As in any other playoff, candidate rhetoric let loose during the U.S. presidential race can be tough. We’ve held a front row seat to the 2012 showdown for over a year, with tensions still rising as the general election looms nearer. Some of the barbs launched along the campaign trail have been laughable: Newt Gingrich’s television ad incriminating Mitt Romney for his ability to speak French comes to mind. Others are not. The dialogue surrounding U.S. poverty and inequality, two issues that are hotter than ever during a deep recession that the nation has shown incapable of simply shaking off [...]
Economy
Despite ‘recovery,’ jobs still scarce
Despite the 200,000 jobs added nationally in December, unemployment rates have only changed 0.3 percent in the last year and the U.S. still needs 10 million jobs to return to full employment. Furthermore, many more Americans work part-time involuntarily or have given up searching for work, and record numbers suffer long-term unemployment. Without dramatic changes,... »
The Empowerment Zone in Boston 2000-2009: Lessons Learned for Neighborhood Revitalization
This 10-year study of Boston’s empowerment zone suggests that this initiative was successful in revitalizing some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Its successes include the first black-owned hotel in New England in decades; assisting small and neighborhood-based businesses, and helping expand the capacity of local nonprofits. These accomplishments increased the level and quality of... »
Income Inequality: An Inconvenient Truth?
The public is becoming indifferent to the significance and growing threat of economic inequality, with fewer Americans believing the country is divided into “haves” and “have-nots.” The majority of Americans also view themselves as the “haves” at a time when nearly 1 in 2 Americans are classified as having a low income or being... »
Blacks hit hardest by recession
Middle-class African-Americans have been hit hardest by layoffs and unemployment in the last two years, according to economists and recent government data. Jobless rates for blacks have consistently been double that of whites, in part because of continuing discrimination and generally lower education levels. Additionally, blacks are one-third more likely than whites to work... »
Economy suffers as graduates return home
Recent graduates are increasingly returning home to live with their parents after college. Life at home provides young people, both employed and unemployed, with financial stability that would be difficult for them to achieve living on their own. Yet paradoxically, this thrift helps perpetuate the fragile economic conditions that made them unwilling to leave... »
Poverty levels bode ill for society
The poor serve as the proverbial canary in the coalmine, alerting others to conditions that are dangerous both economically and socially, argues Jesse Jackson. Current U.S. poverty levels indicate grave problems that are being ignored, Jackson says, as the poor are systematically isolated both by a society that denies their problems and by a... »
Business Strategy and Poverty Alleviation
The Journal of Business Ethics Entrepreneurs and corporations do not view the alleviation of global poverty as a strategic priority, even though their activities can have large negative or positive effects on poverty. Instead of expecting poverty to be reduced as a natural byproduct of successful business activities, this article argues that business must... »
Recession forces household sizes to grow
The 2010 Census found that after a 50-year decline in household size, more people are living together under the same roof. The recession, unemployment and housing crisis are currently forcing people to double up with family or friends. Increases in the numbers of immigrants and of young adults who live with their parents after... »
Innovative program in Brazil relieves economic hardship
While economic inequality is growing in the United States, it is dropping rapidly in Brazil, a country with a reputation for severe inequality. One Brazilian program that is producing benefits provides direct payments to poor families provided they meet certain conditions, among them that their children go to school and get regular medical checkups. »
Older unemployed workers face unpromising futures
A growing number of unemployed people in their 50s and 60s are struggling with finances in light of the economic downturn and its slow recovery. These laid-off workers have a hard time finding employment, and are not yet qualified for Social Security. Many have run out of savings and jobless benefits, living on the... »