http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/politics/26poverty.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

With an Eye on Politics, Edwards Makes Poverty His Cause

By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: March 26, 2006
CHAPEL HILL, N.C., March 25 — As he sought the Democratic Party's
presidential nomination in 2004 and later as John Kerry's running mate,
John Edwards talked about poverty more than any other candidate.

But when he spoke on the campaign trail about what he referred to as the
"two Americas," he told a conference on poverty here this week, "people
called it a downer."

Now Mr. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina and a presumed
contender for his party's 2008 presidential nomination, has made curbing
poverty the centerpiece of his work and his political approach.

This is his true passion, he said in an interview, and he thinks that
voters may be more responsive in the coming years, both because the middle
class is becoming less secure and because of a shared sense of fairness.

"I think there is political traction in helping people help themselves," he
said, emphasizing that he also believed that "if you can work, you should
work, and parents should be responsible for their children."

"I think that for most Americans, what they saw on TV from the Lower Ninth
Ward of New Orleans was just not right," he said, referring to the severe
poverty revealed there after Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Edwards was the organizer and the most assiduous note-taker at the
poverty conference, sponsored by the Center on Poverty, Work and
Opportunity at the University of North Carolina, an organization that he
founded and directs.

The meeting drew more than 200 scholars and leaders of private antipoverty
agencies to discuss issues like the problems of the working poor and the
effects globalization has on labor.

The challenge, Mr. Edwards and other speakers said, is not just to devise
better ways to fight poverty but to find strategies with broad appeal.

Some of the scholars offered, if not cheerful data, themes that they said
might grab the attention of middle-income Americans. Many of the same
economic trends that hurt the poor, the experts said, are also creating "a
harsh new world of economic insecurity for middle-class families," in the
words of Jacob S. Hacker, a political scientist at Yale.

Mr. Hacker described a decline in shared safety nets, like health
insurance, that leave more families confronting medical crises or job
losses without assistance.

Rising costs for housing, health care and other necessities have affected
middle-class families as well as the poor, said Elizabeth Warren, an expert
on family bankruptcy and a law professor at Harvard. Even with more mothers
now working outside the home, Ms. Warren said, families have more debt,
fewer reserves and more volatile incomes than they did a few decades ago.

"It used to be that if you worked hard you'd be in the middle class and
have a secure retirement," she said, "but the rules have changed." Policies
to improve the security of the middle class will also help the poor, she
added.

Several scholars lamented the racial and class disparities in family
assets, including home equity and other savings, a topic that receives less
attention than those disparities in income. Income is used to get by, they
said, but assets provide a safety net and a means to climb ahead. Helping
low-income people buy homes and using tax credits to encourage savings
accounts were among the potential answers put forth.

In interviews, several scholars said they were grateful for the chance to
discuss research and issues, though they said they knew that Mr. Edwards
was most likely banking ideas for a political campaign.

"We'll say whatever we want to say," said Kathryn Edin, a sociologist at
the University of Pennsylvania. "But as academics who do this kind of work,
we're eager to discuss our work with political leaders."

Mr. Edwards said that after his decision not to run for re-election to the
Senate in 2004 and the defeat of the Kerry-Edwards ticket, he talked with
friends and his wife about how to spend his time. They all agreed, he said,
that "I really lit up when I talked about poverty."

Beyond directing the poverty center, a part of the university law school,
Mr. Edwards has campaigned in several states for initiatives to raise the
minimum wage and on behalf of unions for service sector groups like hotel
workers.

Those attending this week's conference offered no simple answers to the
challenge of globalization, which brings consumer benefits but has cost
factory jobs, especially here in the onetime textile belt of North
Carolina.

Mr. Edwards has shied away from calls for protectionism. But he said that
promoting unions, and thus better pay and conditions, in the expanding
service sector "is an example where we can have a real impact without
endangering our economic position in the world."

"Those jobs aren't going anywhere," he said.