As we head into COP28, the annual global meeting on climate change underway in Dubai, there are two dominating schools of thought, both of which are wrong. One says the future is hopeless and our grandchildren are doomed to suffer on a burning planet. The other says we’re all going to be fine because we […]
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Throughout much of the Western world’s history, the wealthiest have been viewed in their communities as a potentially unfavorable presence, and they have attempted to allay this sentiment by using their riches to support their societies in times of crises like plagues, famines or wars. This symbiotic relationship no longer exists. Today’s rich, their wealth […]
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The Findings: Post-pandemic absenteeism is widespread, but it is worse in high-poverty schools. Nearly 70 percent of the highest poverty schools experienced widespread, chronic absenteeism in the 2021-22 school year, compared with 25 percent before the pandemic, according to a new analysis released on Friday by Attendance Works, a nonprofit that aims to reduce chronic […]
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Los Angeles said on Thursday that it would build electric vehicle chargers and offer bigger rebates for the purchase of battery-powered cars in response to a new report that concluded that low-income people were being left behind in the transition to clean energy. City officials said they would offer qualified residents up to $4,000 to […]
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Last year, the University of North Carolina Greensboro contracted with rpk Group, the consulting firm that has worked on West Virginia University’s restructuring, to devise an academic program review in the face of declining enrollment and changes in state funding. Their website asserts that “innovation disconnected from the business model is not sustainable.” Reducing education […]
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At least two million low-income children have lost health insurance since the end of a federal policy that guaranteed coverage through Medicaid earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic, according to new analyses by researchers at the Georgetown Center for Children and Families and KFF, a health policy research organization. The figures, which are likely a significant […]
Read MoreImage Credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images A United Nations poverty and human rights expert has sent letters to Amazon, DoorDash, and Walmart, demanding they address allegations that their wages are so low that they trap workers in poverty. Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty, also sent a letter to the U.S. […]
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The median household income in Manhattan fell below $96,000, a more than 11 percent drop, while the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough, remained flat at $45,500. In the same period, more people living on the margins faced financial challenges. Over 18 percent of New Yorkers, or 1.5 million people, were living in poverty, up from […]
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This is a worldview that seeks to wage not a war against poverty but a war against the poor instead—those who have, in his view, shown insufficient faith. This might come as a surprise to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, but it represents the culmination of a long strand […]
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Chrystal Audet tried to get comfortable in what she called her “bedroom” — the back seat of her eight-year-old Ford Fusion. To stretch her legs, she had to leave a passenger door ajar, but September nights are raw in the Pacific Northwest, with sheets of rain that cut to the bone. From her own “bedroom” […]
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The emergency shelter system in Massachusetts has been stretched to its breaking point, Gov. Maura Healey said on Monday, and the state will no longer guarantee shelter placements for new arrivals beginning next month, despite a law that says eligible families must be offered temporary housing. The announcement comes after months of escalating pressure on […]
Read MoreImage: NurPhoto / Contributor via Getty Images Canada is taking a step toward making universal basic income a reality. The Senate’s national finance committee will study a bill on October 17 which would create a national framework for—but not actually implement—UBI, according to a press release from the office of Ontario Senator Kim Pate. An identical bill exists […]
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Suleiman Chubado is not entirely clear what caused the price of fertilizer to more than double over the past year, but he is bitterly aware of the consequences. At his farm in northeastern Nigeria, he can no longer afford enough fertilizer, so his corn is stunted and pale, the scraggly plants bending toward the powdery […]
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Raising a family in one of the most expensive cities in the world involves some advance planning. So when Monika Navarro and her husband had a child last year in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, they budgeted for a few years of expensive child care — banking on the idea that New York City’s free prekindergarten program […]
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When poor countries are forced to default on their foreign debt, as Ghana and Zambia have done, they pay a heavy price. Cut off from credit of any kind, spending on health, education and dealing with the damaging effects of climate change comes to a juddering halt. Countries in the West often plead with us […]
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Pope Francis on Wednesday implored the world to protect the “suffering” planet, lamenting that scant progress had been made in the eight years since he refocused the Roman Catholic Church more fully on environmental issues in a landmark and widely praised treatise. “With the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not […]
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“Especially with young children, the disruption strains parenting unbelievably, and when parents are strained, so are children,” said Patrick Fowler of Washington University in St. Louis, who studies homelessness and its effects on children. When families are forced to move often, he said, “kids are just constantly taking a hit on well-being, on cognitive development, […]
Read MoreIt has never been easy for Mary Cole to support herself and the 19-year-old grandson who lives with her in Bristol, Va., on her monthly $914 Supplemental Security Income check. But it’s getting harder. “I’ve been struggling a lot,” Ms. Cole said. Because benefits counselors at her local agency on aging have helped her apply […]
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J-PAL North America and Results for America have announced 18 new partnerships with state and local governments across the country through their Leveraging Evidence and Evaluation for Equitable Recovery (LEVER) programming, which launched in April of this year. As state and local leaders leverage federal relief funding to invest in their communities, J-PAL North America […]
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At a drop-in center for homeless youth, Mayor Eric Adams made a promise last year. By marshaling limited city resources and following a detailed blueprint, New York City would aim to eradicate homelessness among younger New Yorkers. It was a bold goal, but one the mayor said was personal to him as someone who grew […]
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When I first met Emmanuel Coreano, a Puerto Rican student from Kensington, he was living with his disabled mother in a dilapidated row home that lacked hot water and electricity. The rooms were filthy and mold-ridden. The bathtub was at risk of falling through the cracked ceiling into the kitchen. One night, Emmanuel was sleeping […]
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Overcrowding is common in the neighborhood. Ms. Zhao and her family “were trying their best to survive, to make rent, to have every room occupied,” said Alexa Aviles, the City Council representative in Sunset Park. The city has turned away from these realities, she told me, “even as it knows that overcrowding is problematic.” To […]
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As many as 600 people called the squalid five-story building at 80 Albert Street in downtown Johannesburg home. Nearly three weeks after a fire tore through the building, leaving at least 77 people dead, survivors recall those they lost and the workaday family lives they led inside a trash-strewn building that had no heat, and […]
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It is an economic imperative to break the vicious cycle of a widening class gap in family structure — and more generally, a high share of one-parent homes outside all but the most highly educated groups in society. That won’t be easy to do. For decades, academics, journalists and advocates have taken a “live and […]
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World leaders will gather this coming week at the United Nations and proclaim their passion for ending poverty and hunger around the globe. In that week, approximately 90,000 children under the age of 5 will die, mostly of preventable causes. As leaders discuss their goal to end hunger, over steak, children will be starving — […]
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I’ve been writing about economics and politics for many years, and have learned to keep my temper. Politicians and policymakers often make decisions that are simply cruel; they also often make decisions that are stupid, damaging the national interest for no good reason. And all too often they make decisions that are both cruel and […]
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American liberals have led the campaign to reduce child poverty since Franklin Roosevelt, and it’s a proud legacy. But we have long had a blind spot. We are often reluctant to acknowledge one of the significant drivers of child poverty — the widespread breakdown of family — for fear that to do so would be […]
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NewsOne Featured Video Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on July 19, 2023, in Washington, D.C. | Source: Win McNamee / Getty A Democratic U.S. Senator whose notorious allegiance with Republicans has repeatedly prevented his Party’s legislative agenda from moving forward is being blamed in part for the nation’s jump in child poverty at a time when […]
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Poverty increased sharply last year in the United States, particularly among children, as living costs rose and federal programs that provided aid to families during the pandemic were allowed to expire. The poverty rate rose to 12.4 percent in 2022 from 7.8 percent in 2021, the largest one-year jump on record, the Census Bureau said […]
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If you’re ever in New Delhi and think you hear a monkey, don’t assume it’s a monkey. It could be a professional monkey noise impersonator. That’s because humans have been trained to imitate the guttural grunts and shrieks of gray langurs, a type of large monkey that can scare away the smaller kinds that tend […]
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MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is launching the Clean Air and Water Labs, with support from Community Jameel, to generate evidence-based solutions aimed at increasing access to clean air and water. Led by J-PAL’s Africa, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and South Asia regional offices, the labs will partner with government […]
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