Poverty

What Are Foundations For?

Philanthropic institutions are plutocratic by nature. Can they be justified in a democracy?

  • Rob Reich
with responses from
  • Christopher J. Coyne
  • Stanley N. Katz
  • Diane Ravitch
  • Deborah Fung
  • Paul Brest
  • Rick Cohen
  • Tyler Cowen
  • Seana Valentine Shiffrin
  • Pablo Eisenberg
  • Larry Kramer
  • Eric Beerbohm
  • Robert K. Ross
  • Gara LaMarche
  • Emma Saunders-Hastings

Little, Big

Big-time development economists are missing something.

  • Pranab Bardhan

Taxing Away Inequality

A Conversation with Emmanuel Saez

  • David B. Grusky
  • Emmanuel Saez

Who Are You Calling Poor?

Managing Editor Simon Waxman interviews Jina Moore about how she reports and writes about poverty.

  • Simon Waxman
  • Jina Moore

Cash Cows

Thanks to dairy farmers, there is hope for a sustainable middle class in East Africa.

  • Jennifer Wheary

The Road (and Rail) to Justice

Pushing for Fair Public Transit

  • Amy B. Dean

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Promoting Social Mobility

The accident of birth is a principal source of inequality in America today.

  • James J. Heckman
with responses from
  • Mike Rose
  • Robin West
  • Charles Murray
  • Carol S. Dweck
  • David Deming
  • Neal McCluskey
  • Annette Lareau
  • Lelac Almagor
  • Adam Swift & Harry Brighouse
  • Geoffrey Canada

Sweet Forgiveness

Debt relief is fair. It would also be good for the economy. Why isn’t it happening? Politics.

  • Mike Konczal
with responses from
  • Dean Baker
  • G. Marcus Cole
  • Tamara Draut
  • Louis Hyman
  • Jacob S. Hacker & Nathaniel Loewentheil
  • Mark A. Calabria
  • Robert C. Hockett
  • Barbara H. Fried

Beyond the Welfare State

Rawls’s radical vision for a better America.

  • Martin O’Neill
  • Thad Williamson

The Primal Ache

What Adam Smith Knew about Inequality

  • John Paul Rollert

How to Be Poor

The “culture of poverty” isn’t about moral failure but about reasonable adaptation to circumstances.

  • Claude S. Fischer

State of the Nation: No Middle Ground

America’s Growing Income Segregation

  • Kendra Bischoff
  • Sean F. Reardon

That’s Not Really Destroying America

An interview with Fischer about his new BR column.

  • Claude S. Fischer
  • David V. Johnson

Good Jobs

Three Reasons There Aren’t More

  • Paul Osterman

Storms Without Names

Climate Change Wreaking Havoc in Central America

  • Douglas Haynes

A World on Fire

Life and death in a New Orleans squat.

  • Danelle Morton

Return to Haiti

A year and a half after the earthquake.

  • Colin Dayan

Who Represents the Poor?

The limits of the NGO movement in global development.

  • Pranab Bardhan

Putting Solutions on Trial

Impact Evaluation and the Millennium Villages Experiment in Africa

  • Michael A. Clemens

Apocalypse

There are no natural disasters, only social ones.

  • Junot Díaz

Feast and Famine

India is growing, but Indians are still starving.

  • Siddhartha Deb

Small Changes, Big Results

Behavioral Economics at Work in Poor Countries

  • Rachel Glennerster
  • Michael Kremer
with responses from
  • Diane Coyle
  • Eran Bendavid
  • Pranab Bardhan
  • José Gómez-Márquez
  • Chloe O’Gara
  • Jishnu Das & Shantayanan Devarajan & Jeffrey S. Hammer
  • Daniel N. Posner

Can Technology End Poverty?

Many development experts promote information and communication technology (ICT) as a way to relieve global poverty. They should pay more attention to the human beings who use it.

  • Kentaro Toyama
with responses from
  • Nicholas Negroponte
  • Dean Karlan
  • Archon Fung
  • Evgeny Morozov
  • Ignacio Mas
  • Nathan Eagle
  • Jenny C. Aker
  • Christine Zhenwei Qiang

Sturdy Green Thread

Yearning for democracy in Iran

  • Sara Irani
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