ABSTRACT
American society is based on paradoxes. Its citizens are at once among the richest and the most economically insecure in the developed world. While income inequality was once on the decline, over the last twenty years the distribution of wealth and prosperity in the nation has become more unequal. Individuals and families at greatest risk for poverty are men with less than a college education, people of color (especially blacks and Hispanics), working families and families headed by women, and a significant number of the nation’s elderly, who live at or close to the poverty line. A reflection on late 1950s America reveals a nation poised to embrace a vision of opportunity shared by all. It is a reflection we begin with to tell the story of America today. America is not the nation it envisioned itself being four decades ago. In the land of opportunity, many of its citizens experience poverty, economic insecurity, and income inequality on a daily basis.
