Wealth & Poverty from Marketplace APM
American Public Media
The Marketplace Wealth and Poverty Desk explores money and class, where we came from and where our country is going economically, thanks to funding from the Ford Foundation. We want to hear your stories, ideas, and questions to help us create great...
Location:
United States
Genres:
Politics
Networks:
American Public Media
Description:
The Marketplace Wealth and Poverty Desk explores money and class, where we came from and where our country is going economically, thanks to funding from the Ford Foundation. We want to hear your stories, ideas, and questions to help us create great journalism about the growing concentration of wealth in the United States. We’ll report on the forces and policies that led to the wealth gap. We’ll look at what the consequences are, good or bad, for our families and communities. We’ll be asking you what economic choices our country should make.
Language:
English
Episodes
Schools struggle to address rising student homelessness
5/7/2019
Cecilia Sirianni's small office at Massabesic High School can sometimes get a bit messy. Piles of donated clothes and boxes of snacks fill cabinets and shelves — all for students at the rural district in York County, Maine. For more than a decade, a big part of Sirianni's job has been to identify kids and families who are homeless and help them meet basic needs."So they're dealing with all this adult stuff,” Sirianni said. “Like, again, where's my food? I have to figure out how to get home....
Duration:00:02:56
Research says collaboration is needed to address Houston's "food deserts"
5/1/2019
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says more than 50 million people across the country live in “food deserts” – low-income communities where it can be hard to find healthy food. According to the last census, in 2010, almost 2 million of those people live in the Houston area alone. New research suggests the problem is persisting in Houston in part because the variety of groups trying to solve it aren’t always coordinating their efforts. And in some cases, they’re even competing for funding.
Duration:00:02:24
Kicking the habit
4/18/2019
Many people in Wise County agree that they can’t jail their way out of a drug epidemic, but there’s a lot less agreement on what to do instead. And we find out what happened to Joey Ballard.
Duration:00:49:28
African Americans' wages nearly stagnant over decade
4/18/2019
The unemployment rate is near historic lows, the job market is tight, and wages have been rising steadily.But since the Great Recession, wage gains have varied significantly by race, with African Americans’ earnings nearly stagnant over the period, while other groups' median pay has risen between 5 and 10%.According to “usual weekly earnings” data reported every quarter by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2007 to 2017 inflation-adjusted median weekly earnings rose 1.2% for African...
Duration:00:01:23
Families bear the costs of alternative sentencing programs
4/12/2019
For the past 30 years, courts in the United States have experimented with different programs designed to keep convicted offenders out of jail — things like drug court or court-ordered community service, where people work off jail sentences. We’re at a moment where these kind of work programs are ballooning in popularity as a potential solution to mass incarceration. It's something we explore in the newest season of our podcast The Uncertain Hour.But these programs raise the question: Is...
Duration:00:03:04
Supply
4/11/2019
It’s not easy being an undercover cop in a county of just 40,000 people. But drugs were making it hard for Bucky Culbertson to run his business, so he made it his business to get rid of drugs.
Duration:00:40:36
Low interest rates have cost savers roughly half a trillion dollars
4/10/2019
Historically low rates of interest have helped the U.S. economy recover from the Great Recession. But there have been casualties. Savers — and the wider economy — have lost interest income from deposits and investments that could total $500 billion. This probably hurt those who are retired, or on a fixed income, the most.Click the audio player above to hear the full story.
Duration:00:02:40
Life for Americans without identifying documents can be financially devastating
4/10/2019
When American-born children age out of foster care without identifying documents like birth certificates and state ID cards, their financial futures can be at stake. These young people may have trouble going to college, getting a job, or renting an apartment. In Texas, when kids in foster care turn 16, the law requires they get birth certificates, Social Security cards and state IDs, but that does not always happen. It can be hard to track down documents if biological parents are out of...
Duration:00:02:37
Welcome to Wise County
4/4/2019
It’s the deadliest drug epidemic our country has ever faced. We go to ground zero, where “nothing changes except for the drug.”
Duration:00:35:55
Sentencing
3/28/2019
The drug bust and the trial were a “farce,” but the full force of the law still came down on Keith Jackson — and thousands of people like him. That didn’t end the crack epidemic, so what did?
Duration:00:48:12
106: How do drug epidemics end?
3/26/2019
Opioid overdoses are killing about 50,000 Americans a year, more than car accidents and guns. Marketplace's documentary podcast, The Uncertain Hour, is digging into drug epidemics in its latest season: why people buy and sell drugs, how law enforcement tries to stop them and how an epidemic eventually ends. Reporter and producer Caitlin Esch spoke with Kai and Molly about going back to Wise County, Virginia, a sort of ground zero of the current opioid epidemic, and about how the stories told...
Duration:00:25:51
What happened to Keith?
3/22/2019
One day, early in the semester, Keith Jackson didn’t show up to class. He’d been arrested for selling crack, but for his classmates, that wasn’t the surprising part.
Duration:00:32:38
George H.W. Bush and his baggie of crack
3/21/2019
It was the perfect political prop: drugs seized by government agents right across the street from the White House, just in time for a big presidential address. The reality was more complicated.
Duration:00:45:37
Report finds link between high housing costs and poor health
3/19/2019
According to a new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin — which ranks the health of nearly every county in the U.S. — more than 10 percent of households live with the burden of extremely high housing costs. Where people spend more than half of their income on housing, it is more difficult to live better and longer.
Duration:00:01:13
Border crossings on the rise despite increased federal investment
3/6/2019
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reports more than 76,000 people came over the southern border last month without documents. That’s more than double from the same time last year. A look at how the budget for border security isn't meeting the realities on the ground.Click the audio player above to hear the full story.
Duration:00:01:29
Delivery companies finding ways to help restaurants donate excess food
2/19/2019
Nearly one-third of food prepared by restaurants and grocery stores winds up as waste, according to data cited by the Environmental Protection Agency. It can be awkward and costly for restaurants to coordinate transport of their surplus food to shelters or food banks, but food delivery companies like Postmates and DoorDash have started offering restaurants a way of doing just that.
Duration:00:02:32
Rents in many California cities keep rising, could a cap on increases help?
2/11/2019
Californians' rejection of a rent control measure in November 2018 has prompted some politicians in Sacramento to talk about getting an anti-rent gouging cap on the books. The idea is similar to a current law that bars the state's businesses from raising the price on goods and services beyond 10 percent during natural disasters.
Duration:00:02:17
Urban Institute analyzes reach of social safety net
2/6/2019
A new analysis by the Urban Institute finds that a quarter of Americans living in poverty don’t receive public assistance such as food stamps, subsidized housing, child care or cash benefits. Click the audio player above to hear the full story.
Duration:00:01:23
Refunds are looking slimmer this tax season
1/29/2019
Update: This story originally published on Jan. 28. It has been updated to include emailed responses. Tax filing season got underway this week. And it's a big one, because we just finished the first full tax year since Congress passed the tax reform law of 2017. That law, and the changes that came out of it, could make a big difference in the size of your tax refund this year. The reason? Most people got a tax cut under the new law, so last year, the IRS told employers to withhold less in...
Duration:00:02:09
Millennials, like Baby Boomers, struggle with lifelong debt
1/21/2019
A recent survey points out that one in 10 millennials thinks they will die in debt.Click the audio player above to hear the full story.
Duration:00:01:21