Lindsey K. Hanson - The New Faces of American Poverty: A Reference Guide to the Great Recession

A Reference Guide to the Great Recession

Lindsey K. Hanson
Timothy J. Essenburg
Rojhat B. Avsar
Behroz Baraghoshi
Mary E. Burton
Gerardo Del Guercio
Bryan Dettrey
Wayne Edwards
Charles Hannema
Kelsey Hanson
Jeff Jacob
Joyce P. Jacobsen
Eric Larson
Joyce LeMay
Carlos Liard-Muriente
Steven McMullen
Stephen Pimpare
Jack Reardon
Cara B. Robinson
Ken Taylor
Katie Uva
Fred Van Geest
Angela R. Wilder
Samuel Zalanga

Copyright 2014 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The new faces of American poverty : a reference guide to the great recession / Lindsey K. Hanson and Timothy J. Essenburg, editors.

volumes cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9781610691819 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 9781610691826 (e-book)

1. PovertyUnited States. 2. PoorUnited States. 3. RecessionsUnited States. 4. United StatesEconomic conditions2009 5. United StatesEconomic policy2009 I. Hanson, Lindsey K. II. Essenburg, Timothy J.

HC110.P6N393 2014

339.460973dc23 2013020418

ISBN: 9781610691819
EISBN: 9781610691826

18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook.
Visit www.abc-clio.com for details.

ABC-CLIO, LLC
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911

This book is printed on acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

We are pleased to present The New Faces of American Poverty: A Reference Guide to the Great Recession. This is one of the first works to address the impact of the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 on poverty in the United States. More than half of people in the United States will experience poverty firsthand before they reach the age of 65, and the Great Recession led to higher rates of poverty than the United States had seen in nearly two decades. During the Recession a housing crisis, rising unemployment and underemployment, and governmental budget crises had dramatic impacts on the poor and poverty rates in the United States. In two volumes The New Faces of American Poverty will explore the impact of the worst economic downturn the United States has seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s on the poor in the United States.

This reference work is designed for high school and college researchers, as well as the general reader and scholar who may have little exposure to either economics or poverty issues. We have included a wealth of information in nearly 60 essays and more than 150 graphs, charts, and tables, which provide background information on poverty and economics, along with detailed research on the relationship between the Great Recession and U.S. poverty. Each essay presents information in four sections: Overview, The Present, Outlook, and Further Reading, which provides references to material discussed in the essay.

The work begins with an introductory essay, Why Care about Poverty? which explores religious, nonreligious, ethical, philosophical, historical, and even self-interested reasons to care about poverty alleviation. Following the introduction, the essays are organized alphabetically within seven sections that seek to answer important questions about poverty and the Great Recession. These questions include:

1. The Great Recession: What happened? The first section of this work provides necessary background information on the Great Recession, including an overview of both the Great Recession and the global downturn, as well as a comparison of the Great Recession and the Great Depression of the 1930s. In addition, it includes an essay that describes the complicated housing bubble, the bubble burst, and the foreclosure crisis. This section concludes with essays that evaluate the fiscal policy responses of the federal government and monetary policy responses of the Federal Reserve for those with little exposure to the field of economics.

2. Why is there poverty, and how is poverty measured? This section investigates the causes and types of poverty in the United States, including temporary, cyclical, chronic, and intergenerational poverty. It also explores the concept and measurement of economic insecurity and methods of poverty measurement utilized in the United States today. Finally, this section provides a general overview of the impact of the Great Recession on poverty rates in the United States to orient the reader for the coming sections that delve more deeply into specific aspects of this topic.

3. How did the Great Recession affect poverty rates for various demographic groups? In the third section the impact of the Great Recession on poverty and poverty rates is investigated through a series of essays, each of which covers one demographic group. Demographic groups covered include immigrants, men, women, children, young adults, older adults, retirees and potential retirees, individuals with disabilities, veterans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Non-Hispanic whites, Native Americans, and those living in various regions of the United States as well as in rural, suburban, and urban areas. This section also includes essays that address the impact of the Recession on poverty rates for individuals based on their prior economic status and prior educational attainment.

4. How did the Great Recession affect low-income individuals and families? The fourth section of The New Faces of American Poverty examines the Recessions effect on low-income individuals and families by exploring topics that are of particular importance to those in poverty. To accomplish this investigative task, essays in this section address access to credit, food insecurity and assistance, health care assistance, access to higher education, hiring practices, homelessness, housing assistance programs and low-income renters, the legal system, Social Security, underemployment, unemployment, wages and income, and welfare/cash assistance programs. In addition, this section includes an essay that discusses some of the more unexpected, or secondary, effects of the Great Recession on low-income individuals and families.

5. How did governments respond to the Great Recession? Section 5 presents essays that cover the responses of local, state, federal, and tribal governments in the United States to poverty during the Great Recession. Essays in this section also address responses of the Republican and Democratic Parties through major legislative efforts, and the response of international governments and nongovernmental organizations to the Recession and U.S. poverty.

6. How long will the effects of the Great Recession last? In Section 6 answers to this commonly asked question are explored through essays that investigate the possibility of a double-dip recession and structural changes to the U.S. economy, and by an essay that presents possible answers to the question that many asked during the Recession and its aftermath: When will the economy be normal?

7. How did U.S. society respond to poverty during the Great Recession?