The annual release of the US Census poverty data is the one day you can be sure the mainstream media will turn their attention to poverty. This year was no exception when Poverty Day arrived last Tuesday. Amidst the frenzy of coverage of the new data, here are five things you might have missed:
1) A Crisis for Children of Color Under Age 5
Melissa Boteach, director of Half in Ten, a campaign to cut poverty in half in ten years, notes “crisis levels of poverty” for children of color under age 5, including more than 42 percent of African-American children and 37 percent of Latino children living below the poverty line. The Children’s Defense Fund also highlighted disturbing statistics across the nation regarding poverty levels of children of color under age 6.
Boteach points out that toxic stress associated with persistent poverty affects brain development in children, and leads to adverse outcomes in education, health and worker productivity when those children reach adulthood. We also know that modest investments in young children can offset some of those negative effects, but we currently are moving in the opposite direction.
Boteach references a new report from First Focus—a bipartisan organization that advocates for investments in children and families—which finds that “in 2013 alone, sequestration will cut $4.2 billion of funding for children concentrated in the areas of education, early learning, and housing, and Congress is considering a budget plan that would lock in or deepen these cuts for next year.” The report also finds that federal spending on children decreased last year by $28 billion, or 7 percent—the largest reduction since the early 1980s. Early education and childcare saw a particularly deep cut of 12 percent, and housing was cut by 6 percent.
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“These data could not be timelier,” writes Boteach. “They show structural threats to our economic competitiveness owing to high rates of poverty among young children of color—who would be badly hurt by Congress locking in or deepening the sequester cuts.”
2) We Could End Child Poverty
Austin Nichols, senior research associate at Urban Institute, writes that a monthly benefit for every child is “now common across developed countries, with amounts of about $140 a month in the UK, $190 in Ireland, $130 in Japan, $160 in Sweden and $250 in Germany.” He suggests that a monthly benefit of $400 for every child in the US would cut child poverty by more than half.
“If we issued a $400 monthly payment to each child, and cut tax subsidies for children in higher-income families, we would cut child poverty from 22 percent to below 10 percent,” writes Nichols. “If we further guaranteed one worker per family a job paying $15,000 a year, and each family participated, child poverty would drop to under 1 percent.”
Nichols suggests that even a $150 per month child benefit would lower child poverty from 22 percent to below 17 percent; and adding the job guarantee would reduce child poverty to 8 percent.
While Nichols is aware that there is no chance for this kind of change at the federal level, he writes that “a few states could try out a new taxable child benefit paid to all families.”
3) Poverty’s Gender Gap and the Safety Net
Tim Casey, senior staff attorney at Legal Momentum, the nation’s oldest organization that advocates on behalf of the legal rights of women and girls, reports that women were 32 percent more likely to be poor than men, and had a poverty rate of 14.5 percent compared to 11 percent for men.
“About one of every seven women was poor, compared to about one of every nine men. Single mothers were 81% more likely to be poor than single fathers, aged women were 67% more likely to be poor than aged men, and employed women were 31% more likely to be poor than employed men,” writes Casey. “At every level of educational attainment women were substantially more likely to be poor than men.”
Elizabeth Grayer, president of Legal Momentum said that the “high poverty rate” and a “continuing gender poverty gap” point to “the need for a social safety net that is accessible and adequate.” She urges Congress to reject any food stamp cuts that would increase hunger and hardship, and to “enact sorely needed improvements in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) [cash assistance] program that would raise sub-poverty benefit levels and reduce the barriers that prevent eligible families from accessing benefits.”
Currently, for every 100 families living in poverty, approximately 27 receive TANF cash assistance; down from 68 in 1996.
4) Vicious Cycle of Long-Term Unemployment and Poverty
The Urban Institute’s Nichols and Zach McDade, research associate, note that “4.2 million Americans—37 percent of the unemployed—have been jobless for longer than six months,” the highest rate “by far” in the last sixty years.
Nichols and McDade suggest that the “relationship between growing long-term unemployment and poverty runs both ways, where poverty can reinforce joblessness just like joblessness can increase poverty.”
“The longer one is unemployed, the harder it is to find work,” they write. “Skills erode, professional networks deteriorate, and workers become tainted by a perception of ‘unemployability.’ Long-term unemployment begets longer-term unemployment. Throw poverty into the picture and it’s only worse. Long-term unemployed workers are much more likely to be poor. Poverty makes it more difficult to travel to interviews, pay for child care, or care for one’s health, making the job hunt all the harder.”
Nichols and McDade argue that the cycle can be broken with “some simple policy prescriptions.” “Workforce development programs generally benefit workers with little education and experience (those who are most likely to be long-term unemployed).” They also call for “large-scale public works programs” that “help workers retain their skills, avoid the stigma of long-term unemployment and provide a regular income.”
5) Missed Opportunity: Unemployment Insurance and Poverty
Arloc Sherman, senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says that one significant reason the poverty rate didn’t decline over the last two years is that “we pulled back too quickly on unemployment insurance (UI).”
“Poverty would have fallen from 2010 to 2012 had it not been for the shrinking antipoverty role of unemployment insurance,” he told me.
UI kept 1.7 million people above the official poverty line in 2012, down nearly half from the 3.2 million who were lifted above the poverty line in 2010. Sherman notes that UI benefits used to reach 67 workers for every 100 unemployed workers; now it’s just 48 for every 100.
“The poverty rate would have declined significantly, by about half a percentage point—and there would be a million fewer poor people today—if UI’s effect per unemployed person hadn’t weakened since 2010,” he said.
Get Involved
Tell the President to Ensure Federal Contractors Pay a Living Wage
Share your story: How has the safety net helped you make ends meet?
See How Your Representative Voted on House passage of $40 billion SNAP cut
North Carolinians: Pledge to Talk About Poverty and Solutions
Event
2013 Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Awards (Wednesday, October 16, St. James’ Episcopal Church in New York City). These awards are presented annually to distinguished individuals or organizations who represent one of FDR’s famous “Four Freedoms”—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear. This year’s laureates include the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, who have fought to improve working conditions for Florida’s tomato pickers; Sister Simone Campbell of Nuns on the Bus; fame; Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman; Ameena Matthews of Chicago’s Violence Interrupters; and poet and farm-to-table activist Wendell Berry, who will receive the overall Freedom Medal. You can learn more and RSVP to the free public ceremony here.
Clips and Other Resources
“Don’t Call Retreat in the War on Hunger,” Patricia Anderson, Kristin Butcher, Hilary Hoynes, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
“Bad Medicine: Pharmaceuticals’ Prescription for Profits Over People,” Alliance for a Just Society
“A Profile that Paints a Far Too Benign Picture of the Republicans’ Proposed SNAP Changes,” Jared Bernstein
“How Much Money Would It Take to Eliminate Poverty In America?” Matt Bruenig
“Breaking Ground,” Kavitha Cardoza (AUDIO)
“Kids’ Share,” First Focus
“No Hunger for California Heroes,” Senator Ben Hueso
“Underwriting Executive Excess,” Robert Hiltonsmith and Amy Traub
“Nonmetro Poverty Increased in 2012,” Housing Assistance Council
“The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit: History, Purpose, Goals, and Effectiveness,” Thomas L. Hungerford and Rebecca Thiess
“Death of An Adjunct,” Daniel Kovalik
“Once Suicidal and Shipped Off, Now Battling Nevada Over Care,” Rick Lyman
“A Win-Win for Children: Raising Smart, Healthy Kids,” Hannah Matthews
“Inequality for All,” Moyers & Company (VIDEO)
“Long-term unemployment and poverty produce a vicious cycle,” Austin Nichols and Zach McDade
“Correcting Five Myths About Medicaid,” Edwin Park and Matt Broaddus
“On Growing Up Poor & Why We Should Save,” Chantilly Patiño
“Sanders, Cummings Introduce Bills to Address Dental Crisis,” Sen. Sanders Press Office
“Poor in the Land of Plenty: Sasha Abramsky’s ‘American Way of Poverty’,” David Shipler
Vital statistics
US poverty (less than $23,492 for a family of four): 46.5 million people, 15 percent.
African-American poverty rate: 27.2 percent.
Hispanic poverty rate: 25.6 percent.
White poverty rate: 9.7 percent.
People with disabilities: 28 percent.
Poorest age group: children, 34.6 percent of all people in poverty are children.
Children in poverty: 16.1 million, 21.8 percent, including 38 percent of African-American children, 34 percent of Latino children, and 12 percent of white children.
Poverty rate among families with children headed by single mothers: 40.9 percent.
Gender gap: Women 31 percent more likely to be poor than men.
Deep poverty (less than $9,142 for a family of three): 20.4 million people, one in fifteen Americans, nearly 10 percent of all children, up from 12.6 million in 2000—increase 59 percent.
Twice the poverty level (less than $46,042 for a family of four): 106 million people, approximately one in three 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.
Poverty-level wages, 2011: 28 percent of workers.
Federal minimum wage: $7.25 ($2.13 for tipped workers)
Federal minimum wage if indexed to inflation since 1968: $10.59.
Federal minimum wage if it kept pace with productivity gains: $18.72.
Hourly wage needed to lift a family of four above poverty line, 2011: $11.06
Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 for every 100 families living in poverty.
Families receiving cash assistance, 2011: 27 for every 100 families living in poverty.
Impact of public policy, 2011: without government assistance, poverty would have been twice as high—nearly 30 percent of population.
Number of people 65 or older kept out of poverty by Social Security: 15.3 million
Quote
“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”
—Nelson Mandela (via @NLuvWitUOnly)
This Week in Poverty posts here on Friday mornings, and again at Moyers & Company. You can e-mail me at [email protected] and follow me on Twitter.
Trudy Lieberman wrote this week about the growing waiting list for food aid in the United States.
