No Slack: The Financial Lives of Low-Income Americans

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Title: No Slack: The Financial Lives of Low-Income Americans

Author: Michael S. Barr

Published: April 2012

Book Summary:

The financial crisis lay bare how the financial system failed the nation but left hidden the many ways in which that system still fails the most vulnerable Americans. In No Slack, Michael S. Barr explores how low- and moderate-income households cope with financial stress, use financial services to make ends meet, and often come up short.

No Slack reveals widespread problems in home mortgage lending, the common threads among people who file for bankruptcy, the reasons so many households are unbanked, and how behaviorally informed financial regulation can make the market work better. Drawing on his deep policy experience, Michael Barr advocates helping families seek financial stability in three primary ways: enhancing individuals’ financial capability, using technology to promote access to financial products and services that meet their needs, and establishing strong protections for consumers.

Available on Amazon.

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Insufficient Funds: Savings, Assets, Credit, and Banking Among Low-Income Households

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Title: Insufficient Funds: Savings, Assets, Credit, and Banking Among Low-Income Households

Author: Rebecca M. Blank & Michael S. Barr, editors

Published: January 2011

Book Summary:

One in four American adults doesn’t have a bank account. Low-income families lack access to many of the basic financial services middle-class families take for granted and are particularly susceptible to financial emergencies, unemployment, loss of a home, and uninsured medical problems. Insufficient Funds explores how institutional constraints and individual decisions combine to produce this striking disparity and recommends policies to help alleviate the problem. The authors ultimately argue that if we want to demand financial responsibility from low-income households, we have an obligation to assure that these families have access to the banking, credit, and savings institutions that are readily available to higher-income families.

Available on Amazon.

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So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America

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Title: So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America

Author: Peter Edelman

Published: September 2012

Book Summary:

In this “accessible and inspiring analysis” (Angela Glover Blackwell), lifelong anti­–poverty advocate Peter Edelman assesses how the United States can have such an outsized number of unemployed and working poor despite important policy gains. He delves into what is happening to the people behind the statistics and takes a particular look at young people of color for whom the possibility of productive lives is too often lost on the way to adulthood. In a timely new introduction, Edelman discusses the significance of Obama’s reelection—including the rediscovery of the word “poverty”—as well as the continuing attack on the poor from the right.

Available on Amazon.

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Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools

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Title: Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools

Author: Jonathan Kozol

Published: June 1991

Book Summary:

For two years, beginning in 1988, Jonathan Kozol visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf between the two extremes was widening—and it has widened since. The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and understaffed, and lacked the basic elements of learning—including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students. Here Kozol delivers a searing examination of the extremes of wealth and poverty and calls into question the reality of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools.

Available on Amazon.

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Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy

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Title: Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy

Author: Martin Gilens

Published: October 2000

Book Summary:

Tackling one of the most volatile issues in contemporary politics, Martin Gilens’s work punctures myths and misconceptions about welfare policy, public opinion, and the role of the media in both. Why Americans Hate Welfare shows that the public’s views on welfare are a complex mixture of cynicism and compassion; misinformed and racially charged, they nevertheless reflect both a distrust of welfare recipients and a desire to do more to help the “deserving” poor.

Available on Amazon.

Book Cover Image Source: Amazon.