Why the Poor Pay More
Many poor people rely on fringe financial services like check cashing stores and payday lenders, which charge interest rates that can reach the triple digits.
PBS Newshour Weekend
Battling the Payday Loan Industry in South Dakota
Payday loans are supposed to be a short-term quick fix for those who can’t get traditional credit. But the loans are rarely actually short-term, and borrowers frequently need to take out a second loan to pay off the first. Special…
Bad Bargain? Manufactured-Home Owners Feel the Financial strain
Millions of Americans live in mobile or manufactured homes that offer affordable housing. But manufactured homeowners often face serious, unique financial difficulties that can make them a bad bargain. NewsHour Weekend's Stephen Fee reports. This is part of an ongoing…
Experts Say Marriage and Birth Control Both Essential to Reducing Poverty
On a moral level, most Americans agree that we should help the poor, but how exactly we go about it has become one of the most divisive issues in politics — and that’s saying a lot these days. The divide…
New Report Finds Americans Lack Economic Mobility, Opportunity
A striking lack of economic mobility exists in America, according to a new report released this week by the Brookings Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. Authors of the report, Kay Hymowitz and Larry Aber join NewsHour's Megan Thompson to…
Living on $2.00 a day: Exploring extreme poverty in America
The World Bank recently set the standard for extreme poverty at $1.90 per day, and declared that, for the first time, less than 10 percent of the global population will be living below that line by the end of this…
The Prison Trap
At the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Philadelphia, which Pope Francis visited on Sunday, 80 percent of inmates haven’t yet been convicted of any crime. They are being held in this dangerous and overcrowded jail while awaiting trial, mostly because they…
Income Inequality or Economic Mobility – Which Is More Important?
Which is more important, income inequality or economic mobility? What's the difference, and can the two really be separated? Interview with Scott Winship
Do We Underestimate the Success of the War on Poverty?
A conversation between NewsHour's Hari Sreenivasan and Sheldon Danziger, editor of Legacies of the War on Poverty