The costs of poverty are not only high, but they’re often hidden from the larger public, something the Washington Post tried to tackle in a lengthy feature earlier this week:

The poorer you are, the more things cost. More in money, time, hassle, exhaustion, menace … The poor know these facts of life. These facts become their lives.

The benefits of everyone, not just the poor, knowing these facts, is twofold. First, it pushes back against false stereotypes about the poor (that they are lazy or have bad habits or make bad choices). Second, it lets us think strategically about ways to improve conditions and make things better.  In this vein, Ed Sector’s Erin Dillon has a new report detailing how to create “functioning, well-designed markets” that “improve higher-quality supply and higher-quality demand.” In the report’s introduction, she writes:

The neighborhoods of Southeast Washington, D.C., are among the poorest in the city. There, the grocery stores, banks, restaurants, and other institutions that suburbanites take for granted have long been in short supply.

This cuts to the chase: things cost “more in money, time, hassle, exhaustion, menace” because those who live in poverty lack options, or have to choose between unappealing options. For instance, Dillon’s colleague Kevin Carey has noted that the only two sit-down restaurants east of the Anacostia River are a Denny’s and an IHOP:

But there’s another business thriving in the various run-down strip malls east of the river: dialysis centers. Wards 7 & 8 appear to have been struck by the diabetes epidemic that is afflicting communities nationwide. And the only two sit-down restaurants east of the river, parking lots full because these are the only options the free market provides, are in the business of selling their customers liquid sugar.

None of this is particular to DC; it’s endemic. PolicyLink found that in New York City, areas with poor supermarket access have higher levels of diabetes and obesity:

In Chicago, those who live in food deserts (areas with little or no access to healthy foods, seen in red in the map on the left) have higher body-mass-indexes:

The Post described the practical effect of living in a food desert:

You don’t have a car to get to a supermarket, much less to Costco or Trader Joe’s, where the middle class goes to save money. You don’t have three hours to take the bus. So you buy groceries at the corner store, where a gallon of milk costs an extra dollar.

A loaf of bread there costs you $2.99 for white. For wheat, it’s $3.79. The clerk behind the counter tells you the gallon of leaking milk in the bottom of the back cooler is $4.99. She holds up four fingers to clarify. The milk is beneath the shelf that holds beef bologna for $3.79. A pound of butter sells for $4.49. In the back of the store are fruits and vegetables. The green peppers are shriveled, the bananas are more brown than yellow, the oranges are picked over.

(At a Safeway on Bradley Boulevard in Bethesda, the wheat bread costs $1.19, and white bread is on sale for $1. A gallon of milk costs $3.49 — $2.99 if you buy two gallons. A pound of butter is $2.49. Beef bologna is on sale, two packages for $5.)

In addition, regardless of neighborhood, there’s a growing financial disparity between healthy and unhealthy foods:

Needless to say, our most impoverished neighborhoods are often the ones with the most health concerns (and we haven’t even mentioned other factors like crime, environmental racism, and lack of health care). Unfortunately, taking sick leave from work is another area where the poor are forced to choose between two unappealing options: going to work sick, or losing pay and risking being fired by staying home. Unlike in other nations, workers in the U.S. aren’t guaranteed paid sick leave:

And those who live in poverty are the least likely to receive such leave benefits - and the least likely to be able to afford taking unpaid leave. They depend on their paycheck to get them through the month. Unfortunately, as the Post details, those who live in poverty are often forced to waste a portion of their check at check-cashing establishments. As you can see, there’s only 1 check-cashing business west of Rock Creek Park in Ward 3, which is largely white and affluent:

In contrast there are almost no banks in Wards 5, 7, and 8. (This list, from 2007, is slightly outdated - there’s a Wachovia in southeast now, and also one at Georgia and T NW.)

As Joel Klein has said:

Schools matter and they matter big time in America. Sure, poverty matters, families matter, but schools can be the game changer…We’re never going to fix poverty in America if we don’t fix education.

Schools can be the game changer. But it’s undeniable that poverty and education are intertwined. This means that fixing education is all the more imperative. But there are strategic steps we can take to alleviate conditions of poverty outside of what we do in schools, and we need to do those things, too.