In 2019, researchers began conducting immersive interviews in Appalachia, Texas, and seven southern states in an attempt to determine the causes of “place-based disadvantage.”

“In place after place,” they write, “we discovered astonishing stories about the industries that fueled the rise of our nation, the workers who sustained them, and the histories of human suffering they wrought.”

Kathryn Edin, William Church Osborn Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, and Timothy Nelson, lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Princeton, will present findings featured in their new book, The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America.

Edin, one of the nation’s leading poverty researchers, has authored eight books and some 60 journal articles. Her book, $2 a Day: The Art of Living on Virtually Nothing in America, was met with wide critical acclaim and was included in The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2015, cited as “essential reporting about the rise in destitute families.”

She is PI of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. In 2014, she was elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

Nelson is the author of numerous articles on low-income fathers and is the co-author, with Edin, of the book, Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City.

This lecture is made possible through an endowment from the Arthur Sulzberger Family. Please join us for a reception immediately following the talk.