Patrick McCarthy on the Increasing Struggles of America's Working Families

Four years after a call to arms to fight pover­ty dur­ing the his­toric elec­tion of 2008, the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion’s Pres­i­dent and CEO Patrick McCarthy calls for increased aware­ness of dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren dur­ing a wel­com­ing speech at the Spot­light on Pover­ty and Oppor­tu­ni­ty forum in Jan­u­ary 2012.

Patrick’s remarks segued into a larg­er dis­cus­sion on the increas­ing strug­gles of Amer­i­can fam­i­lies to make ends meet – par­tic­u­lar­ly the low­er one-third of U.S. fam­i­lies – and how their trou­bles affect­ed the polit­i­cal dis­course dur­ing the 2012 pres­i­den­tial election.

Read a tran­script of McCarthy’s remarks on the pol­i­tics of eco­nom­ic opportunity