So Rich, So Poor

Why are nearly 50 million people in the richest nation in the world counted as poor and what do we need to do to change that? Peter Edelman, once a top aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and a lifelong advocate on these issues, looks at the economic and political history of the past half century and offers some answers. We have taken important positive steps without which 25 to 30 million more people would be poor, but poverty has fluctuated with the business cycle. The answer lies primarily in the fundamental restructuring of the economy that stultified wage growth for half of America's workers, with even worse results at the bottom and for people of color, and bestowed billions on those at the top. Also critical are the steep increase in the number of single-parent families and the continuing impact of race and gender.

Edelman examines the flood of low-wage work, the astonishing and rapidly growing number of people who exist with incomes below half the poverty line, and the special problem of those, primarily African-Americans, who live in high-poverty urban neighborhoods. He takes a particular look at the continuing crisis of young people, especially young people of color, whose possibility of a productive life is lost on their way to adulthood. This is a book for anyone who wants to understand the American dilemma of the twenty-first century: why so much poverty when we are so wealthy?