Half of all new jobs in Washington, DC will require at least a bachelor's degree, although only 12.3 percent of Black residents in 2014 had graduated from college. And, now that wealthier residents have moved back to cities, rent increases have left longtime residents unable to afford their homes.
In this review, Jill Leovy looks at two new studies of contemporary US poverty.
Matthew Desmond is an academic who teaches at Harvard - a sociologist or, you could say, an ethnographer. But I would like to claim him as a journalist, and one who has set a new standard for reporting on poverty. In Milwaukee, he moved into a trailer park and then to a rooming house on the -poverty-stricken North Side and diligently took notes on the lives of people who pay 70 to 80 percent of their incomes for homes that are unfit for human habitation.
This year's annual report from the US Conference of Mayors details just how prevalent hunger and homelessness are in our cities.
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