US poverty rates - dismal

[Jim]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003589315_welfare26.html

 

One of the more striking items in this article is that the U.S. is the 3rd worst, ahead of only Mexico and Russia, in poverty rates among developed countries. Given that we’re the richest country in the world, shouldn’t we be doing better?

 

This of course will bring out the “government should do more – leave it to the marketplace” rivals. I read an interesting article in the NYT Sunday Magazine a month or so ago. The article took a look at what would be needed to ease poverty effects worldwide by having the rich donate to a fund. The target used was the Millennium Development Goals by the UN Millennium Summit which by 2015 listed:

•Reduce by half the proportion of the world’s people extreme poverty (defined as living on $1/day)

•Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

•Ensure that all children can attend primary school.

•Reduce by two-thirds the mortality rate under age 5.

•Reduce by three-quarters the rate of maternal mortality.

•Halt and reduce the spread of AIDS and incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

•Reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.

 

Whew! Lofty goals. Estimated price tag by Jeffery Sacs = $121 billion in 2006 rising to $189 billion in 2015. Considering existing aid promises you only need $48 billion in 2006 rising to $74 billion in 2015. So how could we come up with needed money this?

 

People should donate more. If only the top 10% of US tax payers donated you could raise $171 billion. Here’s the offered breakdown.

 

Top 0.01% - donate a third of income. Left with minimum of $4.3M

Top 0.1% - donate a one quarter of income – Left w/minimum of $846K

Top 0.5% - donate one fifth of income – Left w/minimum of $325K

Top 1%- donate 15% of income – Left w/minimum of $234K

Top 10% - donate 10% of income – Left w/minimum of $83K

 

2004 Tax Data Income Minimal Income by group

 

Top 0.01% - $5M, avg $12,7M

Top 0.1% - $1.1M, avg $2M

Top 0.5% - $407K, avg $632K

Top 1%- $276, avg $327K

Top 10% - $92K, avg $132K

 

So – by asking folks in the top 10% of the US to donate, in a manner unlikely to impose significant hardship on anyone, yields a total of $404 billion. Without government intrusion. Likely to happen - I doubt it. Gotta have that lexus and McMansion. And before the bohemian accusations start to fly – I try to donate 10% of my household income annual. Mostly I can’t make that much, but it’s been at least 7% for 15 yrs now. I do some volunteer work to make up. I just though this was an interesting proposal and those interested in private sector solutions might take note.

 

[Peter_Puget]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003589315_welfare26.html

 

One of the more striking items in this article is that the U.S. is the 3rd worst, ahead of only Mexico and Russia, in poverty rates among developed countries. Given that we’re the richest country in the world, shouldn’t we be doing better?

 

Jim - Check out the portion of your quote that I put in bold.

 

Now I tried to find that in the article you referenced and could not. Here is the entire article:

 

WASHINGTON — The welfare state is bigger than ever despite a decade of policies designed to wean poor people from public aid.

The number of families receiving cash benefits from welfare has plummeted since the government imposed time limits on the payments a decade ago. But other programs for the poor, including Medicaid, food stamps and disability benefits, are bursting with new enrollees.

The result, according to an Associated Press analysis: Nearly one in six people rely on some form of public assistance, a larger share than at any time since the government started measuring two decades ago.

Critics of the welfare overhaul say the numbers offer fresh evidence that few former recipients have become self-sufficient, even though millions have moved from welfare to work. They say the vast majority have been forced into low-paying jobs without benefits and few opportunities to advance.

"If the goal of welfare reform was to get people off the welfare rolls, bravo," said Vivyan Adair, a former welfare recipient and now an assistant professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in upstate New York. "If the goal was to reduce poverty and give people economic and job stability, it was not a success."

Programs for workers

Proponents of the changes in welfare say programs that once discouraged work now offer support to people in low-paying jobs. They point to expanded eligibility rules for food stamps and Medicaid, the health-insurance program for the poor, that enable people to keep getting benefits even after they start working.

"I don't have any problems with those programs growing, and indeed, they were intended to grow," said Ron Haskins, a former adviser to President Bush on welfare policy.

"We've taken the step of getting way more people into the labor force, and they have taken a huge step toward self-sufficiency. What is the other choice?" he asked.

In the early 1990s, critics contended the welfare system encouraged unemployment and promoted single-parent families. Welfare recipients, mostly single mothers, could lose benefits if they earned too much money or if they lived with the father of their children.

 

 

 

 

 

Major changes were enacted in 1996, requiring most recipients to work but allowing them to continue some benefits after they started jobs. The law imposed a five-year limit on cash payments for most people in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF. Some states have shorter time limits.

No job stability

Nia Foster fits the pattern of dependence on government programs. She stopped getting cash welfare payments in the late 1990s and has moved from one clerical job to another. None provided medical benefits.

The 32-year-old mother of two from Cincinnati said she supports her family with help from food stamps and Medicaid.

Foster said she did not get job training when she left welfare. She earned her high-school equivalency last year at a community college.

"If you want to get educated or want to succeed, the welfare office don't care," Foster said. "I don't think they really care what you do once the benefits are gone."

Foster now works in a tax office, a seasonal job that will end after April 15. She hopes to enroll at the University of Cincinnati in the spring and would like to study accounting.

She is waiting to find out if she qualifies for enough financial aid to cover tuition.

Shannon Stanfield took a different, less-traveled path from welfare, thanks to a generous program that offered her a chance to get a college education.

Stanfield, 36, was cleaning houses to support her two young children four years ago when she learned about a program for welfare recipients at nearby Hamilton College, a private liberal-arts school in Clinton, N.Y.

"At the time I was living in a pretty run-down apartment," said Stanfield, who was getting welfare payments, Medicaid and food stamps. "It wasn't healthy."

The program, the Access Project, accepts about 25 welfare-eligible parents a year. Hamilton waives tuition for first-year students, and the program supplements financial aid in later years.

Students get a host of social and career services, including help finding internships and jobs, and financial assistance in times of crisis.

About 140 former welfare recipients have completed the program and none still relies on government programs for the poor, said Adair, the Hamilton professor who started the Access Project in 2001.

Stanfield, who still gets Medicaid and food stamps, plans to graduate in May with a bachelor's degree in theater. She wants to be a teacher.

"I slowly built up my confidence through education," Stanfield said. "I can't honestly tell you how much it has changed my life."

Programs such as the Access Project are not cheap, which is one reason they are rare. Tuition and fees run about $35,000 a year at Hamilton, and the program's annual budget is between $250,000 and $500,000, Adair said.

In 2005, about 5.1 million people received monthly welfare payments from TANF and similar state programs, a 60 percent drop from a decade before.

But other government programs grew, offsetting the declines.

44 million

About 44 million people — nearly one in six in the country — relied on government services for the poor in 2003, according to the most recent statistics compiled by the Census Bureau.

That compares with about 39 million in 1996.

Also, the number of people getting government aid continues to increase, according to more recent enrollment figures from individual programs.

Medicaid rolls alone topped 45 million people in 2005, pushed up in part by rising health-care costs and fewer employers offering benefits. Nearly 26 million people a month received food stamps that year.

Cash welfare recipients, by comparison, peaked at 14.2 million people in 1994.

There is much debate over whether those leaving welfare for work should be offered more opportunities for training and education, so that they do not have to settle for low-paying jobs that keep them dependent on government programs.

"We said get a job, any job," said Rep. Jim McDermott, chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees welfare issues. "And now we expect them to be making it on these minimum-wage jobs."

McDermott, D-Seattle, said stricter work requirements enacted last year, when Congress renewed the welfare-overhaul law, will make it even more difficult for welfare recipients to get sufficient training to land good-paying jobs.

Confidence builder

But people who support the welfare changes say former recipients often fare better economically if they start working, even in low-paying jobs, before entering education programs.

"What many people on TANF need first is the confidence that they can succeed in the workplace and to develop the habits of work," said Wade Horn, the Bush administration's point man on welfare overhaul.

"Also, many TANF recipients didn't have a lot of success in the classroom," Horn said.

"If you want to improve the confidence of a TANF recipient, putting them in the classroom, where they failed in the past, that is not likely to increase their confidence."

 

So I thought I would check out the article linked in the one your referenced. Here it is:

 

WASHINGTON — The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.

A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 — half the federal poverty line — was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall number of poor people grew in the same period. McClatchy's review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor people isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty, the highest rate since at least 1975.

Hardest-hit states

 

 

States with the most people in severe poverty:

California: 1.9 million

Texas: 1.6 million

New York: 1.2 million

Florida: 943,670

Illinois: 681,786

Ohio: 657,415

Pennsylvania: 618,229

Michigan: 576,428

Georgia: 562,014

North Carolina: 523,511

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

McClatchy Newspapers

The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the past three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown "more than any other segment of the population," according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

"That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began," said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, who co-authored the study. "We're not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we're seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty."

The growth spurt, which leveled off in 2005, in part reflects how hard it is for low-skilled workers to earn their way out of poverty in an unstable job market that favors skilled and educated workers. It also suggests that social programs aren't as effective as they once were at catching those who fall into economic despair.

About one in three severely poor people are under age 17, and nearly two out of three are female. Female-headed families with children account for a large share of the severely poor.

According to census data, nearly two of three people in severe poverty are white (10.3 million) and 6.9 million are non-Hispanic whites. Severely poor blacks (4.3 million) are more than three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be in deep poverty, while extremely poor Hispanics of any race (3.7 million) are more than twice as likely.

Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, has a higher concentration of severely poor people — 10.8 percent in 2005 — than any of the 50 states, topping even hurricane-ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana, with 9.3 percent and 8.3 percent, respectively. Nearly six of 10 poor District residents are in extreme poverty.

Life with little

A few miles from the Capitol Building, 60-year-old John Treece pondered his life in deep poverty as he left a local food pantry with two bags of free groceries.

Plagued by arthritis, back problems and myriad ailments from years of manual labor, Treece has been unable to work full time for 15 years. He has tried unsuccessfully to get benefits from the Social Security Administration, which he said disputes his injuries and work history.

In 2006, an extremely poor individual earned less than $5,244 a year, according to federal poverty guidelines. Treece said he earned about that much in 2006 doing odd jobs.

Wearing shoes with holes, a tattered plaid jacket and a battered baseball cap, Treece lives hand to mouth in a $450-a-month room in a nondescript boarding house in a high-crime neighborhood. Thanks to food stamps, the food pantry and help from relatives, Treece said he never goes hungry. But toothpaste, soap, toilet paper and other items that require cash are tougher to come by.

Treece remains positive and humble despite his circumstances.

"I don't ask for nothing," he said. "I just thank the Lord for this day and ask that tomorrow be just as blessed."

Like Treece, many who did physical labor during their peak earning years have watched their job prospects dim as their bodies gave out.

Severe poverty is worst near the Mexican border and in some areas of the South, where 6.5 million severely poor residents are struggling to find work as manufacturing jobs in the textile, apparel and furniture-making industries disappear. The Midwestern Rust Belt and areas of the Northeast also have been hard-hit as economic restructuring and foreign competition have forced numerous plant closings.

At the same time, low-skilled immigrants with impoverished family members are increasingly drawn to the South and Midwest to work in the meatpacking, food processing and agricultural industries.

"What appears to be taking place is that, over the long term, you have a significant permanent underclass that is not being impacted by anti-poverty policies," said Michael Tanner, the director of Health and Welfare Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, disagreed. "It doesn't look like a growing permanent underclass," said Sherman, whose organization has chronicled the growth of deep poverty. "What you see in the data are more and more single moms with children who lose their jobs and who aren't being caught by a safety net anymore."

About 1.1 million such families account for roughly 2.1 million deeply poor children, Sherman said.

The "sinkhole effect"

After fleeing an abusive marriage in 2002, 42-year-old Marjorie Sant moved with her three children from Arkansas to a seedy boarding house in Raleigh, N.C., where the four shared one bedroom. For most of 2005, they lived off food stamps and the $300 a month in Social Security Disability Income for her son with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Teachers offered clothes to Sant's children. Saturdays meant lunch at the Salvation Army.

"To depend on other people to feed and clothe your kids is horrible," Sant said. "I found myself in a hole and didn't know how to get out."

In the summer of 2005, social workers warned that she'd lose her children if her home situation didn't change. Sant then brought her two youngest children to a temporary housing program at the Raleigh Rescue Mission while her oldest son moved to California to live with an adult daughter from a previous marriage.

So for 10 months, Sant learned basic office skills. She now lives in a rented house, works two jobs and earns about $20,400 a year.

Sant is proud of where she is, but she knows that "if something went wrong, I could well be back to where I was."

As more poor Americans sink into severe poverty, more individuals and families living within $8,000 above or below the poverty line also have seen their incomes decline. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University attributes this to what he calls a "sinkhole effect" on income.

"Just as a sinkhole causes everything above it to collapse downward, families and individuals in the middle and upper classes appear to be migrating to lower-income tiers that bring them closer to the poverty threshold," Woolf wrote in the study.

Before Hurricane Katrina, Rene Winn of Biloxi, Miss., earned $28,000 a year as an administrator for the Boys & Girls Club. But for 11 months in 2006, she couldn't find steady work and wouldn't take a fast-food job. As her opportunities dwindled, Winn's frustration grew.

After relocating to New Jersey for 10 months after the storm, Winn returned to Biloxi in September because of medical and emotional problems with her son. She and her two youngest children moved into her sister's home along with her mother, who has Alzheimer's. With her sister, brother-in-law and their two children, eight people now share a three-bedroom home.

Winn said she recently took a job as a technician at the state health department. The hourly job pays $16,120 a year. That's enough to bring her out of severe poverty and just $122 shy of the $16,242 needed for a single mother with two children to escape poverty altogether under current federal guidelines.

Winn eventually wants to transfer to a higher-paying job, but she's thankful for her current position.

"I'm very independent and used to taking care of my own, so I don't like the fact that I have to depend on the state. I want to be able to do it myself."

Many don't seek help

The Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that, in a given month, only 10 percent of severely poor Americans received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in 2003 — the latest year available — and that only 36 percent received food stamps.

Many could have exhausted their eligibility for welfare or decided that the new program requirements were too onerous. But the low participation rates are troubling because the worst byproducts of poverty, such as higher crime and violence rates and poor health, nutrition and educational outcomes, are worse for those in deep poverty.

Over the past two decades, America has had the highest or near-highest poverty rates for children, individual adults and families among 31 developed countries, according to the Luxembourg Income Study, a 23-year project that compares poverty and income data from 31 industrial nations.

With the exception of Mexico and Russia, the U.S. devotes the smallest portion of its gross domestic product to federal anti-poverty programs, and those programs are among the least effective at reducing poverty, the study found. Again, only Russia and Mexico do worse jobs.

One in three Americans will experience a full year of extreme poverty at some point in his or her adult life, according to long-term research by Mark Rank, a professor of social welfare at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

An estimated 58 percent of Americans between the ages of 20 and 75 will spend at least a year in poverty, Rank said. Two of three will use a public-assistance program between ages 20 and 65, and 40 percent will do so for five years or more.

These estimates don't include illegal immigrants. Rank said if illegal immigrants were factored in, the numbers would be worse.

"It would appear that for most Americans the question is no longer if, but rather when, they will experience poverty. In short, poverty has become a routine and unfortunate part of the American life course," Rank wrote in a recent study.

Most researchers and economists say federal poverty estimates are a poor tool to gauge the complexity of poverty. The numbers don't factor in assistance from government anti-poverty programs, such as food stamps, housing subsidies and the Earned Income Tax Credit, all of which increase incomes and help pull people out of poverty.

But federal poverty measures also exclude work-related expenses and necessities such as day care, transportation, housing and health-care costs, which eat up large portions of disposable income, particularly for low-income families.

Alternative poverty measures that account for these shortcomings typically inflate or deflate official poverty statistics. But many of those alternative measures show the same kind of long-term trends as the official poverty data.

Robert Rector, a senior researcher with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, questioned the growth of severe poverty, saying that census data become less accurate further down the income ladder. He said many poor people, particularly single mothers with boyfriends, underreport their income by not including cash gifts and loans. Rector said he has seen no data that suggest increasing deprivation among the very poor.

 

My question is simply where does it say what you say it says?

 

 

 

[Jim]

Sorry Peter. It doesn't. I assumed that this article on the web was the same as the one on page 3 of the Seattle Times this morning. It's not. I tried to find this piece but it's not posted on the Times website. But I specifically remember the reference. I'm more interested in if you think the upper incomes can dig this deep, as you're constantly promoting private sector solutions. Here's a UNICEF report to help bring things into persepective.

 

http://www.unicef.org/brazil/repcard6e.pdf

[Peter_Puget]

Sorry Peter. It doesn't. I assumed that this article on the web was the same as the one on page 3 of the Seattle Times this morning. It's not. I tried to find this piece but it's not posted on the Times website. But I specifically remember the reference. I'm more interested in if you think the upper incomes can dig this deep, as you're constantly promoting private sector solutions. Here's a UNICEF report to help bring things into persepective.

 

http://www.unicef.org/brazil/repcard6e.pdf

 

I bought the paper and scanned the article on page 3. It seems very similar to the second article I pasted above. I cannot find the reference anywhere.