Blog Action Day Today!

Half in Ten is proud to support Blog Action Day 2008. Today, on thousands of blogs around the world, writers and commenters will discuss all aspects of poverty-global and domestic, urban and rural, useful technologies and policy solutions. If you have a blog or podcast, we encourage you to participate. Below, we’ve compiled some facts on American poverty and our solutions, as well as links to other organizations that are fighting poverty, to help you as you develop a post.

What are Blog Action Day and Half in Ten

  • Blog Action Day is an annual event in which blogs around the world blog on a given topic on October 15. This year’s topic is poverty. 5500 blogs with an estimated 8 million readers have already signed up to participate.
  • Half in Ten is a campaign to cut American poverty in half in the next ten years. We are a joint campaign of CAPAF, LCCR, ACORN, and the Coalition on Human Needs.

Statistics on Poverty in America

  • More than thirty-seven million Americans live below the official poverty line (less than $21,203 for a family of four), and more than 13.3 million children are poor in this country.
  • Most poor families live on far less than the poverty level – the annual income of the average poor family is more than $8,500 below the poverty line. Even worse, more than 15 million people live below half the poverty line, and more than one-third of them are children.
  • Inequality has reached record highs – it is greater than at any time since 1929.
  • Growing portions of the nation’s wealth have been concentrated in the possession of a small fraction of households, while a full 30% of us are trying to get by on incomes less than 200% of the federal poverty line (or about $42,000 for a family of four).
  • Rising unemployment, the ongoing foreclosure crisis, and skyrocketing prices threaten to push even more Americans into poverty or near poverty. Well before the current crisis, 6 million low-income households were paying more than half their income on rent and utilities or lived in severely substandard housing. Over the course of a year, more than 35 million people in 12.6 million households could not always afford adequate food. (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
  • In The Economic Costs of Poverty in the United States, Harry Holzer, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Greg Duncan, and Jens Ludwig found that allowing children to grow up in persistent poverty costs our economy $500 billion dollars per year in lost adult productivity and wages, increased crime, and higher health expenditures.
  • Holzer and his co-authors explain that children who grow up in poverty are more likely than non-poor children to have low earnings as adults, reflecting lower workforce productivity. They are also somewhat more likely to engage in crime (though that is not the case for the vast majority) and to have poor health later in life.
  • Holzer and co-authors estimate that each year, childhood poverty reduces productivity and economic output by about 1.3 percent of GDP, Raises the costs of crime by 1.3 percent of GDP, Raises health expenditures and reduces the value of health by 1.2 percent of GDP.

There is a Solution

  • In the past, antipoverty policies have had a distinct effect. Between 1964 and 1973, for example, poverty fell by more than 40%. Between 1993 and 2000 it fell by 25%.
  • After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Center for American Progress convened a task force of antipoverty experts. In April 2007, they released From Poverty to Prosperity, a report outlining 12 policy solutions that can cut poverty in half in the next ten years.
  • The Urban Institute found that acting on just 3 of the recommendations would cut poverty by more than 26%. If we raised and indexed the minimum wage; expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit; and provided child care assistance for working families with incomes up to 200% of the poverty line, we would cut poverty by 26%. Over 9 million fewer people would be poor, the racial poverty gap would narrow, and child poverty would drop by 41%.

Momentum is building to fight poverty

  • Both Barack Obama and John McCain have committed to address poverty in their administrations.
  • In his recent Meet the Press interview, Bill Clinton stated, “I’d say we’re not going to have the America we want unless prosperity is broadly shared, and to do that, we have to have economic opportunity in the poorest parts of America.”
  • Alongside Half in Ten, a number of campaigns and organizations have emerged to fight poverty, including Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, and the ecumenical Fighting Poverty with Faith campaign, with lead organizations including Catholic Charities USA and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

What we can do now

  • The Half in Ten campaign believes that a clear goal and tested strategies to achieve it are crucial fuel for success. Accordingly, setting a 50 percent reduction goal is our first step toward eliminating poverty. We are also pursuing specific policy changes, as outlined below.
  • Building Wealth: Protect low- and moderate-income homeowners from foreclosure
    • Foreclosure rates continue at unprecedented levels; 6% of homeowners, or 3 million households, are now behind on their mortgages.
    • For people who were sold subprime loans – who are much more likely to be low- and moderate-income families, and much more likely to be people of color - the delinquency rate is above 30%.
    • Homeownership has long been overwhelmingly the largest – almost the only – asset held by low- and moderate-income families. When they lose their homes, or the value of their homes, they lose a lifetime of savings and security.
    • Federal policymakers must make helping people stay in their homes with new mortgages they can afford a priority. They must take all the legislative and regulatory steps needed to make such loan modifications happen, including changes in bankruptcy, tax and accounting law, and develop systems that ensure that they happen swiftly and at scale.
    • Meanwhile, states and localities can and must take action to slow foreclosures themselves, including instituting programs like the successful Philadelphia Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion program.
    • For more information, see CAP’s Housing Page and the Center for Responsible Lending
  • Increasing Economic Security: Expand access to Unemployment Insurance and the Earned Income Tax Credit
    • Unemployment Insurance
      • Only about 35 percent of unemployed people get UI benefits.
      • Low-wage workers are more than 40% less likely than higher wage earners to get UI, with rules that penalize women and caregivers.
      • With unemployment levels climbing, the problem is more pressing every month.
      • Last October, the House passed UI Modernization legislation to allow and encourage States to address these issues.
      • For more information, see the National Employment Law Project
    • Earned Income Tax Credit
      • The EITC provided more than $4,700 for families with two children and earnings of as much as $17,000 in 2007 (the EITC is less for families with lower earnings; it also declines for families with higher earnings, phasing out entirely at $40,000). It is an especially good antipoverty tool because it is available as a refund check to low-income families even if their earnings are too low to owe federal income taxes.
      • The EITC provided more than $4,700 for families with two children and earnings of as much as $17,000 in 2007 (the EITC is less for families with lower earnings; it also declines for families with higher earnings, phasing out entirely at $40,000). It is an especially good antipoverty tool because it is available as a refund check to low-income families even if their earnings are too low to owe federal income taxes.
      • EITC expansions during the 1990s helped increase employment and reduce poverty.
      • The current EITC does little to help workers without children. (In 2007 the maximum payment for workers without children was $428, and no credit was available for such workers with earnings of $15,000.)
      • We recommend tripling the EITC for childless workers, and expanding help to larger working families. Doing so would cut the number of people in poverty by over two million.
      • For more information, see the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
  • Providing Opportunity for All: Offer the Child Tax Credit to all households with children under 17; Support child care for families up to 200% of poverty line
    • Child Tax Credit
      • The Child Tax Credit provides a credit of up to $1,000 per child.
      • 10.5 million children in the poorest families in the country were ineligible for the credit in 2007, and another 11 million children received only a partial credit.
      • The package of tax cuts extended as part of the Wall Street bailout legislation includes an improvement in the Child Tax Credit that will make 3 million children newly eligible, and increase the credit for 10 million more. However, the improvement is only in place for one year, and expires after that. We need to secure this extension for the long term, and then make the tax credit available to all children.
      • For more, see CAP’s brief on the CTC
    • Child Care
      • Federal support for child care has been frozen for nearly a decade.
      • We propose that the federal and state governments guarantee child care help to families with incomes below about $40,000 a year, and also expand the child care tax credit so that it reaches more low-income families.
      • These policies would raise employment among low-income parents and help nearly three million parents and children escape poverty.
      • For more see the National Women’s Law Center
    • Promoting Decent Work:
      • Green Jobs and Efficient Homes
        • Home heating accounts for 36% of home energy expenses, and costs are expected to rise 27% in 2008. (See CAP’s brief for more)
        • Meanwhile, an investment in green jobs, like home retrofits, has the opportunity to create millions of jobs, as shown in CAP’s Green Recovery report.
        • We need a tremendous scaling up of investment in retrofitting homes and other buildings – along with providing the job training and access needed to create the workforce to do these jobs.
      • Minimum Wage
        • The minimum wage, at $6.55 (effective July 24, 2008), is still close to its lowest levels in real terms since 1956.
        • The federal minimum wage was once 50 percent of the average wage, providing a floor that supported decent pay for all, but it has fallen to something closer to 30 percent of that wage.
        • Congress should restore the minimum wage to 50 percent of the average wage, about $9.00 an hour in 2008, and then index it to inflation, so that it does not repeatedly fall behind. Doing so would help over 4.5 million poor workers and nearly nine million other low-income workers.
        • For more information, see ACORN and EPI

    Antipoverty Organizations


This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 8:32 am and is filed under Poverty in America Today.