num_pages: 210
description: A revelatory account of poverty in America so deep that we as a country dont think it existsJessica Comptons family of four would have no cash income unless she donated plasma twice a week at her local donation center in Tennessee. Modonna Harris and her teenage daughter Brianna in Chicago often have no food but spoiled milk on weekends. After two decades of brilliant research on American poverty Kathryn Edin noticed something she hadnt seen since the mid-1990s  households surviving on virtually no income. Edin teamed with Luke Shaefer an expert on calculating incomes of the poor to discover that the number of American families living on $2. 00 per person per day has skyrocketed to 1.5 million American households including about 3 million children. Where do these families live? How did they get so desperately poor? Edin has procured rich  and truthful  interviews. Through the books many compelling profiles moving and startling answers emerge. The authors illuminate a troubling trend: a low-wage labor market that increasingly fails to deliver a living wage and a growing but hidden landscape of survival strategies among Americas extreme poor. More than a powerful expos $2. 00 a Day delivers new evidence and new ideas to our national debate on income inequality.
language: English
title: $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt