Today we close our series “The Color of Money,” which has been an examination of how the economic downturn is affecting minorities. We’re ending the conversation with a look at what it would take to turn the lives of the poor around. With unemployment rates higher among African Americans and Hispanics, and the median income about $20,000 lower than it is for whites, these ethnic groups run a greater risk of staying poor and bearing the consequences.

Joining us to talk about how the urban poor are experiencing the recession and what it will take to get out of it is Sudhir Venkatesh. As a sociologist he has done in-depth field work, most famously a six-year immersion in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes housing projects, where he experienced, first-hand, exposure to gang dynamics, the black market and the psychological toll that chronic poverty can have on a community. He is the William B. Ransford professor of sociology at Columbia University and author of numerous books, including Gang Leader for a Day and Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor.

With a fixed amount of water on earth, a growing population means the competition for water is increasing.

But will the economic slowdown hamper environmental progress?

When Nebraska's legislature crafted its safe-haven law to protect newborns from abandonment, state lawmakers had the best intentions. But without an age limit set, those best intentions have opened the door to some 30 children being abandoned at Nebraskan hospitals — and those "children" have often been teenagers, never newborns.