But the mere existence of income inequality tells us little about what, if anything, should be done about it.

Florida recently enacted a law requiring that applicants for welfare take and pass a drug test to qualify for benefits. Should government make such a demand?

How out-of-pocket health spending added 10 million people to the ranks of the poor.

Our current "Great Recession" has hit the poor and middle class hard, but does this short-term downturn in prosperity characterize the last three decades? Bruce Meyer from the University of Chicago and James Sullivan from the University of Notre Dame take the long view and argue that things are not as bad as we think.

The U.S. economy has grown considerably over the past three decades. However, there is a prevailing sentiment that the middle class and the poor have been left behind. Our results show evidence of considerable improvement in material well-being for both the middle class and the poor over the past three decades.

Richard Burkhauser of Cornell and Mary Daly of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, coauthors of The Declining Work and Welfare of People with Disabilities (AEI Press, September 2011), offer a "work first" approach that has the potential to shrink caseloads, curb costs, and improve the economic outlook for people with disabilities.

Sadly, 43 years after CBS News ran a documentary called "Hunger in America" it could do a new version coming to the same, if not more dire and depressing, conclusions. Hunger is here, in a real and palpable way, exacerbated by our tough economic conditions and persistent unemployment, but worsened as well by the high cost of food, especially nutritious food.