(4/8/2008)

Hunger

A recent New York Times article reports that the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year. This would be the highest level of receipt since the program began in the 1960s. Michigan was highlighted as a state with a notable increase in food stamp usage. According to the report, one in eight residents now receive food stamps in Michigan, and the caseload has more than doubled since 2000.

The Food Stamp program is an entitlement program, with eligibility guidelines set by federal law. Eligibility is determined by a complex formula, but, basically, there is a strict asset limit, and an eligible recipient must have an income below $27,560 for a family of four or 130 percent of the federal poverty line.

The author speculated that the increase in the use of food stamps can be attributed to layoffs, and rising food and fuel prices.

You can read the full article, (“As Jobs Vanish and Prices Rise, Food Stamp Use Nears Record” Erik Eckholm, March 31, 2008) at http://www.nytimes.com.

Unemployment

In a related New York Times article, it was reported that the number of people applying for unemployment benefits shot up last week to the highest level in more than two years. The source of the information used in this article is the U.S. Department of Labor.

For the complete article “Jobless Filings at Highest Level Since Late 2005,” (April 4, 2008) go to: http://www.nytimes.com/.

(3/4/2008)

Incarceration Rates

The Pew Charitable Fund has released a report titled One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008. One in every 100 adult is now confined in an American jail or prison. The United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world.

On the basis of race and gender the numbers are even more dramatic. Generally for Black men, the ratio is 1 in 15. For young men behind bars between the ages of 20 and 34, it is a 1 in 30 ratio, while for Black men, the figure is 1 in 9.

For Black women, in their mid-to-late 30s, the incarceration rate is 1 in 100, the same ratio as that for all men, while for Hispanic women the ratio is 1 in 297. The ratio for White women was 1 in 355.

For a copy of the full report go to: http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/One%20in%20100.pdf.

(2/11/2008)

Assessing Child Support Arrears in Nine Large States and the Nation

This report written by Elaine Sorensen, Liliana Sousa, and Simon Schaner of the
Urban Institute was published in July, 2007. It provides information about the underlying
characteristics of child support arrears in the nation and in nine states.

In the nine study states, the obligors who owed over $30,000 in arrears were quite
different from other obligors, 70 percent of these arrears were owed by obligors who
had either no reported income or reported incomes of $10,000 a year or less.

For a copy of the full report online go to:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/07/assessing-CS-debt

The Implementation of the Partners for Fragile Families Demonstration Projects

This report discusses the national demonstration project intended to effect systems change,
deliver appropriate and effective services, and improve outcomes for both parents and children
in low-income families. The project was primarily sponsored by Office of Child Support
Enforcement (OCSE) at HHS and the Ford Foundation. The targeted eligibility population was non-custodial fathers between the ages of 16 –25.

Some of the key findings:

• Careful consideration should be given o the eligibility/targeting criteria in responsible fatherhood initiatives.
• Providing services designed to help low-income fathers benefit from an understanding of the child support system.
• Help with resolving visitation issues and legal representation helps attract and retain young fathers in fatherhood programs.

For a copy of the full report go to::
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411511_fragile_familes.pdf

(1/3/2008)

Racial Disparity and Incarceration for Drug Offenses

A report released in December by the Justice Policy Institute “The Vortex: The Concentrated Impact of Drug Imprisonment and the Characteristics of Punitive Counties.” discusses the increase in the incarceration of drug offenders. The report combined data from multiple sources to calculate county-level of admission to state prisons for drug offenses.

Selected findings:

• While tens of millions of people use illicit drugs, prison,and policing responses to drug behavior have a concentrated impact on a subset of the population.
• Whites and African American report using and selling drugs at similar rates, but African Americans go to prison for drug offenses at higher rates than Whites.
• Counties with larger proportions of African Americans in the community sent people to prison for drug offenses at higher rates.

For a complete copy of the report, please go to:
http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/07-12_REP_Vortex_AC-DP.pdf.

(11/21/2007)

Black and White Economic Mobility

A recent report issued by The Economic Mobility Project , an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts investigated the status of economic mobility in America. The three reports were authored by Julia B. Issacs, Child and Family Policy Fellow at the Brookings Institute. The first report examines how families have done over the last thirty years, while the remaining reports examine mobility by race and gender.

Selected findings of the studies were:

• An Americans’ ability to move up or down the economic ladder is tied closely to their parent’s economic position. Forty-two percent of children born at the bottom of the income distribution remain at the bottom, while 39 percent born to parents at the top, stayed at the top.
• In the report on Black and White Economic Mobility, it was reported that in every income group, Blacks are less likely to than whites to climb the ladder, and the majority of blacks born to middle-income parents are slipping out of the middle class.

For copies of the reports go to: http://www.economicmobility.org/reports_and_research/.

(10/11/2007)

Debt while Imprisoned

A new study commissioned by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance and produced by the Council of State Governments Justice Center entitled “Repaying Debts” describes cases of newly released inmates who have been greeted with as much as $25,000 in debt the moment they step outside the prison gate.

An interesting finding that was highlighted in the editorial section of the New York Times (10/6/07) on the report was that the majority of the debt is composed of child support obligations that mount while the imprisoned parent has no income.

For a copy of the report go to the Justice Center, Council of State Government website: http://justicecenter.csg.org/.

(7/12/2007)

Relationship of Crime and Employment

MDRC has released a new issue paper on the intersection of employment and crime.
In the issue paper, here are a few of the key points:

• A large proportion of former prisoners have low levels of education and work experience, health problems, and other personal characteristics that make them hard to employ, particularly in a labor market that offers fewer and fewer well-paying opportunities for individuals who lack postsecondary education.
• The increase in incarceration over the past 25 years has disproportionately affected African-American men. Among black men born between 1965 and 1969, 30 percent of those without a college education and a startling 60 percent of high school dropouts had served time in prison by 1999.
• Finally, many people enter the criminal justice sytem hard to employ and leave it even harder to employ. Not surprisingly, employment rates for ex-prisoners are typically low.

For a copy of the MDRC issue brief and other related reports go to http://www.mdrc.org/area_issue_23.html (issue focus)
and http://www.mdrc.org/publications/435/full.pdf (issue reports).

(6/7/2007)

Poverty-wage work

According to the State of Working Wisconsin 2006 report, workers who earn less than $9.52 per hour in 2005 dollars, cannot make enough money to keep a family of four out of poverty. The share of workers in poverty-wage jobs in Wisconsin in 2005 was:

White men: 14.6 percent
Black men: 28 percent
White women: 24.5 percent
Black women: 39.3 percent
All: 21.6 percent.

The State of Working Wisconsin 2006 tells a compelling story about the status of jobs and workers in Wisconsin: job growth and rising incomes, along with sharp inequalities along economic and racial lines.

To order a printed copy of the State of Working Wisconsin, please email cows-info@cows.org.

(5/3/2007)

A recent New York Times article, titled In Turnabout, Infant Deaths Climb in South, by Erik Eckholm, details the growing incidence of infant mortality deaths in Mississippi.

For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. However, in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states.

The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and medicaid and poor access to doctors, and related health issues such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.

The current rate of infant mortality is 17 per thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004 while infant deaths among whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. in Mississippi while in the U.S. the average was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks in 2003.

For more detailed information, read the April 22, 2007 issue of the New York Times.

(3/15/2007)

Black male joblessness takes rare fall:

Milwaukee has posted a small and rare decrease in its extreme rate of black male joblessness. This finding is documented in a recently released report titled The Crisis of Black Male Joblessness in Milwaukee: Trends, Explanations, and Policy Options by Marc Levine.

Levine, Director of the Center for Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, reported that 44.1% of the working age African-American men in the city had no job in 2005, down from 47.3% in the 2000 census.

Despite these findings, Milwaukee remains near the bottom of 14 comparable Midwest-Northeast metropolitan areas surveyed.

A full copy of the report can be obtained at http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/CED/
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 13, 2007

(1/22/2007)

• Black children make up less than 15% of the overall child population. However, the most recent data available showed that 27% of the children who entered foster care FY2003 were black, and on the last day of the year, 35% of the children in foster care were black.
• Black and Native children are twice as likely to be part of the population of children entering foster care as they are to be part of the general population.
• Speculation and theories as to the reason for this include:

Disproportionate need—black children are more likely to be poor or in single homes

Disproportionate attention—black children are more likely to come to the attentions of child welfare service providers

Biased decision-making—black children are more likely to be reported to child welfare agencies.

• In 2003, 34% of black children were poor compared to 9% of white children and 30% of latino children.

—from a memorandum to Senator Charles Range
Congressional Research Service August 25, 2005

(12/18/2006)

A recent study reported that applicants for welfare in Wisconsin have not received the help they need to overcome barriers to work and the vast majority remain below the poverty line years after applying for assistance. The research was conducted by Dr. Mark Courtney, McCormick Tribune Professor at the School of Social Service Administration and his colleagues at the Chapin Hall Center for Children, University of Chicago.

Highlights of the Report from the Washington Post:

• More than four of the five parents reported at least one potential barrier to employment: a disability, a disabled family member; poor or fair health; no high school diploma or general equivalency diploma; a mental health problem; an alcohol or drug problem; involvement in a physically abusive relationship. More than half reported two or more barriers to employment, and almost three in 10 reported three or more.
• More than half of the parents had already been investigated for child maltreatment when they applied for welfare. Two of five were investigated in the next five years, and about one-sixth had a child placed in foster care.

For a full copy of the report, go to http://www.about.chapinhall.org/contact/contact.html.

(8/7/2006)

A recent Brookings Institution report confirms that low-income families pay more for the exact same consumer products as higher-income families. According to the report:

• The costs of financial services, such as check cashing, short-term loans, tax preparation and transmitting money can cost low-income households thousands of dollars more each year than the exact services cost higher income households. Separate markets exist for poor families when they seek these services, and higher interest rates, fees and charges are consistently higher in these markets.
• On average, just 30% of lower income neighborhoods in the surveyed metropolitan areas had at least one mainstream bank or credit union.
• Lower income households pay an average of between $50 and $500 more in car prices and an extra two percentage points on an auto loan than do higher income households. Evidence suggests that low-income families also pay higher auto insurance prices.
• Mortgage interest fees were, on average, one percentage point higher for lower income households than for higher income households. Furnishings are more expensive for lower income households because they are much more likely to shop at rent-to-own stores.
• The greater proximity and concentration of smaller grocery stores in lower income neighborhoods drives up food prices. More than 67% of the same food products in a sample were more expensive in small than in large grocery stores.

The authors suggest that curbing unscrupulous business practices that take advantage of the poor, promoting mainstream businesses in lower income neighborhoods and providing financial education to low-income households would allow low-income families to save and reduce their cost of living, providing an economic boost to the families and neighborhoods.

The study is available at http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20060718_PovOp.pdf.

(3/6/2006)

FAST FACTS

• Nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives. To learn more about the prevalence of domestic violence go to www.endabuse.org/resources/facts.
• On average, more than one out of every three Americans - 37 percent of all people in the United States - are officially classified as living in poverty at least 2 months out of the year. To learn more go to www.PovertyUSA.org and their fact page.
• Domestic violence caused the loss of $1.8 billion of wages and productivity. To learn more go to www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/07/dv_stats.html.
• Nationally, a family with two full-time workers earning federal minimum wage would make just $21,424, significantly less than the $32,822 annually they would need to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment. To learn more go to www.nlihc.org and click on the annual Out of Reach report.
• At least 80 percent of the civil legal needs of low-income Americans are not being met. To learn more go to www.lsc.gov/press/pr_detail_T7_R6.php.

(2/2/2006)

ONLY THOSE AT TOP OF WAGE SCALE AND CORPORATIONS PROFITING

• In 2005, the typical worker's wage fell by 1.3%. The decline was even greater for those at the very bottom end of the wage scale, who saw their real wages fall by 1.9%. Only those at the very top of the wage scale had wage growth that outpaced inflation.
• Meanwhile, compared to previous business cycles, the share of corporate income going to compensation is lagging far behind historical trends, while the share of corporate income going to profits is way ahead of its historical average.

These facts taken from a report by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute using statistics from the Bureau of Labor statistics. To learn more about this topic go to http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/ib218.

(1/5/2006)

Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina Continue to Experience Discrimination:

One study of rental practices in five states by the National Fair Housing Alliance found that of those forced to evacuate because of Hurricane Katrina:

• In 66 percent of telephone tests – 43 of 65 instances – White callers were favored over African-American callers
• They also conducted five matched pair tests in which persons visited apartment complexes. In those five tests, Whites were favored over African-Americans three times.

To learn more about this study and housing and rental discrimination in general visit http://www.nationalfairhousing.org/.

(12/8/2005)

Economic Impact of Domestic Violence:

• Federal family violence prevention services were under-funded by $ 48 million this year
• In 44 percent of cities surveyed, the number-one cause of homelessness was domestic violence
• Domestic violence caused the loss of $1.8 billion of wages and productivity
• Domestic violence causes $4.1 billion dollars to be spent yearly on medical and mental health care.

These statistics are taken from www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/07/dv_stats.html. At this site are more statistics on the impact of domestic violence.

(11/24/2005)

A new Center for Budget Policy and Priority report finds that government data shows that:

• Poverty has now risen for four straight years; 37 million people were poor in 2004.
• Food insecurity and hunger have trended upward since 1999.
• The number of people lacking health insurance reached an all-time recorded high in 2004.
• During the last two years, the number of jobs has increased slightly but wages have fallen, with the downward trend in wages being especially marked for low-wage workers. Other data shows that high-income households gained the most from the recovery, and that the already wide gaps between rich and poor is greater.

To read this report by Arloc Sherman and Isaac Shapiro go to www.cbpp.org.

A new study by the Legal Service Corporation (LSC) finds that:

• Each year, four out of five low-income Americans needing legal help cannot get it. This leaves at least 16 million legal problems unaddressed.
• While there is one attorney per 525 people in the general population, there is only one legal aid attorney for every 6,861 low-income person.
• In real dollars, Congressional funding for LSC has declined overall over the past twenty years. To provide justice for low-income persons, the report recommends that “the federal baseline share [of legal services funding] must be at least five times greater than it is now.”

The full report is available at http://www.lsc.gov/pressr/releases/101705pr.htm.

(9/29/2005)

Economists proclaim that we are in an economic recovery. Yet it, more than any other past economic recovery, has helped the rich more than the poor:

• According to an annual report by TNS Financial Services, there are 700,000 more millionaire households this year than in 2004.
• 4,000,000 more people were poor in 2004 than in 2001, at the start of this economic recovery. In no other recovery in the last 45 years did poverty increase in the third full year of economic growth following the recession.

These facts and figures taken from http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/28/news/economy/millionaire_survey/index.htm and http://www.cbpp.org/8-30-05pov.htm.

(8/30/2005)

Facts about children and poverty:

• Children in America have higher poverty rates than adults
• The rate and number of children in America living in poverty increased in 2003, to 17.6% and 12.9 million children, up from 16.7 % and 12.1 million in 2002.
• More than two-thirds of all poor families with children included one or more individuals who worked in 2003. What’s more, family members in working-poor families with children typically worked combined totals of 46 weeks per year.

These facts taken from PovertyUSA.org. To get the facts about the economic choices a family living in poverty faces visit http://www.usccb.org/cchd/povertyusa/tour.htm.

(7/5/2005)

Medicaid is a government-funded program that provides health insurance to many low-income families regardless of their age. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey about this program found that:

• Nearly three-quarters (74%) of adults say Medicaid is a “very important" government program, ranking it close to Social Security (88%) and Medicare (83%) in the public’s mind, equal to federal aid to public schools (74%), and above defense and military spending (57%).
• Eighty percent of respondents feel that the federal government should maintain or increase spending on Medicaid; only 12% of the public want to cut federal funding.
• Fifty-six percent of Americans have some interaction with Medicaid. These respondents were either enrolled in Medicaid themselves at some point or know someone who received Medicaid services.

To find out more about this survey go to http://www.kff.org/.

(6/9/2005)

A new survey investigated dating abuse among American teenagers. The reports of abuse extend across suburbs, cities and regions and all ethnic groups. Key findings from the study include:

• 1 in 3 teenagers report knowing a friend or peer who has been hit, punched, kicked, slapped, choked or physically hurt by their partner.
• Nearly 1 in 5 teenage girls who have been in a relationship said a boyfriend had threatened violence or self-harm if presented with a break-up.
• 13% of teenage girls who said they have been in a relationship report being physically hurt or hit.

To learn more about this survey go to www.loveisnotabuse.com/surveyresults_teens.htm.

(5/8/2005)

An analysis of government data by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds:

• Nearly half (45 percent) of non-elderly, uninsured adults report having one or more chronic health problems.
• Almost half (49 percent) of these adults forgo needed medical care or prescription drugs due to cost. This leaves them at serious risk for increased health problems.
• Despite having fewer contacts with the health care system, more than one in five of these adults report spending at least $2,000 out of pocket on medical care in the 12 months before the study.

This study is available at www.rwjf.org.

(3/28/2005)

A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analyzing Congressional Budget Office data finds that “Income is now more concentrated at the very top of the income spectrum than in all but six years since the mid-1930s.” This report found:

• The top one percent of the population received 11.4 percent of national after-tax income in 2002, up from its already-large 7.5 percent share in 1979.
• In contrast, the bottom fifth received 6.8 percent of such income in 1979, but 5.1 percent in 2002.

The report by Isaac Shapiro is available at www.cbpp.org.

(2/16/2005)

According to a report by CLASP, the president’s budget estimates that 300,000 fewer low-income children will receive child care assistance under its budget by 2010. The president’s budget would freeze child care funding for 2006 and keep funding at this level until 2010. According to a CLASP analysis, this severely underestimates the actual number of low-income children that will lose child care assistance because of the president’s budget. This report notes the importance of child care assistance to parents being able to maintain employment. The report is entitled “President’s Budget Projects 300,000 Low-Income Children to Lose Child Care by 2010” and is available at www.clasp.org.

(1/6/2005)

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report entitled Hunger, Crowding, and Other Hardships are Widespread among Families in Poverty. This report analyzed two United States government studies and found that:

Half of poor families face multiple hardships each year: 52 percent faced two or more of 14 distinct hardships examined by HHS relating to basic needs and safe, adequate housing. Thirty-seven percent faced three or more distinct hardships. Only 7 percent of non-poor families with incomes above twice the poverty line faced three or more distinct hardships.

This report, which also documents other hardships caused by poverty, is available at www.cbpp.org.

(12/21/2004)

A new report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, www.nlihc.org, finds that:

• The national housing wage for 2004 is $15.37, almost three times the federal minimum wage. The housing wage represents the amount a full-time worker must earn to be able to afford the rent for a modest two-bedroom home while paying no more than 30% of income for housing- the government considers anything more unaffordable.
• In only four of the nation's 3,066 counties could a full-time worker making the federal minimum wage afford a typical one-bedroom apartment.
• More than one-quarter of the population earns less than $10 an hour.

(11/23/2004)

HUNGER FACTS

Increasing numbers of families are hungry because of poverty. According to a United States Department of Agricultural report:

• Some 12 million families last year worried they didn't have enough money for food.
• Nearly 3.8 million families were hungry last year to the point where someone skipped meals because they couldn't afford them. That's a 13 percent increase from 2000.
• Most poor families try to ensure their children are fed. Still, 265,000 families have one or more children who on occasion missed meals last year because the families could not afford to eat or did not have enough food.

(10/20/2004)

MANY VETERANS LACK HEALTH INSURANCE

Findings from a new study by Harvard Medical School researchers:

• 1.7 million veterans lacked health coverage in 2003
• Uninsured veterans had as much trouble getting medical care as other uninsured persons did. 26.1% of uninsured veterans reported that they had failed to get needed care due to costs; 42.1% had not seen a doctor within the past year; and two-thirds failed to receive preventive care
• More than two-thirds of uninsured veterans were employed and 86.4% had worked within the past year; 7% of the uninsured vets worked at two or more jobs

To read more about this study go to the website of Physicians for a National Health Program at www.pnhp.org.

(9/27/2004)

UNEMPLOYED STAYING UNEMPLOYED

Last year, more than 43% of people did not have a job when their state unemployment insurance had run out. This represents the highest rate of benefit "exhaustion" in six decades, according to a U.S. Department of Labor study.

When you combine this with the exhaustion rate of 2002, the United States had the highest two-year peak in this measure since 1940 and ’41. This was when the country had just experienced the Great Depression.

To learn more about this issue visit the Economic Policy Institute website at http://www.epinet.org/.

(8/31/2004)

INCOME GAP WIDENS FOR U.S. FAMILIES

A new report finds that
• In 2000, the 2.8 million richest one percent of the population had more after-tax income than did the 110 million people who made up the bottom 40 percent. In 1979, in contrast, the top one percent had less than half as much total income as the bottom 40 percent.

This data is taken from a new report entitled THE NEW, DEFINITIVE CBO DATA ON INCOME AND TAX TRENDS and is available at www.cbpp.org.

(7/14/2004)

TANF NOT RESPONSIVE TO INCREASED JOBLESSNESS AND POVERTY

• During the recent recession the employment rate of single mothers fell at a greater rate than other parents and the population as a whole. The rate, however, is higher than in the mid-1990s.
• Child poverty also increased from 2000-2002.

   Yet for families eligible for TANF cash assistance—families typically well below the poverty line—the proportion who actually receives TANF continues to fall in the recession year of 2001. Less than one out of every two eligible TANF families actually received it.

For more information about this topic visit www.cbpp.org.

(5/27/2004)

A report by Catholic Charities entitled “What’s for Dinner? Food Insecurity and Hunger in a Nation of Plenty” points out that:

• Over 33 million Americans do not have an adequate supply of food.
• In 2001, 13 million children—17.6% of all children—did not have an adequate supply of food. The majority of these children are white and have at least one working parent; nearly half live in two-parent families.

This report is available in the publications section at http://www.catholiccharities.net.

(5/3/2004)

FACTS ABOUT SPENDING ON MILITARY VERSUS REDUCING POVERTY:

• World Bank President James Wolfensohn estimates that countries spend around $900 billion a year in defense compared to $60 billion for foreign aid.
• The United Nations recommends that developed countries give 0.7 percent of their gross national income to foreign aid. Only five countries meet that target.

From “World Bank Laments Poverty” written by Reuters and posted on cnn.com.

(4/27/2004)

The National Urban League unveiled its first “Equality Index” a statistical measurement of the disparities that exist between blacks and whites. Some samples from the findings:

• Economics: Black males' mean income is 70% of white males' ($16,876 gap), black females' mean income is 83% of white counterparts ($6,370 difference)
• Health: On average blacks are twice as likely to die from disease, accident, behavior and homicide at every stage of life than whites
• Social Justice: A black person’s average jail sentence is six months longer than a white’s for the same crime; that is, 39 months versus 33 months

Statistics taken from National Urban League’s Report that Shows Black Progress Is On Shaky Ground and that Equality Gaps Remain In Jobs, Wealth, Education, Health And Social Justice. More information about this and the report is available at www.nul.org.

(4/5/2004)

A profile of the New York City labor market conducted by the Community Service Society of New York used the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey to estimate average unemployment and jobholding for New York residents. The report estimates that in 2003, barely half (51.8%) of New York's Black men were employed, compared to 75.7% of White men residing in the city. This employment-population ratio includes all residents who are jobless, regardless of the reason.

The unemployment rate, in contrast, counts only those who are actively looking for work. Between 2000 and 2003, the Black unemployment rate grew by 5.3%, to 12.9% - the highest rate among the city's largest race/ethnic groups. The unemployment rate for Whites grew by 2.6%, to 6.2%. In 2000, 18.6% of unemployed New York residents had been out of work for 40 weeks or more. Long-term unemployment climbed over subsequent three years, and in 2003 26.9% of the unemployed had been jobless for 40 weeks or more.

Source: Community Service Society, A Crisis of Black Male Employment, February, 2004.

(3/1/2004)

“Section 8” housing vouchers assists two million low-income households. The program helps working families, elderly people, or people with disabilities.

The Bush Administration’s new budget would cut this program by more than $1 billion in 2005. This would cut the number of families assisted by up to 250,000 in 2005 and up to 800,000 or 40% of all assisted families by 2009.

The budget also would replace the voucher program with a block grant to local housing agencies. It would repeal basic protections for low-income families.

For more information on this topic visit www.cbpp.org and read the article “ADMINISTRATION SEEKS DEEP CUTS IN HOUSING VOUCHERS AND CONVERSION OF PROGRAM TO A BLOCK GRANT” from which these statistics were taken by Barbara Sard and Will Fischer.

(1/22/2004)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a one-third reduction in the percentage of uninsured low-income children between 1997 and 2002. This was due to enrollment in State Children’s Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP) and Medicaid. Still roughly 6.8 million children in families with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty line remain uninsured.

Now six states have stopped enrolling eligible children in their SCHIP. The waiting list in Florida, one of the six states to freeze enrollment, for SCHIP contained more than 44,000 eligible children as of November 14. This causes these families “to grapple with the hardships they confront when they cannot obtain medical attention their children need.”

Figures and quote from “OUT IN THE COLD: Enrollment Freezes in Six State Children's Health Insurance Programs Withhold Coverage from Eligible Children” available at www.cbpp.org.

(12/17/2003)

Administration officials have stated that the pending TANF legislation, which provides $1 billion in new federal funding of child care, has adequate money for child care needs:

• “In fact, CBO [Congressional Budget Office] has estimated that it would cost $4.5 billion over five years simply to compensate for the effects of inflation on child care funding and thereby avert a reduction in child care services or child care slots, even if there was no increase in TANF work requirements.”
• CBO has also estimated the cost to states to meet the new work requirements to be between $3 to $9 billion dollars.

Figures and quote from “ADMINISTRATION IS MISSTATING AMOUNT OF CHILD CARE FUNDING IN PENDING TANF REAUTHORIZATION BILLS” available at www.clasp.org

(11/7/2003)

Increasing numbers of families are hungry because of poverty. According to a United States Department of Agriculture report:

• Some 12 million families last year worried they didn't have enough money for food.
• Nearly 3.8 million families were hungry last year to the point where someone skipped meals because they couldn't afford them. That's a 13 percent increase from 2000.
• Most poor families try to ensure their children are fed. Still, 265,000 families have one or more children who on occasion missed meals last year because the families could not afford to eat or did not have enough food.

(10/10/2003)

Race continues to play a dominant role in shaping employment opportunities, equal to or greater than a criminal record. In a study white and black applicants with identical backgrounds found that:

• A criminal record results in a 50% reduction for whites and 64% reduction for blacks in employment opportunities.
• Whites with criminal records are more likely to be called back for an entry-level job interview than blacks without a criminal records.

Other findings from this study entitled “The Mark of A Criminal Record” by Devah Pager are available at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/cdewp/2002-05.pdf.

(9/29/2003)

In a new chartbook, the Kaiser Family Foundation details the disproportionate impact of HIV/AIDS on African-Americans. Blacks make up 12% of the nation's population, but account for more than half of new HIV infections every year. HIV is the leading cause of death for African-Americans age 25-44, but the 5th leading cause for whites in that age group. The AIDS case rate for African-Americans in 2001 was 76.3 per 100,000, compared to 7.9 per 100,000 for whites.

African-American adolescents, who represent 15% of U.S. teenagers, make up 61% of new AIDS cases among adolescents. Inadequate access to quality health care compounds these problems.

The report can be found at www.kff.org.

(7/28/2003)

A new Center for Law and Social Policy report entitled Boom Times: a Bust for Less Educated Young Men finds that

• In 1999, men aged 18 to 24 with a high school diploma or less were less likely to work than in 1979, another economic peak.
• For African American men in this group the numbers are even worse—the employment rate dropped from 13 percentage points, from 66 to 53 percent.

The report calls for expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, increasing the minimum wage, setting realistic child support orders, creating public jobs for youths, developing quality job training programs, and improving pre-and post-release assistance for prisoners. To obtain a copy of this report visit www.clasp.org.

(7/3/2003)

A new paper from the Joint Center for Poverty Research, Children of Incarcerated Parents, examines the fate of children whose parents go to prison. Elizabeth I. Johnson and Jane Waldfogel identify eight risk factors for such children and explore the impact of maternal and paternal incarceration on children.

When a father is incarcerated, the child will live with their mother 77% of the time. When a mother is imprisoned, however, only 17% of children live with their fathers; most live with grandparents or other relatives. See www.jcpr.org.

(6/5/2003)

The new tax law provides parents with a check of $400 per child this summer. Yet the law excludes the 12 million families whose income is between $10,500 and $26,625. The cost of including low-income families in the bill would have been $3.5 billion. This equals one percent of the official cost of the final bill.

This tax policy is questioned in the article entitled WAS THERE ENOUGH ROOM IN THE TAX BILL FOR THE LOW-INCOME CHILD TAX CREDIT PROVISION? by Isaac Shapiro and Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. To read this article and learn more about how this tax bill impacts low-income families visit www.cbpp.org.

(4/15/2003)

79% of Americans believe the Constitution guarantees a poor person a free lawyer in a civil case.

Yet 62-89% of family law cases involve people without a lawyer.
“All of the reasons underlying the right to counsel for an indigent criminal defendant likewise support the right to counsel for an indigent civil defendant”
Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy (Winter 2003) by Simran Bindra and Pedram Ben-Cohen.

(3/12/2003)

• In 2000, the United States surpassed Russia and became the country with the highest incarceration rate.
• THESE IMPRISONED INMATES ARE PARENTS
  1. 7% of African American children in the United States have a parent in prison;
  2. 2.6% of Hispanic children in the United States have a parent in prison;
  3. 0.8 % of White children in the United States have a parent in prison

“It is important to remember that imprisonment does not directly reflect crime, but also political decisions, and that imprisonment feeds back into poverty and, thus, into the causes of crime.” Professor Pamela Oliver University of Wisconsin. Figures taken from http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~oliver/RACIAL/Racialdisparitiesresearch.htm
For more information please visit this website.

(11/25/2002)

A fact sheet on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus has been removed from the Centers for Disease Control web site. The federal Department of Health and Human Services has also recently issued an order to review all grants to federally funded groups that are providing AIDS prevention, treatment, and research. According to some AIDS prevention activists, these actions, as well as the Bush administration's aggressive promotion of abstinence-only education may be putting young people and minorities at increased risk of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Women's eNews, October 5th, 2002. Feds to Audit AIDS Groups for Sexual Explicitness. www.womensenews.org.

Washington Post, October 1st, 2002; Page A6. Bush Policies Hurt AIDS Prevention, Group Says. www.washingtonpost.com

(10/15/2002)

Abortion rate soars for low-income women

The abortion rate rose drastically by more than 20% from 1994-2000 for women whose incomes were below the federal poverty line. The overall abortion rate for women in the United States fell 11% for this same time period. This information is based on a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute and can be found at http://www.agi-usa.org.

(6/12/2002)

According to the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, $1.4 billion in child support was collected for families on welfare assistance in fiscal year 2000. Of this, only $165 million (12%) actually went to the families, and $1.2 billion was retained by the government as reimbursement for assistance. And the government spent $1 to collect each 57 cents of this child support.