A February 18th article written by Erik Eckholm for The New York Times details a “reignited” debate about poverty measurements in the United States:
A brief report this week from the Census Bureau, highlighting how welfare programs and tax credits affect incomes among the poor, has fanned the politically charged debate on poverty in the United States and how best to measure it, with conservatives offering praise and liberals saying it underplays the extent of deprivation.
The report, “The Effects of Government Taxes and Transfers on Income and Poverty: 2004,” found that when noncash benefits like food stamps and housing subsidies were considered, as well as tax credits given to low-income workers, the share of Americans living under the poverty line last year was 8.3 percent.
This is well below the 12.7 percent of Americans that the government officially says lived below the poverty line in 2004, using the conventional methodology that only counts a family’s cash income.
What are the shortcomings of the conventional methodology?
The official poverty line was developed in 1960 and based on the simplest of calculations: the cost of feeding a family, multiplied by three. Since then, the original income cutoff has been adjusted for inflation but not for the radical changes in society and household expenses.
Many sociologists and other professionals have argued for years that the calculations require significant changes. One report from The CNSTAT Workshop on Experimental Poverty Measures noted the following last year:
Over the past 40 years … the poverty measure has become increasingly outdated. Poverty lines based on the cost of food no longer capture families’ basic needs because of the rapid growth in housing prices and other expenditures, such as medical care and child care, relative to food prices … In the 1960s, the official poverty threshold for a four-person family coincided with people’s views of the dollar amount needed to support such a family, as reported in public opinion surveys. By the 1990s this was no longer true … The unfortunate result is that the current official poverty measure no longer accurately captures either people’s perceptions of poverty or the effect of various policies on poverty.
While the Census Bureau has made some adjustments in its new report, it still underestimates expenses:
“Yes, the E.I.T.C. means a family has more money, and that’s good,” said Timothy Smeeding, an economist at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, referring to the Earned-Income Tax Credit, which can pay thousands of dollars to a low-income worker. “But going to work can also mean high new expenses for travel and child care, for example, and these aren’t included.”
“They’ve added in the extra benefits people get, but not the extra costs,” Mr. Smeeding said of the Census Bureau, adding that the report gave an overly optimistic figure of living conditions on the bottom.
A second criticism of poverty measurement in the U.S. involves using income as a sole indicator of deprivation and hardship. Many countries in Europe, particularly England, utilize a more comprehensive approach to measure “social exclusion.”
These differing methodologies can be seen in a comparison of two government Web sites:
U.S. Census Bureau: Poverty
www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/poverty.html
(UK) National Statistics Online: Social Inequalities
www.statistics.gov.uk/focuson/socialinequalities/
For a better understanding of the social exclusion framework, read “Social Exclusion: The European Approach to Social Disadvantage,” written by sociologists Hilary Silver and S.M. Miller.
Simply put, the EU recast exclusion as an inability to exercise “the social rights of citizens” to a basic standard of living and as barriers to “participation” in the major social and occupational opportunities of the society … In contrast to poverty, which is exclusively economic, material, or resource-based, social exclusion offers a more holistic understanding of deprivation …
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Sanford Berman delivered the Sixth Annual Jean E. Coleman Library Outreach Lecture in June 2005 at ALA’s Annual Meeting in Chicago. That address, titled “Classism in the Stacks,” has now been reprinted in various forums, including …
Counterpoise 9, no. 3 (Summer 2005)
http://www.sanfordberman.org/biblinks/classim.pdf
and
Street Spirit (February 2006)
http://www.thestreetspirit.org/Feb2006/libraries.htm
A sample:
Poor people don’t have the dollars to make influential campaign contributions. They can’t afford memberships in politically powerful organizations. They have no access to the mainstream media, no way to tell their stories. And given the thesis of the American dream, if they’re not prosperous, it must be their own fault, hardly the consequence of bad luck, racism, sexism, disability, downsizing, outsourcing, corporate greed, union busting, or an inadequate safety net. Worse, from the deeply ingrained Calvinist perspective, it’s God’s will. If they’re poor, that’s the way the deity wants it.
The hostility—or at least lack of sympathy—toward low-income people manifests in various barriers and kinds of discrimination. All together, the prejudice and what flows from it—the belief and the acts—can be called “classism”: favoring one class over another, valuing middle and upper classes more highly than people at or below the poverty level.
If librarians and others can first recognize their own attitudinal hang-ups, understanding what makes them view welfare mothers and homeless people, for example, unfavorably, and ultimately grasping that poverty—not poor people—is the problem, that poverty can be reduced if not ended, and that the most vulnerable and dispossessed among us are citizens and neighbors who deserve compassion, support, and respect—if we can do these things in our heads and hearts, then there’s a real chance to overcome classism.
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The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has just published “Pulling Apart: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends.”
Among other facts presented: Over the last twenty years, the poorest fifth of families only gained $125 per year; the richest fifth of families gained $4,410 per year. That translates into an 18.9% increase in income versus 59.5%.
In most states, the gap between the highest-income families and poor and middle-income families grew significantly between the early 1980s and the early 2000s …
The five states with the largest income gap between the top and bottom fifths of families are New York, Texas, Tennessee, Arizona, and Florida. Generally, income gaps are larger in the Southeast and Southwest and smaller in the Midwest, Great Plains, and Mountain states …
Possible steps [for reversing this trend] include raising the state minimum wage, strengthening supports for low-income working families, and reforming the unemployment insurance system. In addition, states can pursue tax policies that partially offset the growing inequality of pre-tax incomes.
A full report (PDF), state fact sheets, and state data tables (Excel) are available for review.
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The Center for the Study of Social Policy has just released a fascinating report prepared by its Policy Matters project.
“Twenty State Policies to Create Bright Futures for America’s Children, Families and Communities” reviews a variety of successful policies and assembles
research on effective policies in the areas most important to a family’s opportunity and stability: employment, income and asset growth, health, education, and healthy family relationships … The policies included in this report not only rest on a strong body of objective evidence, they also offer the advantage of taking an early investment and preventive approach so that relatively small investments now can reduce more costly interventions later.
The report offers the following components (in PDF):
The authors detail the shift of “decision-making responsibilities” from the federal government to states.
In today’s economy … the opportunities available to America’s families are becoming more and more constrained. For example:
State policies have been crafted to help families overcome these barriers, effectively addressing everything from predatory lending practices and housing discrimination to minimum wages and children’s health care.
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Marianne Eichelberger, director of the Newton Public Library in Newton, Kansas, recently contacted the HHPTF about poverty-focused training programs created by aha! Process Inc. She writes:
Our community held the “Bridges Out of Poverty: Strategies for Professionals & Communities” seminar in March [2005], which was a definite aha! for most who attended. One board member and two Newton Public Library staff attended the seminar and [afterward] shared the concepts with NPL board and staff. The NPL board has encouraged NPL staff to continue “Bridges” coalition efforts with others in the community.
aha! Process was founded by Ruby K. Payne, best known for her book A Framework for Understanding Poverty. The “Bridges” workshop is one of many products and services the organization offers, which it describes as
giv[ing] both the social service provider and the community member key lessons in dealing with individuals from poverty. Topics include increasing awareness of the differences in economic cultures, how those differences affect opportunities for success, developing an action plan to improve services to clients and improving retention rates for new hires from poverty.
Eichelberger has started discussions with other librarians in Kansas, and a flurry of activity followed the March workshop:
For more details about these programs, including contact info, visit www.ahaprocess.com and www.newtonplks.org.
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