Geniuses who are recognized for their creative work in helping the poor (or the ones who would plunge into poverty due to mass incarceration). These stories show that everybody can do something to help, however small it may seem at first. It just takes a bit of imagination to figure out what it might be.
Before we proceed, it’s also worth pointing out that, according to a New York Times report from 2017,
The median family income of a student from Georgetown is $229,100, and 74% come from the top 20 percent. About 1.9% of students at Georgetown came from a poor family but became a rich adult.
I suspect that such a demographic distribution is reflected in the students in this very class. It’s important, I believe, to have my students realize that a lot of those poor kids who didn’t end up in a place like Georgetown for very complicated reasons and that they themselves got here not simply because they worked hard.
Here is what the students are asked to do.
Preparations (for class on Nov.8):
- Study the UN report on “extreme poverty” in US, June-July 2018.
- Listen to any one episode from On The Media’s podcast series, “Busted: America’s Poverty Myths” and see if you can connect it with the UN report.
- Find and study reports of UN ambassador Nikki Haley’s dismissal of the UN report.
Assignment, due 2 hours before class: Write a one-page report, in which you
- single out what you take to be one misconception or myth about poverty in US that can have serious practical implications, and
- debunk it with any (combination) of the tools you’ve obtained since Oct.25 as well as the ones obtained before then. You may use graphs, videos, etc. to present a compelling case.
In what follows, I point to some materials that may facilitate a more critical and thoughtful reflection on the history, status quo, and future of poverty in US.
To begin, here is Radiolab’s consolidated, wonderfully reconstituted version of On The Media’s series mentioned above.
Here is an extended panel discussion about the UN report, with one of the four panelists being Philip Alston (current UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, who produced the report), “Poverty and Inequality in America under Trump: Human Rights under Threat”:
The following are a few audios and videos that supplement some particularly notable points made in the UN report.
[1] measuring poverty
On p.6 of the report, the report mentions the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), as adopted by the United States Census Bureau to get a more realistic estimate of poverty in US. The report refers to the 2016 SPM rate of 14.0 percent. (The Census Bureau now has the 2017 SPM rate as 13.9, which it says is “not statistically different” from the former.) NPR-Planet Money’s Indicators gave this quick “Snapshot Of Poverty In America” that refers to the 2017 SPM rate:
[2] poverty and justice
The report points out the US government’s “reliance on criminalization to conceal the underlying poverty problem” and “persistent discrimination and poverty” (pp.12-17), both of which may be included among the structural causes of poverty. So, as Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy (2014), puts it, the opposite of poverty is justice–especially racial justice.
And here is a longer (definitely worth your time), captivating interview on the subject with Stevenson from The Ezra Klein Show:
And,to give the whole thing a little historical context, check out this episode from Scene On Radio’s series Seeing White:
[3] poverty and health care
The report also points out how the lack of health care—particularly dental care—can contribute to poverty: “Poor oral hygiene and disfiguring dental profiles lead to unemployability in many jobs” (p.12). As it is explained in this New York Times’ Upshot piece, dental inequality can have negative economic implications. So, it also makes sense for Dr. Leana Wen, the Baltimore City Health Commissioner, to think that the opposite of poverty is health:
[4] poverty NOT a character problem
The report finds it “striking how much weight is given to caricatured narratives about the purported innate differences between rich and poor that are consistently peddled by some politicians and media” (p.6). Check out these two TED talks.
The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn’t True | Mia Birdsong
Poverty isn’t a lack of character; it’s a lack of cash | Rutger Bregman
The art piece on the left,
“The Real Game of American Life” by Kim Testone,
vividly illustrates how hard it is for the disadvantaged to get ahead in this country.
(The photo was taken on Oct.13, 2018, when the artwork was exhibited at the Torpedo Factory, Alexandria, VA. Click the image to see details.)
[5] intergenerational poverty
We find this statement on p.5 of the report: “The United States now has one of the lowest rates of intergenerational social mobility of any of the rich countries. Zip codes, which are usually reliable proxies for race and wealth, are tragically reliable predictors of a child’s future employment and income prospects. High child and youth poverty rates perpetuate the intergenerational transmission of poverty very effectively, and ensure that the American dream is rapidly becoming the American illusion.” To this we should add that, according to a recent study led by Raj Chetty, “black Americans have substantially lower rates of upward mobility and higher rates of downward mobility than whites, leading to large income disparities that persist across generations,” and these different patterns of intergenerational mobility are not explained by differences in ability.
The following podcasts and videos speak to this situation from various angles:
We can end poverty, but this is why we haven’t | Teva Sienicki
How America’s public schools keep kids in poverty | Kandice Sumner
And make sure to check out This American Life’s two-part investigative report “The Problem We All Live With“ (i.e. segregated schools, which disproportionally affect minority students), by the Award-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones.
[6] poverty and technology
The report also briefly mentions the negative impact that technologies can have on the lives of the poor (p.5). Probably no one has talked about this more than Virginia Eubanks, author of Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (2018, reviewed at NYT and Harper’s Magazine, among other venues). She coins the term “Digital Poorhouse” to describe the situation. Here are two interviews with her.
PBS-The Open Mind: Automating Inequality – Virginia Eubanks
Masters of Data Podcast: Fighting Data-Driven Inequality—Virginia Eubanks
[7] poverty and democracy
Pointing to both overt and covert disenfranchisements in US, the report observes that “people living in poverty, minorities and other disfavoured groups are being systematically deprived of their right to vote” and that, due to “the perception that election outcomes will have no impact on the lives of poor people,” there is “the broader absence of party representation for low-income and working-class voters” (p.7). This observation of low electoral participation among the poor has been well known among political scientists and analysts. See, for instance, the various study-based analyses from 1990, 2009, 2015, 2017, and 2018. Elected officials are almost never from low-income neighborhoods. One rare exception is the youngest ever representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York’s 14th Congressional District, who worked as a waitress and reportedly couldn’t afford a D.C. apartment before drawing her first salary as a congresswoman.
[8] poverty and policy
To appreciate the report’s observation of this country’s “illusory emphasis on employment” (p.9) and “use of fraud as a smokescreen” (p.10), as well as the judgment that “the persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power” (p.7), it will be helpful to delve some ways into the history of this country’s complicated relation to poverty.
<1> LBJ’s War on Poverty initiatives (1964-), then and now.
<2> The Poor People’s Campaign, started as MLK’s final dream (1967-68), the continuation of which is captured in the following two radio segments:
<3> Ronald Reagan’s attack on welfare and on the poor: the myth of “welfare queen” (1976), which left lasting damages, especially on poor children, and which continues to be exploited by republicans to promote policies that threaten to widen the gap between the rich and the poor.
<4> Bill Clinton’s Welfare Reform (1996), with an account of its effect on American poverty, in 9 charts and of how welfare has changed since then, in 3 charts, accompanied by this radio episode:
NPR-Marketplace’s Wealth & Poverty Desk—The Uncertain Hour, season 1 is dedicated to the history of the 1996 welfare reform and the surprising ways in which the welfare program is implemented in different states. The season kicks off with this really interesting, must-listen episode (The Magic Bureaucrat) on how a welfare-hating bureaucrat from the suburban Irvine, CA, launched the welfare reform movement:
Now that you’ve known a bit more about poverty in this country, is there anyway for you to translate some of that knowledge into action? Well, first you need to think small — as Freakonomics’ Stephen Dubner explains it in this “Think small to solve big problems” talk:
Once you’ve got a small enough, actionable issue to address, ask yourself what you are good at and can contribute–trust that you definitely have some skills and resources you can use to help others. To be inspired, check out the following stories of two MacArthur fellows from the 2018 cohort.
Vijay Gupta (Los Angeles, CA), violinist and social justice advocate, is recognized for “providing musical enrichment and valuable human connection to the homeless, incarcerated, and other under-resourced communities in Los Angeles.” Here is him explaining how he co-founded the non-profit “Street Symphony” that plays for the homeless and mentally ill living on Skid Row:
Raj Jayadev (San Jose, CA), community organizer and co-founder of Silicon Valley De-Bug (2001-), is recognized for “creating a model of grassroots collective action that gives individuals facing incarceration, their families, and their communities an active role in their defense.” Here is him explaining his work and its impact: