While the poor and their condition defy any single characterization, the challenge of systemic poverty, poverty that is deeply rooted and passed on from one generation to the next, is a condition vastly complicated by two facts of contemporary American life: growing economic inequality and declining social mobility. In a year that marks the fiftieth anniversary of the War on Poverty, we might ask whether the American Dream is a lost hope for more and more Americans, particularly for the many and diverse poor who are the focus of this issue.