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Coonoor Behal

In the Fight Against Poverty, Time for a Revolution - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...erty-its-time-for-a-revolution

povertyprograms povertyassessment methods

shared by Coonoor Behal on 19 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • United States Census bureau has produced what may become another landmark reference. Based on an updated method for assessing poverty, the bureau has found that far more Americans are scraping by than was previously known: 100 million Americans — one in three — are “deep poor,” “poor,” or “near poor.”
  • As Harrington observed, poverty is more than lacking minimum standards of health care, housing, food and education. “Poverty,” he wrote, “should be defined psychologically in terms of those whose place in the society is such that they are internal exiles who, almost inevitably, develop attitudes of defeat and pessimism and who are therefore excluded from taking advantage of new opportunities.”
  • Researchers in the United Kingdom have developed tools to measure “well-being,” looking at such things as material goods, relationships and self-beliefs.
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  • But there is a problem: the system of social services that has been built up over past generations isn’t designed to increase poor people’s “capacity to aspire” and pursue their goals. Social services aren’t treated as part of an integrated process of human development. Just the opposite. Services are fragmented and clients are regularly shunted from agency to agency. Caseworkers serving people who are applying for public benefits don’t have the time, or the discretion, to get to know their clients, let alone brainstorm with them about problem solving.
  • Many Americans struggling in poverty today need more than financial assistance; they need help figuring out how to plug into a changing economy.
  • LIFT’s approach is grounded in the principle that change happens through relationships.
  • LIFT has spent more than a decade systematizing what amounts to a social technology.
  • They have looked closely at the human qualities required to address poverty. Above all, LIFT looks for volunteers who have demonstrated empathy.
  • Advocates are trained to treat clients with courtesy, to value their time, and to listen to their stories (while maintaining clear boundaries).
  • “Being treated politely is for many people a new experience.”
  • In fact, LIFT is seeing more people in the “near poor” or “newly poor” category.
Coonoor Behal

National Poverty Center | University of Michigan - 2 views

www.npc.umich.edu/poverty

povertystats seniors children alternatives EITC

shared by Coonoor Behal on 19 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • The methodology for calculating the thresholds was established in the mid-1960s and has not changed in the intervening years.
  • Money income does not include noncash benefits such as public housing, Medicaid, employer-provided health insurance and food stamps
  • The poverty rate for children has historically been somewhat higher than the overall poverty rate.
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  • Since the late 1960s, the poverty rate for people over 65 has fallen dramatically.
  • The poverty rate for people in households headed by single women is significantly higher than the overall poverty rate.
  • In 2010, 19.9 percent of foreign-born residents lived in poverty, compared to 14.4 percent of residents born in the United States. Foreign-born, non-citizens had an even higher incidence of poverty, at a rate of 26.7 percent.
  • Children represent a disproportionate share of the poor in the United States; they are 24 percent of the total population, but 36 percent of the poor population.
  • The official poverty measure has been criticized for not accounting for several factors that can affect a family's economic well-being and for not having been updated, except for inflation, for four decades. 
  • For example, while cash benefits from government assistance programs are included in a family's income when calculating the official poverty measure, benefits received in-kind such as food stamps, Medicare or Medicaid, employer provided health insurance, housing subsidies, and other social services are excluded.  Taxes that families pay and tax credits they receive such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) do not enter into the official poverty determination.
  • Additionally, the threshold value a family must earn to escape poverty was developed in the 1960s by combining emergency food budget data from the US Department of Agriculture with an estimate of what fraction of income families spend on food. Although the thresholds are adjusted each year for inflation, some analysts believe that these numbers no longer accurately reflect the minimal resources a family requires.
  • These alternative measures tend to show lower levels of poverty than the official measure in any year, but the timing of increases and decreases in the poverty rate is very similar across measures. This similarity suggests that, despite the criticism it receives, the official poverty measure provides a reliable indicator of changes in the poverty rate from year to year.
  • These alternative definitions tend to show higher levels of overall poverty than the official measures in any year, although the difference is usually less than one percentage point.
  • Coonoor Behal on 25 Nov 12
     
    Nuts that the only time the poverty threshold is lower is for single individuals age 65 and older. Seems like you'd have greater expenditures in your old age considering health care costs.
Vetan Kapoor

Notes from "The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity" by J... - 0 views

Ch 3: The Free-Market Fallacy * 63% of Americans concur that "It is the responsibility of government to take care of people who can't take care of themselves. The sentiment that government should h...

started by Vetan Kapoor on 22 Mar 13 no follow-up yet
Vetan Kapoor

Notes from "Poverty in America" by John Iceland (2012) - 0 views

Poverty in America: A Handbook (John Iceland, 2012) 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 impoveri...

notes povertytraits books stats

started by Vetan Kapoor on 22 Mar 13 no follow-up yet
Coonoor Behal

Welfare Reform and the Work Support System | Brookings Institution - 0 views

www.brookings.edu/...welfare-sawhill

welfarereform work EITC policy 1996 povertyprograms worksupport

shared by Coonoor Behal on 09 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Among other provisions, the 1996 reforms required work of almost every adult that joined the welfare rolls. In addition, with some exceptions, a limit of five years was placed on the receipt of cash welfare by individual families.
  • Beginning roughly in the mid-1970s with the enactment of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the federal government originated or expanded a series of programs that provide benefits to working families. Unlike welfare benefits, which are intended primarily for the destitute, these work support benefits are designed to provide cash and other benefits to working adults and their families. In addition to the EITC, the major benefits in the system include the child tax credit, the minimum wage, state income supplement programs, food stamps, health insurance, and child care.
  • This evolution toward a work-based system of support progressed further as a result of state responses to the 1996 welfare law.
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  • As a result, the typical one-parent family with children was far better off working than on welfare, and employment rates among this group increased dramatically, due to the strong economy of the 1990s, welfare reform, and the availability of these expanded work supports
  • The value of these new work support programs at both the federal and state level cannot be overemphasized. The EITC alone provides roughly $4,000 a year in extra benefits to a low-wage worker with two or more children, and the children remain eligible for Medicaid. The average woman leaving welfare earns about $7 an hour, or $13,000 in after-tax income. The combined value of food stamps and the EITC, then, brings her total income up to about $19,000—enough to boost a single parent family with three or fewer children above the federal poverty line
  • Polls show that the public is willing to do more for those who work.
  • Many of these policies respond to complaints that the 1996 welfare law placed too much emphasis on reducing caseloads and not enough on reducing poverty.
  • The work support system serves three primary goals. First, it provides incentives for work.
  • A second goal of the work support system is to help ensure that parents working at low-wage jobs have enough total income to provide an adequate standard of living.
  • The third goal of the work support system is to insure that those who lose their jobs or cannot find work will not be destitute.
  • The minimum wage is not very well-targeted. Only one quarter of minimum-wage earners live in poor families.
  • By 2000, the federal EITC was providing over $30 billion in cash supplements to working families, making it the biggest program other than Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income that provides benefits to low-income families. And unlike nearly every other program for low-income families, it provides benefits only to families that work. It is, in short, the quintessential work support program.
  • States have taken two major approaches to improving work incentives. First, since enactment of the 1996 reforms, nearly every state has allowed parents who find jobs to retain more of their welfare benefit. This policy enables many families to work and continue receiving earnings supplements from welfare.
  • under current federal rules, working families can exhaust their five-year limit on welfare while receiving just a small supplement to their earnings. For this reason, time limits may actually discourage work
  • A second approach states have followed is to create their own EITC programs.
  • nearly all the families leaving welfare are eligible for food stamps
  • less than half the families leaving welfare receive the food stamp benefits to which they are entitled.
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