$ 2.00 A Day Summary

In the book “$2.00 A Day” authors Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer look into the lives of families who are living with an income of $2.00 day. The authors use storytelling throughout the book, but also interject into the stories to explain what policies are in place that perpetuate the circumstances that keep these families in such extreme poverty. The book focused on how the welfare policy reforms in 1996 created a shift in who primarily received assistance. Before the reforms in 1996, welfare “entitled families with children to receive cash assistance as long as they had economic need” (Edin and Shaefer, 2015, pg. 7). However, the 1996 reforms largely did away with this type of assistance by setting lifetime limits on programs cash welfare with programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) (Edin and Shaefer, 2015, pg. 7). Cash assistance is hard to come by and programs like Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) only benefit those who already have jobs (Edin and Shaefer, 2015, pg. 9). The authors’ major points are that while these policies have

While the welfare policy changes have helped many working poor families, they do little to account for the fact that many adults simply face too many barriers to finding and keeping a job. Although some would argue that those in extreme poverty are in that position because of their unwillingness to work, this book emphasizes that the majority of the people living on $2.00 a day are doing everything in their power to find work. Therefore, the social issue has nothing to do with laziness. The social issue is truly that the government has failed to provide a safety net for individuals who either cannot work or cannot find a job. Thus, the book calls for a revision of the 1996 welfare reforms that have lead the country to be in this