About 1 in 10 people — nationally and in Vermont — live below the poverty line. Low-income people are everywhere.

There’s a pernicious myth that poverty is a personal failure or a character flaw. The myth goes that if people were just willing to work harder, they could pull themselves up. The reality is that the vast majority of people in poverty are working. And poverty defies stereotypes.

“The face of poverty in America is a white child,” says Joanne Goldblum, CEO and founder of the National Diaper Bank Network. Goldblum is co-author, with journalist Colleen Shaddox, of the new book, Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty. She notes that nearly half of American children are poor or low-income. The authors argue that poverty is not a personal failing, but the result of bad policy — and it can be solved. They provide a roadmap for the Biden administration to eradicate poverty for millions of Americans through policy changes.