Sheldon Danziger joined Michigan Radio's first live call-in show for its State of Opportunity project to discuss perceptions of poverty within the state.
Danziger, director of the Ford School-based National Poverty Center, said long-held perceptions that able-bodied poor could easily support themselves are inaccurate and do not reflect today's economic conditions.
"We have a view about the poor that might have worked in the economy of 1960, but doesn't work in the economy of 2012," Danziger said. He joined Michigan Radio's Jennifer White and Marya Sosulski, an associate professor from Michigan State University's School of Social Work.
"We used to live in a world in which a rising tide did lift all boats; someone could graduate high school, get a good job in a factory and support a family over time. That's no longer the case," he said. "We live in the gilded age of inequality..."