Why more jobs and degrees won’t reduce poverty
“You can’t beat poverty by helping people get better jobs, or more schooling. We already ran that experiment, and it didn’t work. The last few decades saw a huge influx of women into the job market, a reformed welfare system aimed at promoting work, and a tripling in the number of college grads. Yet, through all that time, the US poverty rate barely budged. How can this be? What perverse illogic could keep poor families from the benefits of rising education and more plentiful paychecks? There are a host of different reasons, but together they reflect one overarching lesson: Work and poverty aren’t as intimately connected as we tend to assume. Poverty hunts at the margins of economic life, disproportionately afflicting those who either cannot or should not work in the first place: children, the elderly, those with disabilities.”