SMS
RSS feeds
Reddit
NewsvineDemocratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are among the policy experts contributing essays to the inaugural issue of Pathways magazine, the new Stanford Center for Poverty and Inequality publication due out in print this week.
Enlarge
Pathways magazine editors Sociology Prof. David Grusky and Sociology Lecturer Christopher Wimer’s vision for the new magazine is to offer readers an alternative to the most popular economy-focused periodicals in circulation. The magazine looks critically at how income is distributed in the economy, rather than solely on how its growth is generated.
“The United States has an ongoing love affair with magazines about the economy,” the editors wrote in the issue. “If supermarket shelves stocked with BusinessWeek, the Economist, Forbes and Fortune are any guide, there is clearly much interest in how the economy is doing ... But, strangely enough, there are no popular magazines focused on how that output is distributed.”
“If we care about the total output, shouldn’t we care also about who is getting all that output?” they added. “Why not a magazine on who’s winning, who’s losing and why?”
Through survey and analysis of current data on inequality levels in the United States, the magazine speculates about the sources and consequences of poverty and the most effective interventions to address inequality.
The magazine seeks to represent a diversity of policy opinions.
“We are committed to a truly open debate on issues of distribution that is constrained only by evidence and brute facts,” Grusky and Wimer wrote.
To research the first issue on how to “fight a new war on poverty,” the magazine extended an invitation to all top 2008 presidential contenders to weigh in on what a new way of combating poverty may look like, though only Clinton, Obama and Edwards agreed to participate. Policy experts Charles Murray, Robert Frank, Rebecca Blank, Stefanie DeLuca, James Rosenbaum, Timothy Smeeding and Emmanuel Saez contributed commentary and articles along with the candidates’ pieces, displaying a wide range of opinions on the topic of distribution.
Subjects covered in the magazine include poverty rates in the United States as compared to nations such as the U.K., the housing voucher policy and “poverty and marriage.” One feature critiqued the 2008 presidential candidates’ stances on wealth distribution — an interesting read for those concerned with the upcoming election.
Stanford students have yet to contribute to the publication, though Grusky noted that the Center for Poverty and Inequality would not be opposed to student participation in the future.
Already, a number of students are involved in other programs at the Center, which was founded in 2006 for the purpose of research, training and policy analysis on poverty and inequality. The Center has 125 Stanford faculty affiliates, as well as national and international fellows. Pathways is the Center’s first publication.
Free subscriptions to Pathways are available at www.inequality.com; articles can be accessed online as well.