Poverty, by America

The first chapter begins in a Newark courthouse, where a man ceded control of his two older children in order to retain custody of the third and youngest. Desmond sees this as emblematic of the brutal choices people have to make while living in poverty. Being poor technically means being unable to afford basic necessities. People thus fall under the poverty line if their income is not sufficient to cover the total cost of food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, and other core human needs.

The idea of the poverty line risks turning people into statistics, and so to put a human face on poverty, Desmond turns to Crystal Mayberry, who was born into an abusive household and placed in foster care at a young age. Shuffling among various homes, she began to exhibit symptoms of mental illness and became eligible for a small supplementary income. Upon finding an apartment, the cost of rent squeezed out other necessities, and after being evicted due to inability to pay, she was disqualified from housing assistance. Her mental illness also contributed to violent behaviors that made it even harder for her to secure a residence. She then lost her government income, after which she became homeless and had no options for money other than sex work.

For Desmond, this story illustrates a few core facts about poverty. The first is that poverty entails acute physical pain, with causes including long hours of menial labor, unsafe working conditions, a lack of medical care, and brushes with violence. Poverty is trauma, often leading to substance abuse and psychological disorders. Poverty is instability, where secure housing and employment are rare. Poverty is fear of loss, including for those who hover above the formal poverty line but may dip below it at any moment or for those already below it but who may sink even further into extreme poverty.

Millions of Americans have a standard of living that most think exists only in the most desperate regions of the developing world. Poverty is unfreedom, given the likelihood of a poor person becoming incarcerated and the law often criminalizing poverty and homelessness so that they become second-class citizens. Poverty is embarrassment, the humiliation of prostrating before officials for meager handouts and feeling invisible in a society that barely even recognizes that a problem exists. Poverty diminishes life itself, inflicting levels of stress and disorientation commensurate with sleeplessness or alcohol abuse.

However, poverty is not just one thing for everyone, as race can make it slightly better or worse for different groups. Black and Hispanic families are more likely to live in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of poverty, with worse-performing schools and higher levels of crime. In short, poverty is a systemic problem connected to every other social ill, and it poses a severe threat to the health and dignity of millions of citizens within the world’s most powerful and prosperous country.

Chapter 2 compares extraordinary developments in medicine and technology with poverty statistics that have barely moved in half a century. Overall living standards have risen, and more technologies are available for more people, but that has not translated into greater percentages of people being able to afford basic needs.

One common explanation is the advent of “neoliberalism,” a bipartisan commitment to slashing the welfare state in order to empower the free market. However, welfare spending has increased in the period associated with neoliberalism, mostly due to rising healthcare costs but other programs as well. Part of the solution that Desmond identifies is that federal antipoverty programs give states wide discretion in how they spend the money, and many of their expenses have had little to do with poverty. They may also decide not to spend it at all, and because states frequently reject disability claims, a large percentage of such awards go to the lawyers who were necessary to secure payment in the first place.

It is common to blame immigrants for welfare costs rising even as the availability of benefits remains stagnant, both now and throughout American history. In reality, poverty rates have not gone up even as immigration has increased, and in some of the states with the highest number of immigrants, rates of poverty went down. This is partially because immigrants exhibit higher degrees of economic mobility, and their main competition for jobs is with one another, not with native-born workers. When there are not enough undocumented migrants to fill other kinds of jobs, the jobs tend to go to machines rather than native-born workers. Immigrants on average rely less on welfare programs, which they either do not qualify for or fear to seek out lest it put them in danger.

Another possible culprit is the increase in single-parent households, which are more prone to poverty than two-parent households. However, this same correlation does not hold outside the United States, especially in countries that make substantial investments in daycare and paid family leave. Marriage, as well as homeownership, is more available to those who have already achieved a degree of financial security, rather than a means of moving from the lower class to the middle class. Incarceration, which disproportionately affects the poor, also contributes to the breakup of families and compounds their financial struggles. Welfare programs punish two-parent households or even living with relatives.

Some argue that graduating from high school, getting a job, and waiting for marriage to have children is a formula for success, but Black families who follow those steps have less success than white ones, and trying to resolve poverty is a better way to deal with the problem than funneling the poor into marriage. Ultimately, the root of poverty is systems in place that knowingly perpetuate it.