That said... ultimately what I want is to understand, and figure out how to explain.
On the explaining front, I am given to understand that individual stories - narratives they can imagine - tend to move people far more than statistics.
Two things I've read you could point people at are Nickel and Dimed (which is more specifically about working at minimum-wage jobs, but covers a number of poverty traps in the process) and John Scalzi's Being Poor - both essay and comments. (Of which there's one that wisely points out that it's not a competition; just because someone else was worse off doesn't mean that one's experiences are invalid / shouldn't be shared.)
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On the explaining front, I am given to understand that individual stories - narratives they can imagine - tend to move people far more than statistics.
Two things I've read you could point people at are Nickel and Dimed (which is more specifically about working at minimum-wage jobs, but covers a number of poverty traps in the process) and John Scalzi's Being Poor - both essay and comments. (Of which there's one that wisely points out that it's not a competition; just because someone else was worse off doesn't mean that one's experiences are invalid / shouldn't be shared.)