Tunica, Mississippi: A mother and her baby. Although legalized gambling
brought jobs and revenue to this anguished corner of Mississippi, poverty
maintains its persistent grip on the delta.
Cutler Harbor, Maine: Millions of immigrants, like the family of this 10-year-old harvesting
blueberries in northern Maine, have taken the perilous journey north to a country whose
corporations desire their cheap labor. Due in large part to their undocumented status, many of
these families face a constant specter of poverty and exploitation.
North of Austin, Texas: Carwynn Singleton, 11, and his brother Anthony, 9, live in a trailer home in the Texas hill
country. Carwynn has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Anthony suffers from asthma. Their mother, disabled
with lupus, often has no means to transport the children to the closest Medicaid doctor, whose office is 35 miles away.
So although they are eligible for assistance, the reality is the children often go without doctor visits and medication.
Tunica, Mississippi: A mother and her baby. Although legalized gambling
brought jobs and revenue to this anguished corner of Mississippi, poverty
maintains its persistent grip on the delta.
Biloxi, Mississippi: Fifteen workers, both men and women, none of whom earns enough to
afford rent for an apartment, live in an abandoned church bus. An acute shortage of affordable
housing has left many low-wage laborers scrambling for shelter.
For 25 years, Steve Liss was a photographer for Time Magazine, traveling the United States taking pictures of issues affecting the welfare of struggling
Americans. Forty-three of his pictures appeared on the cover of Time. He is currently associate professor of media at Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts.
Salt Lake City, Utah: Sixty-nine-year-old Joy Whitehouse,
who suffers from cancer, is shown collecting soup cans on a
highway near her Salt Lake City mobile home.
It’s been 50 years since the idealism of Robert F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administration’s War on Poverty placed economic injustice at the heart of American political and social discourse. Since then poverty has fallen off the national agenda, and the poor in America are often invisible. Today, more than 31 million children under 18 live in low-income families and more than 15 million more live in poor families (below the federal poverty threshold) in this, the richest country in the world. According to UNICEF’s 2005 study “Child Poverty in Rich Countries,” “Protecting children from the sharpest edges of poverty during their years of growth and formation is … the mark of a civilized society.” By this standard, the study concluded, the United States — last among the 21 nations for child health and safety — has the dishonor of being one of the least “civilized” of the major industrialized countries.
