This SDG will examine the issue of poverty in America, what it is, what the extent of it is, contributing factors to it and the solutions that have been proposed to cure it. It will make use of two core books including that of Princeton Professor Matthew Desmond's best seller Poverty by America which argues that poverty in the US is the product not only of larger economic shifts, but of choices and actions by more fortunate Americans. It also will use Professors Mark Robert Rank, Lawrence M. Eppard and Heather E. Bullock's book, Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty.The SDG will then look at numerous other sources to learn how many other factors may have an impact including race, deindustrialization, housing, health care, the decline in unionization, social programs, and the ascendance of neoliberalism. Finally the class will look at the many proposals for reducing poverty not only from the two core books but from conservative, to liberal to socialist thinkers.
Poverty In America
