8 GROUNDCOVER NEWS POVERTY NOVEMBER 3, 2023 Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America, in conversation with Luke Shaefer You might recognize the names Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin from the cover of “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America,” which in 2015 reframed conversations on family poverty in the United States, ultimately leading to the expansion of the Child Tax Credit in 2021. Shaefer, Edin and Timothy Nelson’s newest book, “Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America” now looks at poverty from the macro-perspective of place, instead of person. They developed an assessment method called the “Index of Deep Disadvantage,” which calculated the 100 most disadvantaged and advantaged places in the country. Through data-driven, historical and immersive research — conducted between 2019 and 2022 — they have come to important conclusions about the origins and solutions to inequality in the United States. Lindsay Calka: How does understanding — and addressing — the 100 most disadvantaged places improve well-being and poverty across the country? Luke Shaefer: The problems that we have didn’t appear out of thin air. I think we often proceed like that’s true, but often, the challenges we have are a decade, a century in the making. This book focuses on a set of communities — the most disadvantaged 100 and 200. I think the lesson is that, when you want to understand why things are the way they are, you really have to recognize the history is broader and can be used in many different communities. A second argument in the book is that when we think about poverty, we usually are problematizing the individuals experiencing it. In this book we really try to make the case that there’s a collective problem that things are the way they are not just because of the actions or the circumstances of the families at the bottom of the economic ladder, but those are tied to people in the community far up the economic ladder, really to society as a whole, so we should broaden the scope of what we’re looking at and who benefits from the way things are, to a much broader part of the population. LC: Your 2015 book “$2.00 A Day,” was critical for the expansion of the Child Tax Credit. Who needs to get Injustice of Place in their hands? What outcomes do you hope it supports? LS: The nice thing about the first book was that there was a simple solution: providing cash can be an effective LINDSAY CALKA Publisher similar. So, how can poverty be the result of some family in 2016, 2019, 2023, making the wrong decisions, if we’ve seen the same patterns for 150 years? I think the book tries to make the way to reduce poverty.When we think about the things we do for poor families, I think the litmus test is “will this benefit them more than just giving them the money that would be used to provide the service that we want to provide them.” In “The Injustice of Place,” we don’t have [just] a single policy solution. I’m a big believer in cash transfers. We saw the impact that can have during the COVID pandemic — the expanded child tax credit and the economic impact payments, the stimulus payments — were hugely successful. I’m a full believer in that, but I think this book really suggests many different avenues that we need to be thinking about, including local government corruption. The people who are running the communities that have the most need, how much are they looking out for the folks at the very bottom? Social infrastructure — how much are there opportunities in any given community for people to gather and to have cheap fun together where they can make connections and use those connections to build supports for finding jobs, and role models, and whatever it is? The book really calls us to try to reduce community violence, and makes the argument that by expanding economic opportunity, that’s going to be one of our best ways to impact community violence. The downside is that there’s a lot of avenues in, but the good side is that, I think, communities can really focus on the things that there’s the most energy and infrastructure for. LC: How do you see — or have you seen already — the conclusions of this book influencing popular understanding of poverty in the United States? In other words, what myths are you busting about poverty? LS: So many of the challenges we have can be traced back to a century ago, or a century-and-a-half ago. Early in the book, you see our map of deep disadvantage for the Deep South compared to a map of the concentration of slavery in 1860, and they’re pretty darn case that we have to look at ourselves as a society, and re-think where the change has to come from. And, I think we saw that with the safety-net stuff that we did during COVID. We gave people a lot of money through the child tax credit, and also through the economic impact payments, expanded unemployment insurance; lo and behold, the number of Americans with bad credit fell to an all time low. People used that money to pay off their debt; they used it for food; they used it for essential expenses; they used it for rent. That sort of flies in the face of all of our concerns about giving people money and, more broadly, trusting families and empowering them to make their own decisions. LC: We know stark inequality is a characteristic of Washtenaw County — but this community can hardly be considered one of the "forgotten places of America." How would you apply the findings of this book to our local policy landscape? LS: I think of Washtenaw County as a real microcosm of our economic and social changes. Ann Arbor has always had more money than Ypsilanti, but the divide was not as great half a century ago. Over that period of time, we’ve seen the decline of the industrial economy, and I think Ypsi has really been impacted by that. The increasing rewards of the top knowledge economy, Ann Arbor has really been a beneficiary of that. So, if you want to sort of understand inequality and poverty in the United States, I think Washtenaw County is a great place to do it because you have this, like, growing stratification between two places. I think understanding how our systems kind of leave out a place like Ypsilanti, too, is clear. So, it’s not a rural place, but when you look at philanthropy for example, there’s more philanthropic dollars going into organizations in Ann Arbor because that’s where the money is. People like to give to their community, and so less money goes to Ypsilanti, or folks who are struggling in more rural areas in Chelsea or Dexter. You really see this mis-match between the need and the resources. A lot of what’s playing out here is playing out across the nation. LC: If you were to study this community with the same methods conducted in the book, where would you start in Washtenaw County? LS: The thing I am most disappointed in about Ann Arbor is I think Ann Arbor as a community likes to think of itself as very progressive or liberal, but a lot of our actions suggest we’re not willing to do our part in addressing the inequality that we have — as a small community, and as a county. I think that can take the form of affordable housing and services for folks who have challenges. So, “What can we do to even out the work of really taking these challenges seriously with the resources we have?” is our question going forward. Is Ann Arbor really going to do its part? It’s not like Ann Arbor does nothing. It hosts the Delonis Center, and that’s great, but how much actual action have we seen as a community in Ann Arbor on making housing more affordable? I don’t think there’s really been any. And, if you plotted the agencies that help Washtenaw County, and those in our county who are really having challenges, how many of them would be located in Ypsi, would serve people in Ypsi? And how many would be in Ann Arbor? You know, how many would be in other parts, and is that reflective of everyone sort of coming together to address the challenges? I think not. Who should be paying for it? Where should things be located? You know, we want it to be as accessible to the people who need it as possible, but we also don’t want Ypsilanti to bear all of the challenges of that work. Ann Arbor should be an equal partner. Luke Shaefer, Ph.D. is a U-M Professor of Social Work and Public Policy and the inaugural director of Poverty Solutions, an interdisciplinary, presidential initiative that partners with communities and policymakers to find new ways to prevent and alleviate poverty.
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