In the U.S. in early 2011, 1.5 million households with roughly three million children were living on "no more than $2 per person per day in any given month," according to Kathryn J. Edin (co-author of It's Not Like I'm Poor), an innovative sociologist, and H. Luke Shaefer, an expert at calculating the complex incomes of the poor. In the 1990s, Edin studied the budgets of hundreds of U.S. welfare recipients. They were struggling, but getting by. In 2010, she returned to find many families with "no visible means of cash income from any source." What had changed? The welfare reform legislation of 1996.
$2.00 a Day is the result of in-depth studies launched by the authors in 2012. They followed 18 families in Chicago, the rural Mississippi Delta, Cleveland and Johnson City, Tenn. Eight are featured in the book. At this level of poverty, people can't pay bills, buy phone minutes or get to work, and may go hungry for weeks every month. When they find work, the jobs are often brutally demanding and unforgiving. To survive, they may collect cans, rainwater and scrap metal, sell plasma, sex, rides or their children's Social Security numbers, or trade SNAP benefits illegally.
Edin and Schaefer recommend that society stop shaming the poor and take clear steps to give them a fair chance: raise the minimum wage, improve low-wage job conditions, expand temporary cash welfare, insure the well-being of families with young children and create subsidized job programs linked to social services. "What they want more than anything else is the chance to work." --Sara Catterall