“Why the Very Poor Have Become Poorer” by Christopher Jencks (The New York Review of Books, June 9, 2016, pp. 15-17) is a review of the book $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer (2015, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Jencks is the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at Harvard and author of Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass and The Homeless.
I found the essay both interesting and disturbing. It illustrates the problem of political social thinking since the 1990s. If you combine that thinking with how politicians today, especially Republican politicians, want to reduce social welfare programs, you can see how the thinking is to shift from a “War on Poverty” to a “War on Those in Poverty.”
Regardless of how you view social welfare programs, this essay is worth reading. It provides a different way to look at how social welfare policy has evolved since the 1970s. I know I hadn’t looked at social welfare programs from quite the same perspective — not even when I was a social worker.
Why the Very Poor Have Become Poorer
by Christopher Jencks
After reading the essay, I have added Edin and Shaefer’s book to my To-Buy list.
Richard Adin, An American Editor
An American Editor 
Thank you very much for highlighting this article. I wouldn’t have found it otherwise. I am also interested in this issue and in learning how government policies affect the poor.
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Comment by Christina — June 14, 2016 @ 2:21 pm |