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Poverty

Our coverage of poverty in America, which policies help reduce it, and why it's so hard to achieve economic mobility.

Human progress has come at the expense of animals. It doesn’t have to.

Governments once imagined a future without extreme poverty. What happened?

We cut child poverty to historic lows, then let it rebound faster than ever before

The US hired a leading economist to fix how it allocates foreign aid. Here’s his plan.

Lots of Americans are in the global 1%. A tenth of their income could transform the world.

Poverty is a major public health crisis. Let’s treat it like one.

How abortion bans will strain an already failing foster system

What a landmark new study on homelessness tells us

The brewing war over who goes hungry in America — and how to feed them

Why 70 percent of the world’s maternal deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa

Why even brilliant scholars misunderstand poverty in America

Homeless encampments — and the debate over what to do about them — explained

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Economist Chris Blattman has reshaped our understanding of violence and poverty

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Jamila Michener knows that fighting poverty means fighting for democracy

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak wants to find out what makes antipoverty programs effective

The Mississippi welfare fraud involving Brett Favre, explained

How effective altruism went from a niche movement to a billion-dollar force

How America fails children

The simplest, most revolutionary approach to ending poverty

22 things we think will happen in 2022

22 predictions we made in 2021, and the 13 we got right

Democrats may let the best weapon against child poverty fade away

The lie of “expired” food and the disastrous truth of America’s food waste problem

Biden has launched the second war on poverty

We tried to predict 2020. Here’s what we got right — and so very wrong.

What Kenya can teach its neighbors — and the US — about improving the lives of the “unbanked”

How Canada lifted nearly 300,000 kids out of poverty in a single year

The Nobel went to economists who changed how we help the poor. But some critics oppose their big idea.

Vouchers can help the poor find homes. But landlords often won’t accept them.

A generation of economists helped get us into this mess. A new generation can get us out.

Alaska’s universal basic income problem

The Catch-22 for labor unions enjoying newfound public support

How Trump used a centuries-old racist trope to attack Baltimore

What economists have gotten wrong for decades

The Fed is doing something new: listening to low-income workers

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The 2020 Democratic primary debate over reparations, explained

2020 Democrats share plans to fight poverty at presidential forum

The GOP tax law’s lopsided giveaway to corporations, explained in one sentence

Trump wants to change how poverty is calculated — to make fewer people eligible for benefits

India’s poor don’t want money — they want health care

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