Recently Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, stated what most of us know, long-term unemployment is a national crisis. Our slowly recovering economy is not producing enough jobs and the number of poor children and families continues to grow. Many poor families have at least one working parent but can’t keep their heads above water and their children above poverty.
The Children’s Defense Fund asked reporter Julia Cass to visit families across the country like the Harper family of Columbus, Ohio, to see how children were being affected by economic downturn. Sixteen-year-old Haleigh said her biggest concern over the last few months has been “not knowing what the next day is going to bring. It’s not knowing like whether we’re going to have …” her sister Lindsey, 14, finished the sentence: “Food in the house”. The girls’ mother lost her job, and although their father is still working hard, he’s making less than he used to, and his hours have just been cut back. The family’s home is in foreclosure, and recently they were accepted for food stamps. The Harpers have just joined the growing numbers of America’s working poor.
New faces of poverty in Columbus, Ohio–Haleigh Harper, 16, and her sister Lindsey Harper, 14, have more than grades and boys to worry about. Haleigh said her biggest concern is, “Not knowing what the next day is going to bring. It’s not knowing like whether we’re going to have…” Lindsey finished the sentence: “Food in the house. With money being tight, there were times we didn’t have a lot of food in the house but we always found some way to get it like borrow money from family. But now we have food stamps; we recently got accepted for food stamps.” Their mother lost her job, their father is making less than he used to, and their home is in foreclosure.
According to Cass, “For almost two decades, their parents, Sandy and Walter Harper, have inched towards middle class – although at a pace of two steps forward and one or two steps back, because their best positions more often than not ended when the companies they worked for went out of business or sold out to other companies. The Harpers’ hard work has not enabled them to consistently provide their daughters with safety or security. After nearly 20 years of labor, they’ve had to call on the safety net to put food on the table and to get medical insurance for Haleigh and Lindsey. ‘I am terrified for my girls’ future,’ Walter said. ‘Something seriously has to be done because people can’t survive anymore.’”
Walter and Sandy both had good jobs in 2009.“In a very brief period Sandy calls ‘the golden age,’ they bought a home – the first they’d ever owned. ‘It was something we’d always dreamed about and planned on,’ Walter said. They looked at foreclosed homes that didn’t need too much work and selected a small three-bedroom in a lower middle class neighborhood.” But as both parents’ companies went through restructurings, closings, and layoffs, within a year they fell behind in their mortgage payments. Sandy’s last job was working at the catalogue call center of a small woman’s sports clothing company that was bought by Gap. But last February, “Sandy stopped working when she broke her hand. She needed surgery and received short-term disability payments. She was supposed to call into Gap regularly but didn’t receive the notice specifying that requirement until too late and was fired as a ‘no call, no show’ . . . Now Sandy has ‘the job of looking for a job,’ as she put it.”
Walter had been earning $1,000 a week installing movie rental kiosks until his company went out of business. His old employer gave him a job installing marble and granite countertops—at $13 an hour, no benefits. But then in September, Walter’s hours were cut back, and the family fell below the official poverty guideline of $22,350 for a family of four - the latest setback in a year of setbacks. Walter’s still on the lookout for better paying work. “‘I was offered a job at $15 an hour, but it was seven days a week. I said I needed Sundays for church and family.’ The Harpers are very active in their church. Sandy runs the youth group, which includes Haleigh and Lindsey. Walter helps feed the homeless on Friday nights. All four volunteer at a soup kitchen. Occasionally, they’ve taken in homeless teenagers. ‘We’re the kind of family that helps others,’ Haleigh said.”
Where is the help for them? Cass notes the family is currently trying to save their home through a federal program called Hardest Hit, created by the Obama Administration to help families dealing with a loss of income avoid foreclosure. They’re stuck in a loop of paperwork requirements. They’ve been able to get Medicaid for Haleigh and Lindsey, though Walter and Sandy still have no health insurance. Now the same cycle that’s taken away the girls’ security for today is starting to eat at their hopes for tomorrow. Cass says, “The girls have not given up on the future, but their outlook has been tempered by the uncertainties they’ve experienced. This fall, Haleigh attends her regular high school for a half day and a career-oriented school the other half day to study surgical tech. She wants to become a surgeon. She’s heard that Ohio State has a good medical school but that it’s expensive. ‘One of my goals in life is to be able to help my parents – if they need money, to be like, “Hey, I got some.” But I don’t know. You’ve got to be realistic.’” The Harpers have become one more American family faced with vanishing dreams.
Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund and its Action Council whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.
Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender
Rather than gaining twice the wealth, ever since both parents have entered the workforce due to more women getting higher education and wanting to rightly have their own careers, standard of living has dropped, prices have doubled and tripled on goods. The average house that once cost double the average annual salary of a single middle class person, now has quadrupled or more.
The result is that no average family today can survive on one person working. What happened? Business figured out they could charge double or more for everything since two people were now working and reap the profits.
Obviously there are a bunch of jobs requiring many years of specific experience, but look at the requirements listed here, and tell me how many people YOU know who would qualify (just about everybody over 25 without a criminal record):
Good oral and written communication skills, and strong interpersonal and conflict resolution skills
Basic business math and accounting skills, and strong analytical/decision-making skills
Basic personal computer literacy
High School diploma (College or university Degree a plus!)
1+ years supervisory experience in a complex food service or retail environment, including Profit & Loss responsibility
You have to wonder if divorce wasn't a planned, government inspired scheme to get Americans to buy two of everything. If people are divorced, they need two households,two or more cars, two dishwashers, two refrigerators, two or more television sets, two dogs, two cats etc.and so on ad nauseum. Consumerism is king and what better way to sell more than by promoting divorce. It's brilliant!
The American Dream of a M-F job has sadly turned into the American Nightmare of a seven day workweek that just barely allows you to survive.
However, I thought about people with kids. How would they check to see if their child got home from school OK? Make doctor appointments? Go to doctor appointments? Etc, etc.
I never got the job and was actually relieved as I would of had to make myself take it if te jjob was offered.
I grew up in a working poor household, never lived in a house, drank powdered milk and ate government cheese and MRE's as meals. It was the late 70's/80's, both parents worked, Pops had two jobs and still we just scraped by.
I don't see how one can be in this position and somehow not work hard, if you don't you're out on the streets.
Just as an example, I grew up across the road from a guy who farmed. He and his brother also owned a huge tobacco warehouse in our hometown.
The story was that, when the tobacco alotments were established in the depths of the Depression to smooth the flow of tobacco into the market (yes, a government-run tobacco cartel, in effect), he and his brother gamed the system. They planted all the tobacco they could, got busted for growing way over the limit, paid the fine, and made out like....well...bandits.
Then they used the proceeds to build their warehouse empire.
I have a sneaking suspicion that a majority of fortunes could be traced back to enabing, unethical behavior, if it were possible to see the truth about what really happened.
It is so pervasive and so obvious in so much business behavior, that I don't really have much respect for people (or corporations) with big wads of money; I always wonder whom they cheated to get it.
One case I am familiar with concerns chicken farmers in Louisiana, where everything is under water, under suspicion, or under indictment. Many years ago, most, if not all, of these farmers made huge fortunes by selling diseased birds for slaughter and bribing the inspectors to look the other way. You can imagine the problems the first honest inspector encountered when he tried to get the farmers to clean up their act. At length, he was successful, but he was afraid for himself and his family throughout the ordeal. I know this story because the man at the center of it later became a veterinarian for whom I worked.
Follow the big money long enough, and you're almost certain to find unethical behavior--from Fan #450.
If you are old enough to remember the 60's and 70's, a high school educated employee could make enough money to support a family, buy a house and car and maybe a vacation home and boat. To achieve that same standard of living today requires two earners per family with a college education or technical trade.
We need labor laws and tax policies that focus on re-building the middle class. Alas, all we get are arguments about who caused the horrible mess we are in. It was not one side or the other it was all of us; and, it will take all of us to right the ship. The first step to fixing any bad situation is to acknowledge there is a problem and to generate interest/enthusiasm to make the changes needed.
Either we are a nation that believes in and supports the middle class; or, we are just a casino where a few lucky ones get rich and the rest get to suffer.
What a ridiculous decision, but no problem, the employer will hire somebody that really needs the job. If they are desperate and supporting kids, I don't know how somebody can be so irresponsible to turn down work, it's even more than the husband is making. Nothing wrong with being spiritual, but if you're making 22 grand a year with a family, choosing church over food is asinine and selfish.
If you are not willing to pay people enough to live, then they have no reason to support the system (from which you accumulate your wealth).
This is simply unsustainable.
Sooner or later they will conclude that they have nothing to lose, then you will witness something more like the French Revolution than Occupy Wall Street.
"Let them eat USED cake!"
Yeah, that'll work. Just try it, and see what happens.