11.006 | Fall 2016 | Undergraduate

Poverty and Economic Security

Readings

WEEK READINGS
1 and 2

Who is Poor?” Institute for Research on Poverty. 2015.

Isserman, Maurice. “50 Years Later: Poverty and The Other America.” Dissent 59, no. 1 (2012): 83-89.

Chapter 1 in Hampden-Turner, Charles. From Poverty to Dignity; A Strategy for Poor Americans. 1974. ISBN: 9780385035354.

Chapter 1 in Stiglitz, Joseph E. The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future. WW Norton & Company, 2012. ISBN: 9780393345063.

Excerpts from Harrington, Michael. “The Other America: Poverty in the United States.” (1964): 405-407. ISBN: 9780684826783.

Harrington, Michael. Poverty: Hopeful or Hopeless (Part 1). YouTube. Accessed March 1, 2017.

Matthews, Chris. “Wealth Inequality in America: It’s Worse than You Think.” Fortune, October 31, 2014.

Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2015. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. May 2016.

Economic Report of the President (PDF).” U.S. Council of Economic Advisors. Washington, DC: US GPO. 2015.

3

How Is Poverty Measured in the United States?” Center for Poverty Research, University of California, Davis. Updated September 13, 2016.

DeNavas-Walt, Carmen, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith. “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2014 (PDF-2.2MB).” United States Census Bureau, 2015.

Deparle, Jason, Robert Gebeloff, and Sabrina Tavernise. “Calculating Poverty.” The New York Times. November 4, 2011.

Rector, Robert, and Rachel Sheffield. “Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?” The Heritage Foundation (2011).

THE WORKING POOR

Lichter, Daniel T., Scott R. Sanders, and Brian C. Thiede. “The Challenge of Measuring “Working Poverty” in America. Scholars Strategy Network. 2015.

Urban Institute and the Working Poor: Low-Income Working Families.

THE TRULY POOR

Moore, Suzanne. “Instead of Being Disgusted by Poverty, We Are Disgusted by Poor People Themselves.” The Guardian. February 15, 2012.

Holland, Joshua. “Why Americans Hate Welfare.” Bill Moyers and Company. March 6, 2014.

THE NEWLY POOR

Chen, Vitor Tan. “All Hollowed Out: The Lonely Poverty of America’s White Working Class.” The Atlantic. January 16, 2016.

Case, Anne, and Angus Deaton. “Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife Among White Non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st Century.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 49 (2015): 15078-15083.

Isidore, Chris. “Wealthiest Americans Say the Poor Have It Easy.” CNN Money. January 30, 2015.

The United States Wealth Report. 2015.

4

Chapters 3 and 5 in Iceland, John. Poverty in America: A Handbook. University of California Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780520276369.

Chapter 5 in Wilson, William J. More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. WW Norton & Company, 2009. ISBN: 9780393337631.

David, Autor, and Melanie Wasserman. “Wayward Sons: The Emerging Gender Gap in Labor Markets and Education.” Third Way Report (2013).

Tavernise, Sabrina. “Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U.S.The New York Times. May 17, 2012.

Deparle, Jason, Robert Gebeloff, and Sabrina Tavernise. “Voices of the Near Poor.” The New York Times. November 19, 2011.

WOMEN AND POVERTY

Analysis of the 2014 Census Poverty Data.” National Women’s Law Center. 2015.

ELDERLY AND POVERTY

Teresa Ghilarducci

Ghilarducci, Teresa. By 2050, There Could Be as Many as 25 Million Poor Elderly Americans.” The Atlantic. December 30, 2015.

Baer, David, Ellen O’Brien, and Ke Bin Wu. “Older Americans in Poverty: A Snapshot (PDF - 2.2MB).” AARP Public Policy Institute. 2010.

DISABLED AND POVERTY

How Is Poverty Status Related to Disability?” Center for Poverty Research, University of California, Davis. 2015.

Ekman, Lisa, Shawn Fremstad, and Rebecca Vallas. “A Fair Shot for Workers with Disabilities (PDF).” Center for American Progress. January 28, 2015.

Fessler, Pam. “Why Disability and Poverty Still Go Hand in Hand 25 Years After Landmark Law.” Shots: Health News from NPR. National Public Radio. July 23, 2015.

5

Isserman, Andrew. “Socioeconomic Review of Appalachia Then and Now: An Update of the ‘Realities of Deprivation’ Reported to the President in 1964.” Appalachian Regional Commission. November 1996.

Krogstad, Jens Manuel. “How the Geography of U.S. Poverty Has Shifted Since 1960.” Pew Research Center. September 10, 2015.

Sharkey, Patrick. “After the Great Migration: Inheriting Disadvantage by Staying in Place.” Policy Brief. 2: 7. Center for Poverty Research, University of California, Davis. 2013.

How Does Geography Relate to Poverty?” Center for Poverty Research, University of California, Davis. 2015.

Opportunity Nation. Opportunity Index.

Leonhardt, David. “In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters.” The New York Times. July 22, 2013.

Professor X. “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower.” The Atlantic. June 2008.

Tough, Paul. “Who Gets to Graduate?The New York Times Magazine. May 15, 2014.

THE WEALTHY IN AMERICA

Isidore, Chris. “Wealthiest Americans Say the Poor Have It Easy.” CNN Money. January 30, 2015.

Sherman, Erik. “Where the Super Rich Live in America in 2015.” Fortune. December 6, 2015.

The United States Wealth Report. 2015.

Nye, James. “Where America’s Rich Folk Live (and it’s not New York City): Fascinating Map of U.S. Reveals Areas with Highest Concentration of Wealthy People.” The Daily Mail. February 13, 2013.

RURAL POVERTY

Poverty Dynamics.” United States Department of Agriculture: Economic Research Service.

Geography of Poverty.” United States Department of Agriculture: Economic Research Service.

Gurley, Lauren. “Why the Left Isn’t Talking about Rural American Poverty.” In These Times: Rural America. October 22, 2015.

6

Chapter 1 in Lareau, Annette, and Dalton Conley, eds. Social Class: How Does It Work? Russell Sage Foundation, 2008. ISBN: 9780871545077.

Pages 11-43 in Noah, Timothy. The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2012. ISBN: 9781608196357.

Chapter 1 in Duberman, Lucille. Social Inequality: Class and Caste in America. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. December 1976.

Chapters 1, and 7 in Alexander, Karl, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson. The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood. Russell Sage Foundation, 2014. ISBN: 9780871540331.

Chapter 5 in Wilson, William J. More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. WW Norton & Company, 2009. ISBN: 9780393337631.

7

Chapter 4 in Stiglitz, Joseph E. The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future. W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. ISBN: 9780393345063.

Pages 129-149 in Lardner, James, and David Alden Smith, eds. Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and Its Poisonous Consequences. New Press, 2005. ISBN: 9781595581754.

Leonhardt, David. “Old vs. Young.” The New York Times. June 22, 2012.

Appelbaum, Binyamin. “Where Wealth Declined Most (and an Income Riddle).” The New York Times. June 11, 2012.

Pursuing the American Dream: Economic Mobility Across Generations (PDF).” The Pew Charitable Trusts: Economic Mobility Project. July 2012.

8

Greenstone, Michael, Adam Looney, Jeremy Patashnik, and Muxin Yu. “Thirteen Economic Facts About Social Mobility and the Role of Education.” The Hamilton Project: Brookings Institution. June 26, 2013.

Country Boys. Frontline. January 2006.

Professor X. “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower.” The Atlantic. June 2008.

DeParle, Jason. “For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall.” The New York Times. December 22, 2012.

Kahlenberg, Richard D. “The Untapped Pool of Low-Income Strivers.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. March 19, 2013.

Lederman, Doug. “Higher Ed: Engine of Inequity.” Inside Higher Ed. July 31, 2013.

Chapter 1 and 6 in Bok, Derek. Higher Education in America. Princeton University Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780691165585.

Professor X. “An Anti-College Backlash? The Atlantic. March 31, 2011.

9

Chapters 1, 2, and 6 in Kasnitz, Philip, John H. Mollenkopf, Mary C. Waters, and Jennifer Holdaway. Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age. Russell Sage Foundation, 2009. ISBN: 9780871544780.

Chapter 3 in Saunders, Doug. Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History is Reshaping Our World. Vintage, 2011. ISBN: 9780307388568.

10 and 11

Dobbs, R. A., J. Manyika Madgavkar, J. Woetzel, J. Bughin, E. Labaye, and P. Kashyap. “Poorer Than Their Parents? A New Perspective on Income Inequality.” McKinsey & Company. July 2016.

Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. “Inequality in the Long Run.” Science 344, no. 6186 (2014): 838-843.

Chapter 1 in Hirschl, Thomas A., and Kirk A. Foster. Chasing the American Dream: Understanding What Shapes Our Fortunes. Oxford University Press, 2014. ISBN: 9780190467029.

Chapter 10 in Stiglitz, Joseph E. The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future. WW Norton & Company, 2012. ISBN: 9780393345063.

DeParle, Jason. “Harder for Americans to Rise from Lower Rungs.” The New York Times. January 4, 2012.

Chapters 5 and 6 in Seefeldt, Kristin S., John David Graham, Gordon Abner, and Tavis Smiley. America’s Poor and the Great Recession. Indiana University Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780253009746.

12

Pages 91-97 in Hartman, Chester W., ed. Challenges to Equality: Poverty and Race in America. ME Sharpe, 2001. ISBN: 9780765607270.

Sawhill, Isabel V. “Poverty in the US: Why is it so Persistent?Journal of Economic Literature (1988): 1073-1119.

Kenny, Charles. “We’re All the 1 Percent.” Foreign Policy. February 27, 2012.

Pages 1-30 in Collins, Daryl, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, and Orlanda Ruthven. Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 A Day. Princeton University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780691141480.

Preface, Chapter 2 in Saunders, Doug. Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History is Reshaping Our World. Vintage, 2011. ISBN: 9780307388568.

Chapters 1, 2 in Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. Public Affairs, 2012. ISBN: 9781610390934.

Davidson, Adam. “Why Are Some Countries Rich and Others Poor?Planet Money. National Public Radio. March 16, 2012.

Chapter 6 in Darling-Hammond, Linda. The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future. Teachers College Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780807749623.

Course Info

Instructor
As Taught In
Fall 2016
Learning Resource Types
Written Assignments