this is economics correspondent paul solman. >> woodruff: for more, we turn to richard thaler himselft the call he won at 4:00 a.m. we spoke a short time ago and i began by noting that he has been honored for recognizing that people do not always act rationally when making economic decisions, and whether that is how he sees his contribution to economics. well, yes, although pointing that out is kind of obvious to everybody except economists. so, in some ways, it's pointing out the obvious, but i think the contribution that i've made and the younger economists following in my footsteps have made says, okay, what follows from there? how should we do things differently if people aren't perfect? and there's a lot of things we can do better. >> woodruff: what do you think is main consequence of your research has had on economics and on policy? >> well, on economics, i think it's made especially young economists more open to thinking outside the box. i coined the phrase supposedly irrelevant factors for the kinds of things that economists are sure don't matter, like the way a letter is word

. >> sreenivasan: a slightly offbeat conversation this week from our economics correspondent, paul solmans about a new culinary history and kind of biography that ties to class and socioeconomics. let's have paul connect the dots, part of our weekly series, "making sense." >> reporter: so you see everything through the lens of food. >> absolutely. >> reporter: and i see everything through the lens of economics. >> every food story is an economic story. i mean it starts with affordability, but it's also, it's about class, it's about social standing, there is always a money story behind every food story. >> reporter: and if ever there were a story of food and economics as "class" or "social standing," it would be one of the several tales in laura shapiro's new book, "what she ate": that of rosa lewis, with whom pbs diehards may be familiar. >> the duchess of duke street which was a pbs series that ran in the '70s, was loosely based on her life. rosa lewis was born into a working-class family in london. she went out to work at the age of 12 as a scullery maid and she cooked her way up the la

economics correspondent paul solman has the story as part of his weekly reporting, making sense. >> i would wake up in the morning and take four pills and snort two. that's just to get out of bed. >> reporter: michael oates, a lifelong welder, is recovering from a 10-year opioid addiction which began when he took vicodin for pain while working at a steel mill. did you lose the job? >> actually, my job went to china. that was my excuse to do even more pills. >> reporter: have you worked since? >> i've had four or five different jobs since then. >> reporter: what happened to those jobs? >> i lost them all due to being addicted to opiates. they would random drug test me, and i'd be like, "well, see you later." i'd walk out. i even got caught one time with synthetic urine in my underwear, because i got pretty slick at using that. >> reporter: you'd stash it in your underpants? >> i would stash it in my underwear, and i'd go in and it's synthetic urine. it's got everything in it that you need to make them think it's your urine. >> reporter: out of work for three years now, oates is just on

but first, our economics correspondent, paul solman, is continuing to chronicle some of the problemsh inequality across the country. tonight, he looks at the possibility of moving up the economic ladder by moving out to other communities. it's part of his weekly series, "making sense." >> i want better for my family. >> reporter: kristen hopper, expressing the economic motto of america even before the states united. so you want your kids to do better than you've done. >> 100%. >> reporter: the 35-year-old mother of four has gone the extra miles to make that happen. with help from the interfaith council for action, a housing nonprofit, she's uprooted her family from hardscrabble yonkers new york, where she herself grew up, and has in effect emigrated a mere 20 miles north, but in some respects a world away, to ossining, new york. ossining may be home to sing sing prison where criminals are still sent "up the river" from new york city, but this is suburbia, a place with far better prospects for two-year- old twins robert and juliet, ten-year-old josie, fourteen- year-old gio. >> the la

. >> no, every one of them, judy, william tonight, paul solman last night. face on it, not simply the affliction and the problem, but -- and the recovery. mony, the gravity of the problem is driven home to you, but the hope for recovery is presented. >> woodruff: we have a lot of emergencies, i guess, david, to deal with, but this is clearly one. >> the scene of roxanne newman with her date on the first date, the spirit with which she told that story and her husband's grace -- her now husband's grace is remarkable. her point which you hear over and over again is it's just a slow motion form of suicide. you have to see it. first the heroism, the people trying to deal with recover, but the social chasm that causes it. suicide is just the symptom of isolation and tearing the social fabric has created so many problems for society but this is the one that is the most lethal. >> woodruff: speaking of lethal and social fabric, mark, las vegas has been on all of our minds this week, the worst mass shooting in american history. what does it say about our country, abo