Greg Kaufmann | The Nation

The hardest thing about the poverty beat is this: getting to know men, women and children who are working to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and knowing the consequences to their lives if those obstacles prove too great. I also meet people in low-income communities, NGOs, think tanks, universities, and government who are completely devoted to the eradication of poverty. They engender hope. I checked in with some of them this week and asked what they are thinking about this Thanksgiving. Here is what they had to say:

Sister Simone Campbell, executive director, NETWORK:

On Monday I was in Louisiana sharing stories from Nuns on the Bus with teachers and those who work in various support roles in schools. One woman told me that she has been doing the same support job for thirteen years in a school district, not had a raise for seven years and is currently making $17,000. She has had to take extra jobs to support her family and at times uses a food bank and other services to even get by. While she loves working with the children, it is a daily struggle for her and her family. She is in the bottom 20 percent of our nation for income, yet she is doing some of the most important work helping to form the new generation. This Thanksgiving, I am keenly aware of so many in our rich nation who are struggling to put food on their families’ tables. We are better than this. My prayer is that the 100 percent will come together, and exercise our responsibility for each other, being “We the People” forming a more perfect union.

Sheila Crowley, president & CEO, National Low Income Housing Coalition:

The night after President Obama’s re-election, I left my office near the White House and walked to the closest Metro station. There were fifteen people in the covered entranceway to the station, getting ready to bed down for the night, just like they do most every night. Although I may have felt that the outcome of the election boded well for progressive causes, it did not change the reality that too many people in our country have nowhere to live. I will know that change has come when people are not sleeping outside on concrete in November two blocks from the White House.

Sara Palmer, single mother, SNAP recipient, graduate student, research assistant and food service worker:

I’m thinking of the 10 million single mothers here in the United States who often do the work of two. We work hard, we struggle to provide for our children—what they deserve—and with luck and opportunity we are able. Please be thankful for your families, your networks of support, and the opportunities (and luck) that you have been given.… I know that I am.

Lisalyn Jacobs, vice president for government relations, Legal Momentum:

am thankful, as I read reports about the “freebies” allegedly received by women, minorities and youth, that we will remain on course for the next four years and hopefully come closer to ensuring that everyone—whether single moms, returning vets, unemployed workers, survivors of domestic or sexual violence, those recovering from the ravages of Hurricane Sandy, or those who are doing okay and thankful for that—feels like there is a real and enduring safety net to buoy them during the rough spots. I remain troubled, having checked in with many congressional offices over the last week, that too many of our elected leaders plan to default to gridlock and business as usual rather than turning their attention to removing obstacles, and seeking genuine bipartisan consensus and compromise.

Ralph da Costa Nunez, president & CEO, Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness:

Just this past week I visited four homeless family shelters in New York City. The shelters were full of young children who had a sparkle of hope and dreams in their eyes. They told me how they wanted to be a doctor, a nurse, truck driver, a policeman. After doing this work for thirty-six years, sometimes it feels like we’re moving in circles. But their faces remind me of the reason we have to keep working to reduce poverty and homelessness in America.

Jodie Levin-Epstein, deputy director, Center for Law and Social Policy:

It’s easy to get depressed by the implications of the deficit and the other profound challenges that we face today like creating millions of good jobs; but what’s exhilarating is the work each and every day of groups like the Retail Action Project, Restaurant Opportunities Center United, National Healthy Nail and Beauty Salon Alliance, Caring Across Generations, Warehouse Workers for Justice and Young Invincibles. I am thankful for the creativity, smarts and gumption of these and other groups; being impressed is a solid antidote to getting depressed.

Jessica Bartholow, legislative advocate, Western Center on Law and Poverty:

I traveled this weekend to see my only sister in northern Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband. This year, like millions of Americans, they had turned for the first time to food stamps because they couldn’t find work. I talked to my sister about this experience. She said it was hard: “We still went hungry, and it was never enough to buy healthy foods. It was embarrassing to shop with food stamps, even with the [EBT] card.” Things are better for them now. My brother-in-law has found work and they are able to pay down bills and buy what they need at the grocery store. As we ate breakfast in their small kitchen booth in the camper trailer that is their home, we exchanged stories and laughter with the kind of levity that comes with time and distance from hard times. This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful fewer Americans are hungry due to the food stamp program, but I’d rather that they didn’t need them at all.

Peter Edelman, professor of law, Georgetown University Law Center:

I went to the Children’s Defense Fund Beat the Odds benefit last week and participated in honoring five young women who have beaten the toughest odds and are now on their way to college with the scholarships awarded them by CDF. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. We can’t ever forget the big difference that helping people one by one makes in reducing poverty. We are frustrated sometimes by not making bigger strides in changing the big picture—and we have to succeed there to make the numbers in poverty move down a lot—but we also have to keep on doing the small things that change lives one by one. They add up to a big number.

The United States should be doing more to help low-income American families put food on the table this Thanksgiving. Check out Greg Kaufmann on “The Choice to End Poverty.”

“I really want people to understand that we all work just as hard as the next person that’s in a business suit,” says Tamika Maxwell, mother of three, describing her work as a janitor in Cincinnati, her hometown.

Along with 1,000 colleagues in the city, Maxwell hopes that current negotiations between SEIU and the city’s cleaning contractors will raise their $9.80 hourly wage—which, for annual full-time work, still leaves a family of three below the federal poverty line and relying on food stamps and Medicaid. In essence, the state ends up subsidizing corporations to continue paying people a non-living wage.

“My paycheck is the same amount as my Duke Energy bill,” says Maxwell. “And you know they don’t care—they will cut you off if you don’t have their money.”

Maxwell works part-time while also pursuing a business degree at Cincinnati State. She’s now employed by Scioto Services, which recently won the contract for the Public Defender’s office building that she has cleaned for four years. The company retained Maxwell but cut back all of the janitors’ hours. Instead of working the 5–10 pm shift five days per week, Maxwell now works only four.

“That’s a big deal when you’re only making $9.80 an hour,” she says.

But perhaps what is most frustrating to Maxwell and her colleagues is that among the cleaning contractors’ clients are some of the richest companies in the world. Macy’s, for example, made $1.25 billion in profits last year; Fifth Third Bancorp took in $1.3 billion; and Kroger netted more than $600 million. In all, thirteen Fortune 1000 companies with their corporate headquarters in Cincinnati earned combined profits of nearly $17 billion in 2011. If any of them told the cleaning contractors to pay a living wage, the contractors would do so, and would pass the additional cost onto the multibillion-dollar corporations.

Indeed, Procter & Gamble instructed its cleaning contractor, Compass, that the janitors who clean its headquarters should earn a living wage. Compass then offered the workers healthcare and guaranteed full-time hours, as well as an hourly wage increase of $0.30 in the first year, $0.25 in the second year, and $0.30 in the third year. That would result in a $10.65 hourly wage in 2015, and an average annual salary of $19,863 (just over the poverty line for a family of three). In contrast, the other contractors involved in negotiations with SEIU are offering next to nothing: a wage freeze for two years and a ten-cent increase in 2015.

“We just want to be paid fairly, and treated fairly. And the big businesses need to know that we have families that we want to take care of too,” says Maxwell. “I’m struggling right now, trying to figure out what I’m going to do for my kids’ Christmas. I know the big businesses aren’t worrying about their Christmas.”

Maxwell takes her son to school every morning at 7:45, then gets on a bus to go to school herself. After classes, she is home to help her son with homework, and then takes the kids to day care at 4:30—in time to arrive at work at 5 pm for her five-hour shift.

“By the time we get home it’s bedtime,” she says. “So the only time I really get to spend with my children is on the weekends. It sucks, really. But hopefully it will all be worth it when I finish school and won’t have to struggle as hard.”

Maxwell believes that part of the reason for the plight of the janitors is that “people really don’t understand the work that we do.” In her shift, she cleans forty-three bathrooms on thirteen floors. Half of the bathrooms have two stalls, half of them are singles. That’s about sixty-five toilets a night, or thirteen an hour—about four and a half minutes per toilet. That’s hard enough to do in five hours, and of course the job involves a lot more than cleaning toilets.

“I stock the bathrooms—paper towels, tissue, soap, seat covers. I clean them all, mop them all, and dust them all. Clean the mirrors, the countertops, the sinks, the stainless steel,” she says. “It’s really hard work. I go through more gym shoes than anyone can imagine.”

With so much stress over their reduced hours, one way Maxwell and her colleagues try to make up their lost income is by working overtime to fill-in for someone who can’t make it to work. But she says collecting the extra pay can be a challenge.

“I worked two extra hours over four weeks ago and still haven’t gotten paid,” she says.

She has also been waiting for three months for Scioto to fill out a job verification form that she needs so that her family will not be cut off of food stamps.

“Every time I see the manager and ask him about it he says he’ll get it back to me or the office hasn’t sent it back yet—gives me the runaround,” says Maxwell.

A look at the Scioto website and this kind of treatment of employees—in terms of poor wages, reduced hours and irresponsibility—flies in the face of the image the company is projecting:

It is our human resource investment, however; [sic] that makes us most proud. Scioto Services associates are encouraged to become volunteers with community organizations including the local Chambers of Commerce, Project Parks, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, YMCA, Meals on Wheels, youth sports programs, regional food banks, adult literacy programs and youth tutoring, just to name a few. At Scioto Services, we’re convinced that community involvement is the best way to show our pride in who we are, what we do, and in the communities where we do business.

Another way to invest in human resources and the community is by paying workers enough so that they can eat.

In the meantime, Maxwell hopes that people will rethink their assumptions about janitors and their labor, and get involved in the fight for better pay.

“People think janitors are people who either aren’t trying hard enough, or didn’t try hard enough back when they [were younger], and that’s simply not the case,” says Maxwell. “Somebody has to do these jobs. Workers couldn’t function without our work.”

You can e-mail building owners in Cincinnati—companies like Macy’s and Fifth Third Bancorp—and ask them to support good jobs for janitors here. I’ll be trying to reach them and the cleaning contractors—and continue talking to the janitors—to keep you updated on this story.

Our So-Called Fiscal Cliff: What the hell is it and what can you do?

I hate webinars—loathe them, actually, even though I understand they are a necessary evil nowadays.

But I watched one on Wednesday led by Ellen Nissenbaum, senior vice president for government affairs at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Deborah Weinstein, executive director at the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN), and I thought it was fantastic—great information, presented clearly and creatively, and compelling. So I’m passing along what I learned in the hope that you will speak out on matters that need speaking out on—which is really the first thing you need to know about our so-called Fiscal Cliff:

“Don’t be silent,” said Weinstein. “There’s simply too much at stake.”

What the hell is it anyway?

So what the hell is our so-called Fiscal Cliff anyway? There are four major pieces of policy happenings between the end of December and early next year: the Bush tax cuts, along with the temporary expansion of unemployment insurance, expire in December; the sequestration—which means automatic, across the board cuts of about $110 billion that are scheduled to occur in January; the debt limit has to be raised in early 2013 so the government can borrow money to finance current operations; and then the current fiscal year appropriations are only funded through March 27 and need to be completed.

“What’s really driving the near panic in Congress is the combination of the tax cuts expiring and the sequester taking effect,” said Nissenbaum.

But she said that the panic is unjustified—it really wouldn’t be the “cataclysmic event” it’s being made out to be.

“Nothing happens automatically on January 2—the cuts start to phase in, the tax cuts start to be eliminated,” she said.

But Republicans and Democrats would immediately face tremendous pressure to reach an agreement—with the middle-class tax cuts having expired, $100 billion in spending cuts beginning to take effect (including $50 billion from the Pentagon) and reaching the debt limit and facing possible government default. Nissenbaum noted that when the government shut down in 1995, President Clinton and Congress reached agreement in just three weeks. The pressure come January 2013 would “be like ten times bigger than a government shutdown.”

Because our so-called fiscal cliff isn’t really the huge economic and existential threat that it’s being made out to be, Nissenbaum concludes:

If the choice is between a bad deal [at the end of the year]—a deal that relies heavily on spending cuts, that doesn’t protect the poor—or no deal, that’s simply not a tough choice.… The single most important principle that should guide all of the decisions around deficit reduction is that [it] should not increase poverty or inequality.

Although this has indeed been a principle of deficit reduction agreements going back for “some period of time,” Nissenbaum cautioned that there are now many bipartisan proposals that “are claiming to protect our most vulnerable but when you take a careful look at their proposals they fall well short.”

What’s at stake?

These are the three areas in play for any deficit reduction agreement: (1) discretionary spending (appropriations), (2) health/other entitlements and (3) revenues. The Budget Control Act of 2011 and other cuts last year already axed $1.5 trillion from discretionary spending, but there was zilch in new revenues.

“We have already cut non-defense discretionary down to the bone—particularly from historical levels,” said Nissenbaum.

Therefore, Nissenbaum said, a major concern is whether the president and others will “wall off” the non-defense discretionary programs that protect the poor—such as education, job training, WIC, Head Start, childcare—and prohibit further cuts.

With regard to revenues, Weinstein said that “changes in the tax code need to seek revenues from those who can afford to pay, and protect those people who can’t afford to pay more.” The refundable Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit—which together lifted 8.7 million people out of poverty in 2011—are two of our most effective antipoverty tools and have enjoyed longtime bipartisan support, but will be targeted for cuts by conservatives.

Nissenbaum warned that while conservatives have signaled that they might agree to a small amount of revenues for deficit reduction, “what they really want is to essentially give us a nickel in taxes, only in exchange for requiring the tax committees in Congress to make another round of massive tax cuts on income tax rates well below the Bush levels.” She said some bipartisan proposals are touting a top rate of 26 to 29 percent.

“You can imagine how that would decimate the parts of the budget we all care about if revenues dropped down that low,” she said.

With regard to entitlements, Nissenbaum thinks the three that are most in jeopardy are Medicaid (and whether costs will be shifted to the states); cuts or structural changes that limit the reach and effectiveness of SNAP (food stamps); and Supplemental Social Security Income. She believes Social Security “by and large” will be off the table.

But with a goal of $2 trillion in deficit reduction (beyond the $1.5 trillion in cuts already made under the Budget Control Act)—and so many parts of the budget being entirely or largely protected in Congress, Nissenbaum believes discretionary domestic programs and low-income entitlements will take the biggest hits if major revenues aren’t part of the deal.

What you can do

Weinstein encouraged people to participate in the SAVE For All campaign, which now has the participation of over 1,900 organizations and many individuals nationwide. It’s pushing for a deficit reduction agreement that protects low-income and vulnerable people, promotes job creation, increases revenues from fair sources and seeks responsible savings from the Pentagon and other areas.

She said that antipoverty/human needs advocates are “up against” CEOs who are ready to spend about $60 million promoting a plan that has “moved more in the direction of cutting services, and less in the direction of revenues” than even the Bowles-Simpson plan that was first released in 2010; and also the “deficit scolds” who use the fear of our so-called fiscal cliff to call for huge spending cuts. (I would add a campaign of misinformation by conservatives that labels as “welfare” every investment in low-income people—whether Pell grants, foster care, Head Start, etc.; also bogus talking points such as “we spend $23,000 a year on every person in poverty.”)

“But there is a recent precedent for beating piles of CEO money,” said Weinstein, “people spoke out through the vote. The election is over but we still need to speak out.”

You can send an e-mail to your senators and representative; meet with a staff member in person, or connect with them through statewide conference calls that CHN is helping to organize (contact them). Groups and individuals can write op-eds, letters to the editor or arrange meetings with editorial boards—CHN can assist with this as well, as can the Children’s Leadership Council. Groups can hold an event at a service provider’s site, or demonstrate in front of a senator or congressman’s office—Nuns on the Bus style. Finally, stay tuned for a National Call in Day on November 28.

The bottom line is this: if you care about poverty and not making things harder for people who already have it tough, speak out during this debate. You can bet people who don’t share your interests will, and a lot of them will have much deeper pockets than you do. Be heard, be visible.

Other Campaigns

End Child Hunger: The New York City Coalition Against Hunger (NYCCAH) is calling on President Obama to publicly re-commit his pledge to end child hunger in America. You can sign an online petition here. To learn more about why ending child hunger is not only the right thing to do morally, but also good for the economy, read NYCCAH executive director Joel Berg’s letter to the president.

National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week (NHHAW), November 10–18: On the eve of the halfway mark for The Journey Home—Baltimore’s ten-year plan to end homelessness—students from colleges and universities in and around the city are organizing a series of local events to mark NHHAW. The events will culminate with: “A Bench is Not a Bed: Sleepout” tomorrow, November 17, beginning at 6 pm at the War Memorial Plaza in front of City Hall (100 North Holliday Street). For additional information contact NHHAW.Baltimore@gmail.com.

Urge Congress to Support Affordable Housing: In 2008, the National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) was enacted as part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. Its purpose is to create dedicated sources of funding to build, preserve and rehabilitate housing for low-income people. Unfortunately Congress has never approved funding for the NHTF. With over 630,000 Americans homeless, Fighting Poverty with Faith is calling on Congress to fund the NHTF at $1 billion, providing quality and affordable homes to 3.5 million extremely low-income households over the next ten years. You can contact your senators and representative and urge them to approve $1 billion in funding here.

Reports

“Married… Without Means,” Shawn Fremstad, Center for Economic and Policy Research. Policy makers and too many in the “liberal” media often claim that marriage is a way out of poverty for Americans striving for the middle class. Fremstad’s excellent new report demonstrates that most parents with below-poverty incomes who are raising children are, in fact, married. He attributes the struggles of married adults to policy decisions that have led to stagnating wages; the lack of a coordinated child care and early education system; and a failure to institute basic labor standards such as paid family leave.

“If we want to reduce marital poverty and hardship—and increase family economic security generally—over the next two decades, we need to fix the economy by strengthening existing labor institutions, particularly unions, and creating new basic standards that apply nationwide, including ones for paid family leave,” writes Fremstad. “In the immediate short term, we need more public investment to create jobs and rebuild the economy. Finally, we need to strengthen existing, effective systems of social protection, including Social Security and Medicaid, and overhaul ones that have completely failed struggling married parents, particularly Temporary Assistance for Families (TANF).”

“Pulling Apart: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends,” Elizabeth McNichol, Douglas Hall, David Cooper, and Vincent Palacios, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Economic Policy Institute. The gaps between the incomes of the richest households and low- and middle-income households are wide and growing in most states. Between the late 1990s and mid-2000s, gaps between the richest and the poorest households widened in forty-five states and DC, and narrowed in none. Incomes fell by close to 6 percent among the bottom fifth of households, on average, while rising by 8.6 percent among the top fifth, during this period. Incomes grew even faster—14 percent— among the top 5 percent of households. For the middle fifth of households, incomes grew by just 1.2 percent.

The study is one of the few to examine income inequality at the state level, and it finds that growth in wage inequality is the biggest factor contributing to the income gaps in most states. The report recommends state policies that can mitigate the widening divide, including: raising and indexing the minimum wage; making state tax systems less regressive—they currently rely more on sales taxes and user fees that hit low-income households especially hard, rather than progressive income taxes; strengthening supports for low-income workers such as childcare, transportation and health insurance; and strengthening the unemployment insurance system so that more unemployed workers are able to access benefits.

“State Asset Limit Reforms and Implications for Federal Policy,” Aleta Sprague and Rachel Black, New America Foundation. Nearly every means-tested public assistance program employs an asset test, which is a limit on the amount of savings and other resources a family can own and remain eligible for benefits. Though asset tests vary widely across programs and states, the limits typically hover around just $2000, thus requiring families to remain in both income poverty and asset poverty to receive benefits. This report identifies some of the impacts of both implementing and reforming asset limits on the administration of the SNAP (food stamps) and TANF (cash assistance) programs. Key findings include: assets limits pose a barrier to long-term self-sufficiency; and a variety of resource and political barriers must be overcome to lift asset tests.

“Young Children at Risk,” Taylor Robbins, Shannon Stagman, Sheila Smith, National Center for Children in Poverty. Across the United States, large numbers of young children are affected by one or more risk factors that have been linked to academic failure and poor health. Chief among them is family economic hardship. Additional risk factors can markedly increase children’s chances of adverse outcomes, too. The national and state data presented here highlight groups of vulnerable children and families whose needs can be addressed through a wide range of family support, health and education policies. Information about the size and characteristics of a state’s population of young, at-risk children can inform policy decisions about investments in new or expanded supports that help mitigate risks and improve life outcomes for these children.

“Weathering the Great Recession,” Economic Mobility Project, Pew Center on the States. The report reveals that while all communities felt a devastating impact on their economic security, high-poverty neighborhoods lost the greatest percentage of wealth. Families in low-poverty neighborhoods experienced wealth losses of 47 percent, while those in high poverty lost an astounding 91 percent. Other economic measures examined in the report include: homeownership and housing equity losses; mortgage payment distress; wage decreases; and unemployment.

“The Volunteer Experience: Men and Women Who Make Free Tax Preparation Work,” National Community Tax Coalition (NCTC). NCTC works to create a more accessible and equitable tax system for American workers. It represents more than 63,000 volunteers at 6,300 community Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites. Last year, these volunteers prepared an estimated 1.6 million federal tax returns for low- and moderate-income workers. The program depends on volunteers willing to spend long hours performing a sometimes very tedious task. What makes them do it? NCTC interviewed four volunteers to learn more about their motivations, experiences and backgrounds.

Articles, Clips, etc.

“From Master Plan to No Plan: The Slow Death of Public Higher Education,” Aaron Bady and Mike Konczal

“Segregation and Obama’s second term,” Steve Bogira

“New Poverty Data Provide Key Insights into Fiscal Cliff Negotiations,” Melissa Boteach

“The Problem Is Clear: The Water Is Filthy,” Patricia Leigh Brown

“Homeless College Students Cope With Needing a Home Over Winter Break,” (AUDIO) Kavitha Cardoza

“Americans Want to Raise the Minimum Wage,” Bryce Covert

“The Poor Will Be the First Over the Fiscal Cliff,” Bryce Covert

“Healing a Broken System: Veterans and the War on Drugs,” Drug Policy Alliance

“Rick Perry Calls For Drug-Testing The Poor And Jobless,” Arthur Delaney

“Alleging New Wave of Retaliation, Walmart Warehouse Workers Will Strike Day Early,” Josh Eidelson

“Ohioans’ food stamp aid to be reduced,” Kate Giammarise

“New initiative seeks to keep juveniles out of trouble by keeping them out of jail,” Phillip Lucas

“The Election is Over — Now What?” (VIDEO) Moyers & Company

“Called to Work During Superstorm Sandy, Tribeca Parking Attendant Drowned,” Lizzy Ratner

“Bishops fail to agree on economy, but push Dorothy Day sainthood,” Ann Rodgers

“Anacostia: Why I have faith in the future of my neighborhood,” Michael Shank

“The Power of the Safety Net: What the Supplemental Poverty Measure Shows,” Arloc Sherman

“Poverty growing among L.A. County veterans, study finds,” Alexandra Zavis

Vital Statistics

US poverty (less than $23,021 for a family of four): 46.2 million people, 15.1 percent.

Children in poverty: 16.1 million, 22 percent of all children, including more than one in three African American and Latino children. Poorest age group in the country.

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

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

Children under age 6 below twice the poverty level: nearly half, 11.4 million children.

States with child poverty rates of 20 percent or higher: 27.

States with child poverty rates of less than 15 percent: 7.

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.

Youth employment: lowest level in more than sixty years.

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

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.

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.

People age 50 and over at risk of hunger every day: 9 million.

Percentage of US population in poverty at some time before age 65: over 50 percent.

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

Impact of public policy, 1964–1973: poverty rate fell by 43 percent.

Quote of the Week

“What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?”
      —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (source: Joel Berg letter to President Obama)

Research assistance provided by Christie Thompson.

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

Three months ago, anticipating that the media and presidential campaigns wouldn’t focus on the struggles of the poor and near poor in a substantive way, TheNation.com kicked off a new campaign: “#TalkPoverty: Questions for Obama and Romney.”

In an effort to push the issue of poverty into the mainstream political debate, I profiled and polled five experts who have devoted their lives to fighting poverty—and individuals who have lived in poverty—giving them the opportunity to ask the presidential candidates the questions that they want answers to.

A thriving #TalkPoverty community developed online, and the Half In Ten coalition—comprised of 200 national and local organizations across the country—ran an excellent spin-off campaign to pressure debate moderators to ask President Obama and Governor Romney about their plans to address child poverty. Despite this vibrant campaign—and the outsized focus of the debates on the domestic economy—the moderators never asked a single question about poverty.

At the outset of the #TalkPoverty effort, I promised to hound both campaigns for answers. In the end, it didn’t really require hounding as far as the Obama campaign was concerned—they agreed to respond when I first contacted them. The Romney campaign, on the other hand, initially expressed openness before sending an e-mail last Thursday: “We will not be participating. Thanks for the offer.” It seems that the Romney campaign prefers to continue its strategy of speaking about “the poor” without saying anything of substance about antipoverty policies, or speaking in a manner completely untethered from reality, or outright lying.

I promised both campaigns that we would run the answers without any interpretation, simply let their responses speak for themselves. Here are the answers from the Obama campaign:

* * *

1. In 2011, 20.4 million people in America were living on incomes below half the federal poverty line—less than about $9,000 for a family of three—including over 15 million women and children. That’s up from 12.6 million people in 2000. What will you do to address this growing problem?

President Obama took office in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, threatening the security of families across the country. He took immediate action to address the crisis through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Today, we know that the Recovery Act kept nearly 7 million people out of poverty in 2010, including 2.5 million children. It cut taxes for 95 percent of workers, gave a significant tax cut to low-income families with children, and supported crucial unemployment insurance for those who were hit hardest. The Recovery Act also strengthened Medicaid during the worst of the recession and helped ensure that millions of families had food security to weather the downturn. These steps provided a lifeline for millions of Americans working their way to self-sufficiency who just needed tools to get back on their feet, stay in school, and rejoin the workforce. Though there is still more work to be done, we have seen 31 straight months of private sector job growth and a total of 5.2 million jobs created.

But it isn’t enough merely to get back to where we were before the crisis; we need to continue to take steps to grow the economy from the middle out – not the top down. The President has proposed extending tax cuts for working families that were included in the Recovery Act and will fight to prevent higher income taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year. Through the American Jobs Act, the President has proposed new steps that will accelerate the recovery and create nearly 1 million jobs. The plan would help states keep up to 325,000 teachers, as well as thousands of police officers and firefighters, on the job. President Obama is also calling for immediate new investments to repair crumbling roads and bridges that would put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back to work now and strengthen our economy for the long term.

Even as the President has introduced policies that will lead to strong economic growth, he has also launched bold new initiatives to combat poverty directly. For example, the Administration developed the Choice Neighborhoods programs to address housing, crime, and transportation in order to bring comprehensive neighborhood revitalization to blighted areas. The President also launched the Promise Neighborhoods program, modeled after the successful Harlem Children’s Zone, where 37 communities in 18 different states already have plans in place to put education at the center of combating poverty. The program is based on the idea that children need support both in and out of the classroom in order to succeed. Finally, the Administration’s Project Rebuild will create 200,000 jobs by rehabilitating homes and stabilizing home prices in hard-hit lower income areas. These unprecedented efforts are transforming high-poverty neighborhoods with distressed public housing and crumbling schools into communities that are starting to see real growth and get stronger with each day.

2. One in five children in the United States struggles with hunger. As President, what would you do about hunger in America—especially for young children?

President Obama knows that ending childhood hunger in the United States is a moral imperative. President Obama signed into law the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which represents a major step forward in our nation’s effort to provide all children with healthy food in schools. This landmark bill authorized funding for federal school meal and child nutrition programs and increased access to healthy food for low-income children. It allows more universal meal access for eligible students in high poverty communities. Additionally, it expands USDA authority to support meals served to at-risk children in afterschool programs. These efforts demonstrate the President’s strong commitment to programs that directly alleviate childhood hunger, even as he continues to focus on the root causes by doing everything in his power to grow the economy and create jobs.

3. Investments in childcare are key not only to children’s prospects for productive lives but also a family’s ability to work. Yet federal assistance for childcare currently reaches only about one in seven of those who are eligible. What will you do to increase the availability of quality childcare to more low-income children?

Since 2000, the typical family has seen their child care costs grow at twice the rate of their income. Full-time care for an infant often costs more than $10,000, and monthly child care fees for two children are often even higher than what a typical family pays in rent.

Despite these rising costs, the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit—a tax break for parents who are paying for childcare just so they can work—has only been increased once in the last 28 years and is not indexed to inflation. President Obama has proposed doubling this tax credit for middle-class families making under $85,000 a year. In fact, nearly all eligible families making under $115,000 a year would get a larger credit. Under the President’s plan, families would be able to claim up to $3,000 in childcare expenses for one child or $6,000 for two children.

Child care costs are especially challenging for low-income working families who, even while striving to enter the middle class, struggle to make ends meet. Before the President took office, assistance for these families had plummeted. That’s why the Obama Administration provided an additional $1.6 billion in child care funding in 2011, the largest one-year increase in 20 years, to serve an additional 235,000 children. Additionally, President Obama is challenging states to develop effective, innovative models for expanding early and pre-K learning programs. In his second term, President Obama will continue to work with Congress to improve the quality of care for all children and decrease costs for working families.

4. Government statistics show that over 1 in 3 Americans—approximately 106 million people—are living on incomes below about $46,000 for a family of four (below twice the federal poverty line). This reflects the large number of low-wage jobs in the nation. What will you do to increase the income of working people who are struggling to make ends meet every month and also the number of jobs that provide family-supporting wages?

Even as many Americans are still looking for work, numerous industries in the U.S. have difficulty filling high-wage jobs that require specific technical skills. This is because too many Americans lack access to the kind of practical and specialized training that these higher-wage jobs require. In the coming years, America will need to fill millions of good-paying mid- and high-level skilled positions in high-growth industries from healthcare to advanced manufacturing, from clean energy to information technology.

President Obama has taken unprecedented steps to help bridge the skills divide and ensure that all Americans have access to the training they need to get high-wage jobs. To accomplish his goal of training an additional 2 million workers in high growth industries, the President proposed the Community College to Career Fund. This initiative would create partnerships between community colleges and businesses to train workers for jobs that exist today.

5. The United States can expect to see about 100,000 veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average unemployment rate for veterans ages 18 to 24 in 2011 was 30.2 percent. In 2010, an estimated 76,000 veterans experienced homelessness on any given night, and 1.2 million veterans used mental health services that year. What will you do to make sure that our veterans are supported in their re-entry into civilian life—with vocational support that translates into good jobs with good wages; and also support for veterans whose opportunities have been limited by physical or mental injuries?

President Obama firmly believes that no one who fights for this country should have to fight for a job when they come home. Last November, he signed two new tax credits into law to help put our veterans and wounded warriors back to work today. The Obama Administration is strengthening transition programs to ensure that service members leave the military prepared for civilian careers. It has also forged unprecedented new partnerships between the military and the private sector to make it easier for companies to hire returning service members. This means greater access to jobs in manufacturing, health care, information technology, logistics, and as first responders. President Obama also launched an initiative designed to transform the federal government into the model employer of America’s veterans, and proposed a Veterans Job Corps program that would put up to 20,000 veterans back to work over the next five years as police officers and firefighters and on projects that protect our public lands and resources.

In addition to fighting for veteran jobs, the President is committed to ensuring that our veterans and their families receive high-quality health care. That’s why he signed legislation that ensures funding for veterans’ medical care is allocated a full year in advance, so veteran hospitals can count on predictable and sufficient resources for treating our returning heroes. The Obama Administration is restoring health care coverage for 500,000 veterans who were previously denied because their incomes were only slightly above the required threshold, and is expanding veterans’ access to mental health services. The Obama Administration has also taken steps to get veterans their benefits more quickly and accurately by providing new claims processors and improving training. New investments in technology have led to major improvements, including for the first time offering online applications for initial disability benefits.

Lastly, President Obama is working to ensure that our veterans continue to have access to higher education. As a senator, he pushed for the Post-9/11 GI Bill, and has ensured its successful implementation as President. As of March of this year, the Administration has helped more than 800,000 veterans and family members pursue higher education. The President also expanded eligibility and improved the Post-9/11 GI Bill to ensure that these veteran benefits can now be used for vocational programs. To ensure our veterans and military families are able to make the most of their hard-earned education benefits, this year the President issued an Executive Order establishing principles of excellence for educational institutions serving service members, veterans, spouses, and other family members. This new policy not only requires that colleges provide more transparent information about academic outcomes and financial aid options, but also cracks down on recruiting abuses and low-quality programs.

President Obama will continue to stand up for all those who have served.

For more on inequality in this election, check out Greg Kaufmann on Paul Ryan's lies about poverty. 

Here’s a twist: in the second presidential debate, one candidate used the word “poverty” without saying anything about poverty; the other didn’t use the word at all but managed to speak a fair amount about it.

Make sense? Stay with me.

Governor Romney used this talking point: “There are 3 1/2 million more women living in poverty today than when the president took office”; and again, “I mentioned 3 1/2 million women more now in poverty than four years ago.” He also used what has become a staple of his campaign as a bludgeon against President Obama’s record: “There are more people in poverty—one out of six people [lives] in poverty.”

What he didn’t do was offer any notion as to how a Romney administration would create opportunities for low-income people—people who decidedly aren’t included in his binders. Except for maybe this—in response to a question about limiting the availability of assault weapons: “But gosh, to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone—that’s a great idea because if there’s a two-parent family, the prospect of living in poverty goes down dramatically.”

Does he really think that parents—teen parents and single parents who know this struggle better than anyone—aren’t telling their children to wait to have babies? That they want better circumstances for them than they have had themselves?

He’s right that poverty rates go down for two-parent families. It’s also true that they go down for two-earner families: only 4 percent of households with more than one earner are in poverty, as compared to 24 percent of households with a single earner, according to a report last year from Half in Ten. Marriage isn’t the only route to two incomes (nor does marriage always result in two incomes). The Romney-Ryan ticket and the GOP might want to reconsider, for example, their opposition to investing in job training programs that can lead to good jobs for young people and a path to the middle class.

As for marriage, instead of simply telling people “get married,” Romney might also look at astronomical incarceration rates—especially for minority men in urban areas; low real wages at the bottom and their link to declining unionization; differences in public schools for the haves and have-nots; and racial discrimination in the job and housing markets. Attention to these macro issues would do a lot to increase hope and access to real economic opportunities, which is a great way to support strong families. Gosh, that’s a great idea, you might say.

Romney and the GOP might also consider meeting families—and single mother-headed families—where they are instead of where the GOP wishes they would be. That means investing in federal childcare assistance that currently reaches roughly one in seven families who qualify for it (tough to work when you don’t have a safe place for the kid); raising the minimum wage, which stagnates at $7.25 an hour and results in sub-poverty earnings of $15,080 for a year-round, full-time employee (in the 1960s and ’70s a worker with a full-time minimum-wage job could lift a family of three above the poverty line); reforming a cash assistance (TANF) program that reaches only 27 families for every 100 families with children in poverty, and often traps women in low-wage work rather than opening a path to a living wage; and working aggressively to close the gender pay gap.

Poverty isn’t a talking point—it’s a reality for more than half of the US population at some time before age 65, according to the Urban Institute.

For his part, President Obama did talk about poverty, even if he didn’t use what some antipoverty advocates now call “the p-word.”

“If you focus on the policy proposals and the narrative in the debate then it looks like advocates have really succeeded in getting Obama to talk about policies that address poverty—even if he’s not using the word,” Margy Waller, former senior advisor on domestic policy in the Clinton administration and currently a senior fellow at the Topos Partnership, told me. “And focusing on policies instead of words might actually be a good strategy.”

In response to the very first question from a college student about employment opportunities, President Obama spoke to the issues of low-wage work (and the majority of income from people in poverty comes from work, not benefits) and access to education.

He talked about creating “not just jobs, [but] good-paying jobs, ones that can support a family.” He commended the student for going to college but added, “I want everybody to get a great education.” He spoke of the importance of making student loans available but also the importance of access to community colleges for “young people who may have dropped out of school” and “training them for the jobs that exist right now.”

Waller noted that with regard to tax policy Obama specifically mentioned not just the middle class but “folks who are striving to get in the middle class.” This alludes to critical antipoverty work supports such as the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit—both of which would be scaled back by the GOP despite longtime bipartisan backing from the likes of Presidents Ford and Reagan.

Obama framed the issue of funding for Planned Parenthood as one of access to affordable health care—“not just contraceptive care” but also “for mammograms, for cervical cancer screenings. That’s a pocketbook issue for women and families all across the country.” He cited the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and advocating for pay equity as critical “because women are increasingly the breadwinners in the family. This is not just a women’s issue. This is a family issue.” He expanded on that economic argument to include “child care and the credits that we’re providing, that make a difference in terms of whether [women] can go out there and earn a living for their family…. One of the things that makes us grow as an economy is when everybody participates and women are getting the same fair deal as men are.”

Waller said research suggests that the way we usually talk about poverty—even using the words “poverty” and “welfare” themselves—“makes most people think about people who don’t work, and bad personal choices, and irresponsibility. People’s beliefs are now so hardened in that stereotype, it’s very hard to overcome even with evidence that says otherwise.”

She believes Obama is on the right track by offering “a new narrative that wakes people up and enables them to listen.”

“He’s talking about how we create an economy that is good for everyone,” said Waller. “It opens the door to focusing on the role of government policy in addressing issues like wage stagnation, and maintaining a wage and benefit floor for good jobs. It points to how we are all better off when everyone is contributing to our economy and civic life, and we have jobs in our local communities that are family-supporting.”

My preference is that politicians speak clearly and forcefully about poverty and how to fight it, and that they help set the record straight on so much of the nastiness and misinformation that is out there about low-income people.

But there was a clear winner on Tuesday night when it comes to talking about matters that matter to people in poverty. And a clear loser who used poverty talk as nothing more than a political ploy.

Child Poverty: Obama Goes on Record

At the Maryland Hunger Solutions annual conference in Baltimore this week, keynote speaker Dr. Michael Reisch, a leading social work educator in the United States and Distinguished Professor of Social Justice at the University of Maryland, said, “Children constitute the demographic cohort most likely to be poor, a phenomenon unprecedented in industrialized nations.”

Indeed there are 16 million children in poverty—22 percent of all kids—including more than one in three African-American and Latino children, and one in four children under age 6 from all backgrounds.

So it was very timely that the leaders of six child advocacy organizations wrote letters to President Obama and Governor Romney asking each candidate what he would do to address child poverty in America. There were three questions, including one that has been pushed for months by the #TalkPoverty movement: “What will you pledge to do in your first 100 days to address childhood poverty?” The other two focused on ensuring comprehensive healthcare, quality educational opportunities starting with Pre-K, and food security; and describing a “vision for how to permanently ensure that future generations of children will not have to face the specter of crushing poverty.”

In a detailed response, Obama wrote of the importance of the Affordable Care Act in covering tens of millions of currently uninsured Americans and providing children with preventative care. He singled out the importance of Head Start, public and private Pre-K, and childcare in providing “children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a strong start and a foundation for school success.” He described the importance of extending tax cuts for working families included in the Recovery Act, such as the expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, which benefit people with low-wage jobs. He pushed for infrastructure investments “to repair crumbling schools, roads, and bridges,” and passing the American Jobs Act to create 1 million jobs, and “help states keep up to 325,000 teachers.”

Obama’s long-term vision includes transforming “high-poverty neighborhoods with distressed public housing and crumbling schools into communities that are sustainable for the growth of our children.” He cited the Choice Neighborhoods programs to address housing, crime and transportation in a comprehensive way; and the Promise Neighborhoods program—modeled after the successful Harlem Children’s Zone—“where 37 communities in 18 different states already have plans in place to put education at the center of combating poverty.”

The Romney campaign informed the authors of the letter that their candidate wouldn’t respond in writing. So we’re left with—as far as the Romney-Ryan record goes—the observation that poverty is up; that there are more women in poverty now; that people in poverty are “our brothers and sisters”; and the big fat lie that Obama is “gutting the work requirement” so those very same “bothers and sisters” just get a “welfare check.”

Kudos to these six organizations for getting the most substantive comments yet about child poverty from at least one of the candidates.

The third and final presidential debate on Monday will focus on foreign policy. Child poverty is definitely a foreign policy issue as it relates to economic competitiveness and how America is viewed by the world.

As Dr. Greg Duncan—an economist and widely respected researcher on the consequences of childhood poverty—recently told me: “What’s at stake is whether America will be able to maintain its position as a leading economic power in the next generations. Not to mention that America prides itself on offering people at all levels a chance for success. Rising income inequality over the past thirty years and its attendant increases in poverty should worry not only advocates for poor people but also anyone else concerned about the future of the country.”

ADAPT Disability Rights Activists Occupy Harrisburg

I’ve written previously about the state of Pennsylvania wrongfully denying 89,000 children Medicaid coverage. It seems that’s not the only vulnerable population being hit by Republican Governor Tom Corbett’s Medicaid policies.

Three hundred disability rights activists with ADAPT demonstrated and engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience over four days in Harrisburg. They protested Corbett’s rolling back of home- and community-based Medicaid services—services put in place by both Republican and Democratic governors—that have allowed people with disabilities to live independently instead of in nursing facilities and institutions. With states across the nation facing similar cuts, Harrisburg launched ADAPT’s state-by-state “My Medicaid Matters” organizing campaign.

Over the four day period, ADAPT activists demonstrated outside of the governor’s mansion; occupied the State Capitol rotunda as well as the offices of the governor and the chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations committees; shut down the office of Secretary Gary Alexander at the Department of Public Welfare (DPW). They also held a simultaneous rally with disability rights activists in Olympia, Washington, who are facing similar cuts; and surrounded the Romney campaign office to protest the candidate’s plan to cut somewhere between $800 billion to $1.5 trillion from Medicaid over the next ten years—more than one-third of the entire federal cost of the program.

“You can’t just make cuts without understanding what good the existing money does,” said Shona Eakin of Erie ADAPT. “Our lives are not a business. Home services help my husband and I work and raise our children. The Romney-Ryan plan threatens our two children as well as us.”

The activists demanded a meeting with Corbett and members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly to talk about ADAPT’s ten-point plan for shifting Medicaid spending from institutions and nursing facilities to community-based services. The group obtained a promise of a meeting with Secretary Alexander but the governor refused to send a representative. Because previous talks with Alexander have been unfruitful and Corbett is the ultimate decision maker, activists continued their protest and eighty-three were arrested.

“Governor Corbett would rather arrest us than meet with us, even when we have identified that the state could leverage about $185 million in additional federal funds to increase the use of community-based services and supports,” said Pam Auer of Central Pennsylvania ADAPT.

I’ll report back on how the organization fares in its efforts to speak with the Corbett Administration, and on the “My Medicaid Matters” campaign as it continues around the nation.

Featured Action

Justice Bus: Thursday, October 25^th, 8:30 am–4 pm, 1805 W. Alabama St., Houston. A mobile protest to demand justice for labor abuses experienced by Houston workers, the bus stops at restaurants, contractor’s offices and residences of unscrupulous employers. There will be about sixty riders—workers, community members, faith leaders, students, and volunteers.

The action is designed to draw a stark contrast between the image that the city’s elected officials and business leaders project—of Houston as offering a prosperous economy, low unemployment rates, and a low cost of living—and the reality that millions of working families experience, including wage theft, poverty wages, lack of benefits, and a devaluation of their work.

Riders will kick off the Justice Bus at City Hall where they will present Mayor Annise Parker with hundreds of non-sufficient funds checks representing the $753 million dollars working families in Houston lose every year due to wage theft.

“We met with the Mayor earlier this year to ask for a legal analysis of [a] wage theft ordinance and ways in which it could be implemented,” José Eduardo Sanchez, campaign organizer with Houston Interfaith Worker Justice, told me. “While we got a positive response, we have seen absolutely no action.”

Interlude with Brain Hero

Events

A briefing on a new report: “Improving the Juvenile Justice System for Girls: Lessons from the States,” Tuesday, October 23, 9:30–10:30 am, Room SVC 212-10 in the US Capitol Visitors Center. Sponsored by the Center on Poverty, Inequality & Public Policy, the National Crittenton Foundation, Campaign for Youth Justice, Human Rights Project for Girls, and the National Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Coalition. RSVP: jjadvocate@cfyj.org. The Center on Poverty will also host a Twitter town hall following the briefing. Join them @GtownLawPovCntr.

Florida Association for Community Action’s 3rd Annual Symposium on Poverty: Friday, October 26, 8:00 am–1:00 pm, FAMU College of Law, 201 Beggs Avenue, Orlando. The event is designed to raise awareness regarding the issues of poverty in Florida and identify solutions to address its root causes. The symposium will set the stage for the development of legislation to enact a Florida Commission on Poverty.

Clips

“Two students, two high schools, two divergent paths to college,” Steve Bogira

“Chicago schools: even more segregated than they seem,” Steve Bogira and Jena Cutie

“Group Running Racist ‘Obama Phone’ Ad Has Close Ties to Congressional Republicans,” Lee Fang

“Walmart Workers Walkout,” by Liza Featherstone

“Candidates’ Views On Poverty Get Little Attention,” Pam Fessler

“Ohio weighs future expansion of Medicaid,” Kate Giammarise

“ACLU Sues Morgan Stanley Over Mortgage Loans,” Jessica Silver-Greenberg

“Ohio pushes welfare recipients to find work and exit the system,” Mark Guarino

“Still No Straight Answers on Social Security,” Tim Price

“Collateral Damage in the War on Women,” Akiba Solomon

Studies, briefs, and other resources

“Safe, Stable Homes Lead to Healthier Children and Families: Two studies from Baltimore and Boston,” Children’s HealthWatch. The studies show that stable, affordable housing improves the health of children and the well-being of families. Children’s HealthWatch analyzed over 10,000 surveys from caregivers of young children in Baltimore and Boston. The evidence illustrates the connection between lack of affordable housing, strained budgets and poor health outcomes for children from low-income families. For example, in Massachusetts, children in families who had moved two or more times in the past year were 59 percent more likely to have been hospitalized than were children in housing-secure families. Also, children in families behind on rent were 52 percent more likely to be at risk for developmental delays compared to those in housing secure families.

“The Chained CPI: What It Is and What It Means For Women,” National Women’s Law Center. The CPI determines the cost of living adjustment (COLA) Social Security beneficiaries receive each year. Some want to use a new measurement, the chained CPI, to calculate the COLA. Proponents are calling it nothing more than a “technical fix”—it is anything but.

“LIHEAP Households,” National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA). The situation for low-income households struggling to pay their home energy costs appears to be worsening as winter approaches. Funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) has been reduced—from $5.1 billion in FY 2010 to $3.471 billion for the current fiscal year—and forecasters are predicting a colder, wetter winter. The total number of households receiving LIHEAP grants fell from 8 million in 2011 to 6.9 million in 2012. With millions of families facing the prospect of needing to choose between heating their homes and buying food, medicine and other daily essentials, the National Fuel Funds Network (NFFN) is urging Congress to take all necessary steps to provide additional funding for LIHEAP. “We ask everyone to call their members of Congress and ask them to increase funding for this important program by any means necessary,” said NFFN executive director George Coling.

Vital Statistics

US poverty (less than $23,021 for a family of four): 46.2 million people, 15.1 percent.

Children in poverty: 16.1 million, 22 percent of all children, including more than one in three African American and Latino children. Poorest age group in the country.

Poverty rate among families with children headed by single mothers: 40.9 percent.

Deep poverty (less than $11,510 for a family of four): 20 million people, 1 in 15 Americans.

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

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.

Youth employment: lowest level in more than 60 years.

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

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.

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.

People age 50 and over at risk of hunger every day: 9 million.

Percentage of US population in poverty at some time before age 65: over 50 percent.

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

Impact of public policy, 1964–1973: poverty rate fell by 43 percent.

Quote of the Week

“How do people who are poor and disabled get a voice, their own voice, without people speaking for them? They can’t buy entrance to conferences or fundraisers, so they have to break the door down.”
      —Amber Smock, Chicago ADAPT activist

Research assistance provided by Christie Thompson.

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