Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Letter from the Editors

2005; Wiley; Volume: 22; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1541-1338.2005.00172.x

1541-1338

Alexander Bartik, Eric Kafka, Jesse Wolfson,

Social Policy and Reform Studies

Welcome to this special issue on Poverty of the Review of Policy Research. This journal marks the beginning of what should prove to be a long collaboration between the Roosevelt Institution and the Policy Studies Organization, and we are grateful for the support and faith that David Merchant, Paul Rich and others at the Policy Studies Organization have shown in an organization as young as the Roosevelt Institution. To give our readers some background, in the fall of 2004 an ongoing political dialogue between students across the country made us realize the need for an organized method of developing and promoting students’ ideas. In response, we created the Roosevelt Institution, the nation's first student think tank. Through Roosevelt, we hoped to give students a voice in the political process, to develop solutions to the problems facing our society, and to unite and train our nation's students, laying the groundwork for a strong, progressive future. In only twelve months, we have expanded our model to more than 150 campuses across the country and around the world. At each of our chapters, students have come together, founded issue-focused policy centers, and begun studying and developing solutions to the inequalities, inadequacies, and injustices that are present in our current social, political, and economic system. Throughout these months, as students in various centers have developed policy solutions, others have worked to put the best of these solutions into the hands of those who have the ability and the desire to effect positive social change. This journal marks the result of these efforts, and while its publication is a milestone for our organization, we view it as one of the first marks along a longer trail. Over the next five years, the Roosevelt Institution will become one of the largest and most capable think tanks in the country. If present rates of expansion hold, we will have chapters at five percent of four-year colleges and universities nationwide, with over 50,000 members active in some capacity. Our chapters will be seamlessly integrated with their respective universities, with faculty encouraging students to direct coursework towards creating policy proposals capable of influencing society and students approaching their classes with the belief that their work could go far beyond the classroom walls. Moreover, by connecting students on campuses across the country, we will be able to affect political discourse across the nation while operating on local, state or federal levels. This ability to reach thinkers at all levels of the political process is in many ways unique to our organization, and through our collaboration with the Policy Studies Organization and with the growth of Roosevelt chapters at schools overseas, we are beginning to reach across national boundaries. Given this international scope, when the Policy Studies Organization asked us for a possible topic for this special issue, poverty, with its endemic presence in this country and abroad, seemed the obvious choice. As the recent tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico has vividly illustrated, poverty and its attendant disparities are some of the most pressing issues facing our nation. Moreover, since the great wage compression ended in the 1970s, inequality has rapidly increased in the United States. Nowhere is this clearer in corporate salaries where the average CEO in 1970 made 39 times the pay of the average worker, but today makes more than 1,000 times his pay. As these disparities have increased, the security net that the private sector once provided for Americans has all but disappeared, and this has occurred as the developing global economy has put American workers increasingly at risk. These developments have resurrected a problem whose solution had seemed attainable to President Lyndon Johnson's generation. Finding this solution marks the challenge that our generation has inherited. Any analysis of the effects of poverty must begin with the fact that it is a moral failure. However, wide scale poverty also threatens our long-term economic prospects and our foundation as a democratic society. Impoverished Americans are unable to contribute to the economic output of the country, but more importantly, intergenerational poverty creates an entire lower class of citizens who lack access to the education or technical skills that would help them to rejoin the middle class. The American dream requires, as much as possible, that we be a classless society in which everyone has a chance to climb the ladder of economic mobility. Intergenerational wide scale poverty threatens the foundations on which this dream was built. The optimism of the late 1990s did not lead us to expect this inheritance, yet we believe that we have the knowledge, the resources, and the optimism to address these issues. The articles in this issue of Review of Policy Research begin to do so. In ranging across issues such as voter disenfranchisement, effects of cultural differences on college choices, and the relationship of the Hope VI housing program on neighborhood property values, they illustrate the breadth of the problem facing our world. We hope that our readers find in them evidence of the ability of young people to generate the necessary solutions. More important, we hope that these articles inspire others to examine poverty, to find solutions, and to work for political change. First, we would like to express our gratitude to David Merchant, Paul Rich and the Policy Studies Organization for giving the Roosevelt Institution this opportunity. Second, we would like to thank the following individuals for their innumerable contributions without which this special issue of Review of Policy Research would not have been possible. For your faith and service you have our deepest gratitude. Daniel Appelman Jared Bernstein Chris Breiseth Sophia Brill Dan Carol Diane Chin Andrew Cox Chrissie Coxon Helen Danilenko John Donohue Albert Fang Ted Fertik Leslie Finger John Gedmark Dani Gilbert David and Nancy Grant Morris Graves Scott Grinsell Lisa Seitz Gruwell Carol Heimer Kevin Hilke Mary Hughes Mattie Hutton Margot Isman Suzanne Kahn Kapil Kulkarni Nate Loewentheil Stephan Loewentheil Hon. Zoe Lofgren Nick Moscow Milton Podolsky Vilas Rao Andy and Deborah Rappaport Anne Eleanor Roosevelt Steven Rosenzweig Stanley Sheinbaum Jessica Singleton Melissa Sterry Mark Steitz Arthur Stinchcombe Kai Stinchcombe Michelle Suski Dorothy Vanderbeck Quinn Wilhelmi Lauren Young