Why does poverty persist?

Since the mid-1980s, the gap between poor households and the rest of society in the United States has continued to grow, even as government spending on anti-poverty programmes has increased.

How can this be explained? Why have welfare policies not been more effective in reducing poverty?

Rising costs before welfare intervenes

In this AISSR Lecture, sociologist Matthew Desmond explores how the material conditions of poor families have worsened before government support even comes into play. His research shows that rising housing costs, combined with stagnating wages, have made it increasingly difficult for families to make ends meet. As a result, the overall cost of eliminating poverty has grown substantially.

Welfare policy in a deregulated market

Desmond examines how market forces shape two of the most important pillars of the American safety net: the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Housing Choice Voucher Program. He argues that these programmes operate within an “accommodationist” welfare system—one that seeks to compensate for market failures without fundamentally addressing them. In a context of deregulated housing and labour markets, social policy increasingly adjusts to high costs rather than preventing them, making it less efficient in reducing poverty.

Broader implications

By unpacking the interaction between welfare policy and market dynamics, this lecture offers important insights into why poverty persists in one of the world’s wealthiest countries, and raises broader questions about how social policy can respond more effectively to inequality and rising living costs.

About Matthew Desmond

Matthew Desmond is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and one of the leading scholars on poverty, housing, and economic inequality in the United States.

He is the founding director and principal investigator of the Eviction Lab, a research initiative that produces widely used data on housing insecurity and eviction.

Desmond is the author of five books, including Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and has had major influence on public and policy debates on housing and poverty.

His most recent book, Poverty, by America (2023), argues that poverty in the United States is not an accident but a political and economic choice, sustained by systems that benefit the affluent. The book calls for collective responsibility and structural change to end poverty in one of the world’s wealthiest nations.

His research and teaching focus on urban sociology, poverty, race and ethnicity, organizations and work, social theory, and ethnography.

For who?

Our AISSR lectures are open to everyone interested in fundamental questions in the social sciences: bachelor and master students, colleagues from inside and outside the UvA and AISSR, and anyone curious to learn more.

There will be no livestream available, but a video recoring of this lecture will be published on 20 March in our AISSR Lecture Playlist