More Money For The Rich While The Sick Die

   NOTE: The GOP Agenda,  The Wealthiest Americans Receive An Extension On The Bush Tax Cuts which adds to the deficit while the rest of us  languish.  I find it Morally Reprehensible that there always seems to be money for Corporate Welfare, Tax Cuts for The Filthy Rich but never  anything for the struggling American Families.  The GOP are forever attacking Social Service Programs. This sickens me beyond words.

 By CARLA K. JOHNSON, AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson, Ap Medical Writer

CHICAGO – In Illinois, a pharmacist closes his business because of late Medicaid payments. In Arizona, a young father's liver transplant is canceled because Medicaid suddenly won't pay for it. In California, dentists pull teeth that could be saved because Medicaid doesn't pay for root canals.
Across the country, state lawmakers have taken harsh actions to try to rein in the budget-busting costs of the health care program that serves 58 million poor and disabled Americans. Some states have cut payments to doctors, paid bills late and trimmed benefits such as insulin pumps, obesity surgery and hospice care.
Lawmakers are bracing for more work when they reconvene in January. Some states face multibillion-dollar deficits. Federal stimulus money for Medicaid is soon to evaporate. And Medicaid enrollment has never been higher because of job losses.
In the view of some lawmakers, Medicaid has become a monster, and it's eating the budget. In Illinois, Medicaid sucks up more money than elementary, secondary and higher education combined.
"Medicaid is such a large, complicated part of our budget problem, that to get our hands around it is very difficult. It's that big. It's that bad," said Illinois Sen. Dale Righter, a Republican and co-chairman of a bipartisan panel to reform Medicaid in Illinois, where nearly 30 percent of total spending goes to the program.
Medicaid costs are shared by the federal and state governments. It's not just the poor and disabled who benefit. Wealthier people do, too, such as when middle-class families with elderly parents in nursing homes are relieved of financial pressure after Medicaid starts picking up the bills.
Contrary to stereotype, it's the elderly and disabled who cost nearly 70 cents of every Medicaid dollar, not the single mother and her children.
In California, Medicaid no longer pays for many adult dental services. But it still pays for extractions, that is, tooth-pulling. The unintended consequence: Medicaid patients tell dentists to pull teeth that could be saved.
"The roots are fine. The tooth could be saved with a root canal," said Dr. Nagaraj Murthy, who practices in Compton, Calif. "I had a patient yesterday. I said we could do a root canal. He said, `No, it's hurting. Go ahead and pull it. I don't have the money.'"
Murthy recently pulled an elderly woman's last tooth, but Medicaid no longer pays for dentures.
"Elderly patients suffer the most," Murthy said. "They're walking around with no teeth."
States can decide which optional services Medicaid covers, and dental care is among cutbacks in some places. Last year's economic stimulus package increased the federal share of Medicaid money temporarily. But that money runs out at the end of June, when the federal government will go back to paying half the costs rather than 60 to 70 percent. So more cuts could be ahead.
During the Great Recession, millions of people relied on the Medicaid safety net. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of uninsured Americans grew by more than 5 million as workers lost jobs with employer-based insurance. Another 7 million signed up for Medicaid.
Just when caseloads hit their highest point, the nation's new health care law required states not to change the rules on who's eligible for Medicaid. That means states can't roll up the welcome mat by tightening Medicaid's income requirements.
So states have resorted to a variety of painful options.
In Arizona, lawmakers stopped paying for some kinds of transplants, including livers for people with hepatitis C. When the cuts took effect Oct. 1, Medicaid patient Francisco Felix, who needs a liver, suddenly had to raise $500,000 to get a transplant.
The 32-year-old's case took a dramatic turn in November when a friend's wife died, and her liver became available. Felix was prepped for surgery in hopes financial donations would come in. When the money didn't materialize, the liver went to someone else, and Felix went home. His doctor told him he has a year before he'll be too sick for a transplant.
"They are taking away his opportunity to live," said his wife, Flor Felix. "It's impossible for us or any family to get that much money." The family is collecting donations through a website and plans a yard sale this weekend, she said.
The choices are difficult for states that have already cut payments to doctors and hospitals to the bone.
"If we don't see an economic recovery where state revenues rebound, they're really going to be very strained on how they can make ends meet," said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
States may consider lowering payment rates to nursing homes or home health agencies or further reducing payments to doctors, Rowland said.
"The problem here is the program is pretty lean, and payment rates are pretty low," she said. Patients can't find care because fewer doctors accept the low payments.
Prescription drug coverage in states is an optional benefit, another possible place to cut, Rowland said. "But if you cut back on people's psychotropic drugs, is that penny-wise and pound-foolish? Do they end up in institutions where Medicaid pays more for their care?"
In Illinois, late payments became the rule.
Tom Miller closed his pharmacy in rural southern Illinois this summer and is going through bankruptcy, largely because the state was chronically late making Medicaid payments to him. Most of his former customers are in the program.
With the state sometimes months behind in payments, he couldn't pay his suppliers. Five workers lost their jobs when his business closed.
"You can only fight it for so long," said Miller, 54. He now works as a pharmacist in a hospital. He misses his old clients, the families he grew to know.
"I was in my third generation. I've had moms who had kids. I saw the kids raised, and they had their own children," he said. As a neighborhood pharmacist, "you're their friend. You're family."

Income Gap Widens: Census Finds Record Gap Between Rich And Poor

Income Gap Widens: Census Finds Record Gap Between Rich And Poor

Yes indeed , Congress must extend the the Bushes Tax Cut to The Rich....it's worked so well in the past ten years...at least it has for The Rich 

WASHINGTON — The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession.

The top-earning 20 percent of Americans – those making more than $100,000 each year – received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line, according to newly released census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

A different measure, the international Gini index, found U.S. income inequality at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The U.S. also has the greatest disparity among Western industrialized nations.

At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, census data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.

"Income inequality is rising, and if we took into account tax data, it would be even more," said Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in poverty. "More than other countries, we have a very unequal income distribution where compensation goes to the top in a winner-takes-all economy."

Lower-skilled adults ages 18 to 34 had the largest jumps in poverty last year as employers kept or hired older workers for the dwindling jobs available, Smeeding said. The declining economic fortunes have caused many unemployed young Americans to double-up in housing with parents, friends and loved ones, with potential problems for the labor market if they don't get needed training for future jobs, he said.

Rea Hederman Jr., a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, agreed that census data show families of all income levels had tepid earnings in 2009, with poorer Americans taking a larger hit. "It's certainly going to take a while for people to recover," he said.

The findings are part of a broad array of U.S. census data being released this month that highlight the far-reaching impact of the recent economic meltdown. The effects have ranged from near-historic declines in U.S. mobility and birth rates to delayed marriage and the first drop in the number of illegal immigrants in two decades.

The census figures also come amid heated political debate in the run-up to the Nov. 2 elections over whether Congress should extend expiring Bush-era tax cuts. President Barack Obama wants to extend the tax cuts for individuals making less than $200,000 and joint filers making less than $250,000; Republicans are pushing for tax cuts for everyone, including wealthy Americans.

The 2009 census tabulations, which are based on pre-tax income and exclude capital gains, are adjusted for household size where data are available. Prior analyses of after-tax income made by the wealthiest 1 percent compared to middle- and low-income Americans have also pointed to a widening inequality gap, but only reflect U.S. data as of 2007.

Among the 2009 findings:

• The poorest poor are at record highs. The share of Americans below half the poverty line – $10,977 for a family of four – rose from 5.7 percent in 2008 to 6.3 percent. It was the highest level since the government began tracking that group in 1975.

• The poverty gap between young and old has doubled since 2000, due partly to the strength of Social Security in helping buoy Americans 65 and over. Child poverty is now 21 percent compared with 9 percent for older Americans. In 2000, when child poverty was at 16 percent, elderly poverty stood at 10 percent.

• Safety nets are helping fill health gaps. The percentage of children covered by government-sponsored health insurance such as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program jumped to 37 percent, or 27.6 million, from 24 percent in 2000. That helped offset steady losses in employer-sponsored insurance.

The 2009 poverty level was set at $21,954 for a family of four, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income. It excludes noncash aid such as food stamps.

Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted the effects of expanded government programs in cushioning the impact of skyrocketing unemployment. For example, the Census Bureau estimates that 3.6 million people would have been lifted above the poverty line if food stamps were counted – a number that would have reduced the 2009 poverty rate from the official 14.3 percent to 13.2 percent.

Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor, said while the U.S. has developed policies to combat poverty, it has trouble addressing ever-widening income inequality – even with a growing federal deficit and previous warnings by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan about soaring executive pay.

An Associated Press-GfK Poll this month found that by 54 percent to 44 percent, most Americans support raising taxes on the highest U.S. earners. Still, many congressional Democrats have expressed wariness about provoking the 44 percent minority so close to Election Day.

"We're pretty good about not talking about income inequality," Danziger said.


Online:

http://www.census.gov

The Religious Right on Poverty

Understanding Poverty in America | The Heritage Foundation

I find this article offensive.  People in America who have slip into poverty be it  due to job loss be it from job outsourcing, company downsizing, illness, etc...there are any number of reasons how a person could find themselves living under the poverty line.  It could be a slow descent into poverty or can happen in what seems to be a blink of an eye.  Another point:  just because one has a DVD player or a TV or a dishwasher is of little meaning for the simple fact that  many people had a job and were able to buy things such as a DVD player, TV or any other seemingly luxury items before falling into poverty.  I am very much offended by this article.....but that's just me.

This is a Backgrounder On Welfare and Poverty and Inequality

Understanding Poverty in America

Published on January 5, 2004 by Robert Rector and Kirk Johnson, Ph.D. Backgrounder #1713

This key research from 2004 has been updated in Robert Rector's new paper, How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the "Plague" of Poverty in America Each year, the U.S. Census Bureau counts the number of "poor" persons in the U.S. In 2005, the Bureau found 37 million "poor" Americans. Presidential candidate John Edwards claims that these 37 million Americans currently "struggle with incredible poverty." Edwards asserts that America's poor, who number "one in eight of us…do not have enough money for the food, shelter, and clothing they need," and are forced to live in "terrible" circumstances.However, an examination of the living standards of the 37 million persons, whom the government defines as "poor," reveals that what Edwards calls "the plague" of American poverty might not be as "terrible" or "incredible" as candidate Edwards contends.

Poverty is an important and emotional issue. Last year, the Census Bureau released its annual report on poverty in the United States declaring that there were nearly 35 million poor persons living in this country in 2002, a small increase from the preceding year. To understand poverty in America, it is important to look behind these numbers to look at the actual living conditions of the individuals the government deems to be poor.
For most Americans, the word "poverty" suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. But only a small number of the 35 million persons classified as "poor" by the Census Bureau fit that description. While real material hardship certainly does occur, it is limited in scope and severity. Most of America's "poor" live in material conditions that would be judged as comfortable or welloff just a few generations ago. Today, the expenditures per person of the lowestincome onefifth (or quintile) of households equal those of the median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation.1
The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:

• Fortysix percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a threebedroom house with oneandahalf baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
• Seventysix percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
• Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than twothirds have more than two rooms per person.
• The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
• Nearly threequarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.
• Ninetyseven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
• Seventyeight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
• Seventythree percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.

As a group, America's poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middleclass children and, in most cases, is well above recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higherincome children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above recommended levels. Most poor children today are, in fact, supernourished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier that the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.
While the poor are generally wellnourished, some poor families do experience hunger, meaning a temporary discomfort due to food shortages. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 13 percent of poor families and 2.6 percent of poor children experience hunger at some point during the year. In most cases, their hunger is shortterm. Eightynine percent of the poor report their families have "enough" food to eat, while only 2 percent say they "often" do not have enough to eat.
Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.
Of course, the living conditions of the average poor American should not be taken as representing all the poor. There is actually a wide range in living conditions among the poor. For example, over a quarter of poor households have cell phones and telephone answering machines, but, at the other extreme, approximately onetenth have no phone at all. While the majority of poor households do not experience significant material problems, roughly a third do experience at least one problem such as overcrowding, temporary hunger, or difficulty getting medical care.
The best news is that remaining poverty can readily be reduced further, particularly among children. There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and fathers are absent from the home.
In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.
Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly twothirds of poor children reside in singleparent homes; each year, an additional 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost threequarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty.
While work and marriage are steady ladders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both. Major programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid continue to reward idleness and penalize marriage. If welfare could be turned around to encourage work and marriage, remaining poverty would drop quickly.

What Is Poverty?
For most Americans, the word "poverty" suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. For example, the "Poverty Pulse" poll taken by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development in 2002 asked the general public the question: "How would you describe being poor in the U.S.?" The overwhelming majority of responses focused on homelessness, hunger or not being able to eat properly, and not being able to meet basic needs. 2
But if poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, relatively few of the 35 million people identified as being "in poverty" by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor.3 While material hardship does exist in the United States, it is quite restricted in scope and severity. The average "poor" person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines.

Ownership of Property and Amenities Among the Poor
Table 1 shows the ownership of property and consumer durables among poor households. The data are taken from the American Housing Survey for 2001, conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Census Bureau, and the Residential Energy Consumption Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy.4

As the table shows, some 46 percent of poor households own their own home. The typical home owned by the poor is a threebedroom house with oneandahalf baths. It has a garage or carport and a porch or patio and is located on a halfacre lot. The house was constructed in 1967 and is in good repair. The median value of homes owned by poor households was $86,600 in 2001 or 70 percent of the median value of all homes owned in the United States.5
Some 73 percent of poor households own a car or truck; nearly a third own two or more cars or trucks. Over threequarters have air conditioning; by contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the general U.S. population had air conditioning. Nearly threequarters of poor households own microwaves; a third have automatic dishwashers.

Poor households are wellequipped with modern entertainment technology. It should come as no surprise that nearly all (97 percent) poor households have color TVs, but more than half actually own two or more color televisions. Onequarter own largescreen televisions, 78 percent have a VCR or DVD player, and almost twothirds have cable or satellite TV reception. Some 58 percent own a stereo. More than a third have telephone answering machines, while a quarter have personal computers. While these numbers do not suggest lives of luxury, they are notably different from conventional images of poverty.

Housing Conditions
A similar disparity between popular conceptions and reality applies to the housing conditions of the poor. Most poor Americans live in houses or apartments that are relatively spacious and in good repair. As Chart 1 shows, 54 percent of poor households live in singlefamily homes, either unattached single dwellings or attached units such as townhouses. Another 36.4 percent live in apartments, and 9.6 percent live in mobile homes.6

Housing Space

Both the overall U.S. population and the poor in America live, in general, in very spacious housing. As Table 2 shows, 70 percent of all U.S. households have two or more rooms per tenant. Among the poor, this figure is 68 percent.


Crowding is quite rare; only 2.5 percent of all households and 5.7 percent of poor households are crowded with more than one person per room.7 By contrast, social reformer Jacob Riis, writing on tenement living conditions around 1890 in New York City, described crowded families living with four or five persons per room and some 20 square feet of living space per person.8
Housing space can also be measured by the number of square feet per person. The Residential Energy Consumption survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy shows that Americans have an average of 721 square feet of living space per person. Poor Americans have 439 square feet.9 Reasonably comparable international squarefootage data are provided by the Housing Indicator Program of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, which surveyed housing conditions in major cities in 54 different nations. This survey showed the United States to have by far the most spacious housing units, with 50 percent to 100 percent more square footage per capita than city dwellers in other industrialized nations.10
America's poor compare favorably with the general population of other nations in square footage of living space. The average poor American has more square footage of living space than does the average person living in London, Paris, Vienna, and Munich. Poor Americans have nearly three times the living space of average urban citizens in middleincome countries such as Mexico and Turkey. Poor American households have seven times more housing space per person than the general urban population of verylowincome countries such as India and China. (See Appendix Table A for more detailed information.)

Some critics have argued that the comparisons in Table 3 are misleading.11 These critics claim that U.S. housing in general cannot be compared to housing in specific European cities such as Paris or London because housing in these cities is unusually small and does not represent the European housing stock overall. To assess the validity of this argument, Table 4 presents national housing data for 15 West European countries. These data represent the entire national housing stock in each of the 15 countries. In general, the national data on housing size are similar to the data on specific European cities presented in Table 3 and Appendix Table A.

As Table 4 shows, U.S. housing (with an average size of 1,875 square feet per unit) is nearly twice as large as European housing (with an average size of 976 square feet per unit.) After adjusting for the number of persons in each dwelling unit, Americans have an average of 721 square feet per person, compared to 396 square feet for the average European.

The housing of poor Americans (with an average of 1,228 square feet per unit) is smaller than that of the average American but larger than that of the average European (who has 976 square feet per unit). Overall, poor Americans have an average of 439 square feet of living space per person, which is as much as or more than the average citizen in most West European countries. (This comparison is to the average European, not poor Europeans.)

Housing Quality

Of course, it might be possible that the housing of poor American households could be spacious but still dilapidated or unsafe. However, data from the American Housing Survey indicate that such is not the case. For example, the survey provides a tally of households with "severe physical problems." Only a tiny portion of poor households and an even smaller portion of total households fall into that category.

The most common "severe problem," according to the American Housing Survey, is a shared bathroom, which occurs when occupants lack a bathroom and must share bathroom facilities with individuals in a neighboring unit. This condition affects about 1 percent of all U.S. households and 2 percent of all poor households. About onehalf of 1 percent (0.5 percent) of all households and 2 percent of poor households have other "severe physical problems." The most common are repeated heating breakdowns and upkeep problems.

The American Housing Survey also provides a count of households affected by "moderate physical problems." A wider range of households falls into this category 9 percent of the poor and nearly 5 percent of total households. However, the problems affecting these units are clearly modest. While living in such units might be disagreeable by modern middleclass standards, they are a far cry from Dickensian squalor. The most common problems are upkeep, lack of a full kitchen, and use of unvented oil, kerosene or gas heaters as the primary heat source. (The last condition occurs almost exclusively in the South.)

Hunger and Malnutrition in America
There are frequent charges of widespread hunger and malnutrition in the United States.12 To understand these assertions, it is important, first of all, to distinguish between hunger and the more severe problem of malnutrition. Malnutrition (also called undernutrition) is a condition of reduced health due to a chronic shortage of calories and nutriments. There is little or no evidence of povertyinduced malnutrition in the United States.
Hunger is a far less severe condition: a temporary but real discomfort caused by an empty stomach. The government defines hunger as "the uneasy or painful sensation caused by lack of food."13 While hunger due to a lack of financial resources does occur in the United States, it is limited in scope and duration. According to the USDA, on a typical day, fewer than one American in 200 will experience hunger due to a lack of money to buy food.14 The hunger rate rises somewhat when examined over a longer time period; according to the USDA, some 6.9 million Americans, or 2.4 percent of the population, were hungry at least once during 2002.15 Nearly all hunger in the United States is shortterm and episodic rather than continuous.16
Some 92 percent of those who experienced hunger in 2002 were adults, and only 8 percent were children. Overall, some 567,000 children, or 0.8 percent of all children, were hungry at some point in 2002. In a typical month, roughly one child in 400 skipped one or more meals because the family lacked funds to buy food.

Not only is hunger relatively rare among U.S. children, but it has declined sharply since the mid1990s. As Chart 2 shows, the number of hungry children was cut by a third between 1995 and 2002. According to the USDA, in 1995, there were 887,000 hungry children: by 2002, the number had fallen to 567,000.17

Overall, some 97 percent of the U.S. population lived in families that reported they had "enough food to eat" during the entire year, although not always the kinds of foods they would have preferred. Around 2.5 percent stated their families "sometimes" did not have "enough to eat" due to money shortages, and onehalf of 1 percent (0.5 percent) said they "often" did not have enough to eat due to a lack of funds. (See Chart 3.)

Hunger and Poverty

Among the poor, the hunger rate was obviously higher: During 2002, 12.8 percent of the poor lived in households in which at least one member experienced hunger at some point.18 Among poor children, 2.4 percent experienced hunger at some point in the year.19 Overall, most poor households were not hungry and did not experience food shortages during the year.

When asked, some 89 percent of poor households reported they had "enough food to eat" during the entire year, although not always the kinds of food they would prefer. Around 9 percent stated they "sometimes" did not have enough to eat because of a lack of money to buy food. Another 2 percent of the poor stated that they "often" did not have enough to eat due to a lack of funds.20 (See Chart 3.)

Poverty and Malnutrition

It is widely believed that a lack of financial resources forces poor people to eat lowquality diets that are deficient in nutriments and high in fat. However, survey data show that nutriment density (amount of vitamins, minerals, and protein per kilocalorie of food) does not vary by income class.21 Nor do the poor consume higherfat diets than do the middle class; the percentage of persons with high fat intake (as a share of total calories) is virtually the same for lowincome and uppermiddleincome persons.22 Overconsumption of calories in general, however, is a major problem among the poor, as it is within the general U.S. population.
Examination of the average nutriment consumption of Americans reveals that age and gender play a far greater role than income class in determining nutritional intake. For example, the nutriment intakes of adult women in the upper middle class (with incomes above 350 percent of the poverty level) more closely resemble the intakes of poor women than they do those of uppermiddleclass men, children, or teens.23 The average nutriment consumption of uppermiddleincome preschoolers, as a group, is virtually identical with that of poor preschoolers but not with the consumption of adults or older children in the upper middle class.
This same pattern holds for adult males, teens, and most other age and gender groups. In general, children aged 011 years have the highest average level of nutriment intakes relative to the recommended daily allowance (RDA), followed by adult and teen males. Adult and teen females have the lowest level of intakes. This pattern holds for all income classes.
Nutrition and Poor Children

Government surveys provide little evidence of widespread undernutrition among poor children; in fact, they show that the average nutriment consumption among the poor closely resembles that of the upper middle class. For example, children in families with incomes below the poverty level actually consume more meat than do children in families with incomes at 350 percent of the poverty level or higher (roughly $65,000 for a family of four in today's dollars).
Table 5 shows the average intake of protein, vitamins, and minerals as a percentage of the recommended daily allowance among poor and middleclass children at various age levels.24 The intake of nutriments is very similar for poor and middleclass children and is generally well above the recommended daily level. For example, the consumption of protein (a relatively expensive nutriment) among poor children is, on average, between 150 percent and 267 percent of the RDA.

When shortfalls of specific vitamins and minerals appear (for example, among teenage girls), they tend to be very similar for the poor and the middle class. While poor teenage girls, on average, tend to underconsume vitamin E, vitamin B6, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, and zinc, a virtually identical underconsumption of these same nutriments appears among upper middleclass girls.
Poor Children's Weight and Stature

On average, poor children are very wellnourished, and there is no evidence of widespread significant undernutrition. For example, two indicators of undernutrition among the young are "thinness" (low weight for height) and stuntedness (low height for age). These problems are rare to nonexistent among poor American children.
The generally good health of poor American children can be illustrated by international comparisons. Table 6 provides data on children's size based on the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Data Base on Child Growth: Children are judged to be short or "stunted" if their height falls below the 2.3 percentile level of standard heighttoage tables.25 Table 6 shows the percentage of children under age five in developing nations who are judged to be "stunted" by this standard.

In developing nations as a whole, some 43 percent of children are stunted. In Africa, more than a third of young children are affected; in Asia, nearly half.26 By contrast, in the United States, some 2.6 percent of young children in poor households are stunted by a comparable standard a rate only slightly above the expected standard for healthy, wellnourished children.27 While concern for the wellbeing of poor American children is always prudent, the data overall underscore how large and wellnourished poor American children are by global standards.
Throughout this century, improvements in nutrition and health have led to increases in the rate of growth and ultimate height and weight of American children. Poor children have clearly benefited from this trend. Poor boys today at ages 18 and 19 are actually taller and heavier than boys of similar age in the general U.S. population in the late 1950s. Poor boys living today are one inch taller and some 10 pounds heavier than GIs of similar age during World War II, and nearly two inches taller and 20 pounds heavier than American doughboys back in World War I.28
Poverty and Obesity

The principal nutritionrelated health problem among the poor, as with the general U.S. population, stems from the overconsumption, not underconsumption, of food. While overweight and obesity are prevalent problems throughout the U.S. population, they are found most frequently among poor adults. Poor adult men are slightly less likely than nonpoor men to be overweight (30.4 percent compared to 31.9 percent); but, as Chart 4 shows, poor adult women are significantly more likely to be overweight than are nonpoor women (47.3 percent compared to 32 percent).29

Living Conditions and Hardships Among the Poor
Overall, the living standards of most poor Americans are far higher than is generally appreciated. The overwhelming majority of poor families are wellhoused, have adequate food, and enjoy a wide range of modern amenities, including air conditioning and cable television. Some 70 percent of poor households report that during the course of the past year they were able to meet "all essential expenses," including mortgage, rent, utility bills, and important medical care.30 (See Chart 5.)

However, two caveats should be applied to this generally optimistic picture. First, many poor families have difficulty paying their regular bills and must scramble to make ends meet. For example, around onequarter of poor families are late in paying the rent or utility bills at some point during the year.
Second, the living conditions of the average poor household should not be taken to represent all poor households. There is a wide range of living conditions among the poor; while more than a quarter of the poor have cell phones and answering machines, a tenth of the poor have no telephone at all. While most of America's poor live in accommodations with two or more rooms per person, roughly a tenth of the poor are crowded, with less than one room per person.

These points are illustrated in Table 7, which lists the financial and material hardships among poor households in 1998.31 During at least one month in the preceding year, some 20 percent of poor households reported they were unable to pay their fuel, gas, or electric bills promptly; around 4 percent had their utilities cut off at some point due to nonpayment. Another 13 percent of poor households failed, at some point in the year, to make their full monthly rent or mortgage payments, and 1 percent were evicted due to failure to pay rent. One in 10 poor families had their phones disconnected due to nonpayment at some time during the preceding year.

Overall, more than onequarter of poor families experienced at least one financial difficulty during the year. Most had a late payment of rent or utility bills. Some 12 percent had phones or utilities cut off or were evicted.

Poor households also experienced the material problems listed on Table 7.32 Some 14 percent lacked medical insurance and had a family member who needed to go to a doctor or hospital but did not go; 11 percent experienced hunger in the household; and around 9 percent were overcrowded, with more than one person per room. Slightly less than 4 percent of poor households experienced upkeep problems with the physical conditions of their apartments or homes, having three or more of the physical problems listed in Table 7.

Overall Hardship

Altogether, around 58 percent of poor households experienced none of the financial or physical hardships listed in Table 7 These families were able to pay all their bills on time. They were able to obtain medical care if needed, were not hungry or crowded, and had few upkeep problems in the home. Another 20 percent of poor households experienced one financial or material problem during the year. Around 10 percent of poor households had two financial or material problems, while 12 percent had three or more.

The most common problem facing poor households was late payment of rent or utilities. While having difficulty paying monthly bills is stressful, in most cases late payment did not result in material hardship or deprivation. If late payment problems are excluded from the count, we find that twothirds of poor households had none of the remaining problems listed in Table 7. Some 22 percent had one problem, and 12 percent had two or more problems.

While it is appropriate to be concerned about the difficulties faced by some poor families, it is important to keep these problems in perspective. Many poor families have intermittent difficulty paying rent or utility bills but remain very wellhoused by historic or international standards. Even poor families who are overcrowded and hungry, by U.S. standards, are still likely to have living conditions that are far above the world average.

Reducing Child Poverty
The generally high living standards of poor Americans are good news. Even better is the fact that our nation can readily reduce remaining poverty, especially among children. To accomplish this, we must focus on the main causes of child poverty: low levels of parental work and high levels of single parenthood.

In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week through the year nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.33
The decline in marriage is the second major cause of child poverty. Nearly twothirds of poor children reside in singleparent homes; each year, an additional 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock. Increasing marriage would substantially reduce child poverty: If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost threequarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty.34
In recent years, the United States has established a reasonable record in reducing child poverty. Successful antipoverty policies were partially implemented in the welfare reform legislation of 1996, which replaced the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with a new program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

A key element of this reform was a requirement that some welfare mothers either prepare for work or get jobs as a condition of receiving aid. As this requirement went into effect, welfare rolls plummeted and employment of single mothers increased in an unprecedented manner. As employment of single mothers rose, child poverty dropped rapidly. For example, in the quartercentury before welfare reform, there was no net change in the poverty rate of children in singlemother families; after reform was enacted, the poverty rate dropped in an unprecedented fashion, falling from 53.1 percent in 1995 to 39.8 percent in 2001.35
In general, however, welfare reform has been limited in both scope and intensity. Even in the TANF program, over half the adult beneficiaries are idle on the rolls and are not engaged in activities leading to selfsufficiency. Work requirements are virtually nonexistent in related programs such as food stamps and public housing. Even worse, despite the fact that marriage has enormous financial and psychological benefits for parents and children, welfare reform has done little or nothing to strengthen marriage in lowincome communities. Overall, the welfare system continues to encourage idle dependence rather than work and to reward single parenthood while penalizing marriage.

If child poverty is to be substantially reduced, welfare must be transformed. Ablebodied parents must be required to work or prepare for work, and the welfare system should encourage rather than penalize marriage.

Conclusion
The living conditions of persons defined as poor by the government bear little resemblance to notions of "poverty" held by the general public. If poverty is defined as lacking adequate nutritious food for one's family, a reasonably warm and dry apartment to live in, or a car with which to get to work when one is needed, then there are relatively few poor persons remaining in the United States. Real material hardship does occur, but it is limited in scope and severity.

The typical American defined as "poor" by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.

But the living conditions of the average poor person should not be taken to mean that all poor Americans live without hardship. There is a wide range of living conditions among the poor. Roughly a third of poor households do face material hardships such as overcrowding, intermittent food shortages, or difficulty obtaining medical care. However, even these households would be judged to have high living standards in comparison to most other people in the world.

Perhaps the best news is that the United States can readily reduce its remaining poverty, especially among children. The main causes of child poverty in the United States are low levels of parental work and high numbers of singleparent families. By increasing work and marriage, our nation can virtually eliminate remaining child poverty.

Robert E. Rector is Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies and Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., is Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Fellow in Statistical Welfare Research in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.

About the Author

Robert Rector Senior Research Fellow

Kirk Johnson, Ph.D. Visiting Fellow

Poor America

By Sebastian Stache
In 'the land of the free and the home of the brave,' it is not socially acceptable to have to depend on government help. . .

Translated By Ron Argentati
5 December 2009

Edited by Patricia Simoni

Germany - Junge Welt - Original Article (German)

More and More People are Going Hungry in the United States

Thanksgiving was celebrated in America just over a week ago. The origin of this important holiday was a lavish feast the Pilgrim settlers gave for their Native American neighbors, without whose help they would never have survived through the winter. There was plenty for everybody, and no one went away hungry. But today, while some people’s refrigerators are still packed with the leftovers of their opulent holiday banquets, many Americans face malnutrition. The numbers recently released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are shocking. According to them, 45 million Americans cannot afford to buy sufficient food. That is nearly 15 percent of the national population and 10 million more people than two years before. The situation for children is even more dramatic: one in four must depend on government assistance for nourishment.

It does not help that the agency responsible, the USDA, recently replaced the word “hunger” with the more palatable term, “food insecurity”, in its statistics. This artificial public relations term cannot hide the facts, however. The indications of increasing poverty are all too clear in the richest country on earth. But how could the situation ever develop in which a nation that exports more food than anyone else allows its own citizens to go hungry?

Unemployment is one reason for the increase in the number of people who cannot afford to buy food. Since the start of the economic crisis, a shock that had its epicenter in the U.S., 7.3 million workers have lost their jobs. The jobless rate more than doubled within a year, recently leveling off at around 10 percent. If one considers that many have no social safety net on which they can depend, one begins to realize just how hard their fall can be. The transition from home owner to homeless within months is just as real a scenario in the U.S. as the contrast between the overloaded refrigerator and the poor person going hungry.

Another factor that negatively affects the situation is the deep divide between rich and poor in America. The richest 400 Americans were able to increase their personal wealth by some $700 billion over the last 10 years, while during the same period, the poorest classes saw their personal wealth decline by $1,600 per year. Although the wealthy may feel the negative effects of the financial crisis on their investment portfolios and real estate holdings, they are not forced to live a hand-to-mouth existence.

Making things even more difficult for the hungry is the mixture of pride and national opinion decreeing that everyone is responsible for his or her own fate. In “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” it is not socially acceptable to have to depend on government help, and that explains why many needy people in the U.S. do not even seek assistance: it is a matter of personal embarrassment. In California, only about half the people eligible for food assistance actually take advantage of it.

And because many Americans consider solidarity to be some kind of communist plot, they leave a lot to be desired when it comes to helping others through these needy times. The New York soup kitchens reported donations for their annual Thanksgiving holiday dinner were down some 60 percent this year while the demand rose 40 percent.

Poverty In America Is Of No Concern In Washington

Capitol Hill reaction to poverty figures sidetracked by political concerns

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 17, 2010; 10:59 PM

Deborah Weinstein, a longtime advocate for the poor, calls the news that one in seven Americans is living in poverty "a national emergency."

But for much of Washington's political class, the shocking new poverty numbers provoked not alarm about the poor but further debate over tax cuts for the middle class.

"We know that a strong middle class leads a strong economy," President Obama told reporters in the Rose Garden on Friday, as he used the new census report, which also showed that middle-class income has dipped slightly over the past decade, to continue making his case for limiting the cuts to family incomes under $250,000.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders in the House and Senate had no reaction to the poverty report. But earlier in the week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took the Senate floor to argue for extending the tax breaks to everyone, saying, "We can't let the people who have been hit hardest by this recession and who we need to create jobs to get us out of it" be subject to a tax increase.

McConnell's spokesman later clarified the statement, saying that McConnell indeed believes the economic downturn has hit the poor harder than it has high-income business owners, who also have suffered.

The reluctance of political leaders on both sides of the aisle to directly confront the fact that growing numbers of Americans are slipping into poverty reflects a stubborn reality about the poor: They are not much of a political constituency.

"We talk to many people on Capitol Hill who do believe poverty is important and is a blight on our nation," said Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, an alliance of national organizations that advocates for the poor. "But we are also up against a general recognition that poor people don't vote in great numbers. And they certainly aren't going to be making campaign contributions. That definitely puts them behind many other people and interests when decisions are being made around here."

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), who counts among his legislative accomplishments bills to extend unemployment insurance and to provide housing for people suffering from AIDS, said that the current downturn has expanded the definition of the poor. No longer are the poor the chronically impoverished who scrape along at the bottom of the economic pecking order in good times and bad. They now include many working people who have been thrown out of their jobs by a brutal recession.

"The fact is, increasingly, we are talking about people we know," McDermott said. Still, he said, "For most elected officials, there is nothing politically in talking about the poor. In fact, they don't vote very well and they are not very participatory in political life. Politicians tend to talk to people who get involved."

McDermott said he has been urging his colleagues to take a fresh look at poverty. The new report showed that the ranks of the American poor soared to their highest level in half a century in 2009. Meanwhile, millions more are existing just beyond the poverty line, which is about $22,000 a year for a family of four.

The official poverty rate is just one aspect of the economic upheaval unleashed by the recession. Since 2007, the country has lost almost 4 million wage earners. And for the first time since the government began tracking health insurance in 1987, the number of people who have health coverage declined, a circumstance destined to change when the Obama-led health-care overhaul fully kicks in by 2014.

With foreclosures continuing to rise and long-term unemployment at record levels, McDermott said, the legacy of the economic crisis will affect society in a way the country has not experienced since the aftermath of the Great Depression.

Even amid the devastating downturn, Americans seem ambivalent toward the needy. The instinct to help those in tough straits is often constrained by a lurking feeling that the poor are to blame for their own problems. Or, that what helps the needy might take something away from everyone else.

The debate over extending unemployment benefits, which now last as long as 99 weeks, generated increasing commentary that the benefit was sapping people of the desire to work.

Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, said that more than two decades of polling shows that a solid, if fluctuating, majority of Americans believe government has a responsibility to care for the poor.

"But as you begin to ask more specific questions, you get lower levels of support for specific programs as people worry about costs, taxes and the rise of government," Kohut added. "Plus, there is a great deal of political polarization of this."

A 2009 Pew survey found that 63 percent of Americans believed government should take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. But that number fell to 48 percent when people were asked whether government should help the needy even if it increases the debt. Nearly two in three Democrats, 43 percent of independents and 29 percent of Republicans agreed with that statement.

All of which explains why even many staunch Democrats have not talked much about poverty.

On Thursday, hours after the Census Bureau released the poverty numbers, Obama issued a written statement that quickly broadened the discussion beyond the poor.

"Today, the Census Bureau released data that illustrates just how tough 2009 was," the statement said. "Even before the recession hit, middle class incomes had been stagnant and the number of people living in poverty in America was unacceptably high, and today's numbers make it clear that our work is just beginning." 

Poverty In America

30,000 line up for housing vouchers, some get rowdy

Third World America



By Mike Morris and Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
4:09 p.m. Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Thirty thousand people showed up to receive Section 8 housing applications in East Point Wednesday, suffering through hours in the hot sun, angry flare-ups in the crowd and lots of frustration and confusion for a chance to receive a government-subsidized apartment.

The massive event sometimes descended into a chaotic mob scene filled with anger and impatience. Some 62 people needed medical attention and 20 of them were transported to a hospital, authorities said. A baby went into a seizure in the heat and was stabilized at a hospital. People were removed on stretchers and when a throng of people who had been waiting hours in a line were told to move to another line, people started pushing, shoving and cursing, witnesses said.

Still, officials of East Point declared the day a success. Nobody was arrested and nobody was seriously injured, they said. It was an assessment roundly challenged by many of the people who had to go through it.

Kim Lemish, executive director of the East Point Housing Authority, said the event marked the first time the city has offered Section 8 housing applications since 2002. The waiting list that lasted eight years had depleted, she said, and the agency was beginning a new one. So people braved all the physical difficulties just to get on a waiting list that could keep them waiting for years.

Lemish said the agency had expected about 10,000 people but three times as many showed up. Many were just accompanying those looking for an application. Some 13,000 applications were handed out.

Concern is rising that a similar scene could occur Thursday when the housing authority of this small city begins accepting the completed applications. Wednesday's event was only to hand out the paperwork. The housing authority will begin accepting applications at 9 a.m.

Some of the crowd waited for two days at the Tri-Cities Plaza shopping center. As the temperature rose Wednesday, people fell ill.

Sgt. Cliff Chandler, spokesman for the East Point Police Department, said a toddler was treated earlier in the morning for "some type of seizure," Chandler said.

"A lot of it was heat and some was health-related issues" such people not taking their medications, Chandler said.

By the time everyone had left around 2 p.m., the temperature had climbed into the low 90s.

East Point police, some wearing riot helmets, were patrolling the area. Firefighters and EMTs were attending to people who were overheating in the sun. Police from College Park, Hapeville, Fulton County and MARTA assisted in crowd control.

Chandler said there were no arrests.

Felecia McGhee told the AJC she arrived around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. She said the major problem began when people started breaking into the line and then officials handing out applications started moving those areas and those line breakers. She said she saw at least two small children trampled when the crowd rushed the building where the applications were to be handed out.

"It's a real mess out here," she said.

Channel 2 Action News reporter Mike Petchenik said fights were breaking out and police had to stop people who were storming the door.

Channel 2 reporter Tom Jones said, “There are thousands, I mean, thousands of people here. I’ve seen people fall out from the heat.”

By late morning the crowd had thinned considerably and people were walking up and getting their applications without delay. But just before the 1 p.m. deadline, a line of about 200 people had formed. Shortly after 1 p.m., several people ran across the parking lot to get in line but were told by police that the line was closed.

Emergency personnel brought in a pickup truck full of bottled water and were handing it out to the crowd.

A sign on the door of the office explained that only applications were being handed out.

"The housing authority will be issuing applications Wednesday, August 11, starting at 9 a.m. Everyone in line by 1 p.m. on the 11th will receive an application. ... No Section 8 vouchers are available at this time. There are no public housing units available at this time. You're applying for the waiting list only."

The Housing Choice Voucher Program, called Section 8, subsidized the rents of low-income families living in apartments and houses that are privately owned. The federal program makes up the difference in rent that the poor can afford and the fair market value for each area.

The federal government has specific standards for its subsidized properties but at the same time landlords are assured an income.

Only families with incomes no more than half the median income for the area qualify. The median income for the East Point area is less than $32,000, according to Census data. It is up to the renter to find a place that meets HUD standards, which includes being 90 percent to 110 percent of the “local fair market rent.”
Find this article at:

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/30-000-line-up-589653.html

Being Poor in a Sinking America

Laura Flanders: Being Poor in a Sinking America

Where are the Lifeboats?


By LAURA FLANDERS

Last week in New York authorities announced that at Harlem Hospital Center, the largest health facility in that historic neighborhood, doctors had failed to read 4,000 heart tests -- for three years -- and that 200 of these patients died. These were not simply routine tests, but echocardiograms, ordered when patients showed severe symptoms. That does not happen in affluent neighborhoods.

Among other reasons, heart sickness is elsewhere an enormous profit opportunity -- heart valve and bypass surgeries are a go-go business. But not for sick, poor people. Their Medicaid coverage fails to fully incentivize America's insatiable medical industrial appetite.

According to a cardiologist brought in on an emergency basis to start reading the long backlog of tests in Harlem, approximately half were abnormal and 20 to 30 percent needed immediate medical care. "This is very, very appalling," he told the New York Times.

And it's not just in Harlem.

Across the US, poor communities are grossly under-served: education, nutrition, housing and health care. To a large extent, this explains the chasm in life expectancy between white people and so-called minorities.

How much worse does it get? A Brandeis University study recently underscored the growing wealth divide. According to the Federal Reserve, for every dollar of wealth owned by a white family, a black or Latino family owns just 16 cents.

And as this -- the great marginalization of America marches on -- Democrats, including the president, wrestle with Republicans for smidgeon of reform. Is it anywhere close to enough?

For all the talk of Wall Street reform, and new consumer protections, and talk of alternative energy policy, the fact remains that for most people, America is a sinking ship. And minority communities are the first to be thrown over the side.

Where are the lifeboats?

Laura Flanders is the host of GRITtv, which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV on cable, public television and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com.

And Yet Another Reason To Loathe Wall Street Bankers

Of course there's no money left to help struggling families with child care, Wall Street Bankers need it more.

Cuts to Child Care Subsidy Thwart More Job Seekers

By PETER S. GOODMAN

TUCSON — Able-bodied, outgoing and accustomed to working, Alexandria Wallace wants to earn a paycheck. But that requires someone to look after her 3-year-old daughter, and Ms. Wallace, a 22-year-old single mother, cannot afford child care.
Last month, she lost her job as a hair stylist after her improvised network of baby sitters frequently failed her, forcing her to miss shifts. She qualifies for a state-run subsidized child care program. But like many other states, Arizona has slashed that program over the last year, relegating Ms. Wallace’s daughter, Alaya, to a waiting list of nearly 11,000 eligible children.
Despite a substantial increase in federal support for subsidized child care, which has enabled some states to stave off cuts, others have trimmed support, and most have failed to keep pace with rising demand, according to poverty experts and federal officials.
That has left swelling numbers of low-income families struggling to reconcile the demands of work and parenting, just as they confront one of the toughest job markets in decades.
The cuts to subsidized child care challenge the central tenet of the welfare overhaul adopted in 1996, which imposed a five-year lifetime limit on cash assistance. Under the change, low-income parents were forced to give up welfare checks and instead seek paychecks, while being promised support — not least, subsidized child care — that would enable them to work.
Now, in this moment of painful budget cuts, with Arizona and more than a dozen other states placing children eligible for subsidized child care on waiting lists, only two kinds of families are reliably securing aid: those under the supervision of child protective services — which looks after abuse and neglect cases — and those receiving cash assistance.
Ms. Wallace abhors the thought of going on cash assistance, a station she associates with lazy people who con the system. Yet this has become the only practical route toward child care.
So, on a recent afternoon, she waited in a crush of beleaguered people to submit the necessary paperwork. Her effort to avoid welfare through work has brought her to welfare’s door.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” she says. “I fall back to — I can’t say ‘being a lowlife’ — but being like the typical person living off the government. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to use this as a backbone, so I can develop my own backbone.”
As the American social safety net absorbs its greatest challenge since the Great Depression, state budget cuts are weakening crucial components. Subsidized child care — financed by federal and state governments — is a conspicuous example.
When President Clinton signed into law the changes he declared would “end welfare as we know it,” he vowed that those losing government checks would gain enough support to enable their transition to the workplace.
“We will protect the guarantees of health care, nutrition and child care, all of which are critical to helping families move from welfare to work,” Mr. Clinton pledged in a radio address that year.
Now, with the jobless rate hovering near double digits and 6.7 million people unemployed for six months or longer, some states are rolling back child care.
“We’re really reneging on a commitment and a promise that we made to families,” said Patty Siegel, executive director of the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network, an advocacy organization. “You can’t expect a family with young children to get on their feet and get jobs without child care.”
As part of last year’s package of spending measures aimed at stimulating the economy, the Obama administration added $2 billion for subsidized child care programs for 2009 and 2010, on top of the expected $5 billion a year. The administration has proposed a $1.6 billion increase for 2011. But even as this extra money has limited cuts and enabled some states to expand programs, officials acknowledge that it has not kept pace with the need.
“To say that we are in a difficult environment in terms of state budgets would be the understatement of the century,” said Sharon Parrott, an adviser to Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, which administers federal grants to states for child care. “It’s just not possible for the federal government to fill the entire hole, but the Recovery Act has provided critical help.”
Even some architects of the mid-1990s welfare overhaul now assert that low-income families are being denied resources required to enable them to work.
“We’re going the wrong way,” said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was a Republican Congressional aide and was instrumental in shaping welfare changes. “The direction public policy should move is to provide more of these mothers with subsidies. To tell people that the only way they can get day care is to go on welfare defeats the purpose of the whole thing.”
Here in Tucson — a city of roughly 500,000 people, sprawling across a parched valley dotted by cactus — Jamie Smith, a 23-year-old single mother, once had subsidized child care. That enabled her to work at Target, where she earned about $8 an hour. She paid $1.50 a day for her 3-year-old daughter, Wren, to stay at a child care center. The state picked up the rest.
She was aiming to resume college and then find a higher-paying job. But in December, she missed by a day the deadline to extend her subsidy. When she went to the state Department of Economic Security to submit new paperwork, she learned that all new applicants were landing on a waiting list.
Ms. Smith sought help from Wren’s father to look after their daughter. But he had his own job delivering pizza, limiting his availability.
“Some days, I’d just have to call in sick,” she said.
By March, she had missed so many days that Target put her on a leave of absence, telling her to come back after securing stable child care, she said.
Without the state program, she sees no viable options.
She, too, is contemplating going on welfare.
“It’s a blow to my own self-image and self-worth as a person who can take care of myself,” she says. “I’m totally able, physically and intellectually, to continue working. But I can’t work without child care, and I can’t afford child care without work.”
A Major Cost
In many low-income working families, child care is one of the largest expenditures after housing. Among families with working mothers and incomes below the poverty line — $18,310 for a family of three — child care absorbs nearly a third of total household budgets, according to census data.
Yet long before the recession assailed state budgets, subsidized child care was not reaching the vast majority of families in need.
In 2000, only one in seven children whose families met federal eligibility requirements received aid, according to an analysis by the Center for Law and Social Policy, which advocates for expanded programs. In 2003, the Bush administration found that in the smaller group of children eligible under more restrictive state criteria, only 30 percent received subsidized care.
Until the Obama administration increased financing last year, federal support for subsidized child care had been steady for a decade. From 2001 to 2008, direct federal spending for subsidized child care through the Child Care and Development Fund — the primary source — nudged up to $5 billion a year, from about $4.6 billion, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
During the same years, the number of children receiving subsidized child care under the program fell to 1.6 million in 2008, from an average of 1.8 million a month in 2001.
Data for last year has yet to be compiled, but federal officials and poverty experts assume the number of families eligible for help has climbed, given broad cuts in working hours and other sources of income.
At least nine states, including Illinois and Indiana, used increased federal aid through the stimulus package to begin offering child care support to parents looking for work. Thus they expanded the case loads of such programs or lengthened the duration of the benefits, according to data compiled by the National Women’s Law Center, an advocacy group in Washington.
But at least nine other states, including Arizona, Michigan, Massachusetts and North Carolina, have cut access to subsidized child care programs or the amounts they pay.
New Hampshire, Nevada and New Mexico resorted to waiting lists. Ohio reduced its income eligibility from twice the poverty line to 150 percent — $33,075 annually for a family of four.
“The social safety net was always in patches, and now it’s more frayed,” said Helen Blank, director of leadership and public policy at the National Women’s Law Center. “For a single mom, it’s a lottery in many states whether she gets child care or not.”
This year, California altered its welfare reform program, cutting $215 million from child care financing given to counties and allowing families with young children to draw aid without looking for work. But it also means that those who want to pursue careers may effectively be consigned to the old welfare system, receiving monthly checks without support like child care.
“These women desperately want to be off cash aid,” said Ms. Siegel, at the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network. “That door has essentially been shut.”
Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed scrapping California’s entire welfare-to-work program, including child care and cash assistance, as the state grapples with a $19 billion budget shortfall — an action that would eliminate aid for roughly a million children.
In Arizona last year, stimulus funds prevented budget cuts that would have eliminated care for 15,000 eligible children. But as the budget crisis has ground on, the state has added names of eligible children to the wait list, a term that social service agencies deride as a euphemism.
“It’s really a turn-away list,” says Bruce Liggett, executive director of the Arizona Child Care Association, a Phoenix-based advocacy group. “The program has been shut down.”
For Mr. Liggett, this amounts to a bitter turn. In the mid-1990s, he was a deputy director of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, where he helped put in place the new welfare-to-work program.
“We’ve seen devastating cuts,” he says. “For those families working to stay off welfare, we’re denying help. Welfare reform in Arizona is certainly a broken promise.”
Path to Welfare
Alexandria Wallace grew up in a middle-class home topped by Spanish tile, with a swimming pool out back and a view of jagged reddish mountains. Her decline from work to welfare began in the spring of 2009.
She was working three days a week at a call center for Verizon Wireless, earning about $9.50 an hour while attending beauty school at night to earn a license as a cosmetologist. She aimed to use earnings from that profession as a springboard to nursing school.
Alaya was enrolled at a child care center, with a state subsidy, and Ms. Wallace was pleased with the girl’s experiences there — singing songs, learning to share. But when Ms. Wallace sent in the forms to extend the program, she received a rude surprise: a recent raise — less than 50 cents an hour — had bumped her above the income limit.
With no one to watch her daughter on a regular basis, she quit her job at the call center and began working at her mother’s thrift store for $7.50 an hour while she finished beauty school.
Ms. Wallace reapplied for child care. Now she qualified, but she landed on the wait list.
She shared a two-bedroom apartment with a couple and their 5-year-old daughter, and she sometimes paid them $25 to look after Alaya. But the woman worked, and the man seemed more interested in his PlayStation than the children, Ms. Wallace said.
“I’d come home from work in the afternoon, and Alaya would still be in her pajamas,” she said. “It’s so hard to find someone to really take care of your kid.”
Her younger brother sometimes helped, but reluctantly and irregularly.
A classmate at beauty school offered to watch Alaya during the day. In exchange, Ms. Wallace took care of her friend’s 18-month-old boy every evening.
Her days tending to customers gave way to nights caring for a baby in a cramped apartment while cooking dinner and cleaning her house. Alaya was jealous and demanded extra attention. Ms. Wallace was perpetually exhausted.
Still, this arrangement provided enough stability that Ms. Wallace began cutting hair at a nearby salon. Her first month, she brought home about $500. She felt confident her clientele would grow.
Then, her friend canceled the swap, forcing Ms. Wallace to bring Alaya to the salon, where she tried to keep her occupied with cartoons in a back room.
Soon her car broke down, forcing her to rely on family and the public bus to get to work, which did not always happen.
Her boss had been kind, but patience wore thin.
“She was like, ‘Your baby sitter bailed on you, your car broke down. What do you have left?’ ” Ms. Wallace said. “She said, ‘If you can’t get something worked out, I’m going to have to let you go.’ ”
Even after she lost that job, Ms. Wallace remained confident she could find another.
Then it dawned on her. Given the state of the social safety net, unemployment might provide the solution. She could qualify for cash assistance, which would require her to enroll in a state jobs program and would include help securing child care.
“It’s something I have to do to get where I need to go,” she said.
She plans to stay on cash assistance long enough to gain child care, then find another job. She would then lose cash assistance, but could hang onto child care as long as her income stayed below the eligibility limit.
These were her thoughts as she stood in an airless office, amid the sounds of unhappy children in the arms of tired women, waiting to hand in the forms to receive welfare.
“Oh no,” she said, peeking inside a white envelope full of documents and spotting a brown smudge. “My kid got chocolate on her birth certificate.”
She ducked into the ladies room and dabbed the stain with wet paper towel.
When she stepped outside an hour later, beneath a pounding Arizona sun, $220 a month was headed her way. Her daughter was waiting at her parents’ house. Her future — a working car, a steady job — was waiting out there, too, she told herself, though it had a way of coming in and out of focus.
“I’m just trying to get my life situated to where I can look beyond the day to day,” she said. “I hope it all falls together the way it all fell apart.”