Communicating Regional Resilience: Kathryn Edin 

Kathryn Edin is the William Church Osborne professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. She is a leading researcher of poverty in America, and her recent book, “The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America”, measures where the deepest poverty exists and what led to it. 

The book, co-authored with Luke Shaefer and Timothy J. Nelson, identifies large swaths of rural America as the most poverty-stricken regions, including Appalachia, the Tobacco Belt, the Cotton Belt, and South Texas. 

All of those regions share one thing in common -- a history of dominant industries owned by a minority of wealthy Whites who exploited the local residents for cheap labor and then in many cases abandoned those areas. 

We will talk to her both about the source of this poverty and the resilience and hope for the future that exists in Appalachia.