UK Economics Professor on Panel for KET Program on 'Working Poor'

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 14, 2013) ― John Garen, Gatton Endowed Professor of Economics in the Gatton College of Economics, is on a panel of experts featured on the second installment of "The Price of Poverty in Kentucky," on Kentucky Educational Television.  Hosts Bill Goodman and Renee Shaw examine Kentucky’s 'working poor' and middle-class income earners who are struggling to make ends meet. The program premieres at 8 p.m. EDT Monday, June 17, on KET.

Panelists in addition to Garen are: Jason Bailey, director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy; Richard Nelson, executive director of the Commonwealth Policy Center and a Trigg County magistrate; Adrienne Gilbert, moderator of the Take Back Kentucky coalition; and Bonifacio Aleman, executive director of Kentucky Jobs with Justice.

The program features also features Jere Downs, a journalist with the Louisville Courier-Journal who focuses her writing on life after the economic meltdown and the changing financial realities for many households in Jefferson and surrounding counties. The program also travels to Owingsville to explore the work of the Christian Social Services Center and NewHope Clinic. In addition, Dave Adkisson, president of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, discusses the business community's response to poverty in Kentucky and why higher wages for workers oversimplify the complexity of poverty's possible solutions.

KET is Kentucky’s largest classroom, serving more than one million people each week via television, online and mobile. Learn more about Kentucky’s preeminent public media organization on Twitter @KET and facebook.com/KET and at KET.org.