Product Review
A revelatory account of poverty in America so deep that we, as a country, don€t think it exists
Jessica Compton€s family of four would have no cash income unless she donated plasma twice a week at her local donation center in Tennessee. Modonna Harris and her teenage daughter Brianna in Chicago often have no food but spoiled milk on weekends.Â
Jessica Compton€s family of four would have no cash income unless she donated plasma twice a week at her local donation center in Tennessee. Modonna Harris and her teenage daughter Brianna in Chicago often have no food but spoiled milk on weekends.Â
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After two decades of brilliant research on American poverty, Kathryn Edin noticed something she hadn€t seen since the mid-1990s €" households surviving on virtually no income. Edin teamed with Luke Shaefer, an expert on calculating incomes of the poor, to discover that the number of American families living on $2.00 per person, per day, has skyrocketed to 1.5 million American households, including about 3 million children.Â
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Where do these families live? How did they get so desperately poor? Edin has €œturned sociology upside down€ (Mother Jones) with her procurement of rich €" and truthful €" interviews. Through the book€s many compelling profiles, moving and startling answers emerge.Â
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The authors illuminate a troubling trend: a low-wage labor market that increasingly fails to deliver a living wage, and a growing but hidden landscape of survival strategies among America€s extreme poor. More than a powerful expos©, $2.00 a Day delivers new evidence and new ideas to our national debate on income inequality.Â
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