$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America

“Affluent Americans often cherish the belief that poverty in America is far more comfortable than poverty in the rest of the world. Edin and Shaefer's devastating account of life at $2 or less a day blows that myth out of the water. This is world class poverty at a level that should mobilize not only national alarm, but international attention.” —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickeled and Dimed "In $2.00 A Day, Kathy Edin and Luke Shaefer reveal a shameful truth about our prosperous nation:  many -- far too many -- get by on what many of us spend on coffee each day.  It's a chilling book, and should be essential reading for all of us." —Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer deliver an incisive pocket history of 1990s welfare reform—and then blow the lid off what has happened in the decades afterward.  Edin’s and Shaefer’s portraits of people in Chicago, Mississippi, Tennessee, Baltimore, and more forced into underground, damaging survival strategies, here in first-world America, are truly chilling.  This is income inequality in America at its most stark and most hidden.” —Michael Eric Dyson, author of Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster “Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer, with compelling statistics and wrenching human stories, illustrate how—with incomes far below the pay of low-wage jobs that cripples families by the millions--a shocking number of Americans live in an almost unimaginable depth of poverty, with near-zero incomes. We have let the bottom go out of the American economy. This powerful book should be required reading for everyone.” —Peter Edelman, Carmack Waterhouse  Professor of Law, Georgetown Law Center and author, So Rich So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America   “This searing look at extreme poverty deftly mixes policy research and heartrending narratives... Mixing academic seriousness and deft journalistic storytelling, this work may well move readers to positive action.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review   “An eye-opening account of the lives ensnared in the new poverty cycle.”  —Kirkus Reviews   “A close-up, heartbreaking look at rising poverty and income inequality in the U.S.” —Booklist

“A remarkable book that could very well change the way we think about poverty in the United States . . .  This essential book is a call to action, and one hopes it will accomplish what Michael Harrington’s ‘The Other Americans’ achieved in the late 1960s – arousing both the nation’s consciousness and conscience about the plight of a growing number of invisible citizens.  The rise of such absolute poverty since the passage of welfare reform belies all the categorical talk about opportunity and the American dream.” —The New York Times Book Review "With any luck (calling Bernie Sanders) this important book will spark election year debate over how America cares for its most vulnerable." —Mother Jones “Affluent Americans often cherish the belief that poverty in America is far more comfortable than poverty in the rest of the world. Edin and Shaefer's devastating account of life at $2 or less a day blows that myth out of the water. This is world class poverty at a level that should mobilize not only national alarm, but international attention.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickeled and Dimed "In $2.00 A Day, Kathy Edin and Luke Shaefer reveal a shameful truth about our prosperous nation:  many -- far too many -- get by on what many of us spend on coffee each day.  It's a chilling book, and should be essential reading for all of us." —Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer deliver an incisive pocket history of 1990s welfare reform—and then blow the lid off what has happened in the decades afterward.  Edin’s and Shaefer’s portraits of people in Chicago, Mississippi, Tennessee, Baltimore, and more forced into underground, damaging survival strategies, here in first-world America, are truly chilling.  This is income inequality in America at its most stark and most hidden.” —Michael Eric Dyson, author of Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster “Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer, with compelling statistics and wrenching human stories, illustrate how—with incomes far below the pay of low-wage jobs that cripples families by the millions--a shocking number of Americans live in an almost unimaginable depth of poverty, with near-zero incomes. We have let the bottom go out of the American economy. This powerful book should be required reading for everyone.” —Peter Edelman, Carmack Waterhouse  Professor of Law, Georgetown Law Center and author, So Rich So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America   “This searing look at extreme poverty deftly mixes policy research and heartrending narratives... Mixing academic seriousness and deft journalistic storytelling, this work may well move readers to positive action.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “An eye-opening account of the lives ensnared in the new poverty cycle.”  —Kirkus Reviews “A close-up, heartbreaking look at rising poverty and income inequality in the U.S.” —Booklist

“Affluent Americans often cherish the belief that poverty in America is far more comfortable than poverty in the rest of the world. Edin and Shaefer's devastating account of life at $2 or less a day blows that myth out of the water. This is world class poverty at a level that should mobilize not only national alarm, but international attention.” —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickeled and Dimed "In $2.00 A Day, Kathy Edin and Luke Shaefer reveal a shameful truth about our prosperous nation:  many -- far too many -- get by on what many of us spend on coffee each day.  It's a chilling book, and should be essential reading for all of us." —Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer deliver an incisive pocket history of 1990s welfare reform—and then blow the lid off what has happened in the decades afterward.  Edin’s and Shaefer’s portraits of people in Chicago, Mississippi, Tennessee, Baltimore, and more forced into underground, damaging survival strategies, here in first-world America, are truly chilling.  This is income inequality in America at its most stark and most hidden.” —Michael Eric Dyson, author of Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster

On Kathryn Edin: “[Edin’s work] documents what we should have known.”—William Julius Wilson “[Edin] figured out that it was really better to get interviews and observations of people who were willing to trust you and would tell you the truth than it was to get interviews of people who were a random sample of the population who’d lie to you.  That came as something of a shock to social scientist.  The question of whether people were telling the truth had sort of slipped away."—Christopher Jenks “In a field of poverty experts who rarely meet the poor, Edin usefully defies convention....[She has] produced a pioneering account of what might be called the home economics of welfare.  In a research world heavy on theory, Edin’s inquiries are endearingly concrete.”—New York Times “Edin is one of the nation’s preeminent poverty researchers.  She has spent much of the past several decades studying some of the country’s most dangerous, impoverished neighborhoods.  But unlike academics who draw conclusions about poverty from the ivory tower, Edin has gotten up with the people she studies—and in the process has shattered many myths about the poor, rocking sociology and public-policy circles.” —Mother Jones Praise for Doing the Best I Can: “Doing the Best I Can turns many of our assumptions about fatherhood on their heads.”—Alex Kotlowitz Praise for Promises I Can Keep: “If anything can revive interest in this vexing subject [of poor, unmarried women with children], it is Promises I Can Keep...Ms. Edin and Ms. Kefalas decisively rescue the young welfare mother from the policy wonks and feminist professors who have held her hostage until recently, and in so doing overthrow decades of conventional wisdom.” —Wall Street Journal “Groundbreaking” —Christian Science Monitor  

“Affluent Americans often cherish the belief that poverty in America is far more comfortable than poverty in the rest of the world. Edin and Shaefer's devastating account of life at $2 or less a day blows that myth out of the water. This is world class poverty at a level that should mobilize not only national alarm, but international attention.” —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickeled and Dimed  

“A remarkable book that could very well change the way we think about poverty in the United States . . .  This essential book is a call to action, and one hopes it will accomplish what Michael Harrington’s ‘The Other Americans’ achieved in the late 1960s—arousing both the nation’s consciousness and conscience about the plight of a growing number of invisible citizens.  The rise of such absolute poverty since the passage of welfare reform belies all the categorical talk about opportunity and the American dream.” —The New York Times Book Review "With any luck (calling Bernie Sanders) this important book will spark election year debate over how America cares for its most vulnerable." —Mother Jones “Affluent Americans often cherish the belief that poverty in America is far more comfortable than poverty in the rest of the world. Edin and Shaefer's devastating account of life at $2 or less a day blows that myth out of the water. This is world class poverty at a level that should mobilize not only national alarm, but international attention.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickeled and Dimed "In $2.00 A Day, Kathy Edin and Luke Shaefer reveal a shameful truth about our prosperous nation:  many—far too many—get by on what many of us spend on coffee each day.  It's a chilling book, and should be essential reading for all of us." —Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer deliver an incisive pocket history of 1990s welfare reform—and then blow the lid off what has happened in the decades afterward.  Edin’s and Shaefer’s portraits of people in Chicago, Mississippi, Tennessee, Baltimore, and more forced into underground, damaging survival strategies, here in first-world America, are truly chilling.  This is income inequality in America at its most stark and most hidden.” —Michael Eric Dyson, author of Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster “Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer, with compelling statistics and wrenching human stories, illustrate how—with incomes far below the pay of low-wage jobs that cripples families by the millions—a shocking number of Americans live in an almost unimaginable depth of poverty, with near-zero incomes. We have let the bottom go out of the American economy. This powerful book should be required reading for everyone.” —Peter Edelman, Carmack Waterhouse  Professor of Law, Georgetown Law Center and author, So Rich So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America   “This searing look at extreme poverty deftly mixes policy research and heartrending narratives... Mixing academic seriousness and deft journalistic storytelling, this work may well move readers to positive action.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “An eye-opening account of the lives ensnared in the new poverty cycle.”  —Kirkus Reviews “A close-up, heartbreaking look at rising poverty and income inequality in the U.S.” —Booklist