The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America

Harper Collins, August 2023

Kathryn Edin, William Church Osborn Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs; Director, Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing

Timothy Nelson, Lecturer in Sociology and Public Policy, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

H. Luke Shaefer, University of Michigan

Three of the nation’s top scholars —known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America — turn their attention from the country’s poorest people to its poorest places. Based on a fresh, data-driven approach, they discover that America’s most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice. Instead, nearly all are rural. Little if any attention has been paid to these places or to the people who make their lives there. The unfolding revelation in The Injustice of Place is not about what sets these places apart, but about what they have in common — a history of raw, intensive resource extraction and human exploitation. This history and its reverberations demand a reckoning and a commitment to wage a new War on Poverty, with the unrelenting focus on our nation’s places of deepest need.

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