We Get A Lot Wrong When We Talk About Poverty

There are few areas of American life entrenched with as many myths as poverty. According to Mark Rank, a professor of social welfare at the Brown School at Washington University, the majority of Americans will experience poverty at some point in their adult lives. 

“There’s a perception of poverty as an individual failing. We need to start thinking about it as a structural failing.” — Mark Rank, author of “Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty”

What are the causes of this widespread hardship and how can we collectively overcome the myths and misinformation around poverty that have increasingly intensified in recent years?

Listen: Professor Rank talks about where America has gone wrong when it comes to the poor.

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Mark Rank is a professor of social welfare at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of the new book, “Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty.” Rank tries to shatter the notion that poor people only live in certain communities. “Only about 10-15% of people living in poverty live in a high-poverty neighborhood,” he says.

Rank also says educational attainment does not necessarily mean a ticket out of poverty. “If we were overnight to give everyone a college degree, would that mean that suddenly all of those low-wage jobs would go away? No. It would just mean people working those jobs would have a better education,” says Rank.

“There’s a perception of poverty as an individual failing. We need to start thinking about it as a structural failing,” says Rank. “It’s blinded us to these issues.”

Web story written by Allise Hurd