Health & Healthcare
62% of Disabled Unemployed
Published September 16, 2009 @ 12:37PM PT
National unemployment is over 9%, but for some groups, the rates are much higher. Worse, competition even for the lowest-wage jobs has gotten more intense. According to the census, 62% of disabled Americans are out of work - and now some social service agents are saying their job prospects have never been "this bad."
Norma Rae Inspiration Dies
Published September 15, 2009 @ 10:27AM PT
Crystal Lee Sutton, the workers' rights and union activist who inspired the Academy Award-winning movie Norma Rae, died yesterday of brain cancer. She was 68.
She was a 33 year old mother of 3 earning $2.65 an hour folding towels at the J.P. Stevens textile manufacturing plant in North Carolina in 1973. "Low pay and poor working conditions had impelled her to take a leading role in efforts to unionize the plant. She was met with threats, she said." She was eventually fired for her organizing work.
Her final act of rebellion was enshrined in Norma Rae, played by Sallie Field - before cops ushered her out of the building, "“I took a piece of cardboard and wrote the word ‘union’ on it in big letters, got up on my worktable, and slowly turned it around,” she said... “The workers started cutting their machines off and giving me the victory sign. All of a sudden the plant was very quiet.”
In less than a year 3,000 workers were unionized at 7 plants, including J.P. Stevens, in NC. Ms. Sutton went on to work as a union organizer.
In the final years of her life, she battled with her insurance company to receive the necessary cancer medications. Ms. Sutton asks to be remembered as a fighter for the working poor, and hopes she'll inspire her children and grandchildren to take up the cause in her honor:
"Stand up for what you believe in, not matter how hard it makes life for you," she said. "Do not give up and always say what you believe."
..."It is not necessary I be remembered as anything, but I would like to be remembered as a woman who deeply cared for the working poor and the poor people of the U.S. and the world," she said. "That my family and children and children like mine will have a fair share and equality."
Words for us all to live by.
R.I.P., Crystal Lee Sutton.
40M Americans in Poverty
Published September 10, 2009 @ 11:42AM PT
The census results on poverty in the U.S. in 2008 are in, and they're worse than we thought. The lowlights:
- Median household income declined by 3.6%, to $50,303 from around $52K.
- The poverty rate rose to 13.2% from 12.5% in 2007. That's an additional 2M Americans who have fallen below the nation's already absurdly low poverty threshold to officially qualify as poor.
- Over 46M people - or 15.4% of the population - lack health insurance.
Of course, the specter of poverty hits some groups harder than others. Median incomes for Hispanics, Southern households, and foreign-born households declined by about 5%. If you were earning $10/hour, now you're earning $9.50 - this adds up to almost $1,000 in wages lost over a year for someone already struggling full-time at such a low wage.
Almost every group is worse off, including those with comparatively low rates of poverty: households headed by married couples; non-Hispanic whites; and working age adults.
Interestingly, the number of people with health insurance also grew - because more people are receiving coverage from the government. What's that now about a public option?
Finally, income inequality is unchanged (yippee?), but the poverty rate is the highest in 11 years. It's worth combing through all the data to really get a full picture of how many more Americans have become so poor even the government has officially taken notice - your neighbors, your grandmother, your kid's friends at school, perhaps even you.
Please help us get this info out today (#PDD09!) as part of Poverty Day. And you know the drill - Take Action to Fight Poverty in America now!
(Photo of a tent city in St. Petersburg, FL by Lboogiepeace)
Latin@s Most Likely To Die on Job
Published September 07, 2009 @ 06:47AM PT
That's a harsh title to jolt you out of your Labor Day holiday reprieve, I know. Courtesy of Poverty & Policy, I see that the National Council of La Raza has released a report on Latin@s in the low-wage job market. Like the National Employment Law Project study we covered last Wednesday, NCLR's research reveals a dangerous and highly unequal workplace for low-wage Latino workers, many of them immigrants. The report shows that smart, ethical immigration reform is the "first step" towards reducing worker exploitation and improving the job market for all low-wage workers.
1 in 5 Elderly are Poor
Published September 05, 2009 @ 10:38AM PT
When calculating poverty using the modernized measure from the National Academy of Sciences, the number of older adults living in poverty is nearly double the official rate. The whole article is worth reading for the ways current poverty numbers - among children, single mothers, in cities, etc. - would change if we updated the federal poverty measure.
Everyday that I blog I find more features, reports, news items, etc. than I can possibly cover here. But I don't want to let these stories slip by. So consider this your weekend afternoon news dump on poverty in the U.S.
Medicaid Expansion Talking Points
Published September 03, 2009 @ 01:28PM PT
Via Ezra, I see Families USA has listed 10 reasons why we need health care reform. The #1 Reason? "Fully federally funded" Medicaid expansion that will insure millions of low-income households nationwide.
They helpfully extrapolate on each point in the easily digestible document. Here are your talking points on Medicaid expansion, an issue we've been tackling here at Poverty in America.
The bill will increase Medicaid eligibility to 133% of the federal poverty level (~$24k for a family of 3 in '09). This expansion alone would cover more than one-third of the currently uninsured, or about 17M people.
We need this expansion because so far we're leaving millions of poor adults without access to health care. Medicaid now is fairly restrictive in who qualifies among the low-income. In only 7 states are low-income childless adults currently eligible, and in only DC and 16 states cover parents at 100% of the poverty level.
The remainder of the report is super handy in explaining market regulation, the public option, coverage for kids, cost control, and other reasons why we need health care reform. Read up and gear up for President Obama's speech next week!
Keep Poverty on the Agenda
Published August 30, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
With the death of Sen. Kennedy and the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina both happening this week, the topic of poverty was fresh in the public's mind. In eulogizing Kennedy, most of us could take pride in remembering his service to "working people" everywhere, his commitment to poverty reduction over the life of his career. With Katrina, it is also about a job unfinished, but with a much less nostalgic, sweet glow - the enduring problems of blight, housing insecurity, racial inequality and poverty are glaring, graphic, and depressing.
Whether you're motivated to action by the inspiring good works of folks like Senator Kennedy, or fueled by a sense of outrage over injustice, this past week offered plenty of reminders that poverty is a persistent, entrenched, political problem for which solutions exist. Investments in early childhood education pay lifetime dividends. Economic boycotts and union movements highlight workers' rights and benefits. Providing childcare, fair pay, and extensive family leave policies give mothers better opportunities to compete economically and earn enough to care for their families. And universal health care bankrupts neither households nor the entire medical system.
Change.org is just one platform where you can commit (and re-commit) to fighting poverty in the U.S. To start, let's begin by keeping poverty on the public agenda - as a problem we can and must solve. Let's not let it slip away as our weekend tributes wrap up. As Uncle Teddy and 15k volunteers in New Orleans remind us, the cause endures and the work goes on.
("Not Everyone in SF is Rich..." by Son of Groucho)
