NEWSBYJOAN QUIGLEY

Gary Rivlin, an award-winning former New York Times reporter, has covered everything from the casino industry to the hurly-burly of Chicago politics. His new book, Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. — How the Working Poor Became Big Business, out on June 8, tackles the "poverty industry," a miasma of sub-prime lenders who prey on the cash-strapped, such as single mothers who take $200 advances against their next paycheck, incurring APRs hovering near 400 percent, just to pay their bills. I caught up with him recently to chat about his stint on the economic margins.

Tell me what you mean by the "poverty industry."

To me, it's a business that focuses on the poor, the working poor, those of modest means, the working class — as a way to get profits. Disproportionately, the poor pay more for credit because they use check cashers, pawnbrokers, payday lenders, instant tax-refund mills and auto-title loans.

In terms of profits, the industry makes some pretty eye-popping numbers.

If you include sub-prime mortgage lending, it's well over $100 billion. I wrote about the casino industry for the New York Times. They take in about $60 billion to $70 billion per year.

There's a lot of money to be made.

One can argue poor people need services, just like the rich. To me, there's nothing wrong with setting up a business in a poor community or a rusty, working-class community in the Midwest, but making greater profits than off the wealthy — that's where the real issue comes in.

Your title, Broke, USA, suggests the industry has a broad reach — not just the poor and working class, but even the middle class?

Race doesn't make much difference. Geography doesn't make much difference. These folks are the great white sharks, happy to feed off any fish they come across. It comes down to greed, not racism.

Peel away the veneer of sustainability, the hybrid cars, recycled tote bags and green light bulbs, and the question remains: what happened to Earth Day's focus on environmental justice?

Forty years ago, amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War, more than 20 million Americans marked the first Earth Day, the symbolic birth of a grassroots environmental movement. Months later, President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency.

These achievements, impressive as they were, reflect only part of the vision of Earth Day's founder, Gaylord A. Nelson, a U.S. senator from Wisconsin who understood the connection between environmental degradation and poverty — and the need to address both. "Any national policy on the environment that is worth its name must mean attacking the problem of our cities and the poor as much as it means providing national parks and scenic rivers," Nelson said.

This year, low-income neighborhoods across the country are heralding Earth Day's 40th anniversary with celebrations ranging from earth-friendly community building in South Los Angeles, featuring workshops for poetry-writing and composting, to a butterfly garden-planting project at the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia.

Call it the next wave of the foreclosure crisis. Scam artists, posing as landlords, hoodwink prospective tenants, absconding with their rent and deposit money.

In California, where vacant, foreclosed homes glut the marketplace, law-enforcement officials and legal aid clinics have seen a spike in landlord-impersonation cases over the past few years, according to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. "The properties are just sitting there and easy for con artists to use," Dean Preston, executive director of San Francisco's Tenants Together, told the Chronicle.

Here's how the scheme works: scam artists descend upon foreclosure properties, which remain empty for extended periods of time. They change the locks, advertise the property on Craiglist at an attractive price, then prod prospective tenants with high-pressure tactics, telling them they need to come back soon with cash for the deposit. Unwitting tenants comply, sign the lease and move in, only to confront the legitimate owner — typically an agent for the bank — a few days later. "Then they're out whatever cash they've laid out," said Fiona Ma, a California Assemblywoman who has sponsored a bill to treat landlord impersonation, currently a misdemeanor under California law, as a felony.

One victim profiled was Raquel Rupple, a Sacramento receptionist who found a

Blogger, heal thyself.

I just took a Poverty IQ quiz. And the results proved distressing: I failed.

Granted, I didn't cram; I just plunged in, thinking I was more than well-prepared. I read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal every day. My Twitter feed pulsates with updates from a host of knowledgeable sources. When I spotted a teaser on the web site for the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality prodding me to check my "Inequality Quotient," I couldn't resist. Naturally, I thought I'd nail it.

Take the quiz yourself before you read on. Spoiler alert! I'm about to dissect the answers. Seriously, go find out your poverty IQ and then come back.