Poverty in America: New Directions and Debates

• In Event: 3110 - Between Moral Economies and Economic Moralities

Abstract

This essay promotes a poverty research agenda with three main characteristics. First, it is multi-dimensional, fully taking into account the nature of material hardship, which includes human frailty, generational trauma, family and neighborhood violence, and broken institutions. Second, a robust poverty agenda is relational, accepting that poverty is produced through connections between the truly advantaged and the truly disadvantaged. Third, a component of this sociological program is transparently normative, applying positive research to analyze poverty as a matter of justice, not just economics. Throughout, we discuss conceptual, methodological, and policy-relevant implications of this perspective on the study of extreme disadvantage in America.

Author

• Matthew Desmond, Princeton University