How the Persistence of an Underclass Leads to Societal Decline

Erik Devereux has produced a YouTube video with a presentation about why poverty in the form of a persistent underclass can lead to a society's eventual decline. This is part of a forthcoming series of video presentations related to efforts to reduce poverty in advanced industrialized or post-industrial countries such as the U.S.

Here is a recent example of efforts to re-start a "war on poverty" in the U.S. that recognizes how intractable the problem has been but does not go so far as to recognize the societal/structural reasons for the persistence of the underclass: AEI/Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity - December 13, 2015 (PDF).