Editorials

New data, old reactions

8/25/2013

Another new study concludes that four out of five Americans will face unemployment or near-poverty in their lifetime, and will need safety-net benefits.

Toledo is one of the nation’s poorest cities, various data show. More jobs would help, and many of them likely would have to be public-sector jobs.

It isn’t just an urban condition. Much of the increase in poverty, says William Julius Wilson of Harvard University, the principal author of the new study, is in white Appalachia, including Ohio.

Historically, revelations about poverty — and appeals to alleviate it — have fed the politics of resentment and reaction. Until Americans can overcome such sentiments, the safety net will not widen and public-works jobs that can lift people out of downward mobility will not be created.