The Great Recession was long and deep and the recovery has been very slow for the unemployed and the poor. Instead of focusing on policies for promoting opportunity and reducing poverty, politicians have focused only on reducing the long-run federal deficit. Seefeldt and Graham document how the public and private safety nets, especially the 2009 stimulus, responded to the Great Recession and kept poverty from rising even higher. Most importantly, they suggest many promising policy options that would better protect the poor from the vagaries of the 21st-century economy.--Sheldon Danziger, H. J. Meyer Distinguished University Professor of Public Policy, University of Michigan
