One nation, pulling apart: the basis of persistent poverty in the USA

Poverty in America has grown persistently throughout the twentieth century. Once a condition confined to immigrants, women and children, by the 1930s poverty became tied to the geographic development of the nation. Historically, poverty policy has emphasized individual moral responsibility while ignoring its geographic and structural origins. A weak attempt to address the deeper origins of poverty in the 1960s imploded with the economic crisis of the 1980s and the slide into conservative politics. By 1997 more than 700 counties in the USA were in economic distress. Few new initiatives have been offered to resolve this decades-old problem.