Tim Keogh on Suburban Poverty and the Roots of Postwar Inequality

Tim Keogh on Suburban Poverty and the Roots of Postwar Inequality

In 2022, roughly one in 10 suburban residents lived in poverty (9.6%), compared to about one in six in primary cities (16.2%), according to a recent study by the Brookings Institute. The issue of suburban poverty has garnered significant attention, prompting more than a bit of nostalgia for the good ole days of when suburbs were prosperous, living proof of the American dream. This narrative of postwar suburbia as prosperous, if also exclusive places, has been reinforced by historians and other scholars who, over the years, have shown how the federal government via FHA-insured mortgages and other programs facilitated a dramatic rise in suburban homeownership after WWII, while laregely restricting access through covenants and zoning laws to White Americans.

But is this the full story? In this month's episode, Tim Keogh challenges this narrative, demonstrating that for many the postwar American suburban dream was more myth than reality. Alongside exclusive white middle-class communities, Keogh explains how the suburbs have long served as home to low-income residents, whose labor in construction, retail, childcare and a range of other low-wage jobs helped enable suburban prosperity in the absence of a robust welfare state. Along the way, we explore the policy decisions that helped to ensure poverty's persistence alongside prosperity and what we can do today to eliminate poverty wherever it might appear.

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Kendra Boyd on Black Business and Racial Capitalism during the Great Migration

Kendra Boyd on Black Business and Racial Capitalism during the Great Migration

Take a moment and picture the average person who came North during the Great Migration. Chances are good that you conjured someone who was African-American and working-class, bound for a city in searc...

4 Elo 202531min

Trish Kahle on Energy Citizenship and Coal-Fired Democracy in the 20th Century U.S.

Trish Kahle on Energy Citizenship and Coal-Fired Democracy in the 20th Century U.S.

What do energy consumers owe energy producers? What does it mean to be a citizen in a coal-fired democracy? In this month's episode, guest Trish Kahle reckons with the costs and benefits of coal from ...

11 Heinä 202545min

Ian Kumekawa on Globalization As Told Through One Ship

Ian Kumekawa on Globalization As Told Through One Ship

How do you write the history of something as abstract, as placeless, and as vast as the globalization that has remade our world over the past several decades? If you're Ian Kumekawa, you make those i...

2 Kesä 202531min

Koji Hirata on Steel, Industrialization, and Chinese Socialism

Koji Hirata on Steel, Industrialization, and Chinese Socialism

This month's episode looks at the history of Chinese industrialization by focusing on Anshan Iron and Steel Works or Angang, located in Manchuria. Long portrayed as the quintessential model of Mao-era...

2 Touko 202533min

LIVE! @ BHC 2025

LIVE! @ BHC 2025

It's now been over a decade since the New York Times declared that the history of capitalism was in full swing at American universities. This podcast also just celebrated its 10 year anniversary. With...

1 Huhti 202521min

Justene Hill Edwards on the Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank

Justene Hill Edwards on the Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank

In this month's episode Justene Hill Edwards leads listeners on a deep dive into the rise and fall of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, also known as the Freedman's Bank. Among the topics expl...

5 Maalis 202541min

Erik Baker on the Entrepreneurial Century

Erik Baker on the Entrepreneurial Century

Back in high school, my social studies teacher—who was, of course, also the football coach—told my class that entrepreneurs were the heroes of American history. If we enjoyed a dynamic economy and goo...

3 Helmi 202539min

Mary Bridges on Bankers and the Dawn of American Empire

Mary Bridges on Bankers and the Dawn of American Empire

Looking back from our contemporary vantage point, the United States' global capitalist empire looks both omnipresent and inevitable. Much of the world's trade is denominated in dollars. American finan...

2 Tammi 202536min

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