As we develop policies to promote economic recovery and create jobs, it is essential that we recognize the hard truth about poverty in so many of our nation’s communities.  That is why I hope you can attend the first in the Half in Ten campaign’s briefing series, “Restoring Economic Opportunity: The Need for a Recovery that Cuts Poverty in Half in Ten Years”

The first briefing in the series is entitled “The Starting Line: Poverty and Economic Opportunity Before, During, and After the Recession.” At the briefing, Center for American Progress Action Fund economist Heather Boushey will discuss how the recession has brought economic hardship to many American families, the labor market problems underscoring this hardship, and policy solutions to help jumpstart job creation. She will be joined by Dr. Deborah A. Frank of Boston Medical Center’s Grow Clinic for Children, who will describe the long-term health effects on children of growing up with hunger and poverty and federal programs that can help in mitigating some of these effects. Finally, Kelly Dolberry, a resident of DC’s Park Road Family Shelter, will discuss how the recession has affected her family.

Date: March 12, 2010

Time: 11:00 AM -12:30 PM

Room: Capitol Visitors Center, Room HVC-200, Washington DC

Heather Boushey, Senior Economist, Center for American Progress Action Fund

Kelly Dolberry, Resident, Park Road Family Shelter

Dr. Deborah A. Frank, Director, Boston Medical Center’s Grow Clinic for Children

Moderated by Wade Henderson, President and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Half in Ten partner.

Please RSVP to lpereyra@americanprogress.org.

And save the date for the next briefing in our series, which will be held on April 9!

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.

But the new measure could prove transformative if it becomes the central basis by which we establish whether we are making progress on reducing poverty. Public debate on poverty and policies to alleviate it should be focused on this measure because it will more accurately capture whether the actual resources families have available are enough to meet their most basic needs. For the same reasons, public servants should be accountable for what progress they make according to this metric. The objective of this new poverty statistic can be compared to that of the unemployment rate, which in and of itself does not make a family eligible to receive unemployment benefits, but provides an aggregate picture of how the economy is faring and prompts action to create jobs and better target public policies.

The development of a supplemental poverty measure is an important step forward in the fight against poverty in our nation, but it is an equally important opportunity to focus policy on what works.

CAP Action and its partners the Coalition on Human Needs and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights launched the Half in Ten campaign in order to build the political and public will to cut the U.S. poverty rate in half over the next decade. And last month CAP launched a major project called Doing What Works that will focus on making sure that federal spending is targeted on initiatives that are proven to work. Understanding what works and what does not allows us to ensure that the most effective policies and programs continue and expand, and that the least effective programs are reformed or eliminated. We are coming together with the shared philosophy that better data drives better policy solutions, and that the United States is  better positioned to bring more families into the middle class when we have a measure of poverty that more accurately reflects the realities that struggling families are facing.

Why do we need a supplemental poverty measure?

When policymakers set out to tackle a complex problem, they must ask themselves important questions such as: What outcome are they trying to accomplish? And what does the data tell them about how best to achieve that? What programs are currently working and where are there gaps or inefficiencies? How can we make the best use of limited resources to solve this problem?

Yet our traditional measure of poverty is seriously deficient in allowing us to answer these questions. The current federal poverty measure was developed in the 1960s and is based on taking the cost of an emergency food diet and multiplying it by three. At the time the measure was developed, food constituted one-third of the average family’s budget. But since then the measure has only been indexed to inflation, and the poverty line therefore currently amounts to only about $22,000 per year for a family of four.

There are several problems with this approach. First off, a lot has changed since the 1960s. Food used to be one-third of the average family’s budget, but it now amounts to around one-seventh as the costs of housing, childcare, and health care have all risen disproportionately.

This has important consequences for how our poverty measure stands up against America’s progress as a whole. Since food is now a smaller share of family budgets, the poverty threshold has fallen far behind the actual cost of meeting basic needs. When the measure was first instituted, a person living at the federal poverty line earned about 50 percent of the average American’s income; today that proportion has fallen to approximately 28 percent. This pushes the families our society considers “poor” further and further out of the mainstream and masks the struggles of working families earning slightly above the outdated threshold.

Secondly and shockingly, our traditional poverty measure does not actually register the impact of many critical antipoverty policies. Families who benefit from tax measures such as the Earned Income Tax Credit or spending programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—formerly known as food stamps—are seen as no better off than families who are not enrolled in these programs. This creates the false impression that poverty is intractable and that we’ll never make a dent in this problem no matter what government does. In reality, research commissioned by Center for American Progress in 2007 reveals that just four policy recommendations to improve the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, child care assistance, and minimum wage would cut the U.S. poverty rate by 26 percent over 10 years if we used an updated measure such as the one that will be adopted by the administration.

Finally, the traditional measure includes no adjustment for geographic disparities in cost of living. This means that two families with the same income—one in Tate County, Mississippi and the other in Seattle, Washington—are considered equally as well off despite the fact that fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $574 per month in the former and $987 per month in the latter.

How does the supplemental measure address problems with the traditional measurement?

The new supplemental measure will address these concerns by adopting recommendations along the lines of the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences. The NAS panel recommended that the federal government set the alternative federal poverty threshold at a level intended to accommodate basic needs such as food, housing, and clothing. A family’s income that is not available to meet this set of basic needs because its resources are going toward paying taxes, meeting child support obligations, or paying for work-related or out-of-pocket medical expenses will have those expenses discounted. But income in the form of housing vouchers, the earned income tax credit, and other work supports will register on the measure, showing where policies are in fact having an impact on lifting families out of poverty. The alternative measure will also include some form of geographic adjustments that present a more realistic relationship between cost of living and what it takes to meet basic needs. All of these improvements will be dynamic, meaning that the Census will update the measure according to the best available data and statistical methodology.

No one measure—even the supplemental measure—can provide a complete indicator of economic well-being. The supplemental measure will give us a better understanding of how many families are able meet a set of basic needs, but it cannot tell us how many people are able to do so without relying on any public or private assistance. And because the measure is only connected to changes in spending on basic goods, it cannot tells us how good a job we are doing to ensure that all Americans are moving forward together.

We should remember as the Census Bureau moves forward with developing this supplemental measure that getting a more complete picture of economic well-being in America will require using this new measure in combination with other statistics. It will also require working to develop additional indicators that could ultimately represent a more secure level of income for families to not only to meet immediate basic needs, but to save for the future and have a cushion for emergencies.

How will the supplemental measure promote good government?

Why does this supplemental poverty measure matter for those concerned about good and efficient government? First, the new measure will provide a more accurate picture of how families are faring and what types of expenditures are driving household budgets. This data can help us understand how well the federal government is responding to the recession and what types of policies are most effective at helping those families striving to join the middle class. For example, a recent study using an NAS-type poverty measure revealed that just seven provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment were helping keep more than 6 million Americans out of poverty and reduced the severity of poverty for 33 million more.

Second, it will help us to better understand the impact of current antipoverty programs, which will allow the government to focus policy approaches on what works in alleviating poverty and distinguish between well-functioning programs and those in need of reform.

Finally, we will be able to better evaluate future policies. Mayor Bloomberg has been testing and evaluating innovative strategies to tackle poverty in New York. Some of these proposals could end up lifting many families out of poverty and saving considerable money over the long run. Of course, some might not work at all, and if that is the case, then that’s a reason to try a different approach and keep trying until the toolkit of approaches is the one that is most effective and most efficient.

It is likely that there will be little to celebrate in the new data. Given the depth and length of this recession, the supplemental measure will likely confirm what we’ve known for a while—that more and more working families are living on the brink. Yet if the old adage, “what gets measured gets done” is true, this development gives both antipoverty advocates and proponents of smart government cause for hope.

Our country cannot afford the job loss that will come from inaction. Every dollar of unemployment insurance benefits creates $1.90 of stimulus in the community. Our country will lose another 800,000 jobs if the Senate’s inaction cuts off benefits.

And if the Senate acts now, federal aid could also save jobs in essential public safety, education, and health services provided by state and local governments.

Your senators need to hear that now is not the time to procrastinate.

Demand that the Senate vote immediately to save jobs by extending UI benefits and COBRA subsidies through the end of 2010 and by providing aid to state and local governments.

9to5 recently led a lobby day bringing 12 community leaders to the Capitol to speak to their legislators about policies that impact people living in poverty. We will be conducting more lobby days to provide an opportunity for constituents ask their legislators to sign on to the Half in Ten campaign.

• 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 pbodenhamer@aradvocates.org to get involved

• Last weekend, A Minnesota Without Poverty Executive Director, Nancy Maeker, served as the keynote speaker at three Bread for the World workshops on “Bridging the Gap—Making Work Pay: Addressing the Struggle of Low-Income Workers to Make Ends Meet.” Nancy educated dozens of activists on the Earned Income Tax Credit, strategies to end poverty in Minnesota, and the Half in Ten Campaign’s goals and priorities.
• On February 27th, A Minnesota Without Poverty will hold a statewide Gathering on Five Sites entitled, “If Not We, Then Who? If Not Now, Then When?” This web-linked program will focus on the first recommendation of the Legislative Commission to End Poverty recommendation: Restore work as a means out of poverty. All five sites will share the experience of a keynote speaker, music, conversation, report on the progress toward ending poverty, and a community-wide call to action throughout Minnesota.
• On March 25th, the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition (JRLC) will hold a day at the state capitol where over a thousand activists will gather to celebrate JRLC’s Day on the Hill (March 25). Half in Ten issues and goals will be incorporated into this day’s agenda.

Email Nancy Maeker at nancymaeker@mnwithoutpoverty.org to get involved.

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?

Listen in to hear the answers from a January 28, 2010 webinar featuring Deborah Weinstein from the Coalition of Human Needs, Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change, and Alan Charney of Jobs for America Now!

Click here to listen

Here’s a closer look at how the president’s budget request matches up with Half in Ten’s principles.

Promoting decent work

The president rightly places a high priority on job creation in this budget, allocating nearly $100 billion to strategies that get Americans back to work in sectors such as clean energy, infrastructure, and small business. The president also includes funding for strategies that will help tackle the disproportionate unemployment rates and related hardships in low-income communities.

Double-digit unemployment rates and projections of a slow recovery in the labor market, however, underscore the need for a jobs package of a larger scale and scope. Similarly, disproportionate jobless rates among low-income and minority communities call for a more targeted approach to job creation. Temporary spending to spur job growth today will lay the ground for longer-term economic prosperity and deficit reduction.

That being said, there is much to like about the president’s jobs agenda. He invests in strategies to directly create jobs for vulnerable populations, providing helpful funding for transitional jobs and increased funding for youth employment programs. The budget also makes a considerable investment in Workforce Investment Act policies designed to help low- and moderate-income Americans prepare for decent-wage jobs in high-growth fields in the future.

The budget embraces extended use of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Fund as well, calling for an additional $2.5 billion in fiscal year 2011. This policy represents an incredibly efficient way to create jobs directly because it can be used to fully reimburse states for creating subsidized employment opportunities for low-income families.

The president should also be applauded for requesting a $244 million boost in funding for national service programs, a policy that will offer opportunities for youth to enter the labor market and will provide needed volunteers to nonprofit organizations struggling to respond to growing need with shrinking resources.

Finally, the president’s budget proposes to save hundreds of thousands of jobs through aid to states and extensions of unemployment and health benefits. The budget includes approximately $25 billion for state fiscal relief—specifically for helping states with their Medicaid costs. This funding preserves decent-wage, public-sector jobs and prevents cuts in critical services that are helping vulnerable populations weather this recession. The budget also includes provisions for extended unemployment benefits and health subsidies for jobless workers. This investment both prevents jobless workers from slipping into poverty and puts money in the hands of people most likely to spend it, thereby boosting economic demand and creating and saving jobs in the private sector.

Half in Ten praises the president’s emphasis on job creation and his inclusion of policies to foster employment in low-income communities. We urge Congress to pass a budget resolution that builds on these commitments with additional investments in aid to states and direct job creation as well as targeting funds to ensure that people in communities hit hardest in the recession have the opportunity to access some of the jobs created in the clean-energy, infrastructure, and small business sectors.

Ensuring economic security

The president’s budget invests in creating jobs while recognizing that Americans should be able to live with dignity when they cannot work or work is unavailable, unstable, or pays too little to make ends meet. This commitment is evident by the fact that the president’s budget makes room for important investments in income and work supports in the context of an overall discretionary spending freeze.

One of the most important initiatives of the president’s budget for working families is that he asks Congress to make permanent the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s improvements to the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. Making these provisions permanent provides a three-fold return on investment: It puts money in the pockets of people most likely to spend it, thereby stimulating the economy; it “makes work pay” for millions of low-wage employees; and it lift millions of children out of poverty.

The president also reaffirms his commitment to ending child hunger by calling for $1 billion a year in new investments for child nutrition programs while fully funding the Women, Infants, and Children program that provides nutritious food packages to pregnant and nursing women and young children. And the budget sets forth an innovative legislative proposal, The Healthy Food Financing Initiative, to help bring grocery stores to “food deserts” or communities with little access to nutritious and affordable food.

Finally, the budget includes an innovative $500 million Fatherhood, Marriage, and Families Innovation Fund to encourage states to develop effective programs to promote responsible fatherhood and to improve services for single parents who face barriers to achieving self-sufficiency.

Providing opportunity for all

This budget acknowledges that even though we must tackle immediate needs, we must also invest in long-term economic growth by emphasizing education and workforce development. The president recognizes that “In the 21st century, the best antipoverty program around is a world-class education” and asks for a 6.2 percent increase in the budget for the Department of Education. This funding would help improve teacher quality, enhance afterschool enrichment programs, provide higher Pell grants for low- and moderate-income students struggling to pay for college, and invest in community colleges, among other things.

The president makes a historic commitment to childcare and early childhood education in this budget, too. The budget requests that the investments made in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the Head Start and Early Head Start education programs be extended, which would allow an additional 64,000 children and families to be served. The president also requests an additional $1.6 billion in expanded funding for child care, which would allow states to provide subsidies to 235,000 more children than they could have otherwise. These investments create new jobs for childcare and Head Start workers, help low-income parents maintain steady employment, and provide an enriching environment for low-income children so that they are more on pace with their higher-income peers when they enter school.

Helping people build wealth

Last but not least, the president’s budget includes several provisions designed to build assets for long-term economic prosperity. As a cross-cutting initiative the president proposes asset-test reform so that families don’t have to spend down all of their assets before qualifying for services they need in tough economic times. The president proposes that families should be allowed to keep at least $10,000 in assets before losing eligibility for means-tested programs.
The president also proposes a large-scale initiative to increase retirement savings for low- and moderate-income families. Under this program employers who do not offer a retirement plan could automatically enroll their employees in a direct-deposit IRA plan, and employers who do offer such plans would be able to enroll their workers more easily. The plan would also provide incentives for low- and moderate-income Americans to save for retirement by providing a larger saver’s tax credit.

Conclusion

The president’s budget is more than numbers on a ledger—it is statement of priorities. And judging by this administration’s budget request to Congress, the president places high priority on laying the groundwork for a shared economic recovery and helping families hit the hardest in this recession get back on their feet.

We see the president’s commitment in his investments in the types of programs that reflect the four Half in Ten principles for cutting poverty in half in 10 years: decent work, economic security, opportunity for all, and building wealth.

The Half in Ten campaign looks forward to working with Congress to pass a budget resolution that reflects these principles and builds on the president’s request, particularly in the area of increased investments and additional targeting for job creation in economically distressed communities.

In short, the president’s budget request to Congress is a strong down payment on an agenda that invests in workers who want to participate in the economic recovery and families who aspire to join the middle class.

Melissa Boteach is the Half in Ten Manager at American Progress.

January 28, 2010

As communities of faith united by our common religious traditions and values of justice and compassion, we see the latest unemployment numbers released by the U.S. Department of Labor as a call to action. It is abundantly clear that the effects of the most recent recession will be felt for years to come, and we know the most vulnerable among us are disproportionately struggling.  In December 2009, the jobless rate remained unchanged at 10 percent, with a staggering 15.3 million people unemployed. Meanwhile, the alternative measure of unemployment that includes people who stopped looking for work or were unable to find full-time employment held steady at 17.3 percent.  Even as some economists state that the recession is officially over by economic terms, employers are slow to hire new staff, and workers around the country cannot find employment. In human terms, the recession is still wreaking havoc and many families feel hopeless.

As Congress prepares to take action on a much needed jobs bill, the faith community urges our leaders to be mindful of those who are at greatest risk of impoverishment and hardship in today’s economy.

As proposals are made, Members of Congress must ensure that these policies are targeted to at-risk communities, creating jobs that pay a living wage and are sustainable.

Target job creation programs to low-income communities and vulnerable population groups. Targeted programs are needed in order to reach every sector of the population that is suffering from unemployment, especially the most distressed communities. Certain groups with disproportionately high unemployment or low earnings need special efforts to guarantee they are not left out of an economic recovery. Job creation initiatives should target those groups experiencing especially high unemployment, including minorities, workers without a high school degree, and single parents. Legislation must also consider populations with unique needs, such as people of color, displaced workers, workers with disabilities, seniors, low-income youth, and people with limited-English proficiency, by providing worker retraining, education assistance, and other job-related services. In addition, appropriate programs should be targeted to geographic areas with significantly higher-than-average levels of unemployment. National unemployment rates can obscure large regional disparities. In areas around Detroit, Cleveland, and the Central Valley of California, which have experienced the greatest job loss, and regions like the Gulf Coast and the Textile Belt, which were already suffering from elevated unemployment, additional efforts are needed to overcome the job loss crisis.

New jobs that are created should generate sustainable employment and a long-term pathway to economic security. By targeting high growth and priority industries (for example renewable energy, health care, education, infrastructure, and child care),in both the public and private sectors, newly created jobs can provide a pathway out of poverty if they pay a livable wage and include comprehensive benefits.  While many of these jobs may be temporary in the beginning, if on-the-job training and proper work experience is provided, they can turn into longer-term careers for those most in need of employment. Job creation efforts should promote economic security, not stand in the way of it.

Assistance should be provided to help vulnerable families impacted hardest by job loss and the recession. Low-income and asset-poor families are hit hardest during a recession because they lack the resources to weather the storm. In addition to creating jobs, legislation must ensure that workers do not lose essential services during their period of unemployment. When workers lose their job, they are supported by safety net programs that ensure access to food, shelter, healthcare, and other critical needs. As unemployment has climbed, so too has the demand for these programs. Congress should ensure that both the programs that serve jobless and low-income people and the states that administer them are adequately resourced.

Our common scriptures present a vision of shared responsibility that endows the notion of work with an inherent dignity yet also commands that we care for the vulnerable among us. Right now, it is imperative that our nation’s leaders turn the economy around and put the country on the pathway to a healthy recovery. Job creation is a top priority for the President and Members of Congress. They must not lose sight of those communities that need the most help. There is a place in this emerging economy for all of us, and properly-drafted legislation will create a workforce that is better trained, stronger, competitive, inclusive, and more viable in the future.

African Methodist Episcopal Church

American Friends Service Committee

Bread for the World

Church Women United

The Episcopal Church

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Friends Committee on National Legislation

Interfaith Worker Justice

Jewish Council for Public Affairs

Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Washington Office.

The National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd

National Council of Churches of Christ, USA

National Council of Jewish Women

National Ministries, American Baptist Churches USA

NETWORK: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Washington Office

Union for Reform Judaism

United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries

United Methodist Church – General Board of Church and Society