Research Guides: Poverty: Final Project Winter '25: Research Resources

Background & Data

Below are resources that provide a broad overview of a particular issue.

Gale in Context: Opposing Views
Find overviews, news, and opinions on hundreds of today's important social issues.

Poverty: An Overview
From Gale in Context: Opposing Views. An overview of poverty in the United States and globally. Includes additional sources, as well as viewpoint articles.

Points of View Reference Center
A full-text database designed to provide students with a series of essays and materials from leading political magazines, newspapers, radio and TV news transcripts, primary source documents, and reference books that present multiple sides of a current issue. The database provides 200 topics, each with an overview (objective background/description), point (affirmative argument), and counterpoint (opposing argument).

ProCon.org
From Britannica. Explore both sides of highly-debated issues. Presented in a non-partisan format with supporting background information, statistics, and resources.
Balletopedia
Ballotpedia is a nonprofit and nonpartisan online political encyclopedia that covers federal, state, and local politics, elections, and public policy in the United States.
Pew Research Center
A nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the world.

Statistical Collections:

Explore US Census Data
From the Census Bureau - search interface for accessing and disseminating data and digital content from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Statista
Categorized into over 20 market sectors, Statista provides business customers, researchers, and the academic community with direct access to relevant quantitative facts on media, finance, politics, and many more areas of interest.

Can I use Wikipedia?

Yes! Wikipedia is an excellent resources for gaining a basic understanding of a current topic. As with any reference source, you should not directly quote evidence from Wikipedia into your paper, but you may use it to inform the direction of your research.

Newspapers and Periodicals

For assistance accessing library news resources, start with these helpful slides. Still feeling stuck? Contact a librarian via email or use the libchat at the bottom of these guide.

Recommended resources are below:

Access World News (Newsbank)
Provides full-text access to global, regional, and local news, including The Trentonian, Trenton Times, and Princeton Packet.
New York Times (Current Digital Edition)
The current digital edition of the New York Times now available with a special personal sign-up free on and off campus. To sign up for a pass, visit https://www.nytimes.com/passes and use your Lawrenceville email address to authenticate.
Wall Street Journal (Current Digital Edition)
The current digital edition of the Wall Street Journal. For on-campus access, just click the link above. For off-campus access, ask a librarian for login credentials by contacting circ@lawrenceville.org.

The Washington Post (ProQuest)
The Washington Post is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most-widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large national audience.

Sora
Read full-text magazines, including The Economist, in the Sora mobile app or in a browser. To set up an account, select The Lawrenceville School as your school and login using your school gmail address. For login questions, contact a librarian.
Flipster
The Flipster platform (for your web browser, phone, or tablet) contains access to periodicals such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and National Review.

NPR National News
Top stories in the US, with extended coverage of certain issues and events.

Want to check if the library has access to a specific newspaper, journal, or magazine? Search for the title in our eJournals portal.

Scholarly Source Collections: Online Resources from Bunn Library

Filter your search results to focus on magazine features and articles written by scholars. Who are the experts in your topic? How do you know?

CQ Researcher
CQ Researcher is often the first source that librarians recommend when researchers are seeking original, comprehensive reporting and analysis on issues in the news. Founded in 1923 as Editorial Research Reports, CQ Researcher is noted for its award-winning in-depth, unbiased coverage of health, social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology and the economy. Reports are published online 44 times a year by CQ Press, an imprint of SAGE Publications.
Gale in Context: Opposing Views
Find overviews, news, and opinions on hundreds of today's important social issues.
HeinOnline
HeinOnline contains the entire Congressional Record, Federal Register, and Code of Federal Regulations, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, and entire databases dedicated to treaties, constitutions, case law, foreign relations, and U.S. Presidents. Additional collections include material on Women and the Law, Slavery in America and the World, Religion and the Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice, and COVID 19: Pandemics Past and Present.
JSTOR
This full-text database contains a broad range of scholarly journals in the arts, sciences, humanities, and social sciences. The JSTOR mission is unique in that it creates a permanent, digitized archive of the selected titles.
Project MUSE
A comprehensive selection of prestigious humanities and social sciences journals to support a core liberal arts curriculum at any academic institution. Every journal is heavily indexed and peer-reviewed, with critically acclaimed articles by the most respected scholars in their fields.
ProQuest
A very large collection of periodicals covering a broad range of subject areas. ProQuest includes four basic databases: Platinum Periodicals, ProQuest Newspapers, Reference, and The Historical New York Times. The New York Times collection is complete back to 1851.

Recommended Resources from the Web

Below are a sampling of resources from the general web that cover politics and policy, including new sources, educational institutions, and think tanks.

Though these sources are recommended based on a certain level of credibility, you should approach any source with a critical eye. Ask yourself: can you trace the claims that are being made? Does that publisher have an agenda that may impact the content it publishes? If you are unsure, go outside the source and trace the claims, and learn more about author/publisher on wikipedia. When in doubt, or if you get stuck, reach out to a librarian or your teacher!

Center for Public Integrity
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit investigative news organization focused on inequality in the U.S. For publications related specifically to issues of democracy, explore the Democracy category.
Congressional Research Service Reports Database
A public policy research institute of the United States Congress. Operating within the Library of Congress, it works primarily and directly for members of Congress and their committees and staff on a confidential, nonpartisan basis.
Southern Poverty Law Center
The SPLC is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. Using litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy, the SPLC works toward the day when the ideals of equal justice and equal opportunity will be a reality.

By Topic: Articles, Podcasts, etc. from the Web

The following links are suggested by Ms. Schulte and Ms. Sinai. If you have questions or trouble accessing the material, please contact asinai@lawrenceville.org

Rural Poverty:

The Persistence of Poverty in Rural America
From the Housing Assistance Council. Persistently poor counties are classified as having poverty rates of 20 percent or more for three consecutive decades. Using this metric, the Housing Assistance Council estimates there were 377 persistently poor counties in 2020 using data from the Census Bureau’s recently released 2016-2020 American Community Survey, the 2006-2010 American Community Survey and the 2000 Decennial Census of Population and Housing.
A Policy Renaissance Is Needed for Rural America to Thrive
From the NYT, December 2022.
Rural Poverty & Well-Being
From the USDA Economic Research Service. ERS research in this topic area focuses on the economic, social, spatial, temporal, and demographic factors that affect the poverty status of rural residents.
The Sunday Read: ‘Young and Homeless in Rural America’
The Daily podcast, from the NYT. November 2022.

Housing:

Housing in America: A Resource Guide
From Princeton Public Library. This booklist was created in support of the upcoming library’s Housing Justice Forum and for those who are interested in exploring this complicated and complex topic to answer the questions of how we got here and what can be done.
Separated by Design: How Some of America’s Richest Towns Fight Affordable Housing
From Pro Publica, May 2019. In southwest Connecticut, the gap between rich and poor is wider than anywhere else in the country. Invisible walls created by local zoning boards and the state government block affordable housing and, by extension, the people who need it.
What Would It Take to Turn More Offices Into Housing?
From the NYT, December 2022. Vast amounts of empty real estate are a crisis for building owners. But some politicians and business leaders hope they can be converted into something new — and transform downtown neighborhoods.
There's a massive housing shortage across the U.S. Here's how bad it is where you live
From NPR, July 2022.
SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America
Podcast from KQED.
Housing
Resources from Planet Money: The Economy, Explained.
UnAffordable and UnSheltered
Podcast from KJZZ (Arizona). Are homelessness, and affordable housing in Arizona connected? Housing in the Phoenix area has become hard to afford. However, it's often the institutional barriers that keep people homeless. UnSheltered and UnAffordable podcasts explore the obstacles that can make surviving and thriving in the Valley a challenge.
Priced Out
From KUNR Public Radio. Home and rental prices continue to soar in Northern Nevada and Northeastern California, leaving more working families and individuals on the brink. Seniors, college students, single parents, immigrants, and the working poor are particularly vulnerable. Some must choose to pay rent over buying food or securing healthcare. The lack of affordable housing in urban and rural areas alike is changing the identity of this region. In response, the KUNR newsroom is examining housing through many lenses, including the economic, political, and public health impacts. Priced Out explores these issues.

Maternal Issues & Healthcare:

Maternal deaths in the U.S. are staggeringly common. Personal nurses could help.
From NPR, December 2022.
We’re Already Paying for Universal Health Care. Why Don’t We Have It?
From the NYT Op-Ed, July 2023.

Abortion:

Who Gets Abortions in America?
From The Upshot, NYT, December 2021.

Education:

Why I Changed My Mind on Student Debt Forgiveness
From the NYT, Op-Ed, August 2022.
I Am Not Proof of the American Dream
From the NYT, Op-Ed, February 2022.
Mississippi Is Offering Lessons for America on Education
From the NYT, Op-Ed, May 2023.

Reforming the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC):

Bad Arguments Against a Child Allowance
From the Niskanen Center, May 2017.
Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
From the NYT, January 2022. The research could have policy implications as President Biden pushes to revive his proposal to expand the child tax credit.
The Anti-Poverty, Targeting, and Labor Supply Effects of the Proposed Child Tax Credit Expansion
Research brief, October 2021. Current proposals to expand the Child Tax Credit would reduce employment by 1.5 million people and, as a result, reduce child poverty by only 22%—more than a third lower than estimates that fail to account for employment reductions—and fail to reduce deep child poverty at all.

Child Allowance:

America Pulled Children Out of Poverty. Now It’s Set to Reverse Course With a Vengeance.
From the NYT, Op-Ed, September 2023.
Why This Economist Wants to Give Every Poor Child $50,000
From the NYT, Ezra Klein Show, June 2023.