Dear 44: Reduce Poverty
Lisa Donner, the Executive Director of Half in Ten, contributes to Politico’s “Dear 44: Ideas for the Next President” series:
What should the 44th president do about poverty in our great nation? He should make cutting poverty a clear goal of his administration and prioritize a set of initiatives that will make the most significant contributions to meeting it. We can — and should — cut poverty in half in the next 10 years.
In August, the Census Bureau announced that 12.5 percent of Americans (one in eight) lived in poverty in 2007. Eighteen percent of children (almost one in five) were poor by the official count. The data show that while from a bird’s-eye view the economy grew every year between the 2001 recession and 2007, a large share of Americans did not benefit from that growth. Poverty rates in 2007 were higher than before that recession began, and median income was lower.
Since 2007 things have gotten significantly worse, with unemployment up and average weekly earnings down. And the poverty numbers only understate the problem: In 2007 the “poverty threshold” for a family of four was $21,027, but the actual cost of making ends meet — paying rent and utilities, buying food, covering child care, getting to and from work every day — is much greater in many communities.
Hardship and insecurity on this scale are neither inevitable nor acceptable in our productive and wealthy country. We have experience in successfully cutting poverty, and we have policy options we know make a difference. Between 1959 and 1973, poverty fell by 50 percent. In the seven years between 1993 and 2000, poverty fell by 25 percent, and child poverty decreased 29 percent. In both periods, a strong, near full-employment economy was combined with federal, state, and local decisions that expressly addressed unemployment and poverty.
The Center for American Progress Task Force on Poverty, in its report “From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half,” urged adoption of a national goal of cutting poverty in half in 10 years. The task force recommended a dozen specific proposals to advance these principles. The Urban Institute calculated that four of them alone — raising the minimum wage to half the average wage; expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit; making the federal Child Tax Credit available to low-income families (as it is to higher income families); and ensuring child care assistance for struggling families — would cut poverty by over 25 percent, while lowering child poverty by more than 40 percent.
A commitment to reducing poverty would have a dramatic effect in improving the life chances of the next generation of American children. And it would promote economic growth and the nation’s productivity. Research by Georgetown University professor Harry Holzer and colleagues found that through lower adult productivity, higher health care costs, and increased crime-related costs, the cost to the U.S. economy from children growing up in persistent poverty is about $500 billion a year, or 4 percent of our gross domestic product.
See the article here.
Read the companion piece from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Jim Robinson here.
