Bringing down poverty

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Matthew Desmond’s new book is titled Poverty, by America (Crown, 2023), and the word by is key. Poor Americans, he argues, are not poor because of the choices they make but because of the choices the nonpoor make—both in their personal lives and in the public policies their elected leaders enact. Poverty is “by” America because nonpoor Americans cause it.

It’s an arresting argument, and Desmond offers some compelling evidence of the way nonpoor Americans use politics for selfish purposes. Be prepared to squirm as Desmond points out how almost every American is “on the dole.” Subsidized student loans, middle-class entitlements, and tax loopholes mean nobody should look down on those who accept welfare. Desmond also shows how people lobby politicians to make their houses more valuable (and out of reach for low earners), and how changes in laws allow payday lenders to exploit the poor.

Fixing problems like these may be important, but it would only go so far in fixing poverty. Desmond places too much confidence in government policy and not enough in cultural renewal. Throughout most of the book, he makes the case that cash payments lift people above the poverty line, and he celebrates government assistance during the pandemic. But giving ­people money hasn’t solved the social problems associated with poverty, and the pandemic is a case in point. As Congress showered Americans with money, crime and overdose rates increased markedly.

He similarly points to poverty falling in the first decade after President Johnson’s War on Poverty. But poverty rates were falling before the 1960s. What changed after the War on Poverty was the explosive increase in crime rates. Poverty rates stopped falling after the 1970s as Johnson’s policies continued, and rates of violent crime remained much higher than they were in 1960. Simply giving people money to move them above a particular income line doesn’t solve problems that result from behavior, and it carries a risk of making bad habits worse.

Another weak (and morally problematic) point is Desmond’s claim that legal abortion is a poverty-fighting tool. Poverty rates were falling in the years leading up to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, when abortion was illegal in most places, and then stopped falling in the decades after Roe forced states to legalize ­abortion. The legal status of abortion may not have been the cause of those numbers, but legal abortion is clearly—at best—unnecessary to fight poverty, especially in the era of safe-haven baby boxes.

But what really throws a wrench into Desmond’s argument is the ­success of poor immigrants. At one point, Desmond actually points out the amazing upward mobility of poor immigrant families, but it doesn’t prompt him to ask why they (including immigrants from Africa) excel while so many American-born poor people (white and black) don’t. Immigrants don’t think America is such a bad place for the poor, and they flock here more than to other countries.

What do these immigrants have that the American-born poor lack? That’s a complex question, but surely a potential answer is they have values that shield them and their children from the toxic and debilitating culture America built after the sexual revolution.

Overall, Desmond is persuasive that nonpoor Americans should consider how their choices affect the poor, and some of his policy prescriptions are sound. But if we want to solve the social problems associated with poverty (crime, overdoses, hopelessness), then there’s no substitute for rethinking the cultural norms of the last 60 years.