• Cut-off of jobless aid would shrink economic growth and raise unemployment and poverty rates, By Paul Wiseman (AP), November 30, 2010, Baltimore Sun: “If Congress lets unemployment benefits expire this week for the long-term unemployed, they won’t be the only ones to feel the pain. The overall economy would suffer, too. Unemployment benefits help drive the economy because the jobless tend to spend every dollar they get, pumping cash into businesses. A cut-off of aid for millions of people unemployed for more than six months could squeeze a fragile economy, analysts say…”
• Millions face loss of unemployment benefits, By Lyneka Little, November 30, 2010, ABC News: “The nation’s long-term unemployed will be left high and dry if Congress allows emergency unemployment benefits to grind to a halt today. The unemployment bill, along with an extension of the Bush tax cuts, are among the hottest issues in the lame-duck session of Congress that began Monday. The jobless bill has a pricetag of as much as $65 billion and the tax-cut extension could cost $3.7 trillion over the next decade, all on top of a deficit that tops $13.7 trillion. Unemployment insurance has for many decades provided about 26 weeks of benefits, but the current Congress has extended the benefit to 99 weeks in four separate bills. The consequences of ending the extended benefits aren’t entirely clear though most agree it could hurt the recovery…”
• Thousands in Kentucky and Indiana face lapse of unemployment benefits, By Chris Otts, November 28, 2010, Louisville Courier-Journal: “Amid an anti-spending atmosphere in Washington, funds to extend unemployment compensation for more than 33,000 Kentuckians and nearly 67,000 Hoosiers are likely to run out next month. The soonest Congress is scheduled to resume voting is Tuesday - but it’s uncertain if lawmakers will take up the issue, and benefits for people who have been jobless for more than six months expire the next day. Even if the House and Senate move extraordinarily quickly, administrative hurdles would keep states from getting checks out the door for at least a few weeks, said attorney Rick McHugh, Midwest coordinator for the National Employment Law Project, the main proponent of extending jobless aid…”
• Anxious time for laid-off workers as unemployment-benefit program expires, By Jamie Smith Hopkins and Lorraine Mirabella, November 29, 2010, Baltimore Sun: “Mildred Miller was just notified that her unemployment benefits will be cut off two weeks before Christmas. She can’t think about it without breaking down. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do; I really don’t know,’ Miller said Monday, her eyes welling with tears as she scanned job listings at Baltimore County’s work force development center in Essex. ‘I don’t want to get evicted. If we get on the street, I don’t know where we’ll be.’ The Middle River resident, a single mother with a 6-year-old son, is one of thousands in Maryland and about 2 million nationwide whose payments will be phased out in December if the federally funded emergency unemployment compensation program expires Tuesday as planned. She hopes her long job search finally bears some fruit - or that Congress steps in. The prospect of losing benefits left many unemployed residents fearful about the future, as some officials at workforce development centers in the state say they’ve seen rising anxiety among job seekers. The looming cutoff also sparked a protest in Baltimore Monday night…”

• Health care squeeze forcing some Mississippi kids out, By Molly Parker, November 30, 2010, Jackson Clarion-Ledger: “Parents across Mississippi say they are frustrated with state Medicaid officials as programs are downsized and benefits canceled. ‘People are really being turned down right and left right now and it’s frightening,’ said Eric Weber, an assistant professor in the Public Policy Leadership Department at the University of Mississippi and the parent of a disabled child. ‘People who were getting covered last year are not getting covered this year.’ Gov. Haley Barbour’s tough financial stand toward Medicaid speaks volumes about the legacy he may leave when his term expires in January 2012…”
• Medicaid spending ups state budget, By Mike Dennison, November 26, 2010, Billings Gazette: “Year after year, the big kahuna in state spending is human services - and Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s proposed budget makes no exception here, with substantial increases in Medicaid, the state-federal program that pays medical bills for the poor. The governor also proposes full extension of funding for the Healthy Montana Kids program, with its goal of expanding government-funded health insurance to another 15,000 to 20,000 children in low- and middle-income families. These and many other programs all add up to a proposed $3.7 billion in spending (including federal funds) on public health and human-service programs for the next two years, or more than 40 percent of the entire state-authorized budget…”

• U.S. school graduation rate is rising, By Sam Dillon, November 30, 2010, New York Times: “The nation’s high school graduation rate, which declined in the latter part of the 20th century, may have hit bottom and begun to rise, according to a report to be issued Tuesday by a nonprofit group founded by former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. ‘The United States is turning a corner in meeting the high school dropout epidemic,’ General Powell and his wife, Alma J. Powell, wrote in a letter introducing the report. The report cites two statistics. The national graduation rate increased to 75 percent in 2008, from 72 percent in 2001. And the number of high schools that researchers call dropout factories - based on a formula that compares a school’s 12th-grade enrollment with its 9th-grade enrollment three years earlier - declined to about 1,750 in 2008, from about 2,000 such schools in 2002…”
• Federal aid to high schools is up; so are graduation rates, By Nick Anderson, November 30, 2010, Washington Post: “The Education Department announced Tuesday that it has provided an unprecedented amount of aid to turn around struggling high schools, while an independent report found the nation’s high school graduation rate is on the rise. The federal announcement and the report from America’s Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization founded by former secretary of state Colin Powell, reflected a coordinated response to what some experts have called high school ‘dropout factories…’”
• Report: ‘Dropout factories’ on decline in US, By Dorie Turner (AP), November 30, 2010, Washington Post: “The number of so-called ‘dropout factory’ high schools in the United States has declined since 2002, translating into at least 100,000 more students getting a diploma, a new report shows. But the report from America’s Promise Alliance to be released Tuesday also said that progress needs to increase fivefold for the country to graduate nine out of 10 students by 2020, a goal of the Obama administration. States including Tennessee, Texas, New York and Georgia have already figured out tactics that work. But fixing the problem won’t be easy, said report co-author John Bridgeland…”

• In places with scarce prenatal care, midwives deliver maternity solution, By David Wahlberg, November 23, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal: “The people who live in and around this small city where the foothills meet the plains can count on an important service: The hospital delivers babies. One reason maternity care is available in New Mexico’s San Miguel County, where the poverty rate is nearly twice the national average, is the presence of midwives, who oversee most of the births. Rural hospitals in New Mexico, Wisconsin and across the country have dropped deliveries in recent years because they can’t find enough doctors to do them. But the arrangement in Las Vegas, where only one doctor does obstetrics full time but three nurse midwives attend births, suggests midwives can help maintain maternity care in rural areas…”
• High deductibles mean less medical care for lower-income families, survey finds, By Eryn Brown, November 23, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Lower-income families with high-deductible insurance policies are more likely to delay or forego medical care because of cost than higher-income families, reported a study published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The findings are not surprising. But coming at a time when policymakers are working to keep healthcare costs down and outcomes up — calibrating insurance plans to motivate consumers to be choosier about the medical services they purchase, yet still seek enough care to remain healthy — the results could yield useful ideas, the researchers wrote…”

Student transfers from failing schools via No Child law swamp successful ones, By Michael Birnbaum, November 23, 2010, Washington Post: “In some struggling school districts around the country, students transferring from failing schools are overwhelming the few successful schools in their areas, an unintended byproduct of the No Child Left Behind law. The issue arose in Prince George’s County this year, when the parents of nearly 3,000 middle-schoolers learned just days before school started that they could switch their children to the only two non-specialized middle schools in the county that met the law’s performance goals. About 200 families accepted the offer, taking their new schools by surprise. The flurry of transfers - more than 700 in Prince George’s this year across all 12 grades - has packed classrooms while underscoring a tough aspect of the Bush administration’s landmark education initiative. It demands steadily rising achievement - all students are supposed to pass benchmark tests by 2014 - and, as a result, more schools fail every year…”

Young men the face of poverty in post-recession Canada: study, By Heather Scoffield, Winnipeg Free Press: “The recession has left a lingering bruise on an increasingly vulnerable sector of Canadian society: young, single men. As social scientists begin to dissect the effects of the downturn, they’re coming to the same conclusion Kerry Kaiser has reached intuitively, by watching the clientele at her downtown Ottawa food bank. ‘Single males are screwed,’ she said bluntly. ‘I don’t know why.’ She has an inkling, though. The young men who show up hungry on her doorstep are spending most of their welfare cheques on rent. They don’t get the benefits or the subsidies that governments have set up over the years for struggling families. And now, with low-skill jobs scarce in the wake of the recession, they can’t compete. ‘We see them getting it at all angles,’ Kaiser said. Her observation dovetails with the findings of John Stapleton, a social policy researcher who has just completed an exhaustive study of social assistance during the recession, for the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation…”

• 1 in 10 Canadian children living in poverty: Report, By Amy Minsky, November 24, 2010, Montreal Gazette: “One in 10 Canadian children is living in poverty, according to a report on the status of child and family poverty released Wednesday. With Parliament’s self-imposed deadline long past, it still has far to go on the promise it made 21 years ago to eradicate child poverty by 2000. The most recent numbers show there is a 9.1 per cent rate of child poverty in Canada, down slightly from 11.9 per cent in 1989, the year Parliament unanimously resolved to end child poverty, it says in Campaign 2000’s report card, which cites data from 2008..”
• One in seven B.C. children living in poverty, Canadian Press, November 24, 2010, Globe and Mail: “An anti-poverty group says one in seven children in B.C. is living in poverty and the recession will likely make things worse. In releasing its annual report Wednesday, the BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition said while the child poverty rate dropped in 2008, the recession was also starting, and it’s almost certain to produce higher poverty figures for 2009 and 2010…”

• Unemployment claims drop sharply to 407K, By Christopher S. Rugaber (AP), November 24, 2010, Washington Post: “The number of people applying for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week to the lowest level since July 2008, a hopeful sign that improvement in the job market is accelerating. The Labor Department said Wednesday that weekly unemployment claims dropped by 34,000 to a seasonally adjusted 407,000 in the week ending Nov. 20. Wall Street analysts expected a much smaller drop. A Labor Department analyst said the claims figures are volatile during the week between the Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving holidays. A key question is whether claims will remain this low in future weeks, or bounce back. Still, applications for jobless aid are steadily moving lower. Claims have fallen in four of the past six weeks…”
• 41 states see job gains in Oct., most in 5 months, By Christopher S. Rugaber (AP), November 24, 2010, Washington Post: “Businesses and other employers added jobs in 41 states in October, the best showing in five months, the Labor Department said Tuesday. The figures indicate the job market is picking up a bit in most parts of the country. Even the nation’s hardest hit states - Nevada and Michigan - showed declines in their unemployment rates. But the gains weren’t enough to broadly reduce unemployment rates. The Labor Department said the jobless rate fell last month in 19 states, remained the same in 17 and rose in 14. Unemployment can rise when jobs are created if more people begin searching for work…”
• As holidays near, Congress remains divided over jobless benefits, By David Lightman, November 24, 2010, Miami Herald: “Voters clearly want lawmakers to ease the nation’s unemployment pain, but a sharply divided Congress is still balking at extending jobless benefits for those out of work a long time. Unless Congress acts by Nov. 30, an estimated 2 million people slated to receive extended benefits will not get them on time, if ever. And Congress is taking this week off for a Thanksgiving recess, reconvening on Nov. 29. If lawmakers don’t extend the benefits, it will be the third time this year that they will have missed a deadline to do so, even though the nation’s unemployment rate, at 9.6 percent, hasn’t budged since May. Earlier this year, after Congress failed to extend benefits before deadlines, jobless workers got retroactive benefits once legislation was passed…”
• Many in area set to lose jobless benefits, By Ben Goad, November 23, 2010, Press-Enterprise: “Congress appears unlikely to act in time to prevent unemployment benefits from expiring next week for millions of jobless Americans, as lawmakers are sharply divided over whether a costly extension of the program is in the nation’s best interest. Coming on the cusp of the holiday season, the current Nov. 30 expiration would hit particularly hard in Inland Southern California. At 14.2 percent, the Inland area’s jobless rate is far above the national average of 9.0 percent. As of last count, 167,275 residents of Riverside and San Bernardino counties were collecting unemployment insurance benefits totaling up to $450 a week. They are among more than 4 million people across the country who would begin to fall off the rolls unless the program is extended…”

Montana: Medicaid-for-all drug plan different from other states’ illegal tries, By Mike Dennison, November 21, 2010, The Missoulian: “At least two other states have tried discounted prescription-drug programs similar to a proposal Gov. Brian Schweitzer unveiled last week as a potential money-saver for all Montana residents - and in both cases, a federal court declared them illegal. Schweitzer has asked federal health officials to allow all Montanans to qualify for Medicaid for the purpose of paying lower drug prices, forcing the drug industry to pay price rebates on those drugs. Yet in 2001 and 2002, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., struck down programs in Vermont and Maine that extended Medicaid drug-price rebates to people not otherwise covered by Medicaid. The pharmaceutical industry had sued to stop the programs as an improper use of the rebates…”

Four in 10 say marriage is becoming obsolete, By Hope Yen (AP), November 18, 2010, Washington Post: “Is marriage becoming obsolete? As families gather for Thanksgiving this year, nearly one in three American children is living with a parent who is divorced, separated or never-married. More people are accepting the view that wedding bells aren’t needed to have a family. A study by the Pew Research Center highlights rapidly changing notions of the American family. And the Census Bureau, too, is planning to incorporate broader definitions of family when measuring poverty, a shift caused partly by recent jumps in unmarried couples living together…”

• Some states weigh unthinkable option: ending Medicaid, By Janet Adamy and Neil King Jr., November 22, 2010, Wall Street Journal: “Huge budget shortfalls are prompting a handful of states to begin discussing a once-unthinkable scenario: dropping out of the Medicaid insurance program for the poor. Elected and appointed officials in nearly a half-dozen states, including Washington, Texas and South Carolina, have publicly thrown out the idea. Wyoming and Nevada this year produced detailed studies of what would happen should they withdraw from the program. Wyoming found that Medicaid accounts for 63% of the state’s nursing-home revenue. The idea of abandoning Medicaid as a solution is so extreme that even proponents don’t expect any state will follow through, but officials are floating the discussions because dire budgetary pressures have forced them to at least look at even the most drastic options…”
• Cuts to Medicaid threaten real pain, By Kathie Durbin, November 21, 2010, The Columbian: “Debb Snyder’s slender lifeline to independent living is her government-paid prescription for Klonopin, the expensive anti-seizure drug that controls her grand mal seizures and allows her to remain in her small apartment off St. Johns Road. She’s been taking 0.5 grams of the drug six times daily for 20 years. That’s why it was intensely personal for Snyder when she saw the list of cuts to Medicaid programs the Washington Department of Social and Health Services is preparing to implement between Jan. 1 and March 1 to achieve its share of 6.27 percent across-the-board cuts in state agency budgets. The department will eliminate coverage for outpatient prescription drugs provided by retail pharmacies to an estimated 277,000 clients, effective March 1. As a ‘discretionary’ program under Medicaid, the prescription drug program is one the state has the option to discontinue while still maintaining its partnership with the federal government in providing health coverage to the poorest of the poor under Medicaid…”

Want to slash poverty? Look to Latin America, By David Francis, November 22, 2010, Christian Science Monitor: “One in 10 South Americans - about 38 million people - escaped poverty during the past decade. That’s remarkable progress by any measure. Contrast that with the United States, where poverty has been growing due to a decade-long stagnation of income for the middle class and the Great Recession. In 2009, the US had more poor people than in any of the 51 years since poverty levels have been estimated. Of course, America’s poor are far better off than South America’s poor. And the US still has a much lower poverty rate (14.2 percent versus around 70 percent). South America remains infamous for huge income gaps between a tiny elite and masses of people making, often, just $1 or $2 a day…”

Poverty a leading cause of Type 2 diabetes, studies say, By Andrea Janus, November 21, 2010, CTV News: “For years, Canadians have heard that obesity, a lack of physical activity and a family history are the top risk factors for developing Type 2 diabetes. But new Canadian research says that, in fact, it is living in poverty that can double or even triple the likelihood of developing the disease. ‘What we know about Type 2 diabetes is not only are low-income and poor people more likely to get it, but they’re also the ones that, once they get it, are much more likely to suffer complications,’ Prof. Dennis Raphael, one of the researchers, told CTV.ca in a telephone interview. ‘And the complications from Type 2 diabetes when they’re bad are really bad, whether it’s amputations, or blindness, or cardiovascular disease.’ Researchers from York University analyzed two sets of data: the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) and the National Population Health Survey (NPHS) for a study published in the journal Health Policy…”

• Health coverage at risk for working poor in Pa., By Don Sapatkin, November 17, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “An affordable health-insurance program for low-income working people that was started by Gov. Tom Ridge and expanded under Gov. Rendell is projected to run out of money within weeks after Gov.-elect Corbett takes office, administration officials said. Contractual obligations mean that insurance-termination notices may need to go to tens of thousands of subscribers in the program, known as adultBasic, even before the new governor is sworn in, if more than $50 million is not found before then, they said. As attorney general, Corbett joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn President Obama’s health-care overhaul. The opposition was based on the mandate that individuals and many businesses sign up or pay a fine, said Kevin Harley, a spokesman for the transition. The governor-elect said during the campaign that he supported plans to continue funding the state program at least through the fiscal year that ends June 30…”
• With Medicaid waiver, California dives into health care reform, By Christine Vestal, November 19, 2010, Stateline.org: “Nearly missed in the noise from newly elected politicians vowing to upend the Obama administration’s health care reform law was a federal decision allowing California to start implementing it - and improve its fiscal situation in the process. On Election Day, California got word it would receive $10 billion in federal Medicaid money to extend coverage to some 500,000 people who are currently uninsured. The initiative means the nation’s most populous state will dive right into the new health law’s biggest challenge: providing coverage for low-income adults who are not eligible for Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor. The plan, which the state calls a ‘bridge to reform,’ is also designed to bolster the state’s safety-net hospitals, as well as lower overall health care costs. Under the Nov. 2 agreement - a waiver of standard Medicaid rules aimed at allowing states to test innovative new programs - California promised to shave $2 billion per year from its existing Medicaid bill by streamlining care for its highest-cost recipients: seniors, adults with disabilities and children with severe illnesses. The federal government agreed to give California $2 billion per year in return…”
• Maine Republicans say they will end ‘Dirigo’ health care experiment, By Pamela M. Prah, November 17, 2010, Stateline.org: “Before there was a federal health care overhaul, and before there was a Massachusetts law to use as a model for the national plan, there was Dirigo. That’s what Maine called its first-in-the-nation attempt at achieving universal health coverage when Democrats approved the plan back in 2003. Now, the Maine program may be one of the first casualties of the Republican landslide in state capitals. Maine’s incoming governor, Paul LePage, pledged during the campaign to ‘repeal and replace’ the plan, which is Latin for ‘I lead’ and is the state’s motto. Republicans also took control of the Maine House and Senate, making the state one of only two to flip from total Democratic control to total control by Republicans (Wisconsin was the other)…”

• 12th-grade reading and math scores rise slightly after a historic low in 2005, By Sam Dillon, November 18, 2010, New York Times: “Reading scores for the nation’s 12th-grade students have increased somewhat since they dropped to a historic low in 2005, according to results of the largest federal test, released Thursday. Average math scores also ticked upward. Experts said the increases, after years of dismal achievement reports, were surprising because every year the nation’s schools are educating more black and Hispanic students, who on average score lower than whites and Asians. The black-white achievement gap dates back more than a century, though researchers debate why it persists. Researchers presume that language barriers pull down scores for Hispanics…”
• 12th grade students still below ‘92 reading scores, By Christine Armario (AP), November 18, 2010, Washington Post: “A national education assessment released Thursday shows that high school seniors have made some improvement in reading, but remain below the achievement levels reached nearly two decades ago. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, referred to at the Nation’s Report Card, tested 52,000 students in reading and 49,000 in math across 1,670 school districts in 2009. Students scored an average of 288 out of 500 points in reading comprehension, two points above the 2005 score but still below the 1992 average of 292. Thirty-eight percent of 12th grade students were classified as at or above the ‘proficient’ level, while 74 percent were considered at or above ‘basic…’”

• Jobless-benefits bill rejected, By Janet Hook and Martin Vaughn, November 19, 2010, Wall Street Journal: “House Republicans Thursday torpedoed a bill to extend benefits for the long-term unemployed, pressing their demand that the $12 billion cost of the program be offset rather than adding to the deficit. In a defeat for Democrats trying to keep the program from expiring Nov. 30, the House rejected a bill to continue the program for three more months. Lawmakers in both parties expect a compromise eventually to be reached-but not until December, after the current program expires. Without an extension, 800,000 unemployed workers will lose their benefits by Nov. 30 and two million by the end of December. The unemployment aid is just one of many issues before the lame duck Congress that are confounding President Barack Obama and congressional leaders. Others include the fate of the Bush-era tax cuts due to expire Dec. 31 and a funding mechanism to keep the government running after a stop-gap appropriations bill expires Dec. 3…”
• Filibuster blocks U.S. aid for jobless, By Ann Belser, November 19, 2010, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “On the same day the state reported that there were still 560,000 unemployed Pennsylvanians in October, congressional Republicans blocked a measure that would have reauthorized the national extension of unemployment benefits. The state’s Department of Labor and Industry announced Thursday afternoon that the unemployment rate last month dropped to 8.8 percent, the same level as January, as Pennsylvania gained nearly 16,000 nonfarm jobs. Reauthorization of unemployment benefits would have allowed states to pay unemployment compensation past the standard 26 weeks up to 99 weeks, as they have been doing since early in the recession…”
• House GOP blocks extension of jobless benefits, By Lisa Mascaro, November 18, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “House Republicans voted Thursday to deny an extension of unemployment benefits for jobless Americans and tried to cut off public funding for National Public Radio, moves that reinforced the GOP’s direction following its midterm election gains. The votes were not necessarily new tactics, as Republicans have generally opposed extending unemployment insurance unless it is paid for with federal spending cuts elsewhere, and have pledged to take weekly votes to cut federal spending. But the two House votes, within hours of each other as lawmakers prepared to recess for a Thanksgiving break, provided an example of the agenda to come when the GOP takes control of the chamber in January…”
• EPI: Extending federal unemployment benefits through 2011 could generate the equivalent of 700,000 jobs, By Jackie Headapohl, November 9, 2010, MLive.com: “Not only do unemployment benefits assist the unemployed, they also boost spending in the economy and generate jobs, according to a brief from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The brief states that extending unemployment insurance benefits through 2011 would generate more than 700,000 full-time-equivalent jobs while saving millions from poverty…”
• CBO: Unemployment benefits prevented record poverty rate in 2009, By Arthur Delaney, November 17, 2010, Huffington Post: “Extended unemployment insurance put in place to fight the recession prevented the poverty rate from rising to 15.4 percent in 2009, a level unseen since the 1960s, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The government announced in September that that the 2009 poverty rate had risen to 14.3 percent from 13.2 percent the previous year…”

Is ‘Race to the Top’ aid at risk?, By Catherine Candisky, November 19, 2010, Columbus Dispatch: “In an effort to preserve his education plan, outgoing Gov. Ted Strickland went to Education Secretary Arne Duncan to put pressure on his successor to keep it. Strickland said yesterday that he told Duncan he fears Ohio will lose its $400 million federal Race to the Top grant if Gov.-elect John Kasich follows through on his plan to dump Strickland’s evidence-based school-funding model. ‘I asked Secretary Duncan if the (U.S.) Department of Education allowed states to change their plans’ after funds were awarded, ‘and how could it possibly be fair to other states,’ Strickland said. The governor said his evidence-based model ‘was such a vital part’ of Ohio’s plan that he questions whether the state would still qualify for the federal money…”

• Health of 400,000 ‘nearly homeless’ Canadians similar to those on the street: study, By Heather Scoffield, November 19, 2010, Globe and Mail: “Hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are just one step away from being homeless are dealing with the same devastating health risks as people living on the streets, according to new research. Mental illness, hunger and chronic health issues such as arthritis and hepatitis are just as prevalent among the ‘vulnerably housed’ as among the homeless, research by a network of academics, doctors and community workers suggests. Their investigation in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa suggests that for every person sleeping on the street, there are 23 more who are at risk of becoming homeless - living in unaffordable, crowded and unsafe conditions…”
• Too many Canadians on brink of being homeless: Doctor, By Nicki Thomas, November 19, 2010, Toronto Star: “For every person sleeping in a shelter bed, there are 23 households on the verge of homelessness, according to a dire report released Friday. These ‘vulnerably housed’ Canadians are spending more than 50 per cent of their monthly income on rent in crowded and unsafe housing. And many face the same myriad health problems as those with no home at all, states the report that calls for a national strategy to address the housing crisis. Dr. Stephen Hwang, the Toronto doctor who authored the report, called the country’s lack of a national housing strategy ‘deplorable.’ ‘Housing is just as essential to the health of Canadians as nutritious food, clean air and fresh water and access to medical care,’ said Hwang, a physician with the Centre for Research on Inner City Health at St. Michael’s Hospital. ‘If we ensure that people have their basic housing needs met, we would actually be making an investment in the health of our population.’ Earlier this week, a parliamentary committee released a report on poverty that also recommended a long-term national strategy on homelessness and housing…”

• Colo. food banks see “staggering” increase in need, By Colleen O’Connor, November 18, 2010, Denver Post: “Colorado’s five major food banks distributed more than 76 million pounds of food throughout the state last year, a 25 percent increase over the previous year, and experts expect worse to come. ‘Already, this fiscal year . . . is on pace for another 7 to 10 percent increase over the prior year, which makes that a 32 to 35 percent increase over a two-year time period,’ said Kevin Seggelke, president and chief executive of Food Bank of the Rockies. ‘That’s just a staggering number. The worst news is that we continue to hear that even if the economy (goes) back to pre-2008 levels, there may be a gap of 18 to 24 months’ before the number of people swamping state food banks returns to pre-recession levels, he said. A report released this week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that food insecurity - the lack of consistent access to a nutritious, balanced diet - remained relatively stable in 2009, with the number of U.S. households classified as food insecure increasing slightly to 17.7 million from 17.6 million in 2008…”
• Employed but low-income N.J. families struggle to find assistance, By Carmen Juri, November 14, 2010, Star-Ledger: “Before the economic slump, Contina Wright and her family enjoyed the creature comforts of a middle-class lifestyle. Wright and her husband, a construction worker, spent money freely, vacationed, dined out regularly and had enough left over for savings. ‘We had everything covered,’ said Wright, 38. All that changed when the housing market plunged. With construction jobs scarce, Wright became the sole breadwinner in a family of six. Unable to pay bills, the family hit rock bottom last year and had to live at a homeless shelter for two months. These days, Wright and her family are actually lucky they found a shelter for the underemployed…”
• Hunger grows in Oregon, according to report, By Jillian Daley, November 19, 2010, Salem Statesman Journal: “Oregon is the third-hungriest state in the United States, according to a recently released report. About 6.6 percent of 1,514,000 Oregon households (about 500,000 people) had very low food security, meaning they did not have regular access to healthy food, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released Tuesday. The number of Oregonians suffering from low or very low food security is two percentage points higher than it was in a 2004-06 study…”

• Fla. lawmakers mull how to transform Medicaid into managed health care for poor, By Kathleen Haughney, November 17, 2010, Palm Beach Post: “Florida’s newly installed lawmakers Wednesday began considering ways to cut what they fear could be a $20 billion Medicaid bill in the coming year, including shuttling more low income patients into private managed care programs and setting caps on the amount of money spent on each patient. Key senators held a six-hour meeting Wednesday on the heels of passing a non-binding message to Congress Tuesday that said the legislature intends to revamp the state’s Medicaid program by expanding the state’s five-county managed-care pilot program statewide. Since the summer, Senate President Mike Haridopolos and his top legislative lieutenants have been promising to overhaul the system during the 2011 legislative session…”
• Can Florida really alter Medicaid?, By Jim Saunders, November 18, 2010, Kaiser Health News: “Florida Republican leaders made a clear statement during a special legislative session Tuesday: They want to overhaul the Medicaid program and don’t want the federal government tying their hands. But that might ignore Washington realities. Congress this year required states to increase the number of people eligible for Medicaid in the future — the opposite of giving Florida more flexibility to run the program. What’s more, federal officials won’t agree to a relatively straightforward extension of Florida’s Medicaid ‘Reform’ pilot, which required thousands of beneficiaries to enroll in managed care plans. Instead, the federal government will require changes in the pilot…”

Report reveals rise in homelessness, By Mary Vorsino, November 17, 2010, Honolulu Star-Advertiser: “The number of homeless people on Oahu rose 5 percent under one key measure in the last fiscal year, according to a new report that also sheds new light on the health and education of homeless children. Advocates say the study helps illustrate how the recession has driven many households living paycheck-to-paycheck into homelessness. ‘We’re still seeing people struggling,’ said Debbie Shimizu, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers-Hawaii chapter. ‘People are still trying to adjust.’ The report, by the University of Hawaii Center on the Family, said 9,781 homeless people received outreach or shelter services on Oahu last year, a 5 percent increase…”

Poverty rising in suburban schools, By Rita Price, November 17, 2010, Columbus Dispatch: “Suburban school districts more known for their affluence are seeing double- and triple-digit increases in the percentage of students considered to be economically disadvantaged. A report to be released this week by KidsOhio, a Columbus-based education nonprofit organization, found that nearly half of the disadvantaged students in Franklin County now are enrolled in a suburban school district. The report documented the change over five years, from the 2004-05 school year to last school year. Although Columbus schools have the highest rate of disadvantaged kids, that district’s increase was more modest…”

Gates Foundation pledges $500 million to help the poor save money, By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times: “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $500 million Tuesday to help create new banking systems that will reach into the world’s most impoverished corners and allow families earning $2 a day or less to begin saving money. After years of promoting microcredit borrowing to help impoverished farmers and bottom-of-the-rung entrepreneurs expand their business opportunities, foundation leaders said it was increasingly apparent that saving, not just credit, is crucial to helping poor families weather crises, pay for schooling and make small investments to expand their incomes. ‘Loans for the poor in some ways may be more intuitive for people to understand, and I think people naturally understand that poor people often don’t have access to capital or to credit or to cash. But I think people don’t often as easily grasp the concept that the poor actually need to save,’ Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the foundation, said at a forum here on the swiftly expanding global financial sector aimed at serving millions of poor…”

• Cuts hit program funding child care, By Kevin Graman, November 13, 2010, Spokane Spokesman-Review: “More than 4,000 working poor households across the state will lose their child care subsidies in the coming year as a result of budget cuts to Washington WorkFirst, the state’s temporary assistance program. Crystal Watkins, of Spokane, depends on the subsidy, called Working Connections, which helps provide safe child care for her two children while she works. ‘It will totally turn my life upside down,’ said Watkins, a 27-year-old single mother. ‘I will have to find another job for which I also will have to find child care.’ Watkins now works 40 hours a week for a local bank, and earns less than $2,671 a month, 175 percent of the federal poverty level, which qualifies her for Working Connections help with child care…”
• Child care cuts felt by working parents, By Jamie Oppenheim, November 13, 2010, Merced Sun-Star: “Lourdes Centeno, a single mother of two, brooded over a letter sent to her Friday afternoon from the Merced County Office of Education. It told her she’ll still receive her state-subsidized child care — but only until Nov. 23. After that, she’s not sure what will happen.In early October, Centeno, who works as a saleswoman for Valley Satellite, got another notice telling her that on Nov. 1 the state would terminate her child-care funding. Centeno is on the CalWORKS Child Care Stage 3, a state-funded child care program for families who have transitioned from cash-aid assistance for two years and are employed…”
• State child care program spared through end of year, By Martin Espinoza, November 17, 2010, Santa Rosa Press-Democrat: “An Alameda County judge today approved a court settlement that extends until the end of the year child care services to parents who have graduated from the state’s welfare-to-work program until the end of the year. The $256 million child care program, which was slated for elimination on Nov. 1, affect some 56,000 children in the state and about 850 children in Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino counties. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sought to end the program, known as CalWORKS Stage 3 child care, as part of $1 billion in last-minute savings through line item vetoes on Oct. 8. But the move was blocked by court order on Oct. 29, after a group of child care advocates and four state mothers sued the state…”

• Medicaid squeeze: Shrinking federal reimbursements cause doctors to limit care to needy, By Louise Knott Ahern, November 14, 2010, Lansing State Journal: “In a 16-county swath across Northern Michigan, pregnant women have to drive an hour or more to reach a hospital where they can deliver their babies. From Cheboygan to West Branch to Clare, hospitals have been closing their obstetrics units since last summer in a startling domino effect that has health care activists worried about care availability for rural mothers and babies. But they’re equally alarmed about the reason behind the hospital closures. The hospitals blame, in large part, Medicaid. And health care reform advocates say that reflects a broader problem. Since 2002, the state has been chipping away at how much it reimburses doctors and hospitals for treating Medicaid patients to a point where some say they’ve reached a painful bottom-line reality: It has become too expensive to treat poor people…”
• Conservative legislators in Texas seek to opt out of Medicaid, By Dave Montgomery, November 13, 2010, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “A push from conservative legislators for Texas to opt out of Medicaid is stirring alarm among healthcare providers and nursing homes, which say the potential loss of billions of federal dollars could drastically undercut efforts to provide healthcare for the poor. The opt-out plan has quickly emerged as another high-profile topic for the 2011 Legislature, pushed by Gov. Rick Perry and a number of conservative lawmakers who believe that Texas can provide health coverage to the indigent more efficiently with a state-run plan free of federal mandates…”

• Record number of U.S. households face hunger, By Pam Fessler, November 15, 2010, National Public Radio: “The number of Americans who struggled to get enough food last year remained at a record high, according to a report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. More than 50 million Americans lived in households that had a hard time getting enough to eat at least at some point during 2009. That includes 17 million children, and at least a half-million of those children faced the direst conditions. They had inadequate diets, or even missed meals, because their families didn’t have enough money for food. ‘Household food insecurity remains a serious problem across the United States,’ says Agriculture Undersecretary Kevin Concannon. He says there’s a reason the hunger numbers hit a record high in 2008 and stayed there in 2009: a struggling economy…”
• Rise in U.S. hunger slows, but remains high, By Tony Pugh, November 15, 2010, Kansas City Star: “U.S. agriculture officials said Monday that the nation’s 15 federal nutrition programs helped keep hunger in check in 2009 even as the number of unemployed Americans soared. After a record one-year increase from 2007 to 2008, the number of U.S. households facing food shortages increased only slightly last year to roughly 17.4 million, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The share of households with members who went hungry or cut their food intake because of money also held steady in 2009, albeit at the highest levels since the data were first collected in 1995…”
• 17.4 million U.S. families went hungry at some point in 2009, USDA says, By P.J. Huffstutter, November 15, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “About 15% of U.S. households - 17.4 million families - lacked enough money to feed themselves at some point last year, according to a new U.S. Department of Agriculture report. Released Monday, the study also found that 6.8 million of these households - with as many as 1 million children - had ongoing financial problems that forced them to miss meals regularly. The number of these ‘food insecure’ homes, or households that had a tough time providing enough food for their members, stayed somewhat steady from 2008 to 2009. But that number was more than triple compared with 2006, before the recession brought double-digit unemployment…”

• Medicaid easy to cut in theory, not reality, By Catherine Candisky, November 14, 2010, Columbus Dispatch: “The state budget crisis has put a target on the backs of 2million Ohioans on Medicaid - children and pregnant women, the disabled and elderly - but scaling back the tax-funded health-care program comes with its own price tag. For every dollar Ohio cuts in Medicaid spending, it loses $2 in federal matching funds. The human toll also could be staggering. Ohio’s Medicaid program pays for: • 1 in 3 births. • Half the patients treated at Ohio’s six children’s hospitals. • 70 percent of nursing-home care. The state’s Medicaid spending has reached $15.4 billion a year. That money provides care to the poor and disabled and pays doctors, nurses, home health aides and other service providers. According to state officials, Medicaid now makes up more than 3percent of the state’s economy. But most agree the tab - $29,000 per minute - is one Ohio taxpayers can no longer afford…”
• Is Texas really thinking of opting out of Medicaid?, By Corrie MacLaggan, November 13, 2010, Austin American-Statesman: “It’s been the buzz this past week in certain corners of the Texas Capitol: Is the Lone Star State really considering dropping out of the Medicaid program? GOP Gov. Rick Perry, fresh off a big re-election win and touting his new book on states’ rights, is among those who say it’s a good idea. The election results - which included a huge haul of state House seats for Republicans - have left some Capitol watchers wondering whether they should take seriously an idea that might have been immediately discarded in the past. Never mind that no state has ever ditched Medicaid. Or that the federal government typically kicks in about 6 of every 10 dollars spent on the health care program in Texas. Medicaid pays for more than half of all births and chips in for the care of nearly two-thirds of all nursing home residents in the state. And top medical industry officials say opting out of Medicaid would cripple the state’s health care system and hurt the economy…”

• End of jobless benefits is political plight, By Janet Hook and Sara Murray, November 15, 2010, Wall Street Journal: “Jobless benefits for two million unemployed Americans will begin to expire in two weeks, an issue Congress is ill-prepared to tackle during a packed lame-duck session that is shadowed by growing voter antipathy toward government spending. With the aid for the long-term unemployed due to lapse Nov. 30, Democrats are under heavy pressure to extend the program during the lame duck session because its prospects will likely dim after Republicans gain control of the House in January. The program, which provides aid for up to 99 weeks after workers are laid off, has been extended seven times during the current economic downturn. Democrats are hoping its critics will be loath to allow the benefits to lapse during the holiday season, with the unemployment rate still exceeding 9%. But the last time Congress extended the program, the summertime battle was so pitched that extended benefits lapsed for more than a month as Republicans opposed another extension on the grounds that it would add to the deficit-a concern that has only grown more prominent during and after the midterm elections…”
• Congress’ to-do list includes unemployment help, By Audie Cornish, November 15, 2010, National Public Radio: “Lawmakers have a long list of items to take up in their lame-duck session, and one of the things they could tackle is a federal program extending unemployment benefits for millions of laid-off workers. The money runs out at the end of November. If lawmakers don’t extend those unemployment benefits, millions of people will lose their checks over the next few months. The program funds jobless benefits beyond the 26 weeks that states normally provide. In states with the highest unemployment rates, workers are eligible for more than a year and a half of benefits…”
• Jobless benefits set to end yet again, By Catherine Candisky, November 14, 2010, Columbus Dispatch: “Nearly 40 percent of Ohioans receiving jobless benefits will exhaust their unemployment by the end of December unless Congress agrees to continue funding extended benefits. According to state officials, 115,679 Ohioans will lose their benefits within a month if the program expires Nov. 30. By the end of April 2011, nearly all of the 291,998 receiving aid will fall off the rolls, said Benjamin Johnson, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Congressional Democrats, who will be in the minority in the House and have a diminished majority in the Senate, are considering a three- or six-month extension when lawmakers return to Washington this week for a brief lame-duck session. While some Democrats say they would like to pass a one-year extension, it’s doubtful there will be the votes to accomplish that…”

• Medicaid managed care programs grow; so do issues, By Phil Galewitz, November 12, 2010, USA Today: “After Tonya Bauserman slipped in a grocery store and hurt her right knee last July, an emergency room doctor prescribed painkillers and told her to see an orthopedic surgeon. But Bauserman, 27, who’s insured by a Medicaid managed health care plan called HealthCare USA, says she had trouble finding an orthopedist in her plan who would see her. Finally, she drove 2½ hours to Columbia from her home in a northwestern suburb here to see a physician, who fitted her for a brace and recommended physical therapy. HealthCare USA later said it wouldn’t pay for the brace. Furious, Bauserman says her experience was ‘crazy.’ But it’s not uncommon. Primary care physicians in the area say a shortage of specialists in Medicaid managed-care networks makes it difficult sometimes to refer patients…”
• Battle lines drawn over Medicaid in Texas, By Emily Ramshaw and Marilyn Serafini, November 11, 2010, New York Times: “A week after newly emboldened Republicans in the Texas Legislature floated a radical cost-saving proposal - opting out of the federal Medicaid program - health care experts, economists and think tanks are trying to determine just how serious they are, and if it would even be possible. The answer? It is complicated. But that is not stopping some conservative lawmakers in nearly a dozen other states, frantic over budget shortfalls and anticipating new costs from the federal health care overhaul, from exploring it. ‘States feel like their backs are against the wall, so this is the nuclear option for them,’ said Christie Herrera, director of the health and human services task force for the American Legislative Exchange Council, an association for conservative state lawmakers. ‘I’m hearing below-the-radar chatter from legislators around the country from states considering this option…’”

Amid Montgomery’s affluence, plight of suburban poor worsens in downturn, By Annie Gowen, November 12, 2010, Washington Post: “Their numbers are growing, but the suburban poor can be tough to spot amid the affluence that sometimes surrounds them. In few places is that more true than Tobytown, a tiny enclave in Potomac still occupied by the descendants of former slaves who founded it in 1875. The neighborhood off River Road, hidden from view on a woodsy stretch of Pennyfield Lock Road near the C&O Canal, is almost jarringly out of place. It nestles in the midst of great opulence - homes guarded by stone lions with lawns big enough for their own soccer fields. Tobytown’s 60 or so residents have struggled to break free of poverty for generations, and their circumstances have worsened in the recession. People have lost jobs and face more difficulty finding transportation in and out of the neighborhood, which is so remote it has no bus service. At the same, Montgomery County has cut funds for a taxi voucher program and an after-school program for kids…”

• Report shows fourth-grade students in N.J. public, charter schools have same passing rates, By Rohan Mascarenhas, November 10, 2010, Star-Ledger: “Some public schools in Newark are among the best in the city, performing as well as charters in certain areas, according to the annual Kids Count survey to be released today. Comparing test scores and demographic data, the report found public schools had the same passing rates on average as charters at the fourth grade level, thanks to a decade of significant academic gains. The data appears to contradict the prevailing assumption about the consistent high quality of charter schools and their reputation as a panacea. It also belies the rhetoric from politicians and educators that Newark schools are uniformly bad…”
• Newark rents rise, incomes are stagnant, and more kids on food stamps, report shows, By Rohan Mascarenhas, November 11, 2010, Star-Ledger: “A study released today painted a grim picture of social and economic struggles in the state’s largest city. Rents in Newark have spiked, and more city kids are on food stamps, while income levels are remaining stagnant, according to the annual Kids Count survey published by the Advocates for Children in New Jersey. The report found that median rents rose 22 percent between 2005 and 2009. At the same time, the average income for Newarkers increased only one percent. Compiling statistics on welfare and demographic data, the survey offers a snapshot of the recession’s impact in Newark, where the unemployment rate hovers around 15 percent. Over the past five years, the number of Newark children on food stamps has jumped sharply, rising 33 percent, the report said…”

• Welfare reforms will lead to ‘extreme hardship’, say campaigners, By Hélène Mulholland, November 11, 2010, The Guardian: “Ian Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, faced a backlash from poverty campaigners today over plans to impose severe welfare penalties on people who are out of work and refuse to take up jobs. Leading anti-poverty charities accused the coalition government of creating a ‘climate of fear’ and exposing families and children to the ‘risk of destitution’ as Duncan Smith outlined tough sanctions as part of a radical shake-up of out-of-work benefits which he said represented a ‘fair deal’ for both the jobless and the taxpayer. Under the changes outlined in a white paper, published today, a work programme will be introduced to help people return to the workforce - with some long-term jobless required to do unpaid community work. But unemployed people who persistently fail to turn up or turned down and refused to apply for jobs will lose their £65-a-week jobseekers’ allowance for up to three years…”
• Facing austerity, Britain unveils welfare cuts, By Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell, November 11, 2010, New York Times: “A day after violent protests against government proposals to cut education spending and steeply increase tuition for university students, the government unveiled proposals on Thursday for welfare reforms that could penalize Britons deemed to be work-shy and stir further resistance. In one particularly contentious proposal, unemployed people would be stripped of a $100-a-week job-seekers allowance for up to three years if they turn down three job offers - a proposal that drew protests from civic groups. Some economists called the sanctions the harshest ever imposed by a British government…”
• Off the sofa! UK gets tough on welfare, By David Stringer (AP), November 11, 2010, Washington Post: “Britain announced the most radical overhaul in decades Thursday to its once-generous welfare system, pledging harsh penalties for those who refuse jobs and community work service for the unemployed in return for benefit checks. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith unveiled sharp changes to the country’s cradle-to-grave social safety net, which was first introduced after World War II to better protect newborns, families, the jobless and the sick. Critics have long said the British system offered hefty benefits unavailable to other citizens across Europe, the U.S. and other major economies - encouraging some people to snub modest jobs in favor of an easy life on handouts…”

• Rising fees for utilities may be slowing recovery, economists say, By Colleen O’Connor, November 7, 2010, Denver Post: “Even in one of the most contentious election cycles in recent history, most politicians agree on one thing: It’s a mistake to raise taxes during an economic recession or early in a recovery. But equally mandatory fees have quietly and relentlessly crept up in Colorado and across the nation, and economists say they could be slowing the economic recovery. Rates for electricity, water, sewage treatment and phones - even bus fares - have risen during the recession…”
• Nickel and dimed by increasing fees, Editorial, November 9, 2010, Denver Post: “Unemployment is high. Pay raises, for those lucky enough to be getting them, are low. The economy is barely bubbling back to life, yet utility and public transportation rates have soared in the past few years in Colorado, making us wonder if those in charge are tone deaf to the pressures faced by working families. A story in The Sunday Denver Post by reporter Colleen O’Connor documented some of those increases, which include an average 15 percent retail electricity increase from Xcel between 2009 and 2010…”

Poverty moves into the suburbs, By Ann Belser, November 7, 2010, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Life in America’s suburbs, isn’t all commuting and scout meetings anymore, if it ever was. Among its many side effects, the Great Recession brought into stark relief the fact that poverty has taken root in the nation’s suburban areas. Once seen as a problem only in urban and rural areas, the strains caused by lost jobs or low income employment are now shared by neighborhoods that were often created as havens from a city’s ills. ‘It’s a longer historical trend where you’re seeing cities and suburbs moving closer together, not just in unemployment but also in poverty and food stamps,’ said Emily Garr, a research assistant at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. On Friday, the government announced the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 9.6 percent and, if this month’s data pans out the same as others have since the recession’s start, the growth of suburban unemployment will continue to outpace that of urban unemployment. The change is not readily apparent in a year-over-year comparison, but it stands out when looking at data over the last two decades…”

• Number of uninsured U.S. adults hits record high, By Steven Reinberg, November 10, 2010, USA Today: “Nearly 50 million Americans have gone without health insurance for at least part of the past year - up from 46 million people in 2008, federal health officials reported Tuesday. Those people included not only those Americans living in poverty, but an increasing number of middle-income people, according to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ‘The bottom line is that uninsurance of young and middle-class adults increased by 4 million people from 2008 to the first quarter of 2010,’ CDC Director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden said during a news conference Tuesday. What’s more, the number of people without insurance for a year or more increased from 27.5 million in 2008 to 30.4 million in the first quarter of 2010, Frieden said. ‘That’s an increase of 3 million of chronically uninsured adults…’”
• Report: 59 million Americans lack health care, By Joshua Norman, November 10, 2010, CBS News: “More than 59 million Americans had no health insurance for at least part of 2010, an increase of 4 million from the previous year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported Tuesday. While the worsening economic conditions did have a direct impact on the number of Americans with coverage, the situation also meant that a far greater number of Americans are forgoing needed medical care because of costs…”

Nebraska groups criticize child welfare reform effort, By Margery A. Beck (AP), November 10, 2010, Lincoln Journal Star: “Several groups complained publicly Wednesday that agencies hired by the state to manage parts of Nebraska’s child welfare system have refused to work with attorneys in cases involving state wards, failed to return phone calls or even tell authorities where foster children have been placed for weeks. Voices for Children in Nebraska, Nebraska Appleseed and others gathered in Lincoln to release a letter signed by more than 800 organizations and individuals calling on the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services for more information, transparency and accountability in the state’s child welfare reform process. The letter is being sent to Gov. Dave Heineman and officials with the state Health and Human Services Department…”

• Increasing poverty among students challenges educators, By Adam Wise, November 6, 2010, Wisconsin Rapids Tribune: “In the past 10 years, the poverty rate has nearly doubled in some local school districts. The financial struggles of thousands of families in Wood and Adams counties is increasing the stress on school officials, as they try to address achievement gaps between impoverished students and the general student population. Locally, district poverty levels — measured by the number of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches — increased in five local school districts, including a more than 80 percent increase in the Wisconsin Rapids and Nekoosa districts from the 2000-01 school year to 2009-10…”
• As family homelessness rises in Washtenaw County, educational project works to help kids stay in school, By Kyle Feldscher, November 7, 2010, AnnArbor.com: “For two years, Amina Brewer did her best to act like every other student at Ann Arbor’s Pioneer High School. The energetic 17-year-old pulled strong grades, had plenty of friends and seemed as carefree as her classmates. But she was hiding a secret from her friends. When the bell rang at the end of the day, the reality of Amina’s life would snap into focus. Her family was homeless…”

• Program seeks to aid hard-core homeless, By Alexandra Zavis, November 9, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Prominent business leaders are putting their weight behind a plan that they say could make a major dent in homelessness in Los Angeles County, embracing a strategy that will face significant political opposition. The blueprint they plan to unveil Tuesday seeks to put a permanent roof over the heads of the most entrenched street dwellers, then provide them as much counseling and treatment as they will use. Because the chronically homeless take up a disproportionate share of resources, the plan’s authors argue that focusing on housing them will ultimately free up services for the many more people who need only temporary help to get back on their feet…”
• Solving homelessness will require cooperation, Editorial, November 9, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Los Angeles remains the nation’s homelessness capital, with almost 48,000 people living around the county on streets, in cars and in shelters, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority. About a fourth of them are chronically homeless, burdened in many cases by physical and mental ailments that make it hard for them to reintegrate into society. The magnitude and intractability of the problem haven’t stopped policymakers and homeless advocates from offering plan after plan for improving the situation, but none has made much of a dent in the homeless population. On Tuesday, yet another group will weigh in: the Business Leaders Task Force on Homelessness, a project organized by the local branches of the Chamber of Commerce and the United Way…”

• Proficiency of black students is found to be far lower than expected, By Trip Gabriel, November 9, 2010, New York Times: “An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented - a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another. But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known. Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys. Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches…”
• Report calls attention to achievement gap between black and white male students, By Nick Anderson, November 9, 2010, Washington Post: “Black male students trail their white counterparts in school by alarming margins and for reasons that often are not well understood, according to a report released Tuesday. The report from the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy organization for urban education, suggests that poverty is not the only factor behind the black-white achievement gap. Federal test data show that white male students nationwide who come from families poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches outperform black males from large cities whose families are better off economically, according to the report. The report analyzed fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress…”

• Housing benefit cuts will ‘push poor out of south’, experts warn, By Randeep Ramesh and Andrew Sparrow, November 8, 2010, The Guardian: “Large swaths of southern England will become off limits to housing benefit recipients in a little more than a decade because of the government’s proposed plans to cut welfare bills - triggering a huge migration of the poor to the north - according to a study by housing experts. The work, by the Chartered Institute of Housing, shows that before 2025 rents on most two-bedroom properties in the south will become unaffordable to those claiming local housing allowance…”
• How Britain’s new welfare state was born in the USA, By Anushka Asthana, Toby Helm, and Paul Harris, November 7, 2010, The Observer: “The gathering was small and discreet and made no headlines at the time - but its significance for the future of our welfare state and for David Cameron’s vision of a ‘big society’ will become clear this week. It was on a warm day in June that Professor Lawrence Mead, who inspired many of the US welfare reforms of the 1990s, strode into 10 Downing Street. The American guru had been invited by Steve Hilton, Cameron’s chief strategist. Also present were senior Whitehall officials from the Treasury and other government departments. They were joined by Neil O’Brien, director of the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange. Mead was immediately struck by how eager the assembled team was to hear his ideas. ‘I was surprised how interested they were,’ he said. Under detailed questioning, he told his inquisitors that attitudes to welfare in Britain had been characterised by a culture of ‘entitlement’ for too long…”
• Unemployed told: do four weeks of unpaid work or lose your benefits, By Toby Helm and Anushka Asthana, November 7, 2010, The Observer: “The unemployed will be ordered to do periods of compulsory full-time work in the community or be stripped of their benefits under controversial American-style plans to slash the number of people without jobs. The proposals, in a white paper on welfare reform to be unveiled this week, are part of a radical government agenda aimed at cutting the £190bn-a-year welfare bill and breaking what the coalition now calls the ‘habit of worklessness’. The measures will be announced to parliament by the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, as part of what he will describe as a new ‘contract’ with the 1.4 million people on jobseekers’ allowance. The government’s side of the bargain will be the promise of a new ‘universal credit’, to replace all existing benefits, that will ensure it always pays to work rather than stay on welfare…”

Judge orders child care subsidies continued, By Marisa Lagos, November 6, 2010, San Francisco Chronicle: “Thousands of poor California families who rely on state subsidies to pay for child care will have a few more weeks of help after an Alameda County judge agreed Friday to postpone budget cuts to the welfare program. In a ruling issued Friday, Judge Wynne Carvill determined that the state did not do a good enough job telling recipients about options when it informed them last month that the subsidies were being terminated. He ordered the Department of Education to keep paying for the program until the court takes up the issue on Nov. 23. Advocates for the families filed suit against the state last month, after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his line-item veto power to eliminate the $256 million annual subsidy, known as CalWORKS stage 3. The governor vetoed the allocation when he signed the budget last month to increase the state’s reserve fund…”

• Census finds single mothers and live-in partners, By Tamar Lewin, November 5, 2010, New York Times: “More than a quarter of the unmarried women who gave birth in a recent year were living with a partner, according to a Census Bureau report that for the first time measured the percentage of unmarried mothers who were not living alone. ‘Everybody tends to think of single mothers as being alone with their child, and we wanted to look at whether that was true,’ said Jane Dye, the demographer who wrote the report, ‘Fertility of American Women: 2008.’ ‘We found that 28 percent of these women were living with an unmarried partner, whether opposite sex or same sex.’ While cohabitation has increased enormously over the last generation, the catchall category of ’single mother’ has often blurred the difference between those living alone and those living with a partner…”
• Facing 72 percent rate of unwed mothers, blacks explore reasons and answers, By Jesse Washington (AP), November 6, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “One recent day at Dr. Natalie Carroll’s OB-GYN practice, located inside a low-income apartment complex tucked between a gas station and a freeway, 12 pregnant black women come for consultations. Some bring their children or their mothers. Only one brings a husband. Things move slowly here. Women sit shoulder-to-shoulder in the narrow waiting room, sometimes for more than an hour. Carroll does not rush her mothers in and out. She wants her babies born as healthy as possible, so Carroll spends time talking to the mothers about how they should care for themselves, what she expects them to do - and why they need to get married. Seventy-two percent of black babies are born to unmarried mothers today, according to government statistics. This number is inseparable from the work of Carroll, an obstetrician who has dedicated her 40-year career to helping black women…”

A haven for homeless veterans, By David Abel, November 8, 2010, Boston Globe: “Like too many veterans of the Vietnam War, Tom Clark has been homeless for years. Now he’s making a list of all the domestic items he will soon need - a loveseat, vacuum cleaner, an iron - and considering things he never imagined would be a concern, such as how to match his bedding with curtains. ‘This is unbelievable that this is possible,’ said Clark, 58, a former Marine corporal, as he shared his list of household items with fellow veterans from nearby shelters who will join him this month in a new, daintily manicured complex in Pittsfield. It is the nation’s first community of its kind for homeless veterans and part of a new approach to fighting homelessness: Instead of moving those without homes into overcrowded emergency shelters or transitional places far from services, the $6.1 million project that looks like a high-end condo complex provides them with attractive one-bedroom and studio apartments for as long as they want to stay. The new community, which was built beside a shelter for veterans and includes an array of mental health and addiction services, allows the veterans to buy in with a $2,500 deposit and, depending on the size of the apartment, make regular payments of either $640 or $740 from their disability checks or other income to an association that they run…”

• UN rethinks how to measure, define ‘poor’, By Jina Moore, November 5, 2010, Christian Science Monitor: “The United Nations is starting to rethink that question. The UN Development Program yesterday unveiles this year’s Human Development Report and the Human Development Index (HDI), the annual statistical extravaganza that offers an alternative to GDP as a measure of well-being. This year, the HDI does something new for the poor: It multiplies them. The report introduces a new measure for poverty. Called the ‘multidimensional poverty index’ (MPI), it’s a different way of thinking about who is or isn’t poor. The old way was (comparatively) easy: Count the number of people who live on less than $1.25 a day. The report still does that, but it augments that income standard with a, well, multidimensional index…”
• Human development report shows great gains, and some slides, By Neil MacFarquhar, November 4, 2010, New York Times: “The world has made significant progress in income, education and health over the past 40 years, but the gains have been uneven and in some places war and the ravages of AIDS shortened life spans, according to a United Nations report on Thursday. Over all, average life expectancy around the globe jumped to 70 years in 2010, up from 59 in 1970. School enrollment through high school reached 70 percent of eligible pupils, up from 55 percent, and average per capita income doubled to more than $10,000 in the 135 countries for which numbers were available. The statistics cover about 92 percent of the world’s population…”

• Hunger in Philadelphia: The safety net is torn, By Alfred Lubrano, November 5, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Myra Young fits a nebulizer mask over her son Todd’s face to beat back his chronic asthma. Inhaling vaporized medicine that keeps him breathing, the 4-year-old with large eyes leafs through a children’s Bible to pass the time. Young, 41, is an unemployed nursing assistant who lost her job in 2007 caring for Todd during his two-month hospitalization. She watches nervously as the whirring machine eats electricity. The power to Young’s two-bedroom rental in Kensington will be cut in two weeks because the bill has climbed to $770. She lives in the poorest place in Pennsylvania - the First Congressional District. According to a national poll, the district is the second-hungriest in America. Young, who is separated, is not without help. She receives monthly welfare payments of $205, along with $362 in food stamps, and $674 in Supplemental Security Income for Todd’s illness - part of the safety net meant to aid the poor. Young’s husband, a hotel kitchen worker, chips in as well. But all that help still keeps mother and son stuck at the poverty level - not nearly enough to pay the $625 rent, and feed Young’s hungry child and his voracious breathing machine. Because Young hasn’t worked since Todd’s hospitalization, it’s harder for her to get jobs; employers are wary of her two years away from nursing…”
• Inquirer Editorial: We are what we eat, Editorial, November 5, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Hunger isn’t confined to a single zip code. But there are few places where its impact is more evident than within this city’s First Congressional District, rated the second-hungriest in America. Inquirer reporter Alfred Lubrano recently detailed how that hunger, rooted in poverty, can paradoxically lead to obesity. Many among the poor are overweight not from eating too much, but because they eat the wrong foods…”

• Jobs data highlight the challenges for Washington, By Catherine Rampell, November 5, 2010, New York Times: “Good, but not good enough. As President Obama said himself, that was the message in Friday’s Labor Department report, which showed that the United States economy added 151,000 jobs in October. It was certainly a welcome change after four months of job losses but not strong enough to make a dent in unemployment. Nearly 15 million people are still out of work, and the unemployment rate remains at 9.6 percent. The jobless rate has not fallen substantially this year largely because job growth has been barely fast enough to absorb new entrants to the labor force. And even if the economy suddenly ramps up and starts adding 208,000 jobs a month - the average during the best year of job creation this decade - it would take 12 years to fully close the gap between the growing number of American workers and the total number of jobs available, according to Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project…”
• Unemployment rate holds at 9.6%, but job market shows signs of life, By Don Lee, November 5, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “The nation’s sluggish job market showed signs of life in October: Employers added a net 151,000 jobs over the month, and private-sector job creation was the strongest since April, the Labor Department said Friday. However, the better-than-expected job gains weren’t large enough to bring down the unemployment rate, which remained stuck at 9.6% for the third month in a row. A broader measure of unemployment and underemployment, which includes part-time workers who can’t find full-time jobs, dropped a notch to 17% last month…”
• Unemployment drops in 85% of metro areas in September, By Christopher S. Rugaber (AP), November 3, 2010, USA Today: “Unemployment fell in more than 85% of the nation’s largest metro areas in September, a sharp improvement from the previous month. The Labor Department said Wednesday that the jobless rate dropped in 321 of the country’s 372 metropolitan areas, while remaining the same in 20 and rising in 31. That compares to 230 metro areas that saw their rates fall in August and is the largest number of areas reporting improvement since April…”

• UN: ‘Significant progress’ in human development, By David Loyn, November 4, 2010, BBC News: “Launched 20 years ago with the simple line that ‘people are the real wealth of a nation’, the United Nations’ Human Development Report has become the most trusted annual indicator of progress in developing nations. The 20th anniversary report charts progress going back 20 years before that first publication - so it is an ambitious attempt to chart development achievements - or not - going back 40 years. The UN Development Programme’s report concludes that since 1970 there has been significant progress - often underestimated until now - and that the fastest progress has been in some of the poorest countries. It also concludes that aid works…”
• 8 Indian States have 421 million multidimensionally poor people, By Aarti Dhar, November 4, 2010, The Hindu: “Eight Indian States are home to 421 million multidimensionally poor people, more than the figure of 410 million in 26 poorest African countries. The Multidimensional Poverty Index - which identifies serious simultaneous deprivations in health, education and income at the household level in 104 countries - brought out in the latest United Nations Human Development Report has calculated that South Asia is home to half of the world’s multi-dimensionally poor population, or 844 million people…”
• Oman most-improved nation in last 40 years, UN index says, By Tavia Grant, November 4, 2010, The Globe and Mail: “Basic aspects of life such as health and education have improved for the vast majority of the planet’s population in the past two decades, with the greatest strides seen in the poorest countries, a United Nations report said Thursday. The UN’s human development index, launched in its 20th edition, shows that while development has not been uniform, huge steps in areas such as life expectancy, school enrollment, literacy and income means its index of 135 countries has climbed 18 per cent since 1990 and 41 per cent since 1970…”

Poverty drives diabetes epidemic, By Moira Welsh, November 3, 2010, Toronto Star: “Every morning before breakfast Edgar Dawson pricks a tiny needle into the tip of his finger. He smears a drop of his blood onto a paper test strip in his glucose meter and waits to see if the flashing digital numbers tell him that his blood sugar level is okay. It’s a routine test that many with diabetes use, but Edgar - and thousands of low-income earners like him - can’t afford to follow his doctor’s orders by checking another four times a day. ‘I try to live within my means,’ Dawson, says in the modest Scarborough townhouse he calls home. ‘I try not to let it bother me too much.’ Dawson, 58, says he and his partner spend roughly $100 a month to manage his Type 2 diabetes with test strips, needles (known as lancers) for the glucose meter and other costs such as fresh vegetables and salads. To follow his doctor’s orders, and test between three to five times, he says he would have to spend another $200 a month…”

$10-billion Medicaid plan approved for California, By Noam N. Levey, November 3, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “The Obama administration on Tuesday approved a $10-billion plan to help California modernize and expand its Medicaid health insurance program for the poor, pushing the state to the forefront of the national effort to implement the new healthcare law. The administration’s much-anticipated decision to grant a so-called Medicaid waiver could ultimately help cover hundreds of thousands more Californians over the next five years. State and federal officials hope that will bolster efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of care provided to the state’s poorest residents. ‘California is now firmly leading the country in the implementation of health reform,’ said Peter Harbage, an independent consultant who has worked extensively on healthcare policy in the state. The state’s head start was made possible by an agreement between Washington and Sacramento to reallocate money already planned for the state’s Medicaid program. Whether the California agreement becomes a template for the rest of the country remains to be seen. Republican leaders in many states are fighting against implementation of the new healthcare law and arguing that the next Congress should repeal it…”

• High-school dropout rates fall dramatically: StatsCan, Canadian Press, November 3, 2010, Toronto Star: “A new study has found that high-school dropout rates have plummeted by almost half in the past 20 years. Statistics Canada reports that 191,000 young people aged 20 to 24 had not completed a high-school diploma and were not attending school in 2009-2010, or 8.5 per cent. That’s a big drop from the 1990-91 figure of nearly 340,000, or 16.6 per cent. The agency says dropout rates were lower for young women (6.6 per cent) last year than for young men (10.3). StatsCan found that, while rates have declined for both sexes, the rate of decrease was faster for men, narrowing the gap between the two…”
• High school dropout rate cut in half in 2 decades, By Mark Iype, November 3, 2010, Vancouver Sun: “The number of young Canadians not getting a high school diploma has been slashed nearly in half over the last 20 years according to Statistics Canada, a change many experts say reflects the rising value of education in the country. In 1990-91, nearly 340,000 or 16.6 per cent of young people aged 20 to 24 had not completed a high school diploma and were not attending school. But in the last two decades, that number has dropped dramatically, falling to 8.5 per cent of young people or 191,000 by the 2009-10 school year, according to data released Wednesday…”