EVERYONE INVOLVED IN "WELFARE REFORM" COULD usefully read "What Money Can't Buy" (Harvard University Press), a study by economist Susan Mayer of the University of Chicago. Its message is somber: as a ...

The idea that there is a "culture of poverty" has been anathema to social scientists--liberal ones, in particular--since Johnson's assistant labor secretary Daniel Patrick Moynihan introduced it in ...

Sir: Not long ago, a news report showed Nigerian children writing the West African Senior School Certificate Examination, WASSCE late into the night with nothing but candles and torchlight. For many, ...

Critics of Rep. Paul Ryan's remarks about cultural factors in the persistence of poverty are simultaneously shrill and boring. Their predictable minuet of synthetic indignation demonstrates how little ...

Labels act as lenses, shaping what we see. As Michel Foucault observed, “The power to classify is the power to control.” The act of naming and classifying populations does more than categorize—it ...

We used to be trapped. And by “we,” I really do mean all of us. A few hundred years ago, the majority of the world lived in extreme poverty, and even in recent decades, people lucky enough to clear ...