Notes from "Poverty in America" by John Iceland (2012) - 0 views
started by Vetan Kapoor on 22 Mar 13
started by Vetan Kapoor on 22 Mar 13
Start a New Topic » « Back to the Domestic Poverty Analytics group
started by Vetan Kapoor on 22 Mar 13
Chapter 4: Characteristics of the Poverty Population
* 22.4% of Americans were poor in 1959, 11.1% in 1973, and 12.5% in 2003
* 70% of impoverished owned car or truck (compared to 90% of total pop)
* People who do not have access to a car may have trouble holding a job, given the decentralized character of many American cities and inadequate accompanying of municipal public transportation systems
* Longitudinal data show that a majority of poor individuals actually remain poor for only short periods of time and a relatively high proportion of people have experienced poverty at one point or another. One study found that 1 in 3 Americans experienced at least one year in poverty between 1979 and 1991.
* Among studied spells of poverty, 45% end within one year and 70% are over within three years (pg 48, check original source). Only 12% of poverty spells last ten years or more (pg 49, check original source).
* Despite the shortness of many poverty spells, it is quite common for people who leave poverty to fall back into it a short time later - about half of those who end poverty spells return to poverty within four years.
o 50% of blacks and 30% of whites who fall into poverty in some year will be poor in five or more of the next ten years.
* Probability of escaping poverty after being poor for one year is 0.53; probability after four years drops to .23
* 0.4 correlation between father's and son's income. 1 in 4 who were consistently poor before age 17 were still poor at ages 25-27.
* Research provides the strongest support for the economic resources model of persistent poverty - where parents' lack of money and time hinders their ability to invest in their children. Growing up poor is consistently associated with higher chances of being poor, even when we take into account other factors such as family structure and neighborhood poverty rates.
* There are some persistently poor and economically depressed rural areas, such as in the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, and the lower Rio Grande Valley. Educational levels are low and job opportunities scarce. [poverty by region, by metropolitan vs. suburban vs. rural, etc.)
* People are affected by their neighbors, and the economic and social environment of high-poverty areas negatively affects those who live there.
* People in high-poverty areas fare worse along a number of social and economic indicators. While 71% of all men aged 16+ are employed across all metropolitan areas, the figure is 46% in high-poverty neighborhoods
* Spatial mismatch theory (John Kain) - increases in concentration of the inner-city poor are directly linked to the elimination of low skill manufacturing jobs.
* …neighborhoods whose people are increasingly socially isolated and face a shrinking job market; hence, an increase in concentrated poverty.
* US has highest relative poverty rate of all OECD countries - almost double that of UK and triple that of France.
* Susan Mayer (pg 63) - there are more poor people in the US, safety net is weaker, and poor Americans are poorer than the poor in other countries
* Child poverty rate in the US is fairly high - 18.5% of children are poor. Western and Northern European countries have lower absolute rates of child poverty.
* Poverty as capability failure (Amartya Sen) - the inability to fully participate in society is what defines poverty. People with little political voice, modest physical and economic security, and little opportunity to better their lives lack basic capabilities and are therefore poor. For example, it's possible to have lower life expectancy despite having higher absolute incomes (African Americans in US compared to citizens in Kerala)
Chapter 5: Causes of Poverty
* It has been estimated that a 1% fall in unemployment reduces the poverty rate by 0.4%, and a 1% change in median earnings by 0.16% (pg 73)
* A majority of the poor do in fact have a family member with some attachment to the labor market. Among poor families with children in 1997, 37% were in full-time working families, another 35% were in part-time working families, and only 28% were in nonworking families (pg 78)
* In 1970, 42% of families included an employed father, a homemaker mother, and children; now, only 16% of families fit this model, and half of all children will spend some portion of their childhood living with only one parent. Family arrangements are much more diverse than they were fifty years ago (pg 88)
* As of 2003, 26.1% of all families with children were headed by women. For whites, the figure that year was 21.1%, for blacks it was 55.8% (pg 91)
* Single-parent families headed by women are considerably more likely to be poor. While the poverty rate among married-couple families with children was 7% in 2003, it was 35.5% among female headed families with children (pg 91)
o Key factor is sometimes finding and paying for child care or missing child support from the father
* The employment rate of never-married mothers, who are the most likely to have little education or job experience and long stays on welfare, rose from 43% in 1992 to 65% in 1999 (pg 94)
Chapter 6: Why Poverty Remains High, Revisited
* In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was growing optimism that poverty was in headlong retreat. At the time, the economy was booming, poverty rates were plunging, and consumer confidence was high (pg 99)
* Income growth explained most of the trend in absolute poverty over the last half of the twentieth century, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. So why did poverty remain high thereafter? As economic growth slowed in the 1970s and 1980s, inequality and demographic changes together served to keep it that way (pg 116)
Chapter 7: Poverty and Policy
* PRWORA brought an end to six decades of federal social policy guaranteeing at least a minimum level of aid to those in poverty. The reform abolished AFDC and replaced it with a system of smaller grants to states, which established rules of eligibility but were required to end welfare to recipients after two years, regardless of whether they had found jobs by that time. It also set a lifetime limit on assistance at five years (pg 127)
* As of 2002, income-tested benefits made up 18.6% of the federal budget. In 2002 spending on means-tested medical benefits was greater than spending on all other forms combined. (pg 128)
* The 2001 Current Population Survey (CPS) indicated a range of program use from 1.9% of households reporting receipt of TANF/General Assistance cash to 13.4% receiving benefits from Medicaid (pg 128)
* In 1994, about a quarter of the poor did not participate in any major welfare program (pg 129)
* The number of people receiving cash assistance dropped dramatically after PRWORA went into effect (pg 132)
* The nation's welfare caseload plummeted from 5 million families in 1994 to 2.2 million in June 2000. In 1994, 62% of poor children received cash welfare; by 1998, the share had fallen to 43% (pg 132)
* Providing broader services such as affordable child care and health insurance, education or job training, transportation aid, and help with substance abuse, mental health problems, and domestic abuse could reduce hardship and still encourage work (pg 133)
* The long-term unemployed constitute about half of all Western European unemployment, compared with 10-20% in the rest of the industrialized world (pg 136)