Take the APA Deep Poverty Challenge

More than 18.5 million people in the US live in deep poverty. This is a state in which an individual household’s annual income falls below 50% of the poverty line.  That means more than 18.5 million people in one of the wealthiest countries in the world are subsisting on $3,000 or less per person.

Several decades worth of psychological research document the associations between poverty and indicators of behavioral, mental, and physical health.

Rosie Phillips Davis, 2019 APA president, wants to leverage the diverse areas of research and practice within the field of psychology to inform solutions to deep poverty, and led the creation of the APA Deep Poverty Initiative to help do so.

SIOP members are invited to take the 5-Week Deep Poverty Challenge, which starts on September 10, in concurrence with the annual release of the US Census Bureau’s national poverty indicators.

Goals of the challenge, and the larger initiative, are to work collaboratively to help change attitudes and perceptions, practice, and policy around deep poverty.

Dr. Phillips Davis said in a livestream discussion of the initiative, “We believe in equal opportunity and equal access for everyone, no matter how you look or where you live.  As a psychologist I want us to use our science to find solutions that really make a difference that lasts, and I want to call on the science from other organizations to do the same thing.”

The challenge will conclude on World Poverty Day, October 17.  Sign up for the 5-Week Deep Poverty Challenge here, and learn more about the initiative here.