It is very expensive to be poor in America. This paradox negatively impacts the lives of the approximately 40 million people in this country who fall under the federal government’s official poverty line – and the many millions more who are one paycheck, serious illness, or other unforeseen challenge away from joining that group.
America’s poverty tax takes many forms including how people who live in poor and other under-resourced communities pay more for a range of services, most of them low quality, such as food, housing, and healthcare. In fact, there is an entire industry that profits from exploiting poor people and others who are navigating economic precarity such as payday lenders and check cashing stores, rental properties that do not require credit checks, used car dealerships that charge usurious interest rates, pawn stores, rent-to-own stores, “health” providers (including dentists) that target Medicaid patients, and for-profit prisons.
