I'm Brooke Gladstone. In the weeks leading up to this election, we decided to spend some quality time on an issue that wasn't getting much attention, poverty. Specifically, poverty myths. The rags to riches myth, the myth of the safety net, and so on. We wanted to dig into the delusions that we hold dear, even if we're poor

ourselves, because they've shaped our policies and the lives of the poor in America for

centuries. As we head into a new administration, these issues seem even more urgent. We're

proud of this series, and we wanted to make it easy for you to listen

to all of it in one place right in your podcast feed. So here goes.

The fact is, the latest research suggests that we're making economic progress.

The richest, of course, still get richer.

The middle class is mending, and even the poor are edging up a little.

But the very poorest, they are poorer now than ever.

How can that be?

How can there be more social mobility in Canada and France?

Over the course of this five-part series, you'll hear many stories, and one by one,

they'll loosen the legs of the stool that props up our poverty myths,

the conservative leg that blames social dysfunction and indolence, the liberal leg that decries government stinginess, and the third leg, the one we don't talk about.

Us, we need to have a frank conversation about the way that our lives directly contribute to poverty in America.

Matthew Desmond is a sociologist at Harvard and author of

Evicted Poverty and Profit in the American City.

I remember hearing a dear friend, a mentor of mine, Ruth Lopez Turley,

who's a sociologist at Rice University.

She gave her presentation a few years ago, and she said,

if everyone who is zoned to Houston Public

School District went to that school, Houston Public School District would have a 40% poverty rate.

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