Real Opportunity for All

Season 1, Episode 7

Real Opportunity for All

An Inside Look at Poverty and Its Many Causes with Howard Pickett

The Director of the Shepherd Program, Assistant Professor of Ethics and Poverty Studies and Adjunct Professor of Law talks with us about poverty in America. In this episode, Pickett focuses not only on what "poverty" means but also on how we can creatively look at issues surrounding poverty and people affected by it.
Recorded August 11, 2020
Aired September 15, 2020

"It's easier to predict the future income of a child based on parental income than it is to predict the future height of a child based on how tall mom and dad are.... [I]t doesn’t mean we can totally predict it, but it does mean that our income status is somewhat predictive. It's 'sticky,' not deterministic."
~ Howard Pickett

Opportunities to Learn More

An Introduction to Poverty and Inequality

"America’s Poverty Course"
Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality

Creating Capabilities
Harvard UP, 2011
By March C. Nussbaum

"On Welfare"(on the capabilities approach)
by Amartya Sen

Intergenerational Mobility

“Mobility in the United States in Comparative Perspective”
Changing Poverty, Changing Policies
by Markus Jantti

"Reviving the American Dream: Lessons from Big Data"
by Raj Chetty

"Zipcode Destiny: The Persistent Power of Place and Education"

Racial Wealth Gap

"How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality"
New York Times
by Matthew Desmond

"Sandy Darrity Has a Plan to Close the Wealth Gap"
The Ezra Klein Show
by William Darrity

Health

"Inequality at Birth: Some Causes and Consequences"
American Economic Review
by Janet Currie

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Podcast Option)
Princeton University Press
by Anne Case

Education

"Education and Inequality"
Occupy the Future
by Sean Reardon

"No Rich Child Left Behind"
New York Times
by Sean Reardon

Labor Market Discrimination

Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration
University of Chicago Press
by Devah Pager

"The Mark of a Criminal Record"
American Journal of Sociology
by Devah Pager

"Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Racial Discrimination: A Field Experiment"
The Quarterly Journal of Economics
by Amanda Agan and Sonja Starr

Global Poverty

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
Public Affairs
by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo


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