A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) brings more nuance to our understanding of life expectancy among rich and poor Americans.
Diapers are political. An obvious and absolute necessity for the first few years of a child’s life, diapers should be both accessible and affordable, but for poor families across America, they are neither. Now, the White House is looking to address the problem. Last week at SXSW, President Obama introduced a new White…
Last month, New York Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal introduced a bill to end the state’s sales tax on tampons and other menstruation products. The tax, Rosenthal said, is “a regressive tax on women and their bodies.” If the bill passed, New York state would become only the 11th state that currently doesn’t tax tampon…
“Nearly one-third of U.S. heads of households ages 55 and older have no pension or retirement savings and a median annual income of about $19,000. A growing proportion of the nation’s elderly are like Westfall: too poor to retire and too young to die.” The Los…
The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families plunged into its current wave of trouble in December 2013, when a five-year-old named Jeremiah Oliver disappeared, and his disappearance went unreported for months, despite his family being under investigation from child services. In the spring of 2014, his body…
In Flint, Michigan, the number of children with “above-average” lead in their blood has doubled in the last year. The change is tied to the city swapping its water source from Detroit’s financially troubled water system to the Flint River. In Detroit, in the meantime, 9,200 Detroit residents are facing water shutoffs,…
Mary Carney, a Marshfield, Wisconsin School Board member, member of the Central Wisconsin Tea Party and Very Frightened Person, will attempt today to do right by her child, her faith, and the Statue of Liberty by wresting Jim Henson’s For Every Child, a Better World out of the hands of vulnerable kindergarteners.
Two years ago, I was hired as a campaign coordinator for a community initiative in South L.A. I got the job because I’d been an organizer for labor unions, and I was eager and thrilled. I’d be coordinating The Belong Campaign, part of a nonprofit funded by government entities as well as large foundations. My cubicle…
The New York Times ran a deeply reported story yesterday on the short, unhappy life and violent death of Tyrelle D. Shaw, a bow tie designer who called himself “Mr. Talented” and who was wanted in a series of violent attacks against Asian women. On his blog, Shaw said he would “hit over a million Asian Women in the…
CBS has a show lined up for the summer called The Briefcase. In it, a “lucky” poor family is given—BINGO—a briefcase with $101,000 in it and told they can keep it all or give some or all of it away to a “needier” family. Then, their agonizing struggle is filmed for our gross-o-tainment! But bear with me: I bet this…
A new report from the Brookings Institute, an influential Washington think tank, confirms what we all know: there's a direct link between family planning and income. The study found, "low-income women are less likely to use contraception and are less likely to have an abortion once pregnant."
There's nothing Tea Party freshman and ace troll Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin hates more than a handout: he's vocal on his feelings that welfare is "a bribe not to work that hard" and that food stamp programs "encourage sloth." Now Grothman is reportedly encouraging his constituents to ask a few hard questions of…
"If you're not getting laid, you're an asshole."
There's some good news in the case of Shanesha Taylor, the 35-year-old homeless Air Force veteran who lost custody of her children after being arrested for leaving two of her kids in a car alone on a hot day while she attended a job interview. After five months, she has been granted full custody of her children. Her…
The relationship between poverty and weight is a vital yet often downplayed aspect of the "obesity epidemic." Poor people have less nutritious food in their neighborhood stores (if they have stores at all), less money to buy it, less time to cook it, and less access to preventive medical care. But the fact that…
Darlena Cunha had it so good in 2008 for a white woman from an affluent suburb with a college degree: She and her husband earned $120k, twins on the way, a house worth $250k. Then the market crashed, husband lost his (journalism) job, and the preemies needed costly formula. Their solid middle class income now clocked…
Oh, good! Ben Stein, the conservative commentator and actor who you may recognize from Clear Eyes commercials, has something to say about poor people! Listen up, peasants! This is for your own good.
Thanks to the fundraising efforts of a woman in New Jersey, a Phoenix mom who was arrested for leaving her kids in a car while she went to a job interview now has more than $91,00o.
Shanesha Taylor, a mother of two from Scottsdale, Arizona, was called in for a job interview last week. Because she's homeless and doesn't have access to childcare, she had to leave her six-month-old and 2-year-old in the car with the windows cracked while she did the interview. While she was gone, police were called…
"It's like she can't win for losin'." This is something my grandmother — who worked in a shirt factory for most of her life in rural Tennessee — used to say about seeing the struggle to make ends meet. And it's what I still think of when I see stories about poverty in this country.
