Pathways Magazine - Winter 2009

Table of Contents (Winter 2009 Issue)

Editors' Note by David Grusky and Christopher Wimer

Trends

• Consumer Indebtedness and the Withering of the American Dream
  by Teresa A. Sullivan
  Consumer debt is skyrocketing. Is there any way to pay it off? Or is the American consumer going down? Teresa A. Sullivan explains why the bailout must be extended to American families.
  

Research in Brief

• New research developments
  The three countries with the most successful poverty-fighting strategies, the rise of a new Republican populism, the effect of female-friendly labor markets on the gender gap in math, and other cutting-edge research.

Reconstructive Surgery: Designing Health Care For Everyone

• The Case for a Two-Tier Health System
  Jonathan Gruber argues for a two-tier health system that has government mandated minimum standards for coverage, access, and quality but allows individuals to buy more than that minimum.
• A Five-Step Plan for Eliminating Inequality in Health Care
  Karen Davis and Kristof Stremikis lay out a five-pronged strategy for eliminating health inequality that is built around the concept of a patient-centered medical home.
• Empowering Individuals in the Health Care System
  Robert E. Moffit calls for a fundamental revamping of the health care system in which access to insurance no longer depends on employment.
• Reducing Disparities by Targeting Mothers & Children by Barbara L. Wolfe
  Barbara L. Wolfe suggests that headway on disparities is best made by targeting the health of low-income women and their children.
  

Interventions

• Transforming the EITC to Reduce Poverty and Inequality:
  Policies for the 21st-Century Labor Market
  The Earned Income Tax Credit is widely cited as one of America's most successful antipoverty programs. But can it be improved? Retooled for the economic crisis? Gordon Berlin describes how a refashioned EITC could make poverty history.