The American dream gives way to a new reality: social immobility, By David Helling, June 18, 2014, Sacramento Bee: “Allison Gibbons has lived a lifetime of problems. A difficult childhood in a broken home. An eating disorder, drug abuse, depression, alcohol – ‘obviously I was self-medicating,’ she says. She is the mother of a young son whose father is in jail. Today she works for a better life, with dreams of becoming a nurse. ‘I know it’s going to be a struggle, she says. It’s a strain Mary Jo Vernon understands. Thirty years ago she was a single mother with three small children and three jobs . . .”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty