Support for Poverty Reduction and Setting Goals
U.S. voters want the government to do more to fight hunger and poverty. Moreover, they say they would approve of increased government spending to solve these problems. Those are some of the findings in surveys of voters in the last year conducted by Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity and the Alliance to End Hunger.17 In a July 2008 survey, 28 percent of those surveyed said they worry very much about going hungry or somebody they know going hungry—and these responses came from a random sample of voters.18 “The findings of the (July 2008) poll are clear—American voters want our leaders to take action now, before the hunger crisis gets any worse,” said Max Finberg, head of the Alliance to End Hunger.
Not all policymakers are failing to hear the concern. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has launched an ambitious poverty-reduction campaign, receiving strong support from residents. In addition to adding 41 new anti-poverty programs, Bloomberg has scrapped the federal poverty measure, using an alternative developed by the National Academy of Sciences in the 1990s. The poverty rate in the city increased when the new measure was applied. Now it represents something much closer to the real cost of living in New York. While some critics have faulted Bloomberg for “increasing poverty”—though only by making the statistics match the daily reality—common sense says you can’t adequately respond to a problem until you know the extent of it.
The New York City anti-poverty initiative is one of several that have been launched across the country. A total of 15 states have embarked on poverty reduction plans and three have passed laws that set poverty-reduction goals. Connecticut was the first state to do so, enacting a law in 2004 that required reducing child poverty by 50 percent in 10 years. The poverty rate in Connecticut is 7.9 percent, the second lowest in the country, and the state child poverty rate of 11 percent is well below the national rate of 18 percent.19 But state-level data hides some staggering inequalities, such as in Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport, where poverty rates are three and four times higher than in the rest of the state.
So far Connecticut has made little progress. In spite of the slow start, though, nobody is suggesting the battle is over. Setting a goal is the easy part. Building coalitions to gain consensus for lasting changes at the policy level is another matter. It was not until 2007 that the Child Poverty Prevention and Reduction Council delivered a blueprint for action. A Republican governor and a Democrat-controlled legislature have clashed over strategy. The governor refused to raise the State Earned Income Tax Credit that the legislature argues can get the state 60 percent of the way towards the child-poverty goal.20 At the national level, pressure is increasing for the federal government to follow the lead of New York City and Connecticut and other states. In 2008, a coalition of advocacy organizations known as Half in Ten began mobilizing public support for setting a national poverty-reduction goal. The campaign supports a plan developed by the Center for American Progress (CAP) that would cut poverty in half in 10 years, mainly by improving existing policies like tax credits, child care, and the minimum wage.
In the 2008 Hunger Report, Working Harder for Working Families, Bread for the World Institute proposed setting a goal to reduce domestic poverty and hunger. Working Harder for Working Families includes the following main recommendations:
- Establish a poverty-reduction goal and timeline to achieve it.
- Make sure all jobs provide a standard of living above the poverty line.
- Improve federal work-support programs like tax credits, nutrition assistance, and health care for all low-income families.
- Increase ways for families to save and build assets so that they may become economically self-sufficient.
The report focused on working families because one in four U.S. workers has a job that does not pay enough to raise a family of four out of poverty.21 It might be a coincidence, or it might not, that the Alliance to End Hunger survey cited above found roughly one in four voters worried about hunger. A lasting solution to hunger, like a solution to poverty, means a job that pays a living wage, provides affordable health insurance, and offers other forms of social insurance, such as paid leave and a savings plan for retirement. This should be something a wealthy nation like the United States can ensure for all workers. We focused on work in the 2008 report because it is the obvious long-term solution to ending poverty and hunger. The United States will always need low-skill workers. Office buildings will always need to be cleaned, fruits and vegetables harvested, food and drink served. The people who do these jobs contribute to society and, like anybody else, deserve a standard of living that allows them to support their families and create opportunities for their children to achieve a better future. People who cannot work because of illness, disability, the need to care for a sick or disabled family member, lack of affordable child care, lack of available jobs, or domestic violence deserve a decent standard of living too; no one in a wealthy country should have to live in poverty. But perhaps the greatest shame, one that is emblematic of much larger economic issues, is that people who are able to work and do work hard may still be living in poverty.
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17 New Attitudes About Hunger and Poverty: The Rise of the “Do Right” Voter and Other Lessons from Recent Research (2007), Alliance to End Hunger: http://www.alliancetoendhunger.org/resources/documents/Alliance2007HMPSurvey.pdf.
18 One in Four Americans Fear Hunger as Food Prices Soar (2008), The Alliance to End Hunger: http://www.alliancetoendhunger.org/pressroom/press-archives/documents/NEWPOLL-Oneinfourfearhunger07.04.08.pdf.
19 Kids Count Data Book Indicators for Connecticut (2008), Annie E. Casey Foundation: http://www.kidscount.org/datacenter/profile_results.jsp?r=8&d=1.
20 Katrina vanden Heuvel (2007), “Fighting Poverty in CT,” The Nation.
21 Lawrence Mishel, et. al. (2007), The State of Working America 2006/2007, Economic Policy Institute.
