It expanded the time window in which laid-off workers could collect unemployment and, in a rare recognition of the inadequacy of the benefit, added supplementary payments. The federal government responded to this free fall with bold and immediate relief. During the week of March 16, 2020, more than 3.3 million Americans did. During the worst week of the Great Recession of the late Aughts, 661,000 Americans filed for unemployment insurance. Between February and April 2020, the unemployment rate doubled-then it doubled again.

Social distancing protocols caused businesses to shutter, and millions of Americans lost their jobs.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.Three years ago, the Covid-19 pandemic struck the United States, and the economy sputtered in the direction of collapse. Former President Barack Obama listed it among the favorite books he read in 2017.ĭesmond is a professor of sociology at Princeton University and a contributing writer to The New York Times magazine.Ĭopyright 2022 The Associated Press. Besides the Pulitzer, the book received an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and a National Book Critics Circle award. Are we - we the secure, the insured, the housed, the college educated, the lucky - somehow responsible for all this suffering?'ĭesmond's “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City' was published in 2016 and focused on eight families in an impoverished area of Milwaukee. To understand the causes of poverty, we must hold a mirror up to ourselves. “But they cannot answer the most fundamental question, which is: Why all this poverty in this land of abundance? I’ve learned that that question requires a different approach. “Books about poverty, including ‘Evicted,’ tend to be books about the poor, tend to bear witness,” Desmond said in a statement issued Wednesday by Crown. According to Crown, Desmond will document how the wealthy harm the poor, knowingly and unknowingly. It also asks why.Ĭrown will publish “Poverty, by America” on March 21, 2023.

NEW YORK – Matthew Desmond's first book since his Pulitzer Prize winning “Evicted” is not just a study of who is poor in the world's richest country.

Matthew desmond poverty by america