Social Programs
Action Alert: Modernize Poverty Measurement
Published August 11, 2009 @ 01:01PM PT
Two bills have been introduced in Congress to update our federal poverty measure that is based on an extremely antiquated estimated proportion of a family's budget spent on food. Both the House and Senate bills rely on National Academy of Science recommendations in which "the cost of food, clothing, housing, utilities and medical expenses be considered. Income from non-cash benefits, such as food stamps and government tax credits, should also be counted" in an updated poverty measure (right now, these social supports can tip people over the poverty line and deny them much needed assistance).
The linked news piece above shows that by following the NAS recommendations, the new poverty line for a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 kids) in 2007 $$ would jump from about $21k to almost $28k, an increase of almost 25%. To my eye, it still looks extremely low. We really need to make geographic considerations when tying assistance programs to estimated costs of living.
This reform is at the heart of the work we do as anti-poverty activists. So far, the House bill, introduced in June, has 10 sponsors, all Dems, and has probably gone on to a quiet convalescence in the House Ways and Means and House Oversight and Govt. Reform Committees. The Senate Bill is less than a week old, introduced by Dodd and co-sponsored by Sen. Bingaman of New Mexico (D). It's gone on to the Senate Health (etc.) Committee, which might have its hands full right about now.
Healthcare reform or not, this is one issue that can't wait. Contact Your Representatives (and Committee Members above) and tell them to support an updated poverty measure today!
(Difference in NAS and official poverty measures, from The Stanford Ctr for the Study of Poverty & Inequality)
Understanding Medicaid Reform
Published August 07, 2009 @ 05:13AM PT
Just a quick note to let you know that I've asked occasional guest blogger NycWeboy to post here weekly on the healthcare debate, paying particular attention to the issue of Medicaid reform and possible expansion. I thought it would be a nice accompaniment to Tim's Healthcare blog, and I for one could certainly stand to learn more about the Medicaid argument.
Then I can make sense of these fretful articles about governors fighting with the feds over who's going to pick up the check for this expansion. Sigh.
A New Approach to the Old Food Bank Model
Published August 06, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Visiting the local food bank has always been viewed as somewhat of an impersonal experience chalk full of long lines, barren walls and sunken faces. You show up, wait your turn and then, if you're lucky, receive a few grocery bags full of post-expiration goods.
It is this routine that sometimes causes people to avoid taking advantage of a food bank's services, even if they desperately need them.
Sasha Abramky, in his book Breadline USA (which I've referenced before), visits a food pantry in Sacramento, California and offers this reflection:
I stopped at the table with whittled-down pencils and short charity request forms to fill in. Once inside, I made a U-turn, going back down the interior side of the brick wall that I had just advanced along from the outside. To my left was a painted wall with a sheet of metal, etched with years of graffiti; to my right, dull white-and-blue painted bricks...This wasn't a supermarket without cash registers, a consumer place of choice, of lifestyles realized. It was, I felt, rather a place for the spreading of tuberculosis or the flu, as well as every other germ, real and imagined; it was truly a last-stop hotel, a room where dignity came to die.
It was probably the desire to move away from such an institutional setting that pushed the University District Food Bank (UDFB) in Seattle to develop a new way for clients to get their hands on much-needed food.
Paying for Better Healthcare
Published August 04, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Good news! Turns out, we already are!
H/t to Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly, I see in 2008 we taxpayers spent almost $1,800 per federal worker to cover their healthcare:
Among the advantages: a choice of 10 healthcare plans that provide access to a national network of doctors, as well as several HMOs that serve each member's home state. By contrast, 85% of private companies offering health coverage provide their employees one type of plan -- take it or leave it.
Lawmakers also get special treatment at Washington's federal medical facilities and, for a few hundred dollars a month, access to their own pharmacy and doctors, nurses and medical technicians standing by in an office conveniently located between the House and Senate chambers.
In all, taxpayers spent about $15 billion last year to insure 8.5 million federal workers and their dependents, including postal service employees, according to the Office of Personnel Management.
There's also no "pre-existing condition" exclusionary cause for federal employees.
Check out the original article to read about Rep. Steve Kagen, a Democrat and former physician from WI who won't accept the federal package until all American's have the same coverage. No health insurance for Kagen, but he's got principles that clearly the rest of his colleagues lack.
(Photo from the rally for the right to healthcare in DC, June 2009, by NESRI)
Saving Middle-Class Kids at the Expense of the Poor
Published August 04, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Ok, this blog post is going to be totally contrarian, so I want to say up front that I like the research findings on which it's based, especially from a racial equity perspective, and am curious to see how/if public-private investment follows from it. But I just have to pick at something; stay w/me here...
A report from the Pew Charitable Trusts came out last week that shows that the #1 reason about half of middle-class African-American kids experience downward mobility as adults (i.e., they are poorer when they grow up) is because they grow up in high poverty neighborhoods. Lots of research has shown that middle-class and low-income Blacks often live in the same or proximate neighborhoods to one another. "Half of black children born between 1955 and 1970 in families with incomes of $62,000 or higher in today's dollars grew up in high-poverty neighborhoods." And the data is not much different today.
The report authors (disclosure: I used to blog with Pat Sharkey at the now defunct Foresight) have this to say:
Sharkey and Morton said policymakers can take heart in one finding: Black children in neighborhoods in which poverty fell by 10 percent had higher incomes as adults than those who grew up in areas where the poverty rate stayed the same. This is a sign, they said, that simply improving the overall economy and quality of a given neighborhood can have beneficial effects on those growing up in it.
But the report also concludes that the data shows that we need more cradle-to-crave, neighborhood based investments, a la Harlem Children's Zone, a strategy that "holds more promise than dispersing poor families into middle-class neighborhoods by giving them housing vouchers, a strategy that has had mixed results and could be difficult to implement on a large scale."
But, doesn't dispersal of low-income Americans, by vouchers and HOPE VI, for instance, make their prior neighborhoods better off for the middle-class kids living there? So doesn't this report suggest that we should sacrifice the poor on behalf of the middle-class?
At a minimum, it points to the need to face the persistence of poverty in the U.S., and its drag on us all.
(Marching band practice in Detroit; photo by Karpov the Wrecked Train)
Is it Time to Protest Yet?
Published August 03, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
More on those unemployment #s: Corrente takes a look at the National Employment Law Project report on unemployment - 1.5M Americans will have exhausted their unemployment benefits by 12/31/09 - and wonders if this is what will finally "break" us. And by break I mean rise up and fight back against atrocious wealth inequality.
I'm skeptical. Almost one-third of unemployed workers haven't worked in six months. That's a long time to be home all day, surfing the internet, sending out resumes, playing with your kids, letting yourself go, feeling your self-confidence and sense of self-worth along with your "soft skills" just totally atrophy. And from this sense of desperation we're going to fight for our economic rights? Revolution doesn't come from desperation; it comes from a sense of entitlement that we deserve more. We have to recognize our own oppression before we can revolt against it. This idea that work = self-worth means that out-of-work Americans just aren't our go-to revolutionaries. We're nothing without our jobs, and we get nothing from our society without them. And we buy into this set-up.
We're coming on 6 months since we last had this conversation about worker protest. As 500,000 Americans gear up to lose their unemployment benefits next month, seems like now's the time to have this discussion again.
What's it going to take, people??
(Photo of strike threat by janitorial workers in Santa Monica by Steve Lyons)
A Nation of Hustlers?
Published August 03, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
(Photo of "Hunger Amidst Plenty" by Kamal H.)
I have to ask: why do so many of our public policies assume the worst of human nature? Check this out from a depressing NYT piece on how unemployment benefits are going to run out by year's end for a frightening # of unemployed Americans:
Traditionally, many economists have been leery of prolonged unemployment benefits because they can reduce the incentive to seek work. But that should not be a concern now because jobs remain so scarce, said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard.
For every job that becomes available, about six people are looking, Dr. Katz said. “Unemployment insurance gives income to families who are really suffering and can’t find work even if they are hustling to look,” he said.
Look, $300 a week in unemployment benefits is nothing to sneer at, but honestly, is it really a negative incentive? It's slightly more generous than working full-time for a week at minimum wage, and it's about half of what the median hourly wage pays weekly in the US.
Why do we assume that by offering any shred of a safety net we're creating a nation of loafers, hustlers, thieves, layabouts, and their rapaciously needy offspring?
Seriously - what are the roots of these very disturbing assumptions? I don't get it.
