It's Not Like I'm Poor

Sarah Halpern-Meekin is Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Wisconsin--Madison. Kathryn Edin is Distinguished Bloomberg Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. She is the coauthor of Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage, and Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work. Laura Tach is Assistant Professor of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. Jennifer Sykes is Assistant Professor of Social Relations and Policy at James Madison College, Michigan State University.

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Family Budgets: Staying in the Black, Slipping into the Red 2. Tax Time 3. The New Regime through the Lens of the Old 4. Beyond Living Paycheck to Paycheck 5. "Debt--I Am Hoping to Eliminate That Word!" 6. Capitalizing on the Promise of the EITC Appendix A: Introduction to Boston and the Research Project Appendix B: Qualitative Interview Guide Notes Bibliography Index

"Humanizes the working poor in an unforgettable way." The Kansas City Star "An important contribution to poverty policy scholarship." -- Vanessa D. Wells Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare "It's Not Like I'm Poor inspires one to wonder whether there are existing educational interventions that, with changes to their delivery method, might lead to better experiences and outcomes for children and families... Not only did their work dispel many of the negative stereotypes of welfare-reliant mothers and present an honest picture of the financial realities these families faced, it also helped forecast the relative hardships families would face when the effects of welfare reform took shape." -- Celia J. Gomez Harvard Educational Review