Updating Poverty

When the official poverty numbers were released on September 10, the Census Bureau revealed that poverty is on the rise. But these figures have not told the whole story. The economic crisis has increasingly made poverty a realistic worry for many of those who thought they were safely outside its grasp. Many more families will be confronting the combination of job loss, rising debt, and economic insecurity.

One of the challenges of the fight against poverty is to identify a set of effective policies suitable for both good times and bad. Now more than ever, we need access to resources that help people move up the economic ladder and into the financial mainstream. From a policy standpoint, we may be in better shape than it seems. Even as poverty has been largely off the political agenda in recent years, it has been a time of quiet experimentation and fresh thinking. These efforts have produced a number of strategies that hold promise, such as in the fields of asset building which have identified a series of impactful incentives, policies, and programs that help families move into the economic mainstream. An additional challenge is how to see that these ideas make progress in the political context and recent experience has generated insights in this process as well.

These topics were thoroughly explored in a Special Report on Poverty in the September issue of The American Prospect. On September 8, the New America Foundation hosted four authors featured authors in the Special Report.  Asset Building Program Director Reid Cramer provided opening remarks, followed by Mark Schmitt's, editor of The American Prospect, discussion on the conceptual framework behind the Special Report's focus on a new agenda for tackling rising poverty in the U.S. Shelley Waters Boots, consulting editor for the Special Report, discussed the core principles of what a modern safety net program should offer. Associate Editor Dana Goldstein touched upon behavioral theory, with a particular focus on Mayor Bloomberg's conditional cash transfer program in New York City. Finally, Darrick Hamilton addressed the racial disparities that characterize poverty in the United States. 

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Participants

Featured speakers
Mark Schmitt
Editor, The American Prospect
"A New Agenda for Tough Times"

Shelley Waters Boots
Consulting Editor of the Special Report
"A New Agenda for Tough Times" and "A Modern Safety Net"

Reid Cramer
Director, Asset Building Program, New America Foundation
"The Assets Report 2009"

Dana Goldstein
Associate Editor, The American Prospect
"Behavioral Theory"

Darrick Hamilton
Assistant Professor at Milano, The New School for Management and Urban Policy
"Race, Wealth, and Intergenerational Poverty"