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Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
Published in March 2023
Poverty, by America is Princeton sociology professor Matthew Desmond’s follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize–winning 2016 book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.
Where Evicted combined ethnography and policy analysis, Poverty, by America is more of a manifesto. Desmond’s central argument is that the comparatively high poverty rates in the U.S. are the consequence of a set of active choices made by the affluent.
In Desmond’s analysis, poverty is less the result of poor individual life choices. Instead, poverty is manufactured by the wealthy to ensure the continuation of the privileges of their class.
Examples of choices by the rich and powerful that directly hurt low-income Americans are:
- The failure to raise minimum wages.
- The absence of universal health care.
- The lack of affordable government-supported housing.
- The high expense of childcare.
These policies disproportionately injure the lowest-income Americans and benefit groups such as corporations (wages are kept low) and landlords (rents are kept high).
I suspect that most of our Inside Higher Ed community will be sympathetic to Desmond’s arguments. We academics are (by and large) a progressive bunch.
When it comes to alleviating poverty, higher education sees itself as part of the solution. But might it be that we are part of the problem?
Take 529 plans. These plans allow tax-advantaged savings for education. The latest figure I could find (2017) is that 529 plans cost the federal government $2 billion a year in forgone revenue.
How likely would any of us in higher education be to support the elimination of 529 plans? I know I’d be against that idea, as it was through 529s that I saved for my kids’ college expenses—and I’m sure the plans benefit colleges and universities.
Or what about tax-free endowments? I think that taxing university endowments would be a bad idea, as endowments enable some students from low- to middle-income households opportunities to attend college without the burden of debt.
One of the central arguments in Poverty, by America is that tax dollars that would be better off spent on alleviating poverty more often go to those who least need the help. Becoming a poverty abolitionist requires supporting more resources for the poor and fewer benefits for the upper class and the wealthy.
At this point, I’m not willing to say that higher education–related federal spending and tax subsidies (which are equal from a fiscal standpoint) should be redirected to alleviate poverty. Perhaps I’m too bought into the idea of higher education as an engine of opportunity.
I’m also skeptical of zero-sum thinking, the belief that there are only a certain amount of resources to go around and that a dollar spent on higher education is necessarily a dollar less spent on aiding people experiencing poverty. Spending on higher education is better considered an investment than a cost.
Still, Poverty, by America has been questioning some of my beliefs. The world is nuanced and complicated. Higher education might be both good for society (including the poor) and embedded in a system that manufactures poverty.
At the very least, Poverty, by America should raise some uncomfortable questions on our campuses that are worth exploring.
What are you reading?
