Increasing interest rates, inflation, and supply chain disruptions notwithstanding, the McMansion is alive and well. Far from being a boomtime fad, it has become a durable emblem of our American way of life.
Why do so many Americans live in poverty? Because so many rich people benefit from it. This is the thesis of the lauded sociologist Matthew Desmond. He shows how employers, financial institutions, and landlords extract money from low-income families while rich families hoard opportunities for themselves.
Some Black residents and elected officials argue the stores stifle economic growth and job creation, and exacerbate food insecurity. The stores are also disproportionately in areas that are low-income, rural, and Black, which experts say is racist.
Nauru, an island in the South Pacific, is known for its high rate of poverty and unemployment. Only a few decades ago, the island was listed among world’s richest countries while it was a major phosphate exporter but as the resources exhausted, the national systems started to fail.
Finland is the only country in the European Union where homelessness is falling. Its secret? Giving people homes as soon as they need them – unconditionally.
A recession is no picnic. A financial crisis leaves wounds that last for decades. A pandemic, though, can sow a unique kind of chaos. The rich got even richer after the Great Recession, but the Great Depression changed the social order.
In the 1930s, Atlanta was the first city to build modern public housing units. They were marketed largely to working-class white people, a temporary stop on the way to presumed home ownership. But as lenders approved more loans to white Americans, black families became the face of public housing.
“Universal basic income” was for a long time an obscure term bandied about in economics circles. That’s no longer the case. The idea, usually involving a monthly cash grant to every person with no strings attached, has entered mainstream discourse. Small programs hint at how it might work — or not — on a national scale.
The major chains — AMC, Regal Entertainment and Cinemark — no longer rely on teenage ushers to keep the floors from getting sticky. Instead, they have turned to a vast immigrant workforce, often hired through layers of subcontractors. That arrangement makes it almost impossible for janitors to make a living wage.
In 2017, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) found that 8.4 million households in the U.S. were without bank accounts. Nearly 53 percent of these households listed “not having enough money” to put into an account as the reason why, while another 30 percent cited not trusting banks.
In Brooklyn, the median rent has gone up about 10 percent in the six years since Quick Evic was founded, allowing the company to expand aggressively. In 2014 it brought in $20,000 in revenue, which ballooned to more than $300,000 by 2017. How one company helps landlords exploit a loophole in New York’s tenant laws.
Despite Ontario’s recent minimum wage increase, workers are still struggling to make ends meet. Even for those who have full-time jobs, earning minimum wage means they have to make a lot of difficult choices.
In America almost 40m people—one eighth of its population—live in poverty. Why does the richest big country in the world still have so many people living in profound need?
Hong Kong has more ultra-rich people than any other country, yet 1 in 5 people still live in poverty. SBS Dateline’s Marc Fennell asks why the gap between rich and poor is so extreme.
It is a mistake to see slums as a byproduct of the modern city, rundown areas that occur by accident. Instead, researchers contend that the slum has long been a “prime moneymaker” for those who profit from land scarcity, racial segregation, and deferred maintenance.
Philanthropists are putting record sums into tackling the world’s most pressing problems. And unlike the mega-donors of the past today’s philanthropists want to see the results in their lifetimes. But how altruistic is this new golden age of giving? Have these mega-donors become too powerful?
Some Mauritanian communities believe that the fatter girls look the wealthier and more attractive they appear to men. Sahar Zand meets the families force feeding their young girls a 9,000 calorie-a-day diet during a brutal “feeding season” in Mauritania.
More than 4,100 refugees live in Samos Reception and Identification Center in Greece, a compound built for 650, awaiting their fate. Some have been here for years, and they include people from dozens of nations across the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. They also include some 1,200 children, many of them unaccompanied minors.
Medical debt is a uniquely American phenomenon, a burden that would be unfathomable in many other developed countries. According to a survey in the American Journal of Public Health, nearly 60 percent of people who have filed for bankruptcy said a medical expense contributed to their bankruptcy.
