Kathryn Edin on the 25th Anniversary of "Making Ends Meet"

Poverty Research & Policy

2022 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low Wage Work, by Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein. The book was based on interviews with low-income single moms that took place between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Edin and Lein detailed the women's household budgets, the strategies they used to support their families, and the unforgiving choice between welfare and low-wage work. In this episode, we hear from Kathryn Edin about what she learned from talking to these mothers and about the changes in U.S. antipoverty policy in the 25 years since Making Ends Meet was published.

A transcript for the episode is available at https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/kathryn-edin-on-the-25th-anniversary-of-making-ends-meet/.