This article was co-written by Brandon Roberts and David Altstadt on behalf of the Working Poor Families Project.
The latest poverty figures paint a grim picture of the Great Recession's deep and persistent impact on average Americans. Last year, more Americans were poor than ever before, as the poverty rate climbed to a 17-year high.
Yet as bad as that sounds, the number of Americans who are struggling to get by is doubly worse. And, many of them are working but still can't make a decent living.
On Tuesday, the Census Bureau announced that the nation's official poverty rate rose to 15.1 percent in 2010, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 to reach the highest mark since 1993. An additional 2.6 million people joined the ranks of the poor, bringing the total to 46.2 million -- the highest number since the government started tracking poverty in the 1950s.
A family of four earning up to $22,314 is counted as poor. But, anyone facing $4 a gallon of gas and rising costs for health insurance, food, and housing knows that you need to earn a lot more to meet your family's basic needs without getting mired deep into debt. Many experts now agree that families must reach twice the poverty level before achieving any semblance of income security.
By this measure, in 2010, 33.9 percent of Americans -- for a total of 103.6 million -- could not make ends meet. This is more than twice the number of officially poor. More than four in 10 children are low income, 32.5 million in all. (The tally of Americans living below 200 percent of poverty is published in Table 6 of the Census Bureau report.)
And, while the nation's stubbornly high unemployment has drawn attention to the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs in the economic downturn, the fact is that three out of four low-income families are gainfully employed. Despite their determination and effort, many are toiling in low-wage jobs that provide inadequate benefits and offer few opportunities for advancement.
The plight of these low-income families is worsening -- challenging a fundamental assumption that, in America, work pays. In 2009, 30 percent of working families were low-income, up from 28 percent in 2007, according to Census Bureau data analyzed by the Working Poor Families Project. These families totaled 45 million people, including 22 million children, an increase of 1.7 million people from 2008. We expect that when 2010 data becomes available soon this negative trend will have continued.
Not surprisingly, the ranks of the working poor have grown at a time in which the median household income has dropped sharply. According to the Census Bureau, the average household earned $49,445 in 2010, a 6.4 percent decline since 2007.
At this critical juncture, policymakers must avoid reducing the national debt on the backs of working families. Instead, policymakers should give priority to investing public resources and enacting public policies that are directed at:
Pell grants, food stamps, unemployment insurance and the earned income tax credit, among other government programs, are vital for helping working families achieve economic security. We must act now to renew America's promise that work pays.
Brandon Roberts manages the Working Poor Families Project (WPFP), and David Altstadt conducts research on the education, skill development, and employment needs of low-skilled adults.
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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
In America today, all men may be created equal, but they don't start off life on the same rung of the ladder to success. We have a Right to life, but not to healthcare. A Right to liberty, yet we have the highest incarceration rate in the world. The pursuit of happiness? That one we still have a Right to..........the pursuit, not necessarily the opportunity to reach the end goal..
The upward mobility ladder is pay as you go, and all too many of our citizens can't afford the toll.
"A society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable" Gandhi
I wonder what the verdict will be on ours?
Red GOP run states lead in a lot of things: highest violent crime rates, highest murder rates. The gop has let their own base down and apparently their base does not even have the intelligence to notice. I do not mean to offend some in red states, but perhaps you can inform your neighbors who do not realize what their GOP run government has done to them.
The only difference between leaders in corrupt Banana Republics and the USA is they wear army fatigues and our reps wear suits.
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There is absolutely no risk of that happening. The national debt increased by over a trillion dollars last year. It would take a miracle to even significantly slow the growth of the debt, let alone start reducing it.
All of it has added up to one thing--business leaders no longer want to pay Americans for work, to share the wealth created by workers with the workers who create it.
While I agree with Mr. Roberts' three policy ideas, I think it is past time we had industrial and trade policies that favor actual Americans rather than just the fiction of corporate "persons."
The other thing we need to get rid of is the idea that greed is good.
Here is a suggested causal analysis: First, legislative Republicans, understandably, wanted a balanced budget, following our $26 billions deficit. Second, Democrats wanted to place a tax issue before voters, which GOP legislators successfully blocked. Third, following state reductions for the last couple of years, the Governor and legislature had no choice but to further diminish higher ed funding. Fourth, approximately 400,000 CC students could not attend classes, depriving them of education vital to their improving their lives.
While job openings are increasing in the Bay Area, especially the legendary Silicon Valley, just two hours east, in the Central Valley, the lack of vocational education is eroding the possibility of earning well-paying jobs. Even transferring to UC or CSU systems is becoming difficult, for those institutions are similarly having to restrict enrollment.
Most of the high school buildings that existed in the middle of the 20th century have become middle schools or have been torn down. Mechanical arts classes and home husbandry courses have been eliminated as school administrators and their political bosses on school boards have slashed "non-essential" courses and focused on training their students to get high marks on mis-labeled standardized achievement tests. the shops and kitchens where teens learned the essentials of how to take care of them selves and do something worth something to others were converted into computer and media labs.
As a consequence we have two generations of students who, for the most part, have no idea how to use tools, how to plan building project, how to wire a doorbell. What they can do is text message, tweet, and game. And while we have plenty of things that need to be done, the number of young and young middle aged adults who know how to do them is declining. The people with the skills this country needs are in Asia, Europe and South America.
What we are seeing the ultimate result of believing "greed is good."
Bush promoted off shore jobs: //seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001854367_bushecon10.html
"The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said yesterday."
The next 20 years will be quite interesting, we may actually experience a new revolution of the masses in this country.