This piece is the first in a series marking the two year anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic. Find more of our work documenting the global response to the coronavirus here. The Covid-19 pandemic cast a bright light on the reality for billions of…

The economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic has hit public housing residents in the United States especially hard. Most public housing residents have low incomes, and nearly half of the households residing in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA…

The United States Congress is debating the content and price tag of the Build Back Better Act, President Joe Biden’s proposal to invest $3.5 trillion over 10 years in education, fighting climate change, and strengthening the US social safety net.…

Critics in the United States who argue about the cost of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package pending in the US Congress, which would expand government investment in the country’s broken social safety net and protections for workers, are missing…

The US House of Representatives last week joined the Senate in voting to overturn a federal regulation that allowed payday and other small-dollar and short-term lenders to skirt limits on what interest rates they could charge for loans. This is a major…

Lucy* (not her real name), a 29-year-old grocery delivery worker and mother of two in the US city of Houston, Texas, was under enormous financial strain when we interviewed her in May. She said her income had dropped steeply during the pandemic; she…

Not long ago, talking about menstruation as a human rights issue raised eyebrows even within much of the human rights movement. The dismissiveness about the issue among many underscored both its stigma and the lack of decision-makers who menstruate…

Most US states have prioritized people over 75 in the first wave of Covid-19 vaccinations, but obstacles to securing an appointment can hinder delivery. Most states are using online systems for scheduling. But while technology was once considered the…

A coalition of Democratic Republic of Congo and international nongovernmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have written to US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and urged them to revoke a decision by…

New York City’s roughly 20,000 street vendors have suffered enormously this past year, as the Covid-19 pandemic compounded perennial challenges such as the lack of a social safety net in the United States for immigrant workers and…

In the US, the Covid-19 pandemic has hit families with children the hardest. Households with children have been most likely to lose employment due to the pandemic. More than 40 percent of US families with children – and more than 55 percent of Black…

Fifty years ago today, then-United States President Richard Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act, a bill that set the stage for many of the basic protections to which US workers are legally entitled today. In January 2020, the…

With negotiations concerning a new economic stimulus stalled, millions of renters in the United States face a grim deadline. On December 31, the national eviction moratorium expires. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued the…

The US elections took place amid a recession, record unemployment, and rising poverty. The economy was the top issue for voters in the election; one in two voters said that economic inequality was very important in their decision about who to support…

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused unemployment in the United States to reach its highest levels since the Great Depression. Yet in the first months of the crisis, poverty fell to historic lows and total income, made up of wages and government support,…

People exposed to air pollution – often because they live in low-income, industrial, or polluted urban neighborhoods – are at greater risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from Covid-19. But instead of addressing this link, the Trump…

  Today is World Water Day, but as the world braces for the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is little to celebrate. The need for good hygiene like handwashing is key to protecting public health and responding to the virus.…

The New York City Council voted this week to provide free telephone calls for anyone held in the city’s correctional facilities. The move will save New York City inmates and their families an estimated US$8 million a year. Until this law takes…

Is extreme poverty a serious problem in the world’s wealthiest country? Yes, says the United Nations’ expert, Philip Alston, who released a report on severe poverty in the United States last month. No, says the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley…