Rachel Baack
The Poverty Paradox
Summary: In this work, social scientist Mark Robert Rank explains what he calls the structural vulnerability approach to understanding poverty in the United States. According to this approach, American poverty can be understood by looking at both individual characteristics that make it more likely that any given person will experience poverty (characteristics such as education, race, gender, parents’ socioeconomic status, etc.) and broader structural realities (especially a lack of jobs that would keep families above the poverty line) that make it so that some people will inevitably fall into poverty. Rank then offers a set of solutions that would allow the US to tackle poverty on both the individual and structural levels.
As someone with no background in economics or social policy, I found this book easy to understand and the evidence that Rank offered to support his claims well laid out.
Summary: In this work, social scientist Mark Robert Rank explains what he calls the structural vulnerability approach to understanding poverty in the United States. According to this approach, American poverty can be understood by looking at both individual characteristics that make it more likely that any given person will experience poverty (characteristics such as education, race, gender, parents’ socioeconomic status, etc.) and broader structural realities (especially a lack of jobs that would keep families above the poverty line) that make it so that some people will inevitably fall into poverty. Rank then offers a set of solutions that would allow the US to tackle poverty on both the individual and structural levels.
As someone with no background in economics or social policy, I found this book easy to understand and the evidence that Rank offered to support his claims well laid out.