In the bayou south of New Orleans, a program called the Nurse-Family Partnership tries to reverse the life chances for babies born into extreme poverty. Sometimes, it actually succeeds.

A Little League season in Camden, New Jersey, where the murder rate is 17 times the national average.

Shamir is 15, bored and broke and balancing right on the edge.

On the post-prison lives of several men in West Baltimore.

A forgotten birthday cake sets off a chain of unexpected events.

"The door to the bakery is meant to be pulled, but I push hard against it, like a bird hitting the glass. The lady behind the counter settles eyes on me, so I pull myself up as straight as I can and pull the door. On a wooden board above the register a TV is playing The Today Show. Jane Pauley and Madonna won’t shut up about Madonna’s dress like it’s gonna end the Cold War and I have to wonder if I’m the only person in the world living with trouble. Be-hind the glare of the case, I can see the Cinderella cake covered in icy blue frosting thick as a comforter. A glass carriage flies across the surface in needle-thin icing. I put my hand to the glass—forgetting the lady behind the counter—smudging it, until she clears her throat.

A report from Owsley County, Ky., the poorest county in America.

How living off food stamps is making South Texans obese but leaving them hungry.

The homeless population of New York City is higher than it’s been in decades. Nobody seems to notice.

They have lost five years of life expectancy and no one knows why.

Riding along on the Lunch Express.

A potential assassin observes a wave of Zimbabwean refugees.

"They plunge into the Limpopo, sometimes drowning, and, if they survive, rise like mists from the water to cut holes in the border fence into his country. Then they plough through the jungle, and then eventually onto this very road that runs in front of his house. Headed to Jo’burg. What puzzles him, what he would really like to find out, is how they leave no footprints on the earth, make no mark, and drop nothing. And how it is that when they walk, like whispering, they do not cast shadows on the earth."

Meet Colorado’s suburban, Ramada-dwelling homeless.

The enduring disadvantage of getting locked up.

A day in the economic life of the Nairobi’s Kibera, the largest shanty-town in Africa.

A woman eking out a meagre existence takes a younger woman in from the cold.

"Inside, I make her tea and give her slices of cake until she is full. She holds big bites inside her mouth and pours tea over them, so each chunk soaks in a hot pool until she swallows it down like it hurts her. She eats four slices this way and does not seem to find happiness in any of them."

Down in out in an unnamed Californian city: newly-translated Japanese noir from the 1920s.

"First, he was obliged to pretend to search through his pockets. Of course he knew he wouldn't find anything. All he had was the penny he'd found earlier. But if that penny were to show up now, it would only ruin his act. At times like this, Sakuzō could become quite the performer."</blockqoute></p>

On the country’s poorest.

A profile of life in Owsley County, one of the poorest in the country.

The infuriating tale of Muncie, Indiana: When public institutions fail.

A profile of environmental activist Van Jones.

The story of a young man on the run in the slum he dreams of escaping.

 The same forces that put his family in the slum also gave him the golf course on the other side of the wall, and the teachers and sponsors, and the strange ability to hit a ball with a club. But it still doesn't make sense. Sometimes it seems as if fate is wrestling with itself, making sure the circumstances of his birth are always conspiring to take away whatever gifts might allow him to escape it. He lives in two worlds, each one pulling away from the other. Anil is in the middle, trying to keep his balance.

60 Minutes on America’s poverty epidemic:

Jade Wiley is eight years old. She spent three weeks living in her car with her mom, her dad, two dogs and a cat. Pelley: Did you think you were ever gonna get out of the car? Jade Wiley: I thought I was going to be stuck in the car. Pelley: How did you keep your spirits up? Jade Wiley: By still praying to God that somebody'd let us stay in a hotel.

An investigation into rising crime rates in small American cities. Is a lauded antipoverty program to blame?

An oral history of a family in Mexico City, in transition from poverty to the lower-middle class, as they scramble to organize the burial of a slum-dwelling aunt.