Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream

When I first saw the cover of this book, I thought it might be the usual book written by a candidate for office. Instead, when I looked deeper I found a work containing articles by serious scholars and professionals who have studied the causes of poverty and inequality in the United States and who present credible solutions. The book is edited by John Edwards, who has put together and excellent group of specialists on poverty representing a variety of disciplines ranging from law to social work and economics. This is a multidisciplinary look at a key issue often neglected by economists. It is too bad that more of the ideas of John Edwards and the scholars writing this book will probably not become policy.

This book is a collection of essays, by a a group of experts, on the general subject of poverty in America. Most of the contributors are left of center in their opinions, but most of the book is pragmatic in tone rather than ideological. If you are looking for THE answer to poverty, which will solve the problem once and for all, this is not your book. It does not provide a clear, consistent set of policies, which arguably might really solve the problem. Rather, this book provides a series of narrowly focused essays on different aspects of the problem. I found two strengths in the book. First, it has to up to date information on recent developments on poverty and income inequality in America. For example, it has a fairly detailed description of just how good things were in the 1990s. In addition, to the poverty rate falling, the number of areas dominated by poverty has fallen dramatically. The recent good news was better than we thought. There is also some good material on exactly why the middle class is under so much economic pressure at this point. That information is both timely and detailed. Second, it has some interesting new ideas on how to deal with the problem. I found most interesting the whole discussion of tax-advantaged individual savings accounts. The idea is to extend the IRA concept, so that it works for a broader range of people. The essays on this idea cite some interesting research to the effect that, if people have assets, it has a wide range of positive benefits, such as encouraging them to do more advance planning and so forth. I think this whole concept is a very exciting one. Among other things, it is an anti-poverty policy idea that could be acceptable to both left and right. The left might support it, because it helps the poor. The right might support it, because it encourages an ownership society. Not all of the essays are good. Some of them, for example, just give us the same-old, same-old arguments that what we need is to spend tremendously more on every social welfare program known to man, or that what we need is more unions. Not exactly new ideas, not good ideas and not ideas that are likely to go anywhere. All in all, however, the book has plenty of new material and is worth reading.

I recently purchased Ending Poverty for a paper i had to write and it came in as a great resource for my research on Poverty. The book includes graphs and numerous statistics along with John Edwards imput on various aspects of poverty, making it an excellent resource for not only my college paper, but most surely for others. As far as reading goes, I wasn't able to finish it due to a deadline but what i had read was a little bland, very straight-to-the point in terms of connecting numbers with Edwards' thoughts on what they mean to him. Again, a great book for resource, but probably not one i would stalk bookstores to read for pleasure.