Open Educational Resources
Document Type
Syllabus
Publication Date
8-13-2026
Abstract
The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, yet poverty, hardship, and inequality remain central features of American life. This course begins with that paradox. Why does a country with so much economic capacity tolerate so much poverty? Why does its welfare state protect some risks generously while treating other forms of need as individual failure? Why are benefits for the poor so visible, stigmatized, and administratively demanding, while benefits for the affluent are often hidden in the tax code, treated as private achievement, and politically protected? The course is organized around a sequence of questions. First, how bad are poverty and inequality in the United States, and how do we know? Second, how should we measure poverty, inequality, mobility, and welfare-state effort? Third, what historical and ideological foundations shaped the American approach to social welfare? Fourth, what do major U.S. social policies actually do? Finally, why does the United States respond to poverty and inequality in this particular way: because ordinary Americans do not demand more redistribution, or because the political system supplies policy in ways that favor organized interests, parties, federalism, and the preferences of the affluent?
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
CUNY OER Funding
CUNY OER Initiative
Comments
Funded in part by the CUNY OER Initiative. Created as part of the Open Knowledge Fellowship, a program of the CUNY Graduate Center’s Mina Rees Library.