Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, By America is another excellent book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City that highlights why poverty in America persists and remains higher than in any other advanced countries. In the first chapter, “The Kind of Problem Poverty Is,” Desmond writes, “We can’t hope to understand why there is so much poverty in America solely by considering the lives of the poor. But we need to start there, to better understand the kind of problem poverty is—and grasp the stakes—because poverty is not simply a matter of small incomes” (pp. 10–11). He writes, “Poverty is about money, of course, but is also a relentless piling on of problems” (p. 13). He highlights various problems associated with poverty, including physical pain, poor living conditions that cause asthma, mold, cockroaches, and allergens,health issues such as cancer and dental problems, violence, sexual abuse, trauma, drug use, housing evictions, loss of liberty, feelings that your government is against you, being embarrassed and shameful, economic instability and hardships, evictions, and constant fear associated with economic insecurity. 

One of the key factors associated with poverty has been economic restructuring. The ongoing restructuring of economies has not only created new structures of work but has also constrained choices available to workers in different labor markets and at home. Desmond indicates that “half of all new positions are eliminated within the first year. Jobs that used to come with some guarantees, even union membership, have been transformed into gigs. Temp workers are not just found driving Ubers, they are in hospitals and universities and insurance companies. Manufacturing jobs—still widely mistaken as the fount of good, sturdy, hard-hat jobs—now employ more than a million temp workers” (p. 16). He adds that “America has welcomed the rise of bad jobs at the bottom of the market—jobs offering low pay, no benefits, and few guarantees. Some industries such as retail, leisure and hospitality, and construction see more than half of their workforce turn over each year” (p. 16).

Poverty remains at the root of social inequality. Desmond writes, “Poverty is no equalizer. It can be intensified by racial disadvantages or eased by racial privileges” (p. 22). “Black and Hispanic Americans are twice as likely to be poor, compared to white Americans, owing not only to the country's racial legacies, but also to present-day discrimination” (p. 22). According to Desmond, many poor Black and Hispanic families live in neighborhoods with high concentration of poverty (i.e., over 40%) whereas poor white families tend to live in communities with lower poverty levels. The implication for that is that “most poor white children attend better-resourced schools, live in safer communities, experience lower rates of police violence, and sleep in more dignified homes compared to their poor Black and Hispanic peers” (p. 22). Desmond indicates that the wealth gap between Black and white families persists. He writes, “[The gap] is as large as it was in the 1960s. Our legacy of systematically denying Black people access to the nation’s land and riches has been passed from generation to generation” (p. 23).

In Chapter 2, “Why Haven’t We Made More Progress?”, Desmond states that “America’s efforts to reduce poverty had stalled because we had stopped trying to solve the problem” (p. 26). Despite increases in poverty spending from previous administrations, poverty rates haven’t been reduced. Desmond writes, “Decade after decade, the poverty rate has remained flat even as federal relief has surged” (p. 28). He argues, “Government aid earmarked for the poor never reaches them.” The 1996 Welfare Reform by President Bill Clinton replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Desmond writes, “Nationwide, for every dollar budgeted for TANF in 2020, poor families directly received just 22 cents” (p. 28). He further indicates that the rest of TANF dollars went to help families in other ways such as job training, childcare, juvenile justice administration, financial literacy, and other activities that “had little or nothing to do with reducing poverty” (pp. 28–29). Desmond puts it this way: “If we have more than doubled government spending on poverty and achieved so little, one reason is because the American welfare state is a leaky bucket. A dollar allocated to an antipoverty program does not mean a dollar will ultimately reach a needy family” (p. 32).

Desmond debunks poverty myths and political ideologies behind policy choices. One of the often-cited myths of poverty is immigration. Immigrants have historically served as a scapegoat for why poverty persists. Desmond illustrates that with the following examples: 1) “The Chinese as a class are a detriment and a curse to our country. They have supplanted white labor and taken the bread out of the mouths of the white men and their families;” 2) “In the early 1900s, native-born white Americans lashed out at Italian immigrants for landing jobs and working hard in them, even resorting to mob violence and lynching to drive then out of town;” and 3) “Conservatives today cast blame on immigrants for dragging down wages and displacing native workers” (p. 33)

Desmond debunks the assertion that immigration is the reason why the poverty rate hasn’t decreased even as antipoverty aid has increased. He writes that states that have taken in the most immigrants over the past half century, such as Texas and Florida, have not grown poorer. “Instead, they have grown more prosperous” (p. 34). He indicates that “immigrants have some of the highest rates of economic mobility in this country. This is especially true for children of immigrants” (p. 34). He adds, “The long-term impact of immigration on wages is quite small, and its impact on employment is even smaller” (p. 34). Desmond argues, “Immigrants could make a country poorer by relying heavily on welfare benefits. But the poorest immigrants are undocumented, which makes them ineligible for many federal programs, including food stamps, non-emergency Medicaid, and Social Security. Over a typical lifetime, an immigrant will give more to the U.S. government in taxes than he or she will receive in federal welfare benefits” (p. 35). 

The other often-cited myth is that single parenthood is a major cause of poverty in America. That is mostly because statistically, single mother-headed families are more likely to be in poverty than married families. Desmond debunks this assertion by showing that single mothers in eight rich democracies were not poor as compared to the general population. He indicates, “Countries that make the deepest investments in their people, particularly through universal programs that benefit citizens, have the lowest rates of poverty, including among households headed by single mothers” (p. 36). He further argues, “The real question about single-parent families isn’t why so many poor parents are single, but why we allow so many of them to remain poor” (p. 40). According to Desmond, “Millions of Americans do not end up poor by a mistake of history or personal conduct. Poverty persists because some wish and will it to” (p. 40).

In Chapter 3, “How We Undercut Workers,” Desmond indicates that more often the poor are blamed for being poor. Desmond argues, “Structural explanations are more in fashion these days, explanations that trace widespread poverty to broken institutions or seismic economic transformations” (p. 41). He writes, “One popular theory of American poverty is deindustrialization, which caused the shuttering of factories and the hollowing out of communities that had sprung up around them” (p. 41).

Another theory of poverty is exploitation. Desmond recalls the history of the world by indicating that “clans, families, tribes, and nationstates collide, and one side is annihilated or enslaved or colonized or dispossessed to enrich the other. One side ascends to a higher place on the backs of the vanquished” (p. 42). Desmond argues, “Our vulnerability to exploitation grows as our liberty shrinks” (p. 43).

Another misconception of poverty is that poor-paying jobs are simply the result of people not getting enough education. Desmond writes, “It's true that workers with college degrees fare much better in today’s economy than those without. But the spread of bad jobs in America is not primarily the result of a so-called skills mismatch involving too many people lacking the right credentials or training for good jobs” (p. 51). He adds: “We can’t reduce our country’s economic problems to a matter of education, and we can’t chalk up today’s brutal job market to globalization and technological change, either.” He argues, “Economic forces . . . like the acceleration of global trade, are often the result of policy decisions such as the 1994 North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which made it easier for companies to move their factories to Mexico and contributed to the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs” (p. 52). 

Desmond further argues, “With unions largely out of the picture, corporations have chipped away at the conventional mid-century work arrangement, which involved steady employment, opportunities for advancement and raises, and decent pay with some benefits” (p. 53). He adds, “As corporations have amassed more market power, they have made every effort to keep wages low and productivity high. Increasingly, workers are providing far more value to their company than their pay reflects, and employers are constantly finding new avenues to squeeze their labor force” (p. 56).

Desmond argues that work is not what keeps scores of low-paid Americans from plunging into deep poverty. The government is. Desmond indicates that “it’s the government that helps these families access to healthcare (through Medicaid), that helps them eat (food stamps), and that boosts their incomes (the Earned Income Tax Credit)” (p. 57). He adds, “When poor workers receive a pay raise, their health improves dramatically. . . . When minimum wages go up, rates of child neglect, underage alcohol consumption, and teen births go down. Smoking, too, decreases” (p. 61). He argues, “Economic security leads to better choices” (p. 62).

In Chapter 4, “How We Force the Poor to Pay More,” Desmond argues, “the poor are exploited laborers, exploited consumers, and exploited borrowers” (p. 78). He indicates, “Poor Americans continue to be crippled by the high cost of housing. Rent has more than doubled over the past two decades, rising much faster than renters’ incomes” (p. 65). He continues, “Poor people—and particularly poor Black families—don’t have much choice when it comes to where they can live. Because of that, landlords can overcharge them, and they do” (p. 65). He adds, “Poor renters are also excluded from homeownership, not because they are too poor to make regular mortgage payments . . . but because several factors discourage them from even trying” (pp. 69–70). 

Desmond shows that “poverty isn’t simply the condition of not having enough money. It’s the condition of not having choice and being taken advantage of because of that. When we ignore the role exploitation plays in trapping people in poverty, we end up designing policy that is weak at best and ineffective at worst” (p. 78). Desmond asserts, “When legislation lifts incomes at the bottom—say, by expanding the Child Tax Credit or by raising the minimum wage—without addressing the housing crisis, those gains are often recouped by landlords, not wholly by the families the legislation was intended to help” (pp. 78–79).

In Chapter 5, “How We Rely on Welfare,” Desmond describes the ambivalent welfare state, which on one hand has a visible poverty policy and cash transfers, and on the other hand, has hidden, wealth-boosting tax breaks and benefits. He addresses underlying ideologies of deservingness and welfare. He indicates that virtually all Americans benefit from some form of public aid. “We’re all on the dole” (pp. 91‒92). Desmond argues,“Today, the biggest beneficiaries of federal aid are affluent families,” who benefit from employer-sponsored health insurance, mortgage interest deduction, and 529 plans (p. 93). He states, “Americans who rely on the most visible social programs (like public housing or food stamps) are also the most likely to recognize that the government had been a force for good in their lives, but Americans who rely on the most invisible programs (namely tax breaks) are the least likely to believe that the government had given them a leg up” (p. 95). He concludes, “Help from the government is a zero-sum affair. The biggest government subsidies are not directed at families trying to climb out of poverty but instead go to ensure that well-off families stay well-off. This leaves fewer resources for the poor” (pp. 101–102).

In Chapter 6, “How We Buy Opportunity,” Desmond describes a history of social inequalities, how wealth-building in the United States works and doesn’t work via redlining, segregation, white flight, and wealth-rapacious exclusionary zoning. Desmond argues, “A trend toward private opulence and public squalor has come to define not simply a handful of communities, but the whole nation” (p. 107). He indicates that “tax cuts are one of the main engines of private opulence and public squalor” (p. 109). He argues, “The drive toward private opulence and public squalor harms the poor not only because it leads to widespread disinvestment in public goods but also because that disinvestment creates new private enterprises that eventually replace public institutions as the primary suppliers of opportunity” (p. 111). Desmond argues, “Equal opportunity is possible only if everyone can access childcare centers, good schools, and safe neighborhoods—all of which serve as engines of social mobility. But private opulence and public squalor leads to the ‘commodification of opportunity,’ where those engines of social mobility now cost something” (p. 111)

In Chapter 7, “Invest in Ending Poverty,” Desmond asks, “How do we, today, make the poor in America poor?” (p. 120). He highlights three ways: 1) We exploit them, we constrain their choices and power in the labor market, the housing market, and the financial market, driving down wages while forcing the poor to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit; 2) We prioritize the subsidization of affluence over the alleviation of poverty; and 3) We create and maintain prosperous and exclusive communities (pp. 120–121). Desmond suggests that policy needs to “go big” to address poverty, by targeting poverty welfare policy with a broader “tent targeting,” or “targeting universalism” (p. 130). He concludes, “We need to ensure that aid directed at poor people stays in their pockets, instead of being captured by companies whose low wages are subsidized by government benefits, or by landlords who raise the rents as their tenants’ wages rise, or by banks and payday loan outlets that issue exorbitant fines and fees” (p. 138).

In Chapter 8, “Empower the Poor,” Desmond describes ways to eradicate poverty. He starts by indicating, “A crucial step toward ending poverty is giving more Americans the power to decide where to work, live, and bank, and when to start a family” (p. 139). He suggests that “Congress should raise the minimum wage and make sure all workers are paid it, ending subminimum pay. But it should do more than that. It should ensure that workers never again have to fight to earn a living” (p. 139). He suggests, “The United States should require periodic (and humane) reviews of the minimum wage” (p. 140). He also suggests, “New Labor (policies) must be inclusive and antiracist, empowering workers, young and old, including those bending in our fields, waiting on our tables, cleaning our homes and offices, and caring for our old and sick” (p. 141). To end rent gouging and neglected properties, Desmond suggests that “we need to expand housing opportunity for low-income families” (p. 143). Desmond continues, “We should also ensure fair access to capital. Banks should stop robbing the poor and near-poor of billions of dollars each year, immediately ending exorbitant overdraft fees” (p. 149). To eradicate poverty, Desmond also suggests ending overdraft fees, greater regulation to payday and usurious lending, increasing access to birth control, holding our institutions accountable, and consumer activism that encourages corporate and anti-poverty practices. 

Finally, in Chapter 9, “Tear Down the Walls,” Desmond argues that “our walls, they have to go” (p. 161). He indicates that “even the most ambitious anti-poverty proposals . . . such as universal basic income, often leave segregation untouched.” He writes, “Opposing segregation is vital to poverty abolitionism” (p. 163). Desmond supports integration. He showed based on previous research that “moving poor families to high-opportunity neighborhoods, without doing anything else to increase their incomes, improves their lives tremendously” (p. 161). He wrote that after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. “Black children who were enrolled in integrated schools performed better in the classroom, graduated at higher rates, and were more likely to go to college than their peers who experienced segregated education” (p. 163-164). As a result, “Black students who benefitted from court-ordered integration were significantly less likely to experience poverty as adults. White children whose schools desegregated remained on track: their academic achievement, and a later-life well-being did not suffer as a result of their new Black classmates” (p. 164).

Desmond further indicates that increasing inequality has led to a further polarization and a rise in income segregation among school districts. He shows that “students from poor families who attended low-poverty schools significantly outperformed those who attended high-poverty schools” (p. 164). He observes, “Our children’s schools today are less economically diverse than their grandparents’ schools were, and most of our communities remained sharply segregated by race as well” (p. 165). Desmond calls for community integration to address America’s poverty.

Desmond describes “scarcity diversion” as a process that allow elites to hoard resources like money or land, pretend that arrangement is natural and unavoidable or ignore it altogether, attempt to address social problems caused by the resource hoarding only with scarce resources left over, and finally fail to decrease the poverty rate and build more affordable housing. This process sustains ideologies around welfare and who most deserves to be helped. Desmond calls for a new paradigm, the opposite of “scarcity diversion,” in line with an “economy of abundance.” He indicates that “choosing abundance, at once a perspective and a legislative platform, a shift in vision and in policy design, means recognizing that this country has a profusion of resources—enough land and capital to go around—and that pretending otherwise is a farce” (p. 175). This is an excellently written and must-read book on poverty in the United States, especially for policymakers, and students in sociology, social work, and other social sciences courses that focus on social stratification and inequality.