The Marketplace Wealth and Poverty Desk explores money and class, where we came from and where our country is going economically.
Latest episodes
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3 min
Schools struggle to address rising student homelessness
Cecilia Sirianni's small office at Massabesic High School can sometimes get a bit messy. Piles of donated clothes and boxes of snacks fill cabinets and shelves — all for students a…
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2 min
Research says collaboration is needed to address Houston's "food deserts"
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says more than 50 million people across the country live in “food deserts” – low-income communities where it can be hard to find healthy food. Ac…
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49 min
Kicking the habit
Many people in Wise County agree that they can’t jail their way out of a drug epidemic, but there’s a lot less agreement on what to do instead. And we find out what happened to Joe…
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1 min
African Americans' wages nearly stagnant over decade
The unemployment rate is near historic lows, the job market is tight, and wages have been rising steadily.But since the Great Recession, wage gains have varied significantly by rac…
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3 min
Families bear the costs of alternative sentencing programs
For the past 30 years, courts in the United States have experimented with different programs designed to keep convicted offenders out of jail — things like drug court or court-orde…
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41 min
Supply
It’s not easy being an undercover cop in a county of just 40,000 people. But drugs were making it hard for Bucky Culbertson to run his business, so he made it his business to get r…
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3 min
Low interest rates have cost savers roughly half a trillion dollars
Historically low rates of interest have helped the U.S. economy recover from the Great Recession. But there have been casualties. Savers — and the wider economy — have lost interes…
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3 min
Life for Americans without identifying documents can be financially devastating
When American-born children age out of foster care without identifying documents like birth certificates and state ID cards, their financial futures can be at stake. These young pe…
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36 min
Welcome to Wise County
It’s the deadliest drug epidemic our country has ever faced. We go to ground zero, where “nothing changes except for the drug.”
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48 min
Sentencing
The drug bust and the trial were a “farce,” but the full force of the law still came down on Keith Jackson — and thousands of people like him. That didn’t end the crack epidemic, s…
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26 min
106: How do drug epidemics end?
Opioid overdoses are killing about 50,000 Americans a year, more than car accidents and guns. Marketplace's documentary podcast, The Uncertain Hour, is digging into drug epidemics…
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33 min
What happened to Keith?
One day, early in the semester, Keith Jackson didn’t show up to class. He’d been arrested for selling crack, but for his classmates, that wasn’t the surprising part.
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46 min
George H.W. Bush and his baggie of crack
It was the perfect political prop: drugs seized by government agents right across the street from the White House, just in time for a big presidential address. The reality was more…
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1 min
Report finds link between high housing costs and poor health
According to a new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin — which ranks the health of nearly every county in the U.S. — more than 10 percent…
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1 min
Border crossings on the rise despite increased federal investment
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reports more than 76,000 people came over the southern border last month without documents. That’s more than double from the same time las…
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3 min
Delivery companies finding ways to help restaurants donate excess food
Nearly one-third of food prepared by restaurants and grocery stores winds up as waste, according to data cited by the Environmental Protection Agency. It can be awkward and costly…
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2 min
Rents in many California cities keep rising, could a cap on increases help?
Californians' rejection of a rent control measure in November 2018 has prompted some politicians in Sacramento to talk about getting an anti-rent gouging cap on the books. The idea…
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1 min
Urban Institute analyzes reach of social safety net
A new analysis by the Urban Institute finds that a quarter of Americans living in poverty don’t receive public assistance such as food stamps, subsidized housing, child care or cas…
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2 min
Refunds are looking slimmer this tax season
Update: This story originally published on Jan. 28. It has been updated to include emailed responses. Tax filing season got underway this week. And it's a big one, because we just…
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1 min
Millennials, like Baby Boomers, struggle with lifelong debt
A recent survey points out that one in 10 millennials thinks they will die in debt.Click the audio player above to hear the full story.