Book Review: ‘The Other America: Poverty in the United States’ (original) (raw)

AMERICA'S STRUGGLE AGAINST POVERTY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

James T. Patterson I thank two able research assistants, both graduate students at Brown University, Robert Fleegler and Andrew Huebner, for their considerable help in preparing this new edition. researched papers and articles on a range of subjects relating to poverty. The IRP sponsored an important conference in December 1984 at Williamsburg, Virginia, featuring leading writers on poverty; their papers have proved of great value to me. I thank Aida Donald, Harvard University Press, for suggesting that I update this book. I also thank

Poverty in the US Its Portrait, Our Response

The US congressional shift toward conservative fiscal policies in the last 35 years has widened the gap between the rich and the rest of us. This article takes a close look at the dynamics of bi-partisan politics as well as the relationship between politics and religion, race, class, and education as they lend themselves to the ever widening gap between the US elite and the poor. The article concludes with a call for progressive Christians to organize and collaborate with progressive politicians and reclaim the Bible as authentic social gospel.

Robert Heilbroner and the Growing Concern with Poverty in the US

Forum for Social Economics, 2008

This paper examines Robert Heilbroner’s 1950 article in Harper’s Magazine on poverty in the USA. It argues that this piece was the first attempt to raise popular concerns about poverty in the USA after World War II, and in many ways sought to do what John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society and Michael Harrington’s The Other America accomplished. Heilbroner was not successful in bringing the issue before poverty to public attention because he wrote at a time of great economic growth and at a time before TV brought images and ideas to a large fraction of the American public. He also wrote in a very conservative era, where McCarthyism reared its ugly head and where calls to eradicate poverty were met with intimations of a Communist conspiracy.

How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the “Plague” of Poverty in America

The Heritage Foundation. August, 2007

Bureau found 37 million "poor" Americans. Presidential candidate John Edwards claims that these 37 million Americans currently "struggle with incredible poverty." 1 Edwards asserts that America' s poor, who number "one in eight of us…do not have enough money for the food, shelter, and clothing they need," and are forced to live in "terrible" circumstances. 2 However, an examination of the living standards of the 37 million persons, whom the government defines as "poor," reveals that what Edwards calls "the plague" 3 of American poverty might not be as "terrible" or "incredible" as candidate Edwards contends. But, if poverty means (as Edwards asserts) a lack of nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, then very few of the 37 million people identified as living "in poverty" by the Census Bureau would, in fact, be characterized as poor. Clearly, material hardship does exist in the United States, but it is quite restricted in scope and severity. The average "poor" person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines. The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports: • Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Cen