Fifty years after major initiatives under War on Poverty
legislation, poverty and inequality persist in the U.S. The
safety net provides important income support and services for
families in need. It also creates opportunities for low-income
families to break the poverty cycle.
Drawing on unique survey data from almost 1,500 faith-based and
secular service organizations in three cities, a book by Poverty
and Place conference presenter Scott W. Allard examines which
agencies are most accessible to poor populations and looks at the
profound impact of unstable funding on assistance programs.
Millions of people live in poverty in this country. They suffer
not only material deprivation, but also the hardships and
diminished life prospects that come with being poor. In
recognition of these challenges, the Brookings Institution has
commissioned fourteen innovative, evidence-based antipoverty
proposals through its Hamilton Project.
A large portion of California’s rural poor live in the Central
Valley, a population characterized by high levels of Hispanic
migrant farmworkers and English learners. A recent study found
that out of 65 rural California towns, labor-intensive
agriculture contributes to poverty and welfare demands in rural
communities by attracting large numbers of unskilled foreign
workers and offering most of them poverty-level wages.[1] In the
65 towns, 28 percent of the residents live in households with
below-poverty incomes. Moreover, the same study projected the
population to reach 12 million by 2025.
From 1900 through the 1960s, millions of black Americans moved
northward during The Great Migration toward economic
opportunity and away from Jim Crow in the South. However,
over the last few decades many of those destination cities
in the north have fared poorly.
