Greg Kaufmann | The Nation

Healthcare workers on strike. (Credit: SEIU1199 NW)

“Providence Health & Services is a not-for-profit Catholic healthcare ministry committed to providing for the needs of the communities it serves—especially for those who are poor and vulnerable.”

So reads the Providence website. But ask the members of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW what they think of the five-state healthcare giant’s commitment to vulnerable workers, and they paint a very different picture. 

More than 700 union workers went on strike in Olympia, Washington, to protest the nonprofit’s unilateral decision while at the bargaining table to switch employees from an affordable healthcare plan to a high-deductible plan. These workers at Providence St. Peter Hospital—which include everyone but the doctors, registered nurses and social workers—and the Providence SoundHomeCare and Hospice earn an average of $31,000 annually. 

SEIU says the deductibles increased on January 1 from $750 to $3,000 for family coverage, and the workers face higher co-pays as well. The Segal Company, a benefits and human resources consulting firm, estimates that the workers will pay a total of $75,000 more in premiums under the new plan while Providence will pay $437,000 less. The lower a worker is on the wage scale, the more regressive the new healthcare plan is. 

The problem isn’t that Providence is lacking in resources: the company reported $286 million in profits in 2011, and the CEO’s compensation rose from $3.1 million in 2010 to $6.4 million in 2011; the senior VP and chief administration officer’s pay rose from $1.5 million to $3.3 million; and the executive VP, western Washington region, saw his pay increase from $2.4 million to $3.5 million.

“The major healthcare provider in Thurston County is going in the wrong direction for our community,” said Thurston County Commissioner Karen Valenzuela. “[Providence] is increasing costs on workers who are least able to afford it. It’s not a good thing for our community to have workers choosing between their healthcare and other basic needs.”

Providence claims that the high deductibles will largely be offset by payments to workers for participating in a wellness plan, resulting in net deductible increases of roughly $250 for individuals and $150 for families.

But an SEIU source close to the negotiations says that the documents Providence is sharing with the union “show very different things than what they are saying in public.” Further, the wellness initiative was in place last year and only half of the eligible union members were able to meet the requirements—partly because the requirements kept changing, and partly because it was difficult for employees with irregular work schedules to meet with specific providers at prescribed times.

“I now work a second a job just to be able to afford my family’s healthcare,” said Abbey Bruce, a certified nursing assistant at Providence St. Peter Hospital. “My husband has cystic fibrosis and needs to take enzymes to absorb his food. This used to be covered, but now it costs our family $300 a month. We work in a hospital, it’s outrageous that any of us have to work a second job or worry about how we’ll afford our care.”

This dispute is one that should be of concern not only to the SEIU workers in Olympia—and 6,000 SEIU hospital workers in Seattle with a contract that expires in 2015—but any employee who isn’t well off and in optimal health. 

High-deductible “catastrophic” or “consumer directed health plans” shift the cost of healthcare from employers to employees and are a permitted form of coverage under the Affordable Care Act. According to SEIU, companies that have moved all or most of their workers to these plans include: JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, American Express, Whole Foods and General Electric. According to Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health, nearly one-fifth of large companies said that catastrophic, high-deductible coverage will be the only kind of plan they offer in 2013.

Studies show that lower-wage workers in these high-deductible plans often skip necessary treatment in order to avoid high out-of-pocket expenses. A 2011 Rand study found a marked decrease in preventive care such as childhood vaccinations, cervical and colorectal cancer screening, and routine blood tests for people with diabetes. Even when catastrophic plans waived the deductible for preventive services, people in these plans still cut back on such care, fearing that a diagnosis would result in further expenses that they wouldn’t be able to afford. In fact, a Kaiser Family Foundation study found that people covered by catastrophic plans were twice as likely to report going without needed medical care as those in other health plans. 

It’s not only the patients who suffer under this approach, providers also often take a hit. Ellis Medicine is the largest provider of hospital services to General Electric workers and retirees in the country. As of June 30 of last year it had reported $7.8 million in bad debt, up $1 million from the year before.

“My guess is that we are seeing more bad debt coming through our ER because of high deductibles,” Ellis Medicine CEO James Connolly told The Business Review.

SEIU says that there is a much better alternative for workers and providers. The union also represents registered nurses at Group Health, a local HMO that has come out against high-deductible plans. When Group Health needed to reduce employee healthcare costs, it joined SEIU in developing a wellness initiative to focus on smoking cessation, weight management and chronic disease management. The result is that healthcare inflation was held to a total of 4 percent over four years, and last year healthcare costs actually went down. 

“We want to do this with Providence but they won’t come to the table and work with us,” said Bob Wilson, a surgical technologist at Providence St. Peter Hospital. “They prefer to slash and burn.”

Note and Question

I won’t be posting the next two weeks because I’m taking time off to hang with my 1-month-old daughter, #BabyGracieRocks. 

It’s been over a year since The Nation launched “This Week in Poverty.” I’m interested in your thoughts on how the blog has been valuable, what you think we could do better, and what we need to do to together—as my friend Dr. Mariana Chilton from The Center for Hunger-Free Communities says—“to knock down the six-foot cement wall between the people in Congress making the major policy decisions, and the rest of low-income America.”

Please comment below or email me at WeekInPoverty@me.com. I hope to post some of your responses in a future blog.

Online Petitions

Oppose Cuts to SNAP
Tell Congress to Support Earned Paid Sick Days
President Obama: Extend Labor Protections to Homecare Workers
Tell Congress: Protect Federal Nutrition Programs That Feed Our Nation’s Children
Tell Your Representative: Vote NO on the House Republican budget

New Resource on Sequestration

The Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) now offers a weekly summary of the effect of sequestration on vital programs that many of you care about—from education and family services, to housing and senior services, and more. The first report includes an item on Head Start in Columbus and Franklin, Indiana, where 36 kids weren’t allowed to return to the classroom after March 15. The cities used lotteries to choose which children were permitted to remain in the program.

“Welfare Reform”: No Model to Build On for Disability Benefits

Guest post by Rebecca Vallas

Some Republicans in Congress, including House Budget Chair Paul Ryan in the budget proposal his committee released this past week, have called for radically restructuring federal assistance programs that they term "welfare"—including Food Stamps (SNAP), Medicaid, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). They propose building on the so-called "success" of "welfare reform," which in 1996 converted Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a block grant program with strict time limits and work requirements that today serves a minuscule share of families in need.

TANF has proven to be significantly less responsive as an anti-poverty program than its predecessor. For every 100 poor families with children, today just 27 are helped by TANF—down from 68 in 1996. The number of poor families with children helped by TANF actually declined during the recent economic downturn, which saw a huge increase in deep poverty. For those lucky enough to receive TANF, grant amounts are equal to just 30 percent of the federal poverty level (less than $5,500 per year for a family of three) in most states.

The claim that the decline in TANF enrollment is due to an upsurge in work among single mothers is flatly contradicted by the data. While the booming economy of the 1990s and early 2000s led to low unemployment and a decline in poverty, those gains have since vanished, and the share of single mothers with a high school diploma or less who are working is now back to where it was in 1996, at about 62 percent.

But facts haven't kept Republicans and even some Democrats from declaring welfare reform a "success" worthy of building on. Those who call for this sort of overhaul of SSDI and SSI say they believe that most working age people who receive disability benefits could and would work if faced with the "right" incentives. The truth is SSDI and SSI beneficiaries have severe impairments and health conditions that keep them from being able to work enough to support themselves. Many are terminally ill: one in five male beneficiaries, and one in seven female beneficiaries, die within five years of receiving benefits. Most applications for benefits are denied and less than 40 percent are approved under the strict disability standard.

Benefits, while inadequate for many, are vital. The average SSI benefit was just $520 per month in 2012—about half the federal poverty level for a single person, and just $17.33 per day. The average monthly SSDI benefit was about $1,100 in 2012, just over the federal poverty line for a single person—but a full quarter of SSDI beneficiaries live in poverty and the majority are low-income (below twice the federal poverty level). For most adult disability beneficiaries their SSI and SSDI benefits make up all or most of their income. These benefits keep millions of people with disabilities out of deep poverty and homelessness.

As with the adult disability programs, most children who apply are denied SSI, and only the most severely impaired qualify for benefits. Just 1.6 percent of US children receive SSI—compared with the estimated 9 percent who have severe disabilities. Benefits are modest (on average $619 per month for 2012) but together with Medicaid make it possible for many children to remain at home with their families instead of in an institution. Nearly half of children receiving SSI live with a working parent, yet many parents of children with disabilities are unable to work full-time due to caregiving responsibilities. SSI replaces some of the income lost when a parent cuts their hours or loses a job after one too many missed work days to care for a sick child. It also covers some of the family's out of pocket medical and disability-related expenses, many of which are not covered by Medicaid.

Unfortunately, research on the work capacity of adult disability beneficiaries is often mischaracterized. Studies are frequently described as finding that some current beneficiaries "could work," though a closer look reveals that the earning potential of that subset of beneficiaries who "could" or "should" be working is a few thousand dollars per year—hardly enough to support oneself.

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Proposals to "reform" SSI and SSDI in the same way that "welfare reform" created TANF would be nothing short of devastating to children and adults with disabilities. Work requirements have no place in programs that—by definition—serve people with disabilities so severe that that they are unable to work enough to support themselves. They also have no place in the SSI children's program, whose purpose is to supplement family income when caregiving responsibilities prevent parents from full-time work. Moreover, the TANF experiment has shown what block-granting does—it weakens vital programs and makes them far less effective at increasing economic security for the people they’re intended to help.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from welfare reform, it’s that we can’t afford to make the same mistake again with other vital programs.

Rebecca Vallas is a staff attorney and policy advocate at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia. She is a co-chair of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) Social Security Task Force and co-leads the SSI Coalition for Children and Families, a group of over 100 organizations working to preserve and strengthen SSI for children with severe disabilities.

March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food

On Sunday, March 17, hundreds of farmworkers from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and their consumer allies from across Florida rallied outside Publix corporate headquarters in Lakeland. The event marked the completion of a two-week, 200-mile trek during which marchers called on the Florida-based grocery giant to honor the breakthrough social responsibility partnership for farm labor reform known as the Fair Food Program (FFP). I wouldn’t bet against the CIW—check out their track record. Photos here, video here:

News from the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED)

Asset Limits: Many public benefit programs—like TANF, Medicaid and food assistance—limit eligibility to those with few or no assets. Nine states introduced legislation to eliminate asset tests (Hawaii and Illinois, for example) or exclude certain kinds of assets such as automobiles from being counted (California and Massachusetts, for example). Minnesota’s Department of Human Services offered the state legislature policy options for simplifying or eliminating asset limits across economic assistance programs. For more information, read this blog post.

Payday and Auto Title Lending: Texas, Alabama, New Hampshire and New York introduced legislation to regulate payday and auto-title lending. Unfortunately, North Carolina is considering reversing a 2001 ban on payday lending, which would allow short-term, high-interest lenders to return to the state.

Earned Income Tax Credit: North Carolina’s Senate voted to eliminate the state’s EITC and Connecticut’s governor proposed a budget reducing the credit from 30 percent to 25 percent of the federal credit. In better news, New Jersey’s General Assembly voted to fully restore the EITC and the Michigan Senate introduced legislation to restore the credit to 20 percent of the federal credit.

Individual Retirement Accounts: Illinois lawmakers introduced legislation to create retirement savings accounts for workers. Sign on to support the bill here.

Individual Development Accounts: IDA programs consist of matched savings accounts that enable low-income families to save, gain assets and enter the financial mainstream. Indiana’s proposed state budget would cut IDA funding in half from $1 million to $500,000. Indiana Institute for Working Families is pushing the Senate Appropriations Committee to restore funding.

Event: Ending Hunger Through Citizen Service
The New York City Coalition Against Hunger is spearheading a new long-term, nationwide initiative to redefine the way people think and act when it comes to volunteering to fight hunger. As part of that effort, the organization will co-sponsor a conference in Dallas, Texas, with the North Texas Food Bank, Texas Hunger Initiative and USDA Food and Nutrition Service: Friday, March 22, 9 am–4 pm (Wilshire Baptist Church, 4316 Abrams Rd, Dallas, TX 75214). More information here.

HBO’s American Winter Premiers Tonight

This documentary about eight families in Portland struggling through the recession is a must-see, and it premiers tonight on HBO. Thanks to host Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and cosponsor The Nation for last week’s screening and terrific panel discussion that included filmmakers Joe and Harry Gantz, two families in the film—Diedre and Jalean, and Brandon, Pam and Jude—and policy experts Elaine Weiss, Algernon Austin and Mariana Chilton.

Clips and other resources (compiled with James Cersonsky)

“Infrastructure investments and Latino and African American job creation,” Algernon Austin

“The City On Baltimore’s Homelessness Problem Following Camp 83,” The Anthony McCarthy Show [AUDIO]

“In City Terms, What the Sequester Means,” Jake Blumgart 

“Right to Lawyer Can Be Empty Promise for Poor,” Ethan Bronner

“Raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 would give working families, and the overall economy, a much-needed boost,” David Cooper and Doug Hall

“What Paul Ryan’s Budget Means for Women,” Bryce Covert

“Activists target Comcast over paid-sick leave lobbying,” Daniel Denvir

“In Virginia, child care doesn’t command the attention it deserves,” Petula Dvorak

“Top Democrats Differ on Ending Subminimum Wage for Workers with Disabilities,” Mike Elk 

“Sandberg left single mothers behind,” Susan Faludi

“Haunted by Julio’s Injustices, and Our Responsibility for Them,” Steven Farr

“Health Problems Compound For Aging Homeless,” Pam Fessler

“We Shouldn’t Have To Live Like This,” Pam Fessler

“Research ties economic inequality to gap in life expectancy,” Michael A. Fletcher

“State budget testimony discusses ways to improve Ohio’s public assistance programs,” Jack Frech, Athens County Job & Family Services

“New CBO Estimates Show How Shifting to Chained CPI Would Harm Poorly Compensated Workers and Others Struggling to Afford the Basics,” Shawn Fremstad

“Relative Poverty Measures Can Help Paint a More Accurate picture of Poverty in America,” Shawn Fremstad

“Why is there so little coverage of Americans who are struggling with poverty?” Dan Froomkin

“Big win for workers in Portland and (hopefully) Philadelphia,” Elise Gould

“Chairman Ryan Gets 66 Percent of His Budget Cuts from Programs for People With Low or Moderate Incomes,” Richard Kogan and Kelsey Merrick

“Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor,” David Leonhardt

“AP: Lawyers say thousands wrongly lost Medicaid,” Marc Levy

“Let the Borrower Beware: Facing the Facts about Payday Loans and Pawnshops,” Gregory Mills 

“In the South and West, a Tax on Being Poor,” Katherine S. Newman

“Unfair Punishments,” New York Times

“City Council Approval of Paid Sick Days Standard Puts ‘A Healthier, More Economically Secure Portland on the Horizon,’” Debra L. Ness

“TANF Emerging from the Downturn a Weaker Safety Net,” LaDonna Pavetti, Ife Finch and Liz Schott

“Ryan Budget Includes Medicaid Block Grant That Would Add Millions to Ranks of Uninsured and Underinsured,” Edwin Park

“Southeast Kansas Winter Homeless Count,” Jennifer Penate

“25 Years of Working with Chicago Public Housing: Personal Stories,” Susan Popkin

“Ryan Budget Would Slash SNAP Funding By $135 Billion Over Ten Years,” Dottie Rosenbaum

“Minnesota minimum wage hike cheered by workers; employers critical,” Matt Sepic

“Sequester set to sock it to D.C.’s poorest,” Michael Shank

“One Economy, Two Americas,” Hedrick Smith

“Poor people in Ohio don’t get a lot of help,” Thomas Suddes 

“Raising Minnesota,” Gabriel Thompson

“City clears homeless camp, residents in temporary housing,” Yvonne Wenger 

“The Paid Sick Leave Battle Widens in the States,” George Zornick

Some Notable Studies and Reports (summaries written by James Cersonsky)

“Out of Reach 2013,” Elina Bravve, Megan Bolton, Sheila Crowley, National Low Income Housing Coalition. The number of households that rent instead of own their homes rose by one million in 2011—the single largest one-year increase since the early 1980s. Though renting can be cheaper than buying, renters are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. This report estimates a 2013 “housing wage”—that is, what a household would have to bring in to afford a decent apartment at HUD’s Fair Market Rent, while spending no more than 30 percent of income on housing—of $18.79. The average hourly wage of renters, though, sits at $14.32. Why the gap? The report cites a number of factors: rising rents, stagnating wages and a shortage of affordable housing units. The biggest solution, it says, is to expand the supply of these units—on the order of 4.5 million—to meet the demand from extremely low-income households with incomes at or below the regional median.

“Family Independence Initiative: The Role of Control, Options, and Social Connectedness in Economic Mobility for Families,” Melanie Moore Kubo, PhD and Suki McCoy, See Change. Through the Family Independence Initiative (FII), families meet regularly for mutual support and have access to a resource bank for various financial and social tools—creating what FII calls “environments of opportunity.” This independent study looks at Boston families who worked with FII over the course of two years. The study shows a slate of positive results, including: half of families who lived below the federal poverty line had risen above it in two years; earnings rose 27 percent; savings rose 187 percent; and 91 percent of families (compared to 27 percent at the outset) reported that they could count on others in their community for support.

“Putting Sustainability on the Table: Airport Workers’ Vision for $3 Billion of Food and Drink at O’Hare,” UNITE HERE! At O’Hare International Airport, the second biggest airport in the country, the City of Chicago is set to give away $3 billion in contracts to food concession companies. For this report, UNITE HERE—which represents workers in the hotel, gaming, food service, manufacturing, textile, distribution, laundry and airport industries—surveyed workers and customers on the guidelines that they’d like to see the city set for the food and work that is on its way to the airport. Among other things, surveys reveal that 78 percent of passengers and 89 percent of workers would like to see food cooked from fresh ingredients, and 89 percent of workers think there should be more food service training opportunities to step up the job ladder. The report offers a variety of recommendations for O’Hare moving forward: requiring bidders to provide plans for fresh cooking, local produce purchasing and disposal management; ensuring every outlet includes healthy options for a variety of diets; requiring job stability for existing airport workers; and investing in a worker training program. 

Vital Statistics

US poverty (less than $17,916 for a family of three): 46.2 million people, 15.1 percent.

Children in poverty: 16.1 million, 22 percent of all children, including 39 percent of African-American children and 34 percent of Latino children. Poorest age group in country.

Deep poverty (less than $11,510 for a family of four): 20.4 million people, 1 in 15 Americans, including more than 15 million women and children.

People who would have been in poverty if not for Social Security, 2011: 67.6 million (program kept 21.4 million people out of poverty).

Gender gap, 2011: Women 34 percent more likely to be poor than men.

Gender gap, 2010: Women 29 percent more likely to be poor than men.

Twice the poverty level (less than $46,042 for a family of four): 106 million people, more than 1 in 3 Americans.

Households with children in large cities that are food-insecure: 25 percent.

People in the US experiencing poverty by age 65: roughly half.

Jobs in the US paying less than $34,000 a year: 50 percent.

Jobs in the US paying below the poverty line for a family of four, less than $23,000 annually: 25 percent.

Poverty-level wages, 2011: 28 percent of workers.

Low-income families that were working in 2011: More than 70 percent.

Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 for every 100 families living in poverty.

Families receiving cash assistance, 2010: 27 for every 100 families living in poverty.

Impact of public policy, 2010: without government assistance, poverty would have been twice as high—nearly 30 percent of population.

Percentage of entitlement benefits going to elderly, disabled, or working households: over 90 percent.

Food stamp recipients with no other cash income: 6.5 million people.

People experiencing homelessness on any given night, US: 643,067.

Children living on streets or in homeless shelters, US: 1.6 million, 42 percent under age six.

Number of homeless children in US public schools: 1,065,794

Annual cost of child poverty nationwide: $550 billion.

Quote of the Week

“There’s a 6-foot cement wall between people in Congress making the major policy decisions, and the rest of low-income America. Low-income Americans have practically no way to penetrate the workings of Congress, to express their opinions and to be taken seriously. In addition, people in Congress cannot and do not seem to try to understand what’s really happening on the ground with their policies.

"What we need is a creative revolution to break down the walls that separate us from Congress. The wisdom and the ideas of the families who are struggling in this country must be heard if we are going to succeed at changing things for the majority of America.”

     —Dr. Mariana Chilton, Center for Hunger-Free Communities, at EPI/Nation screening of American Winter.

James Cersonsky wrote the “Notable studies” summaries and co-wrote the “Clips” section in this blog.

This Week in Poverty posts here on Friday mornings, and again on Sundays at Moyers & Company. You can e-mail me at WeekInPoverty@me.com and follow me on Twitter.

(Reuters/Mario Anzuoni)

Five years ago, Share Our Strength CEO Billy Shore began to wonder why the number of hungry kids in the US hadn’t declined significantly since 1984, when he and his sister founded the anti-hunger organization.

“We knew that it wasn’t because we lack food as a nation—we obviously enjoy an abundance,” said Shore, speaking with reporters in New York City at the release of a new report from Share Our Strength and Deloitte, “Ending Childhood Hunger: A Social Impact Analysis.” He was joined by US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, actor and longtime anti-hunger activist Jeff Bridges and others. “And it wasn’t because we lack food or nutrition programs—we have school lunch and school breakfast, SNAP, WIC and others. So we felt it had to be because children weren’t accessing those programs.”

Shore said the extent to which children don’t access food nutrition programs is best described by “the big gap” between the 21 million low-income students who receive a free school lunch—all of whom are eligible for free breakfast—and the 11 million who eat school breakfast.

“So just a little over 50 percent of the kids who are eligible actually get the breakfast that they really need to perform well in school and be healthy kids,” said Shore.

Shore and Bridges began traveling across the country as part of Share Our Strength’s “No Kid Hungry” campaign to speak with governors about “how to knock down the barriers in their states to get more kids enrolled.”

“Both Democrats and Republicans want to do the right thing when they hear of the problem, the solution and that the resources are there to implement the solution,” said Shore, noting that the funding comes largely from the federal government.

They new report shows the dramatic effect that the School Breakfast Program can have on children’s academic, health and economic futures. It notes that in 2011, nearly 15 percent of US households were “food insecure,” or at-risk of hunger. Households with children were nearly twice as likely to be food insecure as households without children. As a result, more than one out of five kids struggled with hunger. When Share Our Strength surveyed 1,000 K-through-8 teachers—evenly divided between rural, urban and suburban schools—three out of five said they have students in their classrooms that regularly come to school hungry.

The study makes the costs of food insecurity clear: In early childhood, it’s associated with impaired brain development and more frequent hospitalizations. Across children of all ages, it’s linked with lower academic achievement. Hungry children are 31 percent more likely to be hospitalized, at a cost of $12,000 per pediatric hospitalization.

In contrast, the new research demonstrates that students who participate in the School Breakfast Program attend 1.5 more days of school annually, score 17.5 percent higher on math tests, and are less likely to have disciplinary issues. The study concludes that if just 70 percent of kids eating a free- or reduced-price lunch were also eating school breakfast, the potential national impact would be 3.2 million more students per year achieving better scores on standardized math tests; 4.8 million fewer school absences a year; and, as a result of greater attendance and higher achievement, 807,000 more students graduating from high school.

According to the study, high school graduates typically earn $10,090 more annually and are half as likely to experience poverty and hunger as an adult than non-high school graduates.

“Just when everyone thinks that we can’t afford to invest in programs like these, the report shows that we can’t afford not to,” said Shore. “Because the long-term benefits are so strong, so compelling, so good for kids, so good for the economy and schools, it enables us to look at this issue through a different lens.”

The No Kid Hungry campaign is now working directly with schools to increase breakfast participation. The traditional school breakfast is served in the cafeteria before school begins. It’s often difficult for low-income students—particularly those who rely on public transportation—to arrive early enough to eat. Additionally, there is a social stigma associated with being “one of the poor kids” eating breakfast in the cafeteria. So, the campaign provides technical assistance and small grants to help schools work on alternative models that make breakfast part of the school day, including in the classroom.

Lesley-Anne Jones, a fifth grade teacher at PS 158 in Brooklyn, said that her school has a breakfast program from 7:30-8:00, and that too many students are unable to arrive in time to take advantage of it. With the help of Share Our Strength, the school implemented a breakfast in the classroom program for kindergarten and first grades. When her fifth grade students come to school hungry, Jones tells them to go to the younger classrooms and grab “a bag of breakfast.”

“Before the program, kids would come in hungry and some would be a little sluggish and say that their stomach hurts—they didn’t realize their stomach hurt because they were hungry,” said Jones. “Now, they get their breakfast, they’re good to go: it helps with discipline problems, focusing, state exams.”

She noted that prior to this program, teachers would bring in breakfast for the students on the day of state exams, knowing that a meal would help their performance. She would like to see the program expanded to include every grade at her pre-K through fifth grade school.

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The collaboration between Share Our Strength and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley perhaps presents the clearest case of what can be achieved by increasing school breakfast participation. Since 2011, more than 130 Maryland schools are in the process of moving breakfast from the cafeteria into the classroom. Student participation in the program increased from 46 percent of eligible students in September 2010 to 56 percent in September 2012.

“So the state has added 33,000 kids in the last two years, and has 57,000 to go to get to where we should be. The governor is absolutely confident we’re going to get there,” said Shore.

The study suggests that the program can have the greatest impact on students in high-poverty schools who are at the greatest risk of food insecurity. In Maryland, students in schools with 80 percent low-income students that moved breakfast into the classroom were 6 percent less likely to be chronically absent than similar schools with a traditional school breakfast model; and there were nearly 10 percent more students in these schools achieving math proficiency than in similar schools with traditional breakfast models.

The report indeed offers a clear and compelling vision of what can be achieved by making the most of one tool to fight hunger. It caused me to reflect on then-candidate Barack Obama’s pledge in 2008 to end childhood hunger by 2015. Since that time, many anti-hunger advocates have been left wondering: Where exactly is that comprehensive plan?

I posed that question to Secretary Vilsack, and he suggested that “the plan is already in action” at the USDA, citing expansion and improvement of the WIC program; an expanded SNAP program; education initiatives to help families “stretch SNAP dollars” expansion of summer food programs; and food desert reductions through the Healthy Food Financing Initiative.

“From the earliest moment of a child’s life, we’ve made a concerted effort to expand and improve nutrition programs,” said Vilsack.

I pressed the secretary that there is nevertheless no identifiable administration plan people can look to and recognize as the way to end childhood hunger by 2015—an outline of the tools, the costs, the benefits—a clear vision that people can rally around.

“Part of the challenge—the fact that nobody knows about all of this [that we are doing]—unless Jeff Bridges is sitting at the table, if instead I showed up alone here—you all wouldn’t be here,” said Vilsack. “The Agricultural Department is not able to access the mainstream media the way an Oscar-winning entertainer can.”

But I’m going to hazard a guess that if President Obama held a press conference to lay out his plan on how we could end childhood hunger—or even cut it in half—the media would show up and the nation would pay attention.

Kudos to Share Our Strength for demonstrating the importance of one of the nation’s best tools. The campaign is now building a network of advocates around the country that is contacting schools to ask if and how they are serving breakfast. You can get information about your own community here.

“I like to think there’s a larger potential significance with this campaign, too,” Shore told me. “In this era of such deep polarization, a little bit of progress could inspire more in the larger field of poverty where so many are skeptical that results are possible. Governor O’Malley said to me that ‘small things done well make large things possible.’”

President Obama isn’t the only one who could do more on poverty. Read Greg Kaufmann’s takedown of Jeff Sessions.

Volunteers fill bags at a food bank in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

In his State of the Union address, President Obama offered the kind of concrete proposals that anti-poverty advocates have long been waiting for: raising the minimum wage, expanding high-quality early childhood education and creating new “ladders of opportunity” in twenty of the poorest communities in the country.

All of these policies would help reverse the spread of hunger, which now affects more than 50 million Americans, including more than one in five children—an increase of 37 percent in childhood hunger since 1999. However, these promising proposals aren’t nearly enough, especially since the country is poised to move in the wrong direction in the fight against hunger.

If the sequester cuts takes effect, 600,000 low-income pregnant women and children up to age 5 will be cut from the Women, Infants & Children (WIC) program, which currently provides them with a monthly package of nutritious food. SNAP (food stamp) benefits are also scheduled to be cut in order to pay for—if you can believe it—a 2010 deal that improved the nutritional quality of school lunches. After November 1, SNAP benefits will average approximately $1.30 per person per meal. Finally, during the last Congress, both the House Agricultural Committee and the full Senate voted to cut the SNAP program—by $16 billion and $4.5 billion, respectively—so more cuts might be on the horizon.

That’s why a new report from Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger (NYCCAH) and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, is so timely. How President Obama Can Reverse America’s Worsening Hunger Metrics is a practical guide to executive actions Obama can take now “to significantly reduce child hunger, as well as US hunger in general,” according to Berg. In 2008, then-candidate Obama pledged to end childhood hunger by 2015. This report offers ways he can move in that direction without relying on Congress.

Berg is a man who knows this subject. He has served as executive director of NYCCAH since 2001, helping it grow into one of the leading direct service and advocacy organizations on hunger and poverty in the nation, and was a political appointee in the US Department of Agriculture during the Clinton administration. Berg helped start AmeriCorps, and ran a program that mobilized 1,200 people to do anti-hunger work, rural economic development, and environmental work. He created the first-ever federal initiative to help faith-based and other nonprofit groups fight hunger and help low-income Americans move out of poverty. He also coordinated the USDA’s effort to help community groups increase the amount of food they recovered, gleaned, and distributed to hungry Americans.

“My biggest regret when I left the government was that I had finally figured out how the place worked after eight years,” Berg jokes.  

Indeed, two of his key recommendations to Obama involve executive orders that would direct federal agencies to work together to create “food jobs” such as food-processing businesses; and for the agencies to work with the USDA to increase the participation of eligible children, seniors, people with disabilities, veterans and working families in nutrition programs like SNAP, WIC, home-delivered meals for seniors, and school breakfasts and summer meals.

While directing agencies to work together seems pretty straightforward, Berg notes that “it’s fairly rare for federal agencies to work together in this way—even within a department.” For example, he describes his effort at the USDA to coordinate its work with farmers markets: one division allotted resources to WIC and the senior farmers market programs; another gave money for the creation of new farmers markets; another researched farmers markets; and others dealt directly with the farmers who sold produce at the farmers markets.

“Some of the people who worked on these issues had never met each other, much less worked with each other,” he says. “So you can imagine the challenge of trying to work with the rest of the federal government. But that’s the job of a White House—getting agencies to focus on presidential initiatives.”

Berg notes throughout the report that ultimately the solution to poverty and hunger is a Congress and president pursuing a full employment economy with jobs that pay a living wage. But that’s clearly not going to happen in this political environment.

“My top ideology is effectiveness—getting something done we couldn’t ordinarily get done because we are pushing for it,” says Berg.

So his recommendation to create food jobs is key in that regard: Berg urges Obama to sign an executive order directing the USDA, Small Business Administration, Department of Commerce, Department of Labor, Department of the Interior and Corporation for National and Community Service to work together to create food-related jobs and provide the job training and placement services necessary to ensure that low-income Americans obtain and keep those jobs.

He says there have been community food projects at the local level for decades—but they are “very, very small—[involving] hundreds or maybe thousands of people.”

The challenge is figuring out how to scale these businesses up and make them attractive to private investment. For example, New York City public schools serve 4.5 million meals per week. There is significant summer vegetable production in New Jersey and some in the Hudson River Valley. This produce is sometimes shipped across the country for processing and then sold back to New York City public schools.

“Why not instead have a local facility for cleaning, washing, and packaging vegetables for New York City public schools? There could be similar efforts to can, freeze, and process foods in urban centers throughout America,” says Berg. He cites Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles and cities in Texas and Florida as other places with proximity to major agricultural production where these kinds of facilities would make sense. Other food jobs could be created through businesses that turn raw produce into ready-to-eat salads, salad dressings, sandwiches and other products; or companies that sell healthy food and beverage vending-machines; as well as restaurants and catering businesses that offer affordable and nutritious food.

“There are huge tracts of federal land available out there. But I doubt, for example, that the Department of Transportation left to its own devices would really think about food production possibilities on highway right of ways, or commuter railroad right of ways,” says Berg. “They need a push from the White House. This effort could turn food deserts—where there is little or no access to the food necessary for a healthy diet—into jobs oases.”

Berg also calls for a bipartisan White House Conference on Hunger, either as a stand-alone event or as part of a broader summit on poverty, to launch new effective anti-hunger efforts.

“I make it very clear in the paper, it cannot be merely symbolic—it can’t just be a cattle call of people making speeches,” says Berg. “But if the president uses it to galvanize serious commitments and announces specific initiatives that the administration is doing, then it’s very significant.”

Berg says the kinds of commitments that could be elicited include: corporations increasing food donations and helping with outreach to people who are eligible for SNAP, summer meals and other federal nutrition programs; corporations working with organized labor to increase wages and the availability of healthier foods; employees doing skills-based service—for example, an accounting firm offering its services pro bono to food pantries and soup kitchens; and supermarket chains locating new stores in low-income neighborhoods.

“There are many mainstream corporations that progressives don’t agree with on most issues, but they would agree with them on this, and it’s important to bring them to the table,” says Berg. He believes that organizing people together to fight hunger is an effective way to begin to address broader poverty-related issues.

“I’ve always seen fighting hunger as a way of fighting poverty—an entrée into the poverty debate,” says Berg.

One of the great disappointments for anti-hunger and anti-poverty advocates during President Obama’s first term was that he never produced a plan to end childhood hunger as he had promised to do as a candidate. But it’s not too late. Whether Congress would go along with such a plan isn’t the point. Showing the American people how we could get this done if we wanted to is the point. In his report, Berg offers the president actions he could take—with or without Congress—to demonstrate a real commitment to ending hunger in America.

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Reader comment on “Ten Things You Should Know About #TheRealTANF”

Greg,

TANF is such a lousy program, why not just end it and replace it by offering the unemployed a wage-paying [subsidized] Transitional Job (TJ)? The overwhelming majority of TANF recipients are unemployed adults. If, instead of receiving small dollops of cash, they had the opportunity to work in a Transitional Job (TJ) at the minimum wage—up to forty hours per week if they are totally unemployed, or a smaller number of hours per week if they have part-time employment so that their total work week is 40 hours—it would be a vast improvement.

[Participants] would make more money. Their wages would also help them qualify for Social Security and Medicare. More important, their earnings would also help them qualify (if they have children) for the federal EITC, any state EITC, and the federal Child Tax Credit. As a result of their combined earnings and these tax credits, they’d be more likely to get out of poverty.

It is true that some TANF recipients have such a serious disability that—though they may not qualify for SSI—they will have trouble working or working enough hours in a typical job. Also, some TANF recipients will have just had babies, or have young children to care for, making typical work a challenge. The solution is to replace TANF with a Transitional Jobs program that is sensitive to the limitations faced by persons with a disability, a new baby, or the responsibility of raising pre-school children, and enables them, too, to perform enough TJ work to earn wages [that] lift them out of poverty.

TANF has proven a failure. We should replace it by offering the unemployed poor what they really want, and what makes most sense for them and society: the opportunity to work in an accessible, wage-paying Transitional Job until they can find regular, unsubsidized employment.

DAVID R. RIEMER
Senior Fellow

Community Advocates Public Policy Institute

Maria Gomez Awarded 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal

Maria Gomez, president and CEO of Mary’s Center and friend of This Week in Poverty, was awarded the 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal, the nation’s second-highest civilian honor.

In 1988, Gomez founded Mary’s Center in Washington, DC, as a clinic to provide prenatal and postpartum care to Latino women in an impoverished neighborhood. There are now seven sites, a federally qualified health center (FQHC) that reaches 24,000 individuals, including mental health and dental services; a senior center; two mobile units providing dental, maternal and pediatric healthcare; home visiting, early intervention for special needs kids and WIC; literacy, computer and language classes; tutoring, afterschool and mentorship programs on site; and a summer employment program in which teens work in Mary’s Center or local businesses.

Congrats, Maria. And thank you and Mary’s Center for your incredible work.

Clips and other resources (compiled with James Cersonsky)

“Wealth vs. Poverty: The NYT’s Underreporting of Poverty-related Issues,” Joel Berg

"Bad news and good news about racial prejudice," Steve Bogira

“The Woman Who’s Changing the Definition of ‘Foodie,’” Michelle Chen

“Changing neighborhoods can change your life,” Krissy Clark

“Yes, Mayor Gray, It’s Time for a Prosperity Dividend for the District,” Mary Cunningham

“600 homeless children in DC, and no one seems to care,” Petula Dvorak

“Child Poverty for Minorities is Highest in Small, Majority-White Metros,” Sara Edelstein

“Immigration Reform Prevents Employer Abuse,” Leo Gerard

“Money Matters, but So Does Avoiding Red Tape,” Sara Goldrick-Rab

“D.C., advocates at odds over homeless families; 900 people still in shelter,” Annie Gowen

“Rural teens at high risk for pregnancy, analysis finds,” Michelle Healy

“Report: To close achievement gap, fund schools by need, not ZIP code,” Sally Holland

“Is fighting poverty ‘clearly a second-agenda item’ for Obama?” Kailani Koenig-Muenster, Melissa Harris-Perry/#Nerdland

“Mass Incarceration and the New Jim Crow,” John Light

“Goals for TANF Reauthorization,” Elizabeth Lower-Basch

“Building Better Programs for Disconnected Youth,” MDRC

“The economic costs of violence in Chicago,” Sylvester Monroe

“Expanding Choice: Practical Strategies for Building a Successful Housing Mobility Program,” Poverty & Race Research Action Council

“Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth,” Joseph Stiglitz

“Promising future is sidelined by burdens of single motherhood,” David Templeton

“Single moms can find little relief from chronic stress,” David Templeton

“Current Education Reform Perpetuating, Not Curbing, Inequity,” P.L. Thomas

“Prison and the Poverty Trap,” John Tierney

“Minimum Wage: Presidential Words and Media Reports,” Topos

“Parents Sue NY State for Withholding $250M in Big Apple Aid,” Andrew Ujlfusa

“Scabs Recruited as 40,000 New England Grocery Workers Prepare to Strike,” Bruce Vail

Some Notable Studies (summaries written by James Cersonsky)

“To Thrive, Minneapolis Children Need a Place to Call Home,” Children’s HealthWatch. As home prices in the Twin Cities rebound and foreclosures roll on, an increasing number of families are housing insecure—that is, forced to move frequently, living in overcrowded units, or behind on rent. This study finds that two-thirds of low-income children live in families experiencing housing insecurity, putting them at greater risk for developmental delays and other health issues. Compared to securely housed children, their families find themselves at more of a crossroads with energy security, household food security, child food security and quality healthcare. What can policy-makers do? For one, expand access to quality affordable housing.

“Investing in Our Children: A Plan to Expand Access to Preschool and Child Care,” Cynthia G. Brown et al., Center for American Progress. Despite an uptick in preschool enrollment nationwide, the most disadvantaged children are the least likely to enroll. Meanwhile, only 22 percent of low-income families have access to federally subsidized childcare. Researchers offer a variety of proposals to fill the gap. First, the federal government should match state preschool expenditures up to $10,000 per child per year. Preschool would be free for children with family incomes below 200 percent of the poverty line (about $36,000 for a family of three), and would range from 30 to 95 percent of the cost for those above that threshold, on a sliding scale. Second, the government should increase access to child care, raise the federal childcare subsidy and require states to adopt standards of care.

“TANF Child-Only Cases: Who Are They? What Policies Affect Them? What Is Being Done?” Jane Mauldon, Richard Speiglman, Christina Sogar and Matt Stagner. While the majority of funding from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program, goes to families, some goes solely to children. This report parses out the challenges that different categories of needy children face in obtaining federal benefits: children living in the homes of relatives (or non-parent caregiver cases); children whose parents receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI); and US-born children whose parents are undocumented immigrants. The report argues that federal and state governments do a poor job at tracking these cases, disaggregating data, and providing necessary information and services to qualified children. One suggested reform is that the federal government track each of these categories separately.

“Developmental Education: A Barrier to a Postsecondary Credential for Millions of Americans,” MDRC. With a 40 percent share of all college students, community colleges are vital for preparing a huge population of Americans for the workforce. At least two-thirds of these students, however, don’t earn a certificate or degree within five years of enrollment. Resolving the crisis in part involves improving developmental (or remedial) education. There are a variety of promising avenues for doing so: investing resources in comprehensive programs and away from unproven short-term reforms like single-semester learning communities; moving students through remedial education at a faster rate; and improving remedial education instruction.

Vital Statistics

US poverty (less than $17,916 for a family of three): 46.2 million people, 15.1 percent.

Children in poverty: 16.1 million, 22 percent of all children, including 39 percent of African-American children and 34 percent of Latino children. Poorest age group in country.

Deep poverty (less than $11,510 for a family of four): 20.4 million people, 1 in 15 Americans, including more than 15 million women and children.

People who would have been in poverty if not for Social Security, 2011: 67.6 million (program kept 21.4 million people out of poverty).

Gender gap, 2011: Women 34 percent more likely to be poor than men.

Gender gap, 2010: Women 29 percent more likely to be poor than men.

Twice the poverty level (less than $46,042 for a family of four): 106 million people, more than 1 in 3 Americans.

Households with children in large cities that are food-insecure: 25 percent.

People in the US experiencing poverty by age 65: Roughly half.

Jobs in the US paying less than $34,000 a year: 50 percent.

Jobs in the US paying below the poverty line for a family of four, less than $23,000 annually: 25 percent.

Poverty-level wages, 2011: 28 percent of workers.

Low-income families that were working in 2011: More than 70 percent.

Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 for every 100 families living in poverty.

Families receiving cash assistance, 2010: 27 for every 100 families living in poverty.

Food stamp recipients with no other cash income: 6.5 million people.

People experiencing homelessness on any given night, US: 643,067.

Children living on streets or in homeless shelters, US: 1.6 million, 42 percent under age 6.

Annual cost of child poverty nationwide: $550 billion.

Quote of the Week

“Education is the origin of opportunity in our cities and towns, and it is the engine of exceptionalism on the world stage. Now, more than ever before, the attainability of the American dream is imperiled by an opportunity gap in public education—a gap exacerbated by wealth disparities at the local level. Our nation’s global leadership is also threatened by widening disparities between American children and students from other developed nations, as our children and families fall further below the poverty line.”
—Representative Mike Honda, excerpted from For Each And Every Child, a report by the Equity and Excellence Commission to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

James Cersonsky wrote the “Notable studies” summaries and co-wrote the “Clips” section in this blog.

This Week in Poverty posts here on Friday mornings, and again on Sundays at Moyers & Company. You can e-mail me at WeekInPoverty@me.com and follow me on Twitter.

(Flickr/USDA)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again: the American people have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program created in 1996. Both parties tout it as a “success,” but if you look at the numbers—and at the real lives of people who turn to the program for assistance when they are out of work—the picture is bleak, to say the least.

This March, TANF is set to expire and will need to be renewed. It will mark yet another opportunity to have an honest, fact-based discussion about the program. So it was good to see a top-notch panel of experts at the Center for American Progress (CAP) yesterday talking about TANF—“Learning from the Past, Planning for the Future.”

The speakers included Witnesses to Hunger member Shearine Mcghee, a former participant in the successful TANF subsidized jobs program that was created through the Recovery Act but allowed to expire in 2010. Kudos to CAP for having as one of the experts on poverty someone who has actually lived in poverty—it’s way too rare in this town, especially in Congress where public policy decisions are made without testimony from the people who are most affected.

Dr. LaDonna Pavetti, vice president for family income support policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), opened the discussion with an overview of how the program has performed as a safety net and in boosting employment—since the promise of TANF was that it would serve both purposes and thereby create pathways to self-sufficiency. 

Her top line statistic in assessing TANF as a safety net—a statistic that I wish every member of Congress and every progressive activist had on his or her bulletin board, and that the mainstream press would deign to report every now and then—is this: Before welfare reform, for every 100 families with children in poverty in the US, 68 were able to access cash assistance; now that number has fallen to just 27 (and Pavetti thinks it will be even lower when the 2012 data comes in). The benefit for those lucky twenty-seven families who are able to access it is less than 30 percent of the poverty line in most states—so less than $5,400 annually for a family of three.

“TANF does provide an important safety net for unemployed or underemployed families, but it reaches very few families in need, and when it does reach families they get a very small amount of cash,” said Pavetti. 

Pavetti also pointed out that in 1995—the year before TANF replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)—AFDC kept over 2.2 million poor children from falling into deep poverty (defined as below half the poverty line, or less than $11,500 for a family of four today). This means that AFDC successfully lifted over 62 percent of poor children out of deep poverty. But in 2005, TANF lifted just 21 percent of children who would otherwise be in deep poverty, or just 650,000 kids. TANF has directly contributed to the number of people living in deep poverty rising from 12.6 million in 2000, to 20.4 million people today. This includes over 15 million women and children (and nearly 10 percent of all children). 

“So we have a lot less effect [today] on families and [are not] helping them deal with very, very deep poverty,” said Pavetti.

But it was her report on TANF as an employment program that I found most striking. She demonstrated that the (mostly) conservative claim that the TANF work requirement led to huge employment gains for single mothers is bogus. It’s true that in the late ’90s there was a significant increase in employment, but that’s largely because there was a booming economy. Those gains began to decline in 2000 and have vanished today.

“[By] 2011, we basically had lost all of what we had gained,” said Pavetti. “We’re back to where we were in 1996—actually a little bit below it.” Indeed in 1996, 64 percent of single mothers with a high school education or less were working, and in 2011 it was 62 percent. 

Pavetti said that the “more compelling story” is told by comparing the employment of single mothers with and without a high school degree, to single women with similar educational backgrounds and no children. In the early 1990s, there was a significant gap between the two groups. But since 2000, the likelihood of employment for a single mother with kids is almost exactly the same as it is for a single woman without kids. The more significant determining factor for earned income is level of education. 

“This is not a story about parent responsibility,” said Pavetti.“It’s really about what are the labor market opportunities for individuals who have a high school or less than high school [education].”

Pavetti suggested that TANF needs to be reformed to allow parents more educational opportunities so that they can advance in the labor market. Currently, the federal statute is very rigid about which kinds of education and training activities can be counted towards work requirements for TANF participants. She also suggested a renewed focus on a subsidized jobs program—like the one that placed 260,000 unemployed low-income parents and young adults in jobs during the recession. The program enjoyed bipartisan support from governors before House Republicans allowed it to expire. (Many people waged a strong fight to save the program, including Pavetti, who maintained a sort of vigil through her blog, counting down the days until it was scheduled to “die.”)

Mcghee talked about the powerful role that the subsidized jobs program played in her life. She said she was “thankful” for a medical assistance/medical billing work-training program that she enrolled in through TANF.  But when she graduated, prospective employers wanted her to have at least one year of experience in her field. So she found herself instead applying for fast food and other low-wage jobs for which she was then overqualified—what witnesses call “graduation to the same poor wages.”

The federally subsidized Way to Work program allowed her to work for the Coalition Against Hunger doing SNAP outreach, and educating other mothers and families about nutrition. With that work experience, Mcghee was able to obtain a job as a nutrition assistant for the Philadelphia WIC program, where she has been employed for two years.

“The Way to Work program gave us the job readiness that we needed to further our employment,” she said.

Witnesses to Hunger founder Dr. Mariana Chilton—an associate professor at Drexel University School of Public Health and co-principal investigator for Children’s HealthWatch—talked about the tension between education and work for mothers in poverty.

“It’s a real struggle,” she said. “It’s what the women in Witnesses to Hunger call ‘the monster under the bed.’  Because they know they need to improve their education in order to make a better wage. But as [one] Witness said, ‘What am I supposed to do? Tell my kids I can’t feed you for two years—just wait while I go to school and then I’ll feed you?’ So there’s a real Catch-22 between advancing education to get the better job, or going into work and getting stuck in this dead-end job. We need to find some better ways to work with this system.”

Dr. Kristin Seefeldt, assistant professor of social work at the University of Michigan and author of Working After Welfare, has been interviewing women in poverty and deep poverty for decades. She also talked about the difficulties women participating in TANF encounter as they try to further their education. In the late 1990s, she said these women were able to find stable jobs with decent wages—enough to get by—and could plan on waiting until their children were a little older before they returned to school.

“Now it’s different,” said Seefeldt. “That sort of choice is no longer there—the jobs aren’t giving that many hours, the wages aren’t enough to support [a family]. So either women get trapped [in low-wage work].”

Because they can’t obtain the education they need through TANF, many end up taking on huge debt while working multiple jobs. Seefeldt described a woman determined to get her Licensed Practical Nursing (LPN) degree who now works two jobs—because the hours of her “main job” were cut back.

“So she sits beside rehab patients in the middle of the night and tries to do her homework then, and she has another job during the day,” said Seefeldt. “And her kids are either in the car with her—driving from one place to the next—or they’re at a relative’s house. All of them are almost never home. That’s going to go on for another couple years, and I don’t think that’s a situation anyone wants to be in.”

Georgetown University law professor Peter Edelman—director of the Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy—moderated the discussion and noted that some of the program’s resistance to education is found in TANF’s original underpinnings.

“At the very beginning, the philosophy of TANF was work first,” he said. “The premise was that job training doesn’t work, and that letting somebody get educated first before they go to work is wrong—they should get experience and that’s the path to later success. That’s an over-simplification, but there are many states out there that still buy into that attitude.”

Deborah Schlick, project manager of Transitions to Economic Stability at the Minnesota Department of Human Services, said that the “assumption that we need to push people into work” is unfounded. She reported that 80 percent of the parents in Minnesota who turn to TANF for assistance have been in the state’s labor market, and 50 percent are “coming straight out of a job.” She also noted that only 40 percent of the state’s workers are able to collect unemployment insurance, so very low-wage workers with children are forced to turn to TANF. Schlick suggested that to improve TANF she would “start with an assumption that poverty is a measure of circumstances, it’s not a measure of the person. I think misunderstanding that has gotten us in a lot of trouble.”

You go to a discussion like this and you get a sense of just how deep the knowledge is—sixteen years after TANF was created—about why the program doesn’t work and how it could easily be improved. And yet, Republicans and some Democrats continue to get away with pushing the notion that it is a success. 

I’m not sure what it will take to reveal the truth to Americans about how this program is failing low-wage working families and families that are unable to work. But I sure hope I won’t be writing another version of this article six months from now. Instead, I’d like to write about a creative, coordinated campaign by advocates and families across the country that is focused on revealing the real TANF, and that refuses to be distracted by the same old lies told by the same old people. 

A Reader’s Comment on “Time to Take on Concentrated Poverty and Education”

Missing from This Week in Poverty’s list of projects designed to alleviate the effects of concentrated poverty are projects aimed at providing more access to books. There is very consistent evidence showing that:

1. children of poverty living in high-poverty areas have little access to books at home, at school, or in their communities

2. more access to interesting, comprehensible reading material means better development of literacy

Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50!

3. providing access to books increases literacy development

The major source of books for children of poverty is the library. Studies done in the US and internationally show that library quality (more books, more staffing, presence of a credentialed librarian) is associated with reading proficiency.

Recent research suggests that the presence of a library can cancel the negative effect of poverty on reading achievement.

Improving school and public libraries and supporting librarians, in high poverty areas, is a quick and easy way to improve the quality of life and school performance. For a fraction of what we are paying for tougher standards and massive testing, every child in the US could have access to an excellent supply of books and other reading material.

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California

Get Involved

VAWA: Everything you need to know and take action
#TalkPoverty: State of the Union
Tell Congress: Don't Let Food Workers Go Hungry

New book
Behind the Kitchen Door, by Saru Jayaraman

Clips and other resources (compiled with James Cersonsky)

“Old, Female and Homeless,” Rose Aguilar

“American Winter: a documentary about a country in search of its promise,” [TRAILER]

“Aspen Institute Holds Discussion on Domestic Workers,” Aspen Institute [VIDEO]

“Policy Wonks Push for Investment in ‘Advanced’ Manufacturing,” Jake Blumgart 

“Murder and segregation: till death do they part,” Steve Bogira

“Pushing Arne Duncan to Fast-Forward,” James Cersonsky

“Meeting the Challenge: The Dynamics of Poverty in Connecticut,” Connecticut Association for Community Action et al.

“Twenty Years after the FMLA, Our Family Leave Policies Are Dragging Us Down,” Bryce Covert

“High Rates of Child Poverty Hidden in Smaller Metro Areas,” Sara Edelstein

“The Hidden Prosperity of the Poor,” Thomas B. Edsall

“How earnings for Latino immigrants vary in the top 100 US metros,” Maria Enchautegui

“Advancing Healthy Housing: A Strategy for Action,” Federal Healthy Homes Work Group

“How Effective Is the Safety Net?” Robert Greenstein

“Jessica Bartholow and anonymous Calworks recipient discuss Calworks,” The Michelle Jackson Show

“Eric Cantor wants to make your life work. Here’s how.” Ezra Klein

“Lost Votes, Problem Ballots, Long Waits? Flaws are Widespread, Study Finds,” Adam Liptak

“US Rep. Jim McGovern kicks off ‘End Hunger Now’ Speech Series,” Rep. McGovern [SPEECH]

“School-Based Health Centers Redefine Health for Kids and Teens,” National Assembly on School-Based Healthcare

“A Look at the U.S. Department of Labor’s 2012 Family and Medical Leave Act Employee and Worksite Surveys,” National Partnership for Women & Families 

“What Federal Budget Sequestration Will Mean for Child Care and Head Start,” NWLC & CLASP

“Abercrombie’s State-of-the-State agenda includes plans for minimum wage hike,” Pacific Business News

“As Corbett balks at expanding Medicaid, millions suffer,” Philadelphia Daily News

“Equity and the Future of the American Economy,” PolicyLink and SEIU [VIDEO]

“In Hard Economy for All Ages, Older Isn’t Better… It’s Brutal,” Catherine Rampell

“Memo to Congress: To bring down the deficit, focus on jobs,” Greg Sargent

“Missing the mark on Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy at MLK Avenue,” Michael Shank

“Searching for affordable housing in Anacostia: For some, that’s asking too much,” Michael Shank 

“Schools Can't Do It Alone: Why 'Doubly Disadvantaged' Kids Continue to Struggle Academically,” Paul Thomas

“Jews fight for food stamps,” Ryan Torok

“America’s Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model,” Sarah Treuhaft, Angela Glover Blackwell, Manuel Pastor

“Low-income Pregnant Women in Rural Areas Experience High Levels of Stress; Mothers’ and Babies’ Health at Risk,” University of Missouri researchers 

“The ‘painfully undiscussed’ problem of poverty in America,” Alex Wagner [VIDEO]

“Should DC Residents Need a Lawyer to Access Emergency Shelter?” Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless

“More states consider welfare drug testing bills,” Morgan Whitaker

Some Notable Studies (summaries written by James Cersonsky)

“Choice in the Real World: The use of family, friend and neighbor child care by single Chicago mothers working nontraditional schedules,” Illinois Action for Children. With limited access to childcare and nontraditional or erratic work hours, many mothers rely on Family, Friend or Neighbor childcare, or FFN. This report interviews fifty single mothers in Chicago about work-life balance and patterns in childcare. The authors find that 58 percent of mothers rely on a single FFN, while the remainder use multiple FFNs or a combination of FFNs and childcare centers or home care. While most mothers preferred to keep their current arrangement, some wanted changes—most commonly, more affordable care, other children for their kids to socialize with and settings with longer hours. The authors propose a variety of policies: increased child care options, government support for FFN care, support for emergency care, support for kids’ homework needs and parent-friendly employer practices.

“Community Action Agencies: Strengthening Ohio’s Communities,” Ohio University and the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies. Community action agencies (CAAs) aim to alleviate poverty while empowering low-income families. This report, co-produced by Ohio’s consortium of CAAs, summarizes the benefits of CAAs for Ohio residents. Among the findings, Ohio CAAs invest nearly 40 percent of their federal funding toward community economic development projects like workforce training; in 2010, 94 percent of this portion was geared toward job development; 34 percent of CAA funds go toward programs designed to maintain workforce productivity; and 50 percent goes to infrastructure-related projects.

“Citizen Gain: The Economic Benefits of Naturalization for Immigrants and the Economy,” Manuel Pastor and Justin Scoggins, Center for the Study of Immigration Integration. Immigrant naturalization is—or should be—based on basic justice for immigrants. As this study shows, naturalization also has measurable economic benefits for immigrants. Using data from the 2010 American Community Survey, the authors estimate an 8 to 11 percent gain in individual earnings for naturalized immigrants—and, over the next decade, an aggregate wage boost of $40 billion. The impact of naturalized status cross-cuts educational attainment: naturalized immigrants earn more than non-naturalized immigrants at every education level. Some of these gains might not be seen right away; earned income returns tend to rise the longer someone has been naturalized. So why, the authors ask, does this “citizen gain” go unrealized? Part of it has to do with financial barriers that immigrants face like required medical screenings. Fortunately, there’s a lot of work that groups and government agencies can do—and have done—to ease these barriers.

“Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing at HUD: A First Term Report Card,” Poverty & Race Research Action Council. In this report on Department of Housing and Urban Development activity over the last four years, the authors review HUD’s racial integration efforts in nine programs, ranging from its strategic plan to specific initiatives like the Moving to Work program. It concludes, “A flurry of positive activity inside the agency during the first term has not yet been reflected in final program regulations or guidance, even though some of this work has been underway for years.”

Among the report’s findings: HUD hasn’t taken significant action to remove barriers to fair (i.e., non-discriminatory) housing choice under Section 8, despite finally examining these barriers; it has treated fair housing as a policy goal rather than a legal obligation; it has delayed release of “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” rules, despite significant public engagement; it hasn’t come through with clear enough implementation for the Sustainable Communities Initiative; and its support for housing mobility programs has been limited to three cities. 

Vital Statistics

US poverty (less than $17,916 for a family of three): 46.2 million people, 15.1 percent.

Children in poverty: 16.1 million, 22 percent of all children, including 39 percent of African-American children and 34 percent of Latino children.  Poorest age group in country.

Deep poverty (less than $11,510 for a family of four): 20.4 million people, 1 in 15 Americans, including more than 15 million women and children.

People who would have been in poverty if not for Social Security, 2011: 67.6 million (program kept 21.4 million people out of poverty).

Gender gap, 2011: Women 34 percent more likely to be poor than men.

Gender gap, 2010: Women 29 percent more likely to be poor than men.

Twice the poverty level (less than $46,042 for a family of four): 106 million people, more than 1 in 3 Americans.

People in the US experiencing poverty by age 65: Roughly half.

Jobs in the US paying less than $34,000 a year: 50 percent.

Jobs in the US paying below the poverty line for a family of four, less than $23,000 annually: 25 percent.

Poverty-level wages, 2011: 28 percent of workers.

Low-income families that were working in 2011: More than 70 percent.

Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 for every 100 families living in poverty.

Families receiving cash assistance, 2010: 27 for every 100 families living in poverty.

Food stamp recipients with no other cash income: 6.5 million people.

People experiencing homelessness on any given night, US: 643,067.

Children living on streets or in homeless shelters, US: 1.6 million, 42 percent under age 6.

Annual cost of child poverty nationwide: $550 billion.

Quote of the week

“The good news story is that when you get low unemployment it disproportionately benefits people at the bottom—African-American unemployment and African-American teens. African-American unemployment tends to be roughly twice the overall avergage. African-American teen unemployment tends to be around six times the overall average. In 2000, we got the unemployment level down to 4 percent—the unemployment rate for African Americans was about 6.7 percent. Last year we were over 13 percent for the African American unemployment rate…. and for African American teens we were somewhere around 37 percent—a real disaster story. Now no one’s going to celebrate that it was 23 percent in 2000, but that’s a huge, huge difference. The percentage of each group that has poverty level wages [also] hugely changes when you get to a situation of low unemployment. The bad news: this is not on the political agenda in Washington. The political agenda in Washington is cutting the budget deficit.”
                                                         —Dean Baker, co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research,
                                                                     at Equity and the Future of the American Economy conference.

James Cersonsky wrote the “Notable studies” summaries and co-wrote the “Clips” section in this blog.

This Week in Poverty posts here on Friday mornings, and again on Sundays at Moyers & Company.  You can e-mail me at WeekInPoverty@me.com and follow me on Twitter.