Greg Kaufmann

This Week in Poverty: Will the Poor Get Poorer in the Land of Lincoln?

Greg Kaufmann on April 27, 2012 - 8:45 AM ET

At an Appropriations hearing in the Illinois State House last week, the Department of Human Services (DHS) informed the legislature that it has insufficient funds to meet its Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) obligations through the fiscal year ending in June.

This is particularly disturbing since Illinois provides TANF benefits—which is cash assistance—to just 13 of every 100 families with children in poverty, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Prior to welfare reform in 1996 the state helped nearly 87 of every 100 families with children in poverty. Further, the benefit level is only 28 percent of the federal poverty line, or roughly $4,800 annually for a family of three, similar to that in a majority of states.

According to Dan Lesser, director of economic justice at the Shriver Center in Chicago, Illinois will find the funds to pay the TANF benefits one way or another—but just how the state will do it is a significant question.

This Week in Poverty: Georgia Tries to Get to Zero Welfare Recipients

Greg Kaufmann on April 20, 2012 - 8:54 AM ET

It’s not easy for poor people to get cash assistance in America.

Prior to welfare reform in 1996, 68 of every 100 poor families with children received cash assistance through Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). But by 2010, under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program which replaced AFDC, just 27 of every 100 poor families received benefits. The rolls shrunk as states were given wide discretion over eligibility, benefit levels, time limits, and how to use their TANF block grants which were frozen at 1996 funding levels and not indexed for inflation.

Georgia is known as a particularly difficult state when it comes to accessing TANF. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), in 2008-09 for every 100 poor families with children in Georgia, only eight received cash aid.

This Week in Poverty: Will Pennsylvania Rip Another Hole in the Safety Net?

Greg Kaufmann on April 13, 2012 - 8:23 AM ET

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett unveils his 2012-13 state budget proposal before the Pennsylvania House Chamber Tuesday, Feb. 7 2012 in Harrisburg, PA. (AP Photo/Bradley C Bower)

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This Week in Poverty: How to Get Involved

Greg Kaufmann on April 6, 2012 - 8:59 AM ET

I was off this week so just a short post today. I’ll resume regular posts next Friday.

Below is a list of some of the groups working every day to eradicate poverty. It’s by no means exhaustive, but I encourage you to check them out and get involved. These groups and others are doing their best to generate the kind of popular and political will that helped reduce poverty by 43 percent between 1964–1973.

This Week in Poverty: Fresno to Homeless People—Get Out

Greg Kaufmann on March 30, 2012 - 8:51 AM ET

In 2008, the City of Fresno and California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) paid a hefty settlement of $2.3 million for seizing and destroying homeless residents’ personal property and signed an agreement on how to deal with homeless encampments in the future.

But according to nine lawsuits filed last week on behalf of twelve homeless residents, the city and Caltrans have resumed a policy of “demolition and destruction of dwellings and personal property” since October of last year. Central California Legal Services (CCLS) has interviewed over 100 people and more legal action is expected in the coming weeks.

“Starting last September, the city clearly made a decision to try to get rid of all the homeless encampments that there are in Fresno,” says Chris Schneider, director of CCLS, where he has worked for nineteen years. “They started doing what they call ‘cleanups’ but it’s really just destructions of the encampments. The city comes in and says, ‘You’ve got to get out of here.’ Then as soon as people set up somewhere else the police come and tell them to move on from there too. There is just less and less space to go to, while the number of homeless have risen in the bad economy.”

This Week in Poverty: Paul Ryan's Focus on Dignity

Greg Kaufmann on March 22, 2012 - 11:45 PM ET

“Promoting the natural rights and the inherent dignity of the individual must be the central focus of all government.”

That’s what Congressman Paul Ryan wrote earlier this month in an exclusive commentary for Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity. This week, he revealed exactly where his laser-like focus on dignity would lead this nation. He released his budget proposal, as clear a statement of one’s principles and priorities as there is in politics.

Here are the results, and they’re not pretty. Nation readers with young children should probably ask them to leave the room before reading onward.

This Week in Poverty: Me, Mom and Reagan

Greg Kaufmann on March 15, 2012 - 11:19 PM ET

Before we get started, a special note! Please join me and Legal Momentum’s Lisalyn Jacobs and Tim Casey at 11:00 am in the comments section on this post for TheNation.com’s first real-time discussion with commenters, moderated by Nation comments editor Sarah Arnold. We will be taking questions about today’s post, general questions about poverty, and any questions, comments, or suggestions you might have for TheNation.com’s This Week in Poverty blog. Please use the comments box at the top of the conversation thread, not the “reply” function.

Here’s the new American reality: about half of all kids will spend at least part of their childhood in a family headed by a single mother, and the typical single mother is white, has one kid, is separated or divorced, works and probably earns less than $25,000 a year.

Wait, what? Run that back to me.

This Week in Poverty: Welfare Reform—From Bad to Worse

Greg Kaufmann on March 9, 2012 - 9:54 AM ET

A stunning report released by the University of Michigan’s National Poverty Center reveals that the number of US households living on less than $2 per person per day—a standard used by the World Bank to measure poverty in developing nations—rose by 130 percent between 1996 and 2011, from 636,000 to 1.46 million. The number of children living in these extreme conditions also doubled, from 1.4 million to 2.8 million.

The reason? In short: welfare reform, 1996—still touted by both parties as a smashing success.

The report concludes that the growth in extreme poverty “has been concentrated among those groups that were most affected by the 1996 welfare reform.” The law created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, replacing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which had guaranteed cash assistance to eligible families since 1935. Prior to welfare reform, 68 of every 100 poor families with children received cash assistance through AFDC. By 2010, just 27 of every 100 poor families received TANF assistance.

This Week in Poverty: Hunger—Where We Are, Where We Need to Be

Greg Kaufmann on March 2, 2012 - 9:20 AM ET

Volunteers fill bags with food for part of their backpack school lunch program at the Cleveland Foodbank in Cleveland on Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2011. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

There were over 46 million Americans on food stamps (SNAP) last year, and in 2010 the program kept 3.9 million people from falling into poverty. Nearly half of all recipients are children, and 76 percent of participating families have at least one employed person.

This Week in Poverty: Deal on Unemployment Benefits Leaves Out Poorest

Greg Kaufmann on February 23, 2012 - 11:18 PM ET

Unemployment Insurance and Poverty

Congresswoman Barbara Lee, co-chair of the Congressional Out of Poverty Caucus, voted against the recent extension of unemployment benefits because it shortened the maximum number of weeks a jobless worker could qualify.

“Instead of scaling back unemployment benefits we need to be adding weeks to help people get by when there continues to be four workers in line for each job,” said Lee.