by Laura Shapiro

About the author: Laura Shapiro is a senior writer for Newsweek, a weekly newsmagazine.

Eileen is nervous, but she’s hungry, too. She downs a plateful of American chop suey and two dishes of red gelatin. This isn’t what she’s used to—eating dinner at a soup kitchen in Lynn, Massachusetts—but neither is much else in her current life. Eileen, 34, grew up in the comfortable Boston suburb of Belmont—“with a silver spoon in my mouth,” she says. In 1993 she had a $42,000-a-year job as a hospital lab technician. Since then she has lost job, apartment and boyfriend. She and her 13-year-old daughter went on welfare and moved into public housing. In January 1994, Eileen signed up for...