“Broke in America” — feat. Joanne Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox

Rebecca talks to the authors of Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty — Joanne Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.

Nearly 40 million people in the U.S. live below the official poverty line — which in 2021 is just $26,000 for a family of four. Low-income families are everywhere — from cities to rural communities. But while poverty is all too often portrayed as a personal failure, it’s actually the result of bad public policy choices. Public policy has purposefully erected barriers that deny access to basic needs, creating a society where people can easily become trapped in poverty — not because we as a nation lack the resources to lift them out, but because we are actively choosing not to.

This is the premise of a book published earlier this year called Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty, which looks at many of the policy choices conspiring to keep people poor and offers a roadmap of solutions that would eradicate poverty in the U.S. Rebecca sat down with the authors, Joanne Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, for this week’s pod.

This week’s guests:

• Joanne Goldblum, founder and CEO, National Diaper Bank Network, and founder of the Alliance for Period Supplies
• Colleen Shaddox, writer and activist

For more:

• Find Broke in America here
• Learn more about and get involved with the National Diaper Bank Network and the Alliance for Period Supplies