We Shouldn’t Have to Choose Between Kids and Seniors

A striking full-page ad in last Sunday’s Washington Post. A toddler and an elderly woman, both posed as boxers, below the headline “Who Is More Important?”.

Here we go again, I thought. Another message about how spending on Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare is impoverishing the next generation.

But no. The actual message is “We Shouldn’t Have to Choose.” Helping to lift seniors out of poverty is good. We should make the same choice for kids.

The evidence the ad gives is a contrast between child and senior poverty rates. The former is a year out of date, but this doesn’t make much difference because the most current official rate — 21.9% — isn’t significantly lower than the rate for 2010.

Where the ad creators got their senior poverty rate (9.3%) is a mystery to me. The latest official poverty rate for seniors is 8.7% — surely better for the case the nonprofit advertiser is making.

If the figures aren’t right, the overall message surely is. Our child poverty rate is shamefully high. And Social Security is undoubtedly one of our most successful anti-poverty programs — arguably the most successful.

Though we don’t have poverty rates dating back to 1939, when it was created, we do have figures showing a dramatic drop from 1960 forward. The latest reported rate is about four times lower than the rate that year.

And Social Security benefits were the most important factor. The senior poverty rate without them would have been a mind-boggling 54.1%.

These are the official poverty rates, of course. The Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure produces a higher senior poverty rate, mainly because it factors in out-of-pocket medical expenses.

The latest SPM boosts the senior poverty rate to 15.1%. This is nevertheless far lower than it would be without Social Security benefits.

So how would we achieve anything like the same result for kids?

The organizations named in the ad — the Next Generation and its campaign spin-off Too Small to Fail — clearly don’t want a replica of Social Security and have thus far said little about affordable health care insurance for kids.

Their aim at this point is to start a national conversation — and apparently to build a sense of responsibility among businesses, policymakers, parents and other caregivers.

The fact sheets on the Too Small website tee up a host of issues gathered under four main headings — education, health, work-life conflict and 24/7 media, i.e., the benefits and perils of access to computers and other digital technologies.

Most, but not all of the issues disproportionately affect low-income children and youth. And addressing them would, as the campaign says, increase social mobility — specifically, the likelihood that children born at the bottom fifth of the income scale will move up in adulthood.

But it’s hard for me to see how the agenda one might derive from the fact sheets would significantly reduce poverty among this generation of kids while they’re still kids — or for that matter, significantly mitigate the hardships that affect them, e.g., hunger, homelessness, acute parental stress.

These, as we’ve been told many times, help explain why so many low-income children perform so poorly on the achievement tests that are now the make-or-break for schools, teachers and ultimately students.

Perhaps the diverse topics for our national conversation will eventually shake out into an actionable policy agenda.

My own sense, however, is that they wouldn’t “create the protections and level of support that are afforded our seniors” — as limited as those are.

For that, we’d need to revisit the principles underpinning major elements of our safety net. First and foremost, however, we’d need a reset of the priorities reflected in the across-the-board cuts that began this week.

Education alone will take a $2.1 billion hit this fiscal year and possibly additional cuts thereafter as Congress parcels out spending so that the totals will come in below the mandatory spending caps — unless, of course, it can agree on an alternative.

A remote possibility now, but down the road apiece a big threat to Social Security benefits.

We need to “fight together for America’s next generation,” as the Post ad says. But we may well need to fight together for the elder generation too.

Panel to Address Poverty in DC and What to Do About It

On Tuesday, March 5, the Fair Budget Coalition will host a panel discussion on poverty in the District of Columbia — “The State of the District’s Poverty: What’s the Story Behind the 600 Kids at DC General?”.

As the online invitation suggests, the Coalition is linking the record-high number of children in DC General — the District’s main shelter for families — to funding cuts in both safety net programs and others that benefit low-income residents.

A look at the District’s poverty rates is surely worthwhile. As I’ve written before, both the overall rate and the child poverty rate are well above the national rates — and considerably higher than the rates in 2007, just before the recession set in.

But, as I’ve also written, the Census Bureau’s poverty thresholds are unrealistically low. For a single mother with two children, for example, the 2011 threshold was just $18,123.

The Wider Opportunities for Women’s Basic Economic Security Tables for the District show that the family would need about $85,680 for basic necessities, child care and taxes, plus some extra for rainy day and retirement savings – if the mother had employer-sponsored health insurance and retirement benefits.

This is higher than the 2011 median income for District households as a whole, but nearly $22,000 lower than the median for households classified as white/non-Hispanic.

One of many indications that the growing economic prosperity Mayor Gray’s recent State of the District address celebrated hasn’t done much for the “have-nots” in the city.

The challenge Fair Budget faces is that no panel can specifically address all the programs that could alleviate hardship — and narrow the huge income gaps here — if the Mayor and the DC Council invested more money in them.

The event can provide a framework for the programs, however, and draw some links among them. Also identify priorities for addressing critical weaknesses.

We know, for example, that the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program aims to prepare parents for work that will, at the very least, reduce their need for safety net benefits.

The District has invested resources in making TANF job training more effective. It’s also launched several initiatives to match job seekers with employers that might hire them.

But many parents won’t be able to work unless they have child care — and a subsidy to make it affordable. Consider, for example, that the average annual market rate local centers charge for infants is $2,400 more than a full-time minimum wage worker earns.

Yet the District’s subsidy program reimburses providers at such low rates that many have gone out of business. The remainder perforce generally limit the number of subsidized children they’ll take.

So there are more than 9,000 infants and toddlers on center waiting lists, according to the Fair Budget invite.

We’ve thus got one program that’s doing more to address barriers to work and another that should, but isn’t because it’s egregiously under-funded.

Similarly, the employment prospects of more than 36% of D.C. adults are extremely limited because they’re functionally illiterate.

Yet local funding for adult education programs was cut in Fiscal Year 2011 and again in Fiscal Year 2012. It’s at its twice-reduced level in the current budget, I’m told. (The budget for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, where adult ed. is housed, is notoriously opaque.)

Well, I could go on, but point is made, I hope. As with any complex problem, poverty has a lot of inter-related parts. And the District government has a lot of parts that affect it, for good or ill.

If the Mayor truly wants to “improve the quality of life for all,” as his One City Action Plan says, then he should fashion a budget that reflects a comprehensive commitment to both the safety net and poverty reduction.

Like all elected officials, he’ll tend to want what he believes his constituents want seriously enough to consider when election time rolls round.

So a good turnout at the Fair Budget Coalition’s event would send a helpful message. And I expect it to be both informative and a launching pad for this year’s grassroots budget advocacy.

And who wouldn’t be inspired to launch after listening to panelists who know poverty first-hand — and while sitting among some of the families from DC General who’ll be there too?

The hour-long event begins at 3:30 p.m. in Room 412 of the Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. You’ll need a photo ID to get past the guards.

And Fair Budget asks that you RSVP to Janelle Treibitz, 202-328-5513 or janelle@fairbudget.org.

UPDATE: The event will be in Room 123 instead of Room 412, as originally planned.

Obama Talks Poverty in Inaugural Speech

Some months ago, Greg Kaufmann, The Nation‘s fine poverty columnist, launched a Twitter campaign to interject poverty into the Presidential debates.

Not much success there, as I noted at the time. But the campaign morphed. And of late, some tweets have looked forward to the inaugural address.

The President did indeed talk poverty yesterday. And I think he did it very well.

On the one hand, the speech had a framework and language designed to unify us as a people supportive of a progressive agenda — or if you prefer, to bring us over to “his side,” as Wonkblogger Ezra Klein says.

On the other hand, it drew a bright, white line for the policy battles ahead, with only the subtlest hints of the great divide between the Democratic and Republican leaderships.

Essentially, the President co-opted the right wing’s claim to grounding in the “self-evident” truths of the Declaration of Independence — particularly, the “inalienable rights” to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

These, as you know, have been used to justify minimal government — and minimal taxes — based on the original, inspired intent of our Founding Fathers.

The President instead defined the truths as the basis for an evolving process of expanded understanding and enlightened collective decisions.

Thus, we “learned” that we would have to make ourselves anew, as a country without slavery, to remain true to the “principles of equality and liberty.”

And “[t]ogether, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.”

This, his speech implied, is a done deal, leaving only issues of how we can best do this. “For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn.”

Looking back and forward, the equality in the Declaration’s creed becomes more than the anti-slavery, equal protection and voting rights guarantees of the post-Civil War amendments.

“We understand,” the President said hopefully, “that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it” — which, as I understand it, implies that acute income inequality is inconsistent with our creed.

More clearly, equality implies opportunities for everyone to “find independence [note that word] and pride in their work” — and wages sufficient to “liberate [and this one] families from the brink of hardship.”

It implies opportunities for “a little girl born into the bleakest poverty” to have “the same chance to succeed as anybody else.”

Which, we’re to understand, will happen only if we collectively, through our government, ensure that she’s not denied the chance by the impacts of poverty — hunger, homelessness, meager early developmental experiences, lousy and/or inappropriate public education, etc.

The speech goes further in gathering us into a consensus on the value of safety net programs.

“We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm.”

We, in other words, know better than those who attribute poverty to failures of personal responsibility — and contend that safety net programs sap the will to overcome them.

And now the bright, white line — with a tacit parry and thrust to right-wing Republicans, including the right-wing convert Obama recently defeated.

“The commitments we make to each other — through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security — these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.”

Some perhaps may wish that the President had laid out a more specific anti-poverty agenda.

But I think he talked poverty in a more important way — by rooting policies to address it in our history and core values we share.

Mixed News on Progress Toward Poverty Reduction and Shared Prosperity

A year ago, the Half in Ten campaign restarted the clock for cutting poverty in half in 10 years.

As I wrote at the time, it also expanded the goal to include growing a more inclusive and economically secure middle class. It set three top priorities for achieving this — each fleshed out in specific strategies.

Half in Ten established indicators to measure progress (or lack thereof) toward both the poverty reduction and new priority goals.

The first set of figures — mostly 2010 data — were the baseline. Now we’ve got a first year’s worth of updates.

So how are we doing? Not easy to answer within the compass of a blog post.

The full report includes 21 indicators — some new and some reflecting fairly old data because sources either haven’t been updated or lag behind even Half in Ten’s base year.

Half in Ten has a summary of the full set. Also a handful of indicators online.

I’d planned to plow through the online set, using last year’s report for baselines.* But I felt I was losing the forest in the trees. Some of the more interesting indicators too.

A different approach, therefore.

Poverty Reduction

No progress here, as you probably already know. Both the official poverty rate and the somewhat higher rate based on the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure were essentially flat for the two-year period.

Meanwhile, income inequality increased. In 2011, the richest 5% of households got 22.3% of all earnings. The bottom two-fifths got just over half as much — 11.6%.

Good Jobs

Some of the indicators in this group don’t speak to the goodness of jobs, but rather to the issue of whether people have jobs at all.

Generally progress there — except for people with disabilities, whose employment rate dropped from 28.6% to 27%.

More consistent progress on indicators reflecting the employment prospects of young people. For example, the percent of high school freshmen who graduated in four years had increased, as of the 2008-9 school year.

But when we turn to workers in low-wage occupations, we see a partial explanation for the widening income gap.

For full-time workers in service occupations, median annual earnings were just $24,300 — less than $2,000 over the poverty line for a family of four. There’s been no real dollar increase for them since 2000.

Lack of paid sick leave is one — though far from the only — factor depressing yearly earnings for low-wage workers.

In 2011, only 36% of workers earning no more than $11.13 per hour, i.e., slightly below the median or less, had any paid sick leave benefit. This is 4% less than in 2010, suggesting that a lot of not-good jobs got worse.

Strong Families and Communities

Most indicators in this group relate to the current and prospective well-being of children and young adults. And they all moved in the right direction in 2011.

We see, for example, that the teen birth rate continued its downward slide, reaching a record low of 31.3 births for every thousand women in the 15-19 age bracket.

And the percent of people without health insurance dropped from 16.3% to 15.7%. We can credit this to the initial impacts of the Affordable Care Act, Half in Ten says.

Economic Security

End of moderately good news. Only one indicator — food insecurity — remained relatively flat. And even that increased from 14.5% of households in 2010 to 14.9% in 2011.

The percent of jobless workers who received unemployment benefits dropped by 10% to just over half.

Low-wage workers faced a growing affordable housing shortage. In 2010, there were only 58 affordable units available for every 100 very low-income renter households. This is four fewer than in 2009.

No relatively current figures for asset poverty, i.e., less in savings and other cash sources than a family would need to live at or above the poverty line if it had no income stream for three months.

What we know from the indicator is that the percent of asset-poor households increased by 4% between 2006 and 2009, leaving somewhat over 27% of all households at high risk of poverty.

What Will Next Year’s Indicators Show?

Congress has already decided that the unemployment benefits indicator will worsen — unless prospects for long-term job seekers dramatically improve.

It seems on the brink of deciding to let the food insecurity rate rise, since both the House and Senate Farm Bills would cut benefits for half a million households.

But the fate of most indicators — and the people whose lives underlie them — depend on what sort of bargain Republicans and Democrats strike to address the misnamed fiscal cliff.

Half in Ten offers “the right choices” for them — which, of course, are very different from the choices of the right.

* The 2010 figures are supposed to be accessible online. They weren’t when I published this, but I’m told the web tech team is working on a fix.