New York Times best-selling author Matthew Desmond will talk about the impact of eviction on the lives of low-income families and its role in racial and economic inequality at Fresno's Warnors Theatre on Thursday night. Listen to this article: Desmond's most acclaimed book is "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in...
How Bad Teeth and Lack of Dental Care Can Lead to Poverty, Discrimination
Gina Diaz-Nino considers herself an extrovert. But since her mouth began deteriorating after years of methamphetamine use and two fights, she receded into the shadows. Her teeth are yellow, crooked and browning around the corners. Most of her top teeth are either chipped, missing or decaying. When they fell out,...
Opinion: Valley Should Not Be Held Captive to PG&E Failures
The residents of the Central Valley are faced with a utility service company that, in the past two decades, has become a tax collector forced to be under the protection of the federal bankruptcy court for the second time. In this situation, debtors and sophisticated investors seek to game the...
3 Economists Who Study Poverty Win Nobel Prize
STOCKHOLM — Two researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a third from Harvard University won the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics on Monday for groundbreaking research into what works and what doesn't in the fight to reduce global poverty. The award went to MIT's Abhijit Banerjee and Esther...
Walters: California's Paradox of Wealth and Poverty
By happenstance, events in the final week of September perfectly framed what one might call the California Paradox — a thriving, world-class economy with stubbornly high levels of poverty and a widening divide between the haves and have-nots. The week began with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s keynote address to a United Nations-sponsored forum...
For California to Thrive, Latinos Must Be Included, and Right Now They’re Too Far Behind
The good news is that the last decade has been better economically for Latinos living in California. But challenges persist. While Latino poverty rates are shrinking, Latinos still make up the largest ethnic group in the state who live in poverty. While Latino household income is up, $56,000 per household,...
Why Community-Owned Grocery Stores Like Co-Ops Are the Best Recipe for Revitalizing Food Deserts
Tens of millions of Americans go to bed hungry at some point every year. While poverty is the primary culprit, some blame food insecurity on the lack of grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods. That’s why cities, states and national leaders including former first lady Michelle Obama made eliminating so-called “food...
Trump Administration Puts Tough New Asylum Rule Into Effect
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — With a go-ahead from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Trump administration Thursday began enforcing a radical new rule that would deny asylum to nearly all migrants arriving at the southern border — a move that spread despair among those fleeing poverty and violence in their homelands....
Walters: California’s Two-Tier Society
Thirty-four years ago, two researchers delved into California’s rapidly changing demographic and economic trends and saw “an emerging two-tier economy with Asians and better-educated non-Hispanic whites and blacks competing for the prestigious occupations while poorly educated Hispanics and blacks scramble for the lower status jobs …” The study, titled “Population...
Walters: Is California a Shining Example or Third-World State?
Recent weeks have seen a debate of sorts about the image and reality of contemporary California. Is it, as Gov. Gavin Newsom contends, a nation-state proving that economic prosperity, multiculturism, and social progress can advance together? “California is what America is going to look like,” he told a television interviewer....