Ending Poverty in America with Matthew Desmond

Why does the United States, the richest country on earth, have more poverty than any other advanced democracy? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages? What perpetuates poverty and what can be done to end it? “Poverty persists,” Matthew Desmond says, “because the rest of us benefit from it.”

Matthew Desmond is a professor of sociology at Princeton University. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award. He is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of Evicted which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His latest book is Poverty, by America.


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