Busted: America’s Poverty Myths

BUSTED #2: Who Deserves To Be Poor? (Listen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*This series was originally released in fall 2016.*

Listen to this episode here:

In this episode, we trace the history of welfare in America, from aid to widows after the Civil War to Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty to Bill Clinton’s pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” With the help of Kathy Edin, co-author of $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, we consider how the notion of government assistance sapping people of initiative has long shaped policy…and permitted many in poverty to fall through the cracks.

And host Brooke Gladstone meets Carla Scott, a young woman in Cleveland forced to sell her plasma for bus fare after a series of events derailed her life, as well as Carla’s nonagenarian grandmother, Grace, a hard-line believer in “personal responsibility.”

This series was produced by our partners at WNYC’s On the Media. “Busted: America’s Poverty Myths” is produced by Meara Sharma and Eve Claxton, with special thanks to Nina Chaudry.

Photo: Carla and her grandmother Grace on Grace’s porch in Cleveland (Brooke Gladstone/WNYC)

More From Busted: America’s Poverty Myths

BUSTED #1: The Poverty Tour (LISTEN)

May 14, 2018

We ex;pre how our understanding of poverty is shaped, not by facts, but by private presumptions, media narratives, and the tales of the American Dream.