extreme poverty

The Ford School's Luke Shaefer spoke with CBS Detroit on the federal government shutdown's impact on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  "There are senior citizens, millions of senior citizens, millions of families with kids who ar...

U.S. inflation-adjusted household income increased but poverty rates showed only modest changes last year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported , offering a mixed snapshot of how American households fared as the economy returned to pre-coronavirus pandemi...

Government officials are currently trying to spread the word about the recently expanded Child Tax Credit program so that it can reach the maximum number of eligible people. Luke Shaefer, associate dean for research and policy engagement and director...

A paper by Luke Shaefer, Pinghui Wu (University of Michigan), and Kathryn Edin (Johns Hopkins University), "Can Poverty in America Be Compared to Conditions in the World's Poorest Countries?" is forthcoming in the American Journal of Medical Research...

Sandra Danziger and $2.00 a Day are cited in The New York Times piece, “Political rifts over Bill Clinton’s welfare law resurface as aid shrinks.” The piece, which examines the mixed legacy of welfare reform on the occasion of its pending 20th annive...

In “Why the very poor have become poorer,” Christopher Jencks reviews $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, for the June 9 issue of The New York Review of Books. Written by Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin, $2.00 a Day (Houghton Mifflin Harc...

This spring, State & Hill magazine focuses on the vitally important theme of rising inequality. Feature stories highlight the work of six Ford School faculty members who are combating inequality in a number of arenas: Susan Dynarski’s quest to remove...

In a recent Atlantic article, “The End of Welfare as We Know It,” author Alana Semuels explores the state of the welfare system today, focusing in on Arkansas in the years following President Bill Clinton’s 1996 reforms. Semuels argues that the 1...

The New York Times this week highlights a recent development in the fight against poverty that brought together thinkers from both sides of the aisle, including professor emeritus Sheldon Danziger.  "Finding Common Political Ground on Poverty," the T...

In "Precarious Work and the Employment-based Safety Net," an op-ed for the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), Luke Shaefer argues that our current employment-based welfare system overlooks the fact that the poorest Americans can only secure lo...

When living in extreme poverty, people make use of whatever assets they have as a means of survival, whether it means selling plasma, junk yard scrapping, food stamps or sex just to get by. "It's both depressing and uplifting," Luke Shaefer says of w...

Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin’s new book, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, details the lives of Americans in extreme poverty. In a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, the authors estimate that the proportion of Americans living o...

“This essential book is a call to action,” writes William Julius Wilson of Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin’s just released $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. Wilson, who is a professor of sociology and social policy at Harvard, writes t...

The Ford School is delighted to announce that a number of faculty members will join our community this fall. To introduce them to the Ford School and University, we’re running weekly Q&As throughout the summer that touch on their policy and personal ...