Marie Kennedy

In the following viewpoint, Marie Kennedy asserts that poverty and income inequality have increased in recent years to the extent that ghetto neighborhoods share the characteristics of former colonies in the Third World. According to Kennedy, 11 million children suffer from hunger or substantial food shortages, and the availability of public housing units has been sharply reduced. She argues that the poor are becoming marginalized in society, thereby worsening their condition. This marginalization is evident in the use of the term "underclass" and in the belief of policy makers that poverty is caused by pathological behaviors, she contends. Kennedy is a professor of community planning at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She also works with Roofless Women's Action Research Mobilization, a research and activist project that focuses on the problem of homelessness among women.

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