Skip to main content

An Uptick in Elder Poverty: A Blip, or a Sign of Things To Come?

Lydia DePillis New York Times
In the 1960s, more than a third of seniors lived in poverty. Federal programs like Medicare to help the elderly, the situation improved significantly. But last year, the poverty rate for those 65 or older increased, even as it sank for everyone else.

food

Algae: The Food of the Future of the Past

Livia Gershon JSTOR
In the years following World War II, American and European food scientists hoped to feed the world with common pond scum supplemented with plastics. But it wasn’t just the unpleasant flavor that killed the algae craze.

Acts of Rebel Sanity

Frances Moore Lappé The Progressive
With the past half-century’s experience, it’s become harder to deny that suffering arises not from nature’s deficit but humanity’s failure—our failure to reverse the tightening concentration of wealth and the decline of democracies around the world.

Hidden Hunger - How Families Slip Through

Tara Duggan San Francisco Chronicle
One in 10 Bay Area residents earns too little to cover the cost of living; of those, 62 percent earn too much to qualify for food stamps.

Extreme Poverty Returns to America

Premilla Nadasen Washington Post
U.N. study finds growing numbers of Americans are living in the most impoverished circumstances. The growth of extreme poverty in the land of plenty is an indicator that we shouldn't be talking about how to slash spending on social programs, but how to expand services and better meet the needs of the vulnerable among us. One and a half million American households live in extreme poverty today, nearly twice as many as 20 years ago.

Reframing the Minimum-Wage Debate

Michelle Chen / David Howell The Nation / The American Prospect
Why “no job loss” is the wrong standard for setting the right wage floor.
Subscribe to hunger