Why an alternative federal poverty measure will drive smarter policies to bring more families into the middle class

By Melissa Boteach and Jitinder Kohli

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” said New York City Mayor and business magnate Michael Bloomberg in 2007 describing the need for an updated poverty measure.

Now it seems he is getting his wish. The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that it will be developing an alternative way to measure poverty. This new method will better reflect the realities facing struggling families and ways in which current government programs can help them to get back on their feet. Unlike the traditional poverty measure, which is based in a 1960s reality, this supplemental measure will provide a more accurate accounting of household budgets and better determination of whether a family has enough resources to meet its most basic needs.

The Census Bureau has published a number of different alternative poverty data for many years and will continue to do so. But this new measure will accommodate updated research and modeling, and will be released alongside the traditional poverty data in 2011, ushering in a new public understanding of how well we are doing in ensuring that more families are able to meet basic needs and ultimately to join the middle class.

The new measure is not designed to replace the traditional measure. Eligibility for more than 80 public benefits is tied in some form to the current federal poverty measure, which will continue to be a useful tool in administering programs. Issuing a supplemental measure will not change eligibility for any government benefits or in and of itself cost the government one penny in additional poverty program expenditures.

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Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families is excited to be part of the Half in Ten family. With the New Year well on its way, new opportunities to cut poverty in half by 2020 have taken flight in Arkansas. AACF will launch a plan to educate policy makers, service providers and the public on the importance of knowing the facts about poverty and how we can work together to reduce poverty. This three- prong plan will include:

• Hosting regional meetings that will educate participants on the facts of poverty and the policies that help and hinder our most vulnerable populations.
• Holding advocacy academies to equip local advocates with the knowledge on the methods of effective advocacy.
• Empowering locally trained advocates to host round table discussions with candidates and elected officials to share what they have learned and how they can work together to abolish poverty in our state and country.

Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families is also creating a candidate’s guide that will be used in this training. This guide will outline our different issue areas and encourage local advocates to become active in the electoral process by questioning potential candidates on the issues that affect so many working families in Arkansas.
Finally, we are working with local partners to bring the Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS) to Arkansas. This tool was created by the Missouri Association for Community Action to educate policymakers and community leaders about the day to day realities of life with a shortage of money and an abundance of stress. Several local partners and staff members of AACF have been trained to facilitate the poverty simulation. We hope to offer this unique opportunity by mid-March. For more information and description of the poverty simulation

The future is filled with opportunities, as are looking forward to working together with dedicated advocates, concerned lawmakers and the faith community to cut poverty in half by 2020 in Arkansas and the United States overall.

Email Pat Bodenhamer at [email protected] to get involved

The Half in Ten Campaign believes that any strategy to cut the U.S. poverty rate in half over the next 10 years must be based on four fundamental principles: promoting decent work, ensuring economic security, providing opportunity for all, and helping people build wealth. The president’s budget released earlier this week reflects those same principles by laying out an agenda for job creation, investing in income and work supports even in the context of a discretionary spending freeze, offering an education and workforce agenda that promotes opportunity, and championing policies that will allow Americans to save and build for the future. Half in Ten urges Congress to pass a budget resolution that adopts and builds on these investments with special emphasis on job creation for low-income and minority communities.

Here’s a closer look at how the president’s budget request matches up with Half in Ten’s principles.
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Half in Ten is co-sponsoring a webinar on what the federal government can do to address the jobs crisis on Thursday, January 28th at 3:00 pm EST.

Click here to register and hear from the experts on what steps Congress can take to create employment opportunities in low-income and minority communities.

Speakers

• Larry Mishel, President, Economic Policy Institute
• Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director, Center for Community Change
• Alan Charney, Campaign Director, Jobs for America Now
• Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director, Coalition on Human Needs, Moderator

There are 6.4 jobseekers for every unfilled job - and that gap is growing. Two-thirds of Americans are close to someone who is out of work. And joblessness is worst for communities of color, youth, and women who head households. The private sector does not have the capacity to rebuild employment on its own. While the investments made through the federal economic recovery legislation have created or saved over 1 million jobs so far, the recession is so deep that more federal action is urgently needed.

Congress and the Obama Administration are working on job creation plans. What should they do? How can we build support for job creation that does not leave the poorest people behind? Register for the webinar and find out.

By Sam Fulwood III , Melissa Boteach

Listen to Sam and Melissa discuss the anti-poverty legacy of Rev. King on Mic Check Radio’s Progress to Go Podcast

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. shifted his focus in the dwindling years of his life to an audacious, but achievable goal: ending poverty in the United States.

In his book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, King argued that the United States must change its attitude and approach toward the treatment of its poor citizens. He reasoned that since poverty knew no racial boundaries, he couldn’t limit his call for congressional action to assist only black Americans.

“In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out,” King wrote in 1967. “There are twice as many white poor as [black] poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects white and [black] alike.”

This was a radical—and unpopular—change for the preacher who is best known for pushing voting, employment, housing, and other civil rights for black Americans. At this point in his career, during what would become the final months of his life, he was widening his field of vision to seek an end to poverty among all Americans.

It’s appropriate as we pause to celebrate this year’s national holiday in memory of King’s 81st birthday to recall the relevance of his final struggle to the contemporary fight against poverty. Read more »

When: Tuesday, December 8, 2:00 - 3:00p.m., Eastern time

In just one year, the number of people in households that sometimes lacked the money for enough nutritious food rose from 36 million to 49 million - the highest number on record. Among them were 17 million children - 4 million more in 2008 than in 2007.

This is called food insecurity. The recession is making it worse.
It is hurting children.

Learn More:

• What the USDA food security survey means
• How to use the data compellingly, simply, and accurately
• Research showing how food insecurity hurts children
• What policy choices can halt this very disturbing trend

Presenters:

• James D. Weill, President, Food Research and Action Center (FRAC)
• Dr. Deborah Frank, Founder and Principal Investigator, Children’s HealthWatch; Professor of Pediatrics at Boston U. School of Medicine and Director of the Grow Clinic at Boston Medical Center
• Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director, Coalition on Human Needs
• Moderator: George A. Braley, Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Public Policy, Feeding America

Register

Thanksgiving for All Americans In light of the latest data on poverty and food insecurity in the country, Melissa Boteach of the Half in Ten Campaign and Jim Weill of the Food Research and Action Center call on Congress and the President to act by investing in nutrition assistance and job creation. Read more and download the memo »

Find 2008 poverty data for your congressional district.

The Census Bureau released data throughout September that revealed growing poverty in 2008, spelling hard times for families who were struggling even before the recession. Half in Ten: The Campaign to Cut Poverty in Half in Ten Years and the Center for American Progress Action Fund have organized this data by congressional district, with additional breakdowns on child poverty, women in poverty, and poverty among racial minorities.

“This data offers lawmakers a more detailed look into the growing poverty rates among their own constituents,” said Melissa Boteach, manager of the Half in Ten Campaign. “We look forward to working with Congress and the administration to advance the necessary policies to help those most in need during this time of economic turmoil while laying the groundwork for a shared economic recovery” emphasized Boteach.

On September 29, the government released the latest batch of data, which showed how states and localities were affected during the recession’s first year. However, the data does not incorporate the sharp increase in the unemployment rate, which averaged 5.8 percent last year and is expected to average 9.3 percent in 2009 according to the Economic Policy Institute. Read more »

In her May 7th column, “Essential Legal Services“, Joy Moses - a policy analyst with the Center for American Progress - highlights the legal challenges poor and lower-income families face in a recession, among these being foreclosure, landlord-tenant disputes, and government assistance eligibility. Unemployment projections due out later this week are expected to be the worst since this recession began in 2007. As such, she argues, the Obama administration and Congress must take appropriate steps to ensure the Legal Services Corporation has adequate funding this year and going forward. State and federal authorities looking to ‘trim the fat’ ought to be chastened by the fact that recessions tend to affect these two groups disproportionately and therefore, cuts to legal programs would merely exacerbate the effects of hard times on the hard-hit.

Half in Ten partner and Executive Director at the Center for Human Needs, Deborah Weinstein, participated in a recent event hosted by The New School, where poverty experts squared off, debating the merits of President Obama’s efforts - namely, the ARRA and his 2010 budget proposal - to curb and eventually reduce poverty in the long run. Although the event was largely focused on poverty initiatives in New York City, panelists were urged to consider their applicability nationwide. Weinstein’s daughter - a professional animator and audience member - has an amusing take on the discussion. Click here to see it.