Resources for understanding and teaching about poverty (part 1)

The anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s death was yesterday (June 6). He said “as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil”. He was assassinated in 1968, just two months and two days after the assassination of Dr. King. Both of these men at their death were committed to eradicating poverty in the US, and part of their work was in making sure people (both political leaders and the “average” American) weren’t able to close their eyes and ignore the problem.

I do think some people want to close their eyes and ignore the problem because it feels so overwhelming to try and solve. I think some people want to ignore the problem because they live in a mental place of “it isn’t going to happen to me”.

Several years ago, I developed an elective course on Poverty in the US, and I appreciate having the opportunity to teach a course with this focus (though the topic is woven into several courses in the social work curriculum in various ways). Part of my goal for the class is to address the two mindsets above (about it being overwhelming and about thinking “it won’t happen to me”). I also want students to be critical consumers of news about poverty, and I want them to know what resources are in their community. I get to teach my Poverty in the US elective this fall for the first time in several years so I am thinking through my syllabus as I have some time, updating readings and resources, etc.

The most recent “official” data on poverty in the US is the Census report that was published in fall of 2022 about US poverty in 2021. You can download that report here. There is a ton of data to digest, but I think it really useful for showing trends. This report from the Social Security Administration is a totally “in the weeds” discussion about the history of how the official poverty measure was developed, and while I have never been brave enough to assign it to students the info in this report has helped me answer many of their questions over the years.

This living wage calculator is a great tool from MIT to help students understand how much someone would need to earn to be able to afford housing, childcare, etc. Using this tool in conjunction with a discussion about minimum wage jobs and specific employment contexts familiar to them is a great tool for learning.

Another topic we discuss in class is the likelihood of experiencing poverty across the lifespan. I will write more on that in a future post, but this poverty risk calculator is a great tool for this aspect of the course.

The first couple of times I taught this course I “saved” the intervention discussions for the last part of the semester, so that we could have a big focus at the end of the course on thinking about “what works”. However, it can be a little depressing to never discuss or point out solutions and things that make a difference before week 13 of a 15 week semester. So, we sprinkle some “good news” in throughout, and one of the best resources for this is from the Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan.