Peter Edelman – författare

In this new conference volume from the National Academy of Social Insurance, experts offer differing views on what changes will, and must, occur to ensure the continuing viability of Social Security, retirement benefits, unemployment insurance, Medicare, and health security programs. The book opens with a general overview of how economic and political forces will shape the future of social insurance. In the chapters that follow, contributors discuss and debate a full range of related topics, including future Social Security investment returns, the changing face of private retirement plans, insuring longevity risk in pensions and Social Security, issues in unemployment insurance, long-term financing, governance, and markets for Medicare, and health care for the underserved and uninsured. Contributors include William C. Dudley (Goldman Sachs), Richard Berner (Morgan Stanley Dean Witter), Kilolo Kijakazi (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), Fay Lomax Cook (Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University), Lawrence Jacobs (University of Minnesota), Jack VanDerhei (Fox School of Business Management, Temple University) Craig Copeland (Employee Benefit Research Institute), Jeffery R. Brown (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard), Janet Norwood (1993-96 Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation), Marilyn Moon (Urban Institute), Sheila Burke (Smithsonian Institution and Kennedy School of Government, Harvard), Mark Schlesinger (Yale), Gerard Anderson (Johns Hopkins University), Lauren LeRoy (Grantmakers in Health), Ruth Riedel (Alliance Healthcare Foundation of San Diego), and Henrie M. Treadwell (W. K. Kellog Foundation¡¯s Community Voices).

In one of the richest countries on Earth it has effectively become a crime to be poor. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Department of Justice didn't just expose racially biased policing; it also exposed exorbitant fines and fees for minor crimes that mainly hit the city's poor, African American population, resulting in jail by the thousands. As Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, in fact Ferguson is everywhere: the debtors' prisons of the twenty-first century.

This work identifies the urgent need facing the United States for more effective methods of making adolescence a period of opportunity for children in poverty as well as for those in the mainstream. It focuses on the interaction between adolescent growth and maturation, on the one hand, and the inadequate (or outright dysfunctional) socialization mechanisms of impoverished communities, on the other. "Adolescence and Poverty" authors describe how this interaction is contributing to social and economic failure for a growing sub-population of American teenagers. One chapter in the volume looks at US demographic data which show a decreasing number of teens overall but an increasing proportion living in poverty. The authors discuss the steep decline in the relative economic value of a high school diploma that characterized the US economy during the 1980s. They explore the implications of a growing segment of the potential workforce that is significantly under-educated and under-trained for the type of jobs that will increasingly be the norm.The role of early jobs and job experience in determining later work success is examined, and different patterns of job and job-related social supports in mainstream versus non-mainstream communities are explored.

If America's gross national income of over £14 trillion were divided evenly between the entire US population, every household could call itself middle class. Yet the income level disparity in the US is now wider than at any point since the Great Depression. So Rich, So Poor delves into what is happening to the people behind the statistics and takes a particular look at the continuing crisis of young African Americans. Crucial reading for anyone who wishes to understand the most critical American dilemma of the 21st century.