If you’re wondering why millennials don’t have much sex, and don’t buy cars, forget social theorizing: the harsh truth lies in their near-empty wallets. By Samantha Allen.

Lack of dental care through Medicaid not only harms people’s health, but has negative economic implications as well. By Austin Frakt.

A new report on Americans with limited incomes says that poor choices aren’t why people are poor. By Richard Eisenberg.

For parents raising their kids in poverty, having to say “no” is a part of daily life. Junk food is one thing they can afford to say

You might think that the kind of extreme poverty that would concern a global organization like the United Nations has long vanished in this country. Yet the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, recently made and reported on an investigative tour of the United States. Surely no one in the United States today is as poor as a poor person in Ethiopia or Nepal? As it happens, making such comparisons has recently become much easier.

The development charity Oxfam has called for action to tackle the growing gap between rich and poor as it launched a new report showing that 42 people hold as much wealth as the 3.7 billion who make up the poorest half of the world’s population.

We might direct assistance to the millions of Americans whose suffering is as bad as that of poor people in Africa or Asia.

The difference between the greed of the wealthy and the precariousness of American workers is painfully stark when looking at vacant homes. 2016 figures from ATTOM Data Solutions — which publishes comprehensive housing data — show that wealthy investors are buying up more and more real estate as a moneymaking venture while housing prices and homelessness continue to skyrocket across America.

Where do hairs for fashion wigs and hair extensions come from? The answer is: everywhere, but the majority of them come from China and India, where human hair is a lucrative business. In earlier times, the hair was thrown away into the river. But today they are sold to vendors in western countries through online auctions that fetches the temple between $3 to $6 million every year. Everyday between 500 to 600 barbers working in rotation shave over 20,000 heads. Baskets filled with hair are collected every six hours and stored in a vast warehouse where it is piled knee deep.

Over the course of a year, photographer Stacy Kranitz documented life in the Ohio River Valley, where voters went for Trump by wide margins. By Alice Speri.

Sixty-nine years ago, on April 12, 1945, just weeks into his fourth term of office, President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed away. Many Americans had known no other president. Bill, an 11-year-old growing up in Texas, reflects on his father’s reaction to the death of the man who led his nation through the Great Depression and World War II.

The UN’s Philip Alston is an expert on deprivation – and he wants to know why 41m Americans are living in poverty. The Guardian joined him on a special two-week mission into the dark heart of the world’s richest nation.

One reason people are quiescent in the face of racist, sexist, ecocidal outrage is their belief that Russiagate special prosecutor Robert Mueller will save them. By Paul Street.

The Skirball fire, which destroyed homes and forced the evacuation of a large chunk of Bel-Air, has put the homeless issue at the forefront of community debate. By Makeda Easter and Gale Holland.

The San Francisco branch the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) has been ordered by the city to stop using a robot to patrol the sidewalks outside its office, the San Francisco Business Times reported Dec. 8. The robot, produced by Silicon Valley startup Knightscope, was used to ensure that homeless people didn’t set up camps outside of the nonprofit’s office. It autonomously patrols a set area using a combination of Lidar and other sensors, and can alert security services of potentially criminal activity.

A United Nations official who tours the globe investigating extreme poverty said Thursday that areas of Alabama’s Black Belt are suffering the most dire sewage disposal crisis of any place he has visited in a developed country. By Connor Sheets.

Updated | A United Nations official investigating poverty in the United States was shocked at the level of environmental degradation in some areas of rural Alabama, saying he had never seen anything like it in the developed world. "I think it's very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees. I'd have to say that I haven't seen this," Philip Alston, the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, told Connor Sheets of AL.com earlier this week as they toured a community in Butler County where "raw sewage flows from homes through exposed PVC pipes and into open trenches and pits."

Meet the Bowery Boys, the Plug Uglies, and the Dead Rabbits, the 1800s gangs that ruled New York with an iron fist. By Mark Oliver.

Tech giant Alibaba Group on Friday launched a 10 billion yuan (US$1.51 billion) fund to support China’s ambitious poverty alleviation campaign. At a conference attended by the company’s 36 partners at its headquarters in Hangzhou, executive chairman Jack Ma announced it would set up the Alibaba Poverty Relief Fund, with the money to be donated over the next five years.

A church in upmarket Malibu has decided to stop providing free meals for those in need after claiming they were told by officials they were attracting too many homeless people. The United Methodist Church, one of many churches that provides food and help, has been offering free meals twice a week. But it said it was going to stop after being told the meal service was luring too many homeless people.