Beginning this year, federal payment recipients will receive their government benefits through electronic funds transfer (EFT)-- what most of us call direct deposit. Although cost-cutting is the driving force behind the move to a virtually all-electronic federal payment system, Michael Stegman believes the initiative has a far broader potential: to bring poor Americans into the banking mainstream. In this book Stegman outlines how many families will enter the mainstream banking system thro...

An " engrossing collection of rigorously researched articles" from Elizabeth Warren, Jared Bernstein, William Julius Wilson, and more ( Publishers Weekly).Can the wealthiest nation in the world do anything to combat the steadily rising numbers of Americans living in poverty—or the tens of millions of Americans living in "near poverty"? In this book, some of the country's most prominent scholars, businesspeople, and community activists answ...