^{Wealth & Poverty Review} A New American Poverty

There's a new American poverty, and it's spreading through every corner of our nation.

The visuals are familiar: boarded-up homes, abandoned downtowns and shuttered factories. But underneath the visible signs of economic decline, a new social and cultural order has quietly established itself in all of the forgotten cities of the American interior.

I spent five years documenting three of these communities – Youngstown, Ohio; Memphis, Tennessee; and Stockton, California – for a feature documentary called "America Lost." Fifty years ago, all three were exemplars of economic and social progress. What happened next has become conventional wisdom: the old industrial economy was automated and outsourced, the new high-growth industries were centralized in coastal megacities, and places like Youngstown, Memphis and Stockton fell into a half-century of decline.