Poverty in the 50 years since ‘The Other America,’ in five charts

Dylan Matthews wrote Poverty in the 50 years since ‘The Other America,’ in five charts.

"Fifty years ago, the democratic socialist activist and writer Michael Harrington published The Other America, which chronicled the state of the American poor at that time. The book shed light on what was at the time an especially marginalized population, easily ignored by middle and upper-class Americans who didn’t venture into the urban ghettos and rural communities where most of the poor lived. Most notably, the book, in part due to a review of it by the social critic Dwight MacDonald in The New Yorker, helped convinced the Johnson administration to launch the war on poverty.

The 50th anniversary is prompting a fair amount of useful reflection on poverty reduction efforts since the book’s publication, notably at a conference being held at Demos today. Which raises the question: what has happened to poverty since The Other America?"