- After recession, economic gap widens, By Michael Pollick, September 29, 2013, Sarasota Herald-Tribune: “For Realtors selling million-dollar homes and wealth managers who control seven-figure nest eggs in Southwest Florida, the recession that began in 2007 was more of a bother than a crisis. Navigating the Great Recession, at least for the uber-rich and those who make handsome livings catering to them, provided as many opportunities as problems…”
- Great Recession won’t recede for many, By Michael Pollick, September 29, 2013, Sarasota Herald-Tribune: “When Joel Sugar moved to Sarasota from Illinois in 2006, Southwest Florida’s economy was humming along at an unprecedented pace. Housing prices were skyrocketing, jobs were plentiful, opportunities seemed endless. For Sugar and countless others, those days seem like a lifetime ago. ‘I honestly cannot believe how much our standard of living has dropped, and how we have accepted it,’ said Sugar, who in better times owned a jewelry store in Joliet, Ill…”
- In urban North Carolina, deep pockets of misery are masked, By Gene Nichol, September 29, 2013, News and Observer: “It’s common to think of North Carolina poverty on a rural-urban axis. We’ve become a state, the narrative goes, of booming, economically vibrant metropolitan centers accompanied by in many instances struggling, chronically poor rural communities. The traditional portrait is accurate, so far as it goes. Per capita income is markedly higher in urban counties. Poverty and unemployment rates, on average, are elevated in rural ones. Our policy framework, understandably, reflects the divide…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty