Credit: (Barron Bixler)In the opening pages of Princeton University sociologist Matthew Desmond’s new book, “Poverty, by America,” he writes that books about poverty are often about poor people. But they don’t answer one critical question.
“…These kinds of books help us understand the nature of poverty. They are vital. But they do not — and in fact cannot — answer the most fundamental question, which is: Why? Why all this American poverty?”
To “understand the causes of poverty,” he writes, “we must look beyond the poor.”
Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2016 book, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” explored the lives of some families dealing with financial and housing insecurity after the 2008 financial crisis. In “Poverty, by America,” out Tuesday, he seeks answers for who and what cause poverty.
The answers are complicated, multilayered and omnipresent. But a part of the answer may startle some: Poverty exists because those who aren’t in the lowest income bracket benefit from it. Desmond provides a plan for what can be done to end poverty, asking the reader to consider “poverty abolitionism” as the way forward.
NJ Spotlight News’ Taylor Jung spoke with Desmond about his book, its findings (including about New Jersey) and how his own childhood living in poverty helped shape him and his thoughts.
Below is an abridged and edited version of the conversation:
NJ Spotlight News: One of the things that really struck me about your book is that you leave no stone unturned when it comes to arguments about what causes poverty. You also examine some of your findings, as well as possible solutions — anything from policy to individual action. What went into your research and how did your personal story inform what you wrote?
Matthew Desmond: I think my personal story informed it, because I got a bit of taste growing up about what poverty can do to a family. We lost my childhood home to foreclosure, and we went through a period of incredible instability, and in poverty, really. The reason I paused over that word is because another big part of my experience was living in a mobile home park in Milwaukee and in a rooming house and spending time with families facing eviction (as part of research for his book, “Evicted”). And what I saw those families endure was nothing like I had endured. I saw a level of poverty that was much more vicious and dispiriting than what I had grown up with. I think I see poverty as an abomination and a real misery. And I think that holding on to those experiences really does motivate and inform my research.
Matthew Desmond discusses his own experience of poverty
And on the research process, it’s kind of drawing everything I’ve learned so far about why there’s so much poverty in the United States, and really trying to make a case about how to end it … I tried to write a new poverty book.
There’s this line I ran across in Tommy Orange’s novel (“There There”). He writes, “These kids are jumping out of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think that the problem is that they’re jumping.” When I read that, I was like, man, that’s a perfect encapsulation of the American poverty debate. So this is a book about why there’s so much poverty in this line of dollars and how to finally abolish it. But it’s a book about the fire, who set it, and who’s warming his hands by it.
NJSN: Your book talks about the multiple factors that contribute to socioeconomic status. And you talk about how we also contribute or buy into that mindset that there might not be enough to go around.
Desmond: Yeah, I think that I’m trying to push against this division of individual-level and structural explanations and also solutions. I think the climate-change example is really telling because I think a lot of us realize that to really address climate change, we’re going to need geoengineering, we’re going to need new policies, we’re going to need new corporate priorities. But we also have some skin in the game, right? We can think about what do we eat and what do we drive and how we (live). And I would love for us to make those connections to the poverty debate, too.
The book really does try to make a case that there’s so much poverty in America because many of us benefit from it. And some lives are made small so that others may grow. It certainly is the case that you can’t solve climate change by hang-drying your clothes. And we’re not going to solve poverty by making small adjustments to our personal lives. But I think that if we really embrace this project of poverty abolitionism as both a personal and a political problem, I think that could make a big difference.
NJSN: How do you feel New Jersey is faring when it comes to some of those solutions?
Desmond: I think there sometimes is a tendency to view certain states as doing better or worse on poverty measures. And that does make sense given deep pockets of extreme poverty in some parts of the country. But New Jersey has its own challenges, too — extremely high cost of housing here is something that I think is very challenging. And it’s also very encouraging that New Jersey is taking real steps to build affordable housing all over the state because of our Mount Laurel doctrine, because we have a state (Supreme) Court law that mandates that investment. And it’s really encouraging that through that execution of the law, which is mainly being done by the Fair Share Housing Center, there’s affordable-housing units basically in every suburban district in the state. And what’s happened to our property values? They’ve still been really high. And what’s happened to our school system? Well, it’s one of the best in the nation.
NJ, a ‘model for integration,’ but a long way to go
And so I think that New Jersey does provide a model for economic integration — that certainly isn’t finished … (but) does provide a great model and a blueprint in a similar way that Massachusetts provided a model for the Affordable Care Act.
NJSN: Why is it that when you provide some of these solutions, they’re challenged?
Desmond: I think part of the answer is that we seem to have lost a moral ambition for the country. When the war on poverty was launched and (Lyndon Johnson) in the State of the Union declared an unconditional war on poverty, he wasn’t playing. They set a deadline: 1976 is when we’re going to abolish poverty. That was ambitious.
They didn’t get there, but they did a lot. And I think that we’ve become, in a way, too easily pleased and too despondent. My biggest fear of the book is people will read it, and they’ll learn a lot, but they’ll put it down and they’ll sigh. They won’t see themselves as part of this movement. And I think that we have to rekindle our sense of moral urgency in our national ambition when it comes to addressing these problems.
The hope for eradicating poverty in the U.S.
I do think the country is ready for a new story about itself when it comes to poverty. Data shows that the majority of Americans today — conservatives and liberals — believe that poverty is a result of unfair circumstances, not a moral failing. So it seems like that’s a big sea change from where we’ve been. But I think now we have to confront often our moral failing for those of us who are secure and lucky, about how we often contribute to those unfair circumstances that do keep poor folks poor.
So I do think there’s a long way to go. I think we are in a moment, like (Italian philosopher Antonio) Gramsci said, where the old is dying, but the new hasn’t been reborn yet. I do think we are in this pregnant moment that has a lot of potential and a lot of hope of moving forward.
Editor’s Note: Matthew Desmond will discuss his book, “Poverty, by America,” on Thursday, March 23, at 6:00 p.m., with scholar and activist Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor, at Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton. More information is available online.
