• Food stamp recipients to critics: Walk in our shoes, By Jesse Washington (AP), January 20, 2012, Charlotte Observer: “Some have advanced degrees and remember middle-class lives. Some work selling lingerie or building websites. They are white, black and Hispanic; young and old; homeowners and homeless. What they have in common: They’re all on food stamps. As the food stamp program has become an issue in the Republican presidential primary, with candidates seeking to tie President Barack Obama to the program’s record numbers, The Associated Press interviewed recipients across the country and found many who wished critics would spend some time in their shoes. Most said they never expected to need food stamps, but the Great Recession, which wiped out millions of jobs, left them no choice. Some struggled with the idea of taking a handout; others saw it as their due, earned through years of working steady jobs. They yearn to get back to receiving a paycheck that will make food stamps unnecessary…”
• The Americans no one wants to talk about, By Michael Gerson, January 19, 2012, Washington Post: “It is an achievement of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements to have raised large issues of economic freedom and economic inequality. It is a paradox that their arguments have generally been vague, ideological and unhelpful. Elements on the right reject the whole ideal of distributive justice - opposing most taxation as theft and embracing a utopian project involving the abolition of the modern state. Elements on the left seek a substitute for capitalism - a utopian project that has been tried and found frightening. The political debates on free markets or the privileges of the 1 percent seldom touch on the actual struggles of citizens - say, living in the shadow of foreclosure, or attending a failing school, or surviving in a gang-occupied neighborhood. Ideology is abstract. Hardship is lived concretely. I like a good political philosophic debate as much as the next columnist. Give me a soy latte and a libertarian, and I’m set for the night. Ideas do have consequences. But many Americans are being overlooked in this bipartisan conspiracy of economic abstraction. A significant and growing portion of the population lives in poverty…”
• GOP presidential candidates wade into politically tricky territory of food stamp spending, By Associated Press, January 9, 2012, Washington Post: “Politicians normally shy away from saying they want to cut food stamps, but this year’s Republican presidential candidates are using domestic food aid as an example of a welfare state gone awry. Supporters of the program say it is one of the most reliable safety nets for families who suddenly find themselves unable to pay for food, and politically the program has proved almost untouchable over many decades. More than 45 million people received the benefit last year at a $75 billion cost to the government, a record number as the economy has flailed. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and fellow contender Rick Santorum, both heavily involved in congressional welfare reform efforts in the mid-1990s, say the government should stop promoting a welfare-like state and convert food stamp spending to block grants to states, a move that could freeze spending and cut the benefit to many who now receive it. A spokesperson for Republican Mitt Romney says the former Massachusetts governor also supports turning the nation’s food stamp program into state block grants, though he rarely mentions it…”

• The Near Poor: Many educated, employed Americans struggle to make ends meet, By Elizabeth Stuart, November 30, 2011, Deseret News: “Federal poverty statistics may not paint an accurate picture of how Americans are getting along economically, two new studies suggest. About 45 percent of U.S. residents who are not considered poor by federal standards don’t have enough money for basic expenses like housing, food and health care, according to a new study by the advocacy group Wider Opportunities for Women. And the number of people hovering just above the federal poverty threshold is 76 percent higher than official records indicate, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data published in the New York Times…”
• In U.S., Canada, new measures of the poverty line, By Miles Corak, November 28, 2011, Globe and Mail: “U.S. President Barack Obama appointed Rebecca Blank — a capable, no-nonsense, PhD in economics, and a former Dean at the University of Michigan — to his new administration, and told her to answer a simple question: How should the United States measure poverty? Blank did an end-run around the sad politics that has characterized discussions of poverty measurement in the U.S. by having the Census Bureau develop an entirely new indicator that reflects the realities of participating in contemporary American society…”

• Malloy touts new tax credit, By JC Reindl, November 23, 2011, The Day: “Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Tuesday joined Democratic lawmakers and social services advocates to herald the implementation of Connecticut’s new Earned Income Tax Credit for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. The credit was included in the governor’s biennial budget plan that passed the General Assembly this spring. The cost to the state is a projected $110 million this fiscal year. Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia now offer some type of earned income tax credit. Under Connecticut’s program, the approximately 190,000 state households that are eligible for the federal Earned Income Tax Credit will receive an additional credit equal to 30 percent of the federal one…”
• Taxing the working poor back to starting line, Editorial, November 20, 2011, Detroit Free Press: “As much as younger pensioners may howl about the state income taxes they’ll have to pay come Jan. 1, the hardest hit group of people who file income tax forms may be the poorest — workers whose wages barely bring their families up to the poverty level. That’s because the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit will drop from 20% of the federal payment to 6%. Although this is better than nothing — which, in fact, was what Michigan had until three years ago — it will return the state to the unwelcome status of taxing some people back into poverty…”

• Poverty’s new faces: Where to draw the line?, By Rick Montgomery, November 12, 2011, Kansas City Star: “For nearly half a century, the U.S. government has based poverty levels on a simple formula that nearly all experts consider outdated: Calculate the lowest annual cost of keeping a family fed, then multiply by three to cover other basic needs. For the new poor - such as Amber Vieux, 28, who once earned $19 an hour - grocery bills often aren’t the main problem. Her son won’t go hungry, she’ll make sure of that. What has thrown the nursing student into the assistance line, a place Vieux never imagined being, are the other bills: Day care for her 4-year-old, $575 a month. Mandatory health premiums to study and work part-time at KU Med Center, $350 for half a year. Car payment, fuel and insurance, $600 a month or more. The rent. Utilities. Internet access and her cellphone plan, without which she’d be isolated from the modern world…”
• New Poverty Measure: More accurate account of income and benefits still shows growing need, Editorial, November 13, 2011, Syracuse Post-Standard: “For years, economists and others have been arguing that the way the nation counts its poor is outdated. For one thing, the measure put in place in the 1960s overemphasizes the cost of feeding the average family, which has shrunk from one-third to one-seventh of household resources. For another, while the old measure factors in welfare payments, it doesn’t take into account more widely used ’safety net’ programs like food stamps that aim to rescue many families from the cruelest burdens of poverty. This year, for the first time, the U.S. Census Bureau has adopted a ‘Supplemental Poverty Measure’ that takes into account those safety net programs. It doesn’t replace the ‘official’ poverty measure - that’s still needed to determine safety net eligibility - but it paints a more realistic portrait of poverty in America…”
• Editorial: New data offer a fuller picture of life for America’s poor, Editorial, November 9, 2011, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “The flaws built into the Census Bureau’s official estimates of poverty in the United States never have been a secret. Specialists in the economics of poverty - non-profit service organizations, public service officials, academics, statisticians, even the Census Bureau itself - recognized the inadequacies of the oversimplified estimates almost from the moment they were developed in the 1960s. But on Monday, the bureau released a report describing a new Supplemental Poverty Measure that addresses many of the longstanding imperfections in the official estimates…”
• Measuring poverty, Editorial, November 12, 2011, Boston Herald: “The Census Bureau has worked up a new measure of poverty that for the first time takes into account facts in the real world - today’s world particularly. Now we can only hope it will improve official decision-making and public discussion. The official measure, which still will be used and is incorporated in scores of federal laws, was produced in 1964 to measure progress in President Lyndon Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty.’ An economist in the Social Security Administration noted that the Agriculture Department estimated that families of three or more spent one-third of their income on food, so therefore, the poverty level for those families was set at three times their food expenses. It’s been adjusted for inflation but not otherwise changed, even though families now spend about a seventh of their income of food…”

• Bloomberg to use own funds in plan to aid minority youth, By Michael Barbaro and Fernanda Santos, August 3, 2011, New York Times: “The administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a blunt acknowledgment that thousands of young black and Latino men are cut off from New York’s civic, educational and economic life, plans to spend nearly $130 million on far-reaching measures to improve their circumstances. The program, the most ambitious policy push of Mr. Bloomberg’s third term, would overhaul how the government interacts with a population of about 315,000 New Yorkers who are disproportionately undereducated, incarcerated and unemployed…”
• Can George Soros, Michael Bloomberg save New York’s troubled young men?, By Ron Scherer, August 4, 2011, Christian Science Monitor: “New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to improve the lives of young black and Hispanic males. On Thursday, Mr. Bloomberg announced that the city, combined with his own philanthropy and that of billionaire George Soros, would spend $127.5 million over three years to try to cut down on some of the factors that result in higher rates of poverty, incarceration, and unemployment among young minority men…”
• A hand up, not a handout, for young black and Latino men, Editorial, August 4, 2011, Christian Science Monitor: “Blacks and Latinos took the brunt of America’s Great Recession. Their wealth gap with whites is now at a record high. And with large cutbacks in government social programs, there’s a greater need than ever for private giving to help these two groups. That’s the reasoning behind a $130 million initiative in New York City by two billionaires, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and financier George Soros, to target young male minorities with innovative approaches to helping them succeed - as workers and as fathers. Each man is giving $30 million to the public-private project. (Mr. Soros already funds many such programs in other cities.) Known as the Young Men’s Initiative, the three-year project is just the latest of dozens of programs started in recent years to focus on young African-American and Latino males - groups with dreadful rates of poverty, education, and employment…”

• Is stress to blame for preterm births?, By Mark Johnson and Tia Ghose, April 16, 2011, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “A tight, persistent pain in the lower abdomen chased Jasmine Zapata from class that morning, forcing her upstairs to rest on a couch at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. It was Sept. 20, and Zapata was in her 25th week of pregnancy, just past the midpoint. She neither smoked nor drank. She knew the importance of proper prenatal care - of course she did - and had followed the doctor’s orders to the letter. Zapata, after all, was in her second year of medical school. The 23-year-old Milwaukee native had carried her first pregnancy to term and had a beautiful son to show for it: MJ, now 18 months old. At her last doctor visit the week before, all had been fine. But on this morning when Zapata rose from the couch and went into the bathroom, she saw she was bleeding. By the time the ambulance got to the hospital, she was completely dilated and in fear for her baby daughter. ‘When they were doing an ultrasound, I was mentally preparing myself,’ Zapata said. ‘What if they tell me she’s dead?’ Educated, married, with no chronic illnesses or family history of prematurity, Zapata was not, in most respects, a high risk for premature delivery, the No. 1 cause of infant mortality in Milwaukee. Only one factor suggested risk: Zapata is African-American…”
• Understanding the risks, Editorial, April 16, 2011, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “African-American babies in Milwaukee are dying before their first birthday at more than twice the rate of white infants. This tragic trend line has widened despite years of effort. Poverty, unhealthy environments, lack of prenatal care, smoking or drinking alcohol and chronic diseases such as diabetes all play a role. But researchers now believe that something else is behind these cruel numbers: the accumulated stress of a life lived as a racial minority. This insight argues for approaches that help black women understand the multiple risks they face and that give them tools to cope with these risks. Milwaukee’s black infant mortality rate was 15.7 deaths per 1,000 live births between 2005 and 2008, one of the worst rates in the country and double the rate for white babies…”

• Microfinance struggles to restore its reputation, By Erika Kinetz (AP), March 7, 2011, Boston Globe: “Long heralded as a way to lift the downtrodden out of poverty, microfinance is under a cloud. The stories of lives being changed by a $27 microloan and picture perfect scenes of smiling women with colorful handlooms, empowered by affordable credit, have been replaced by headlines about borrowers driven to suicide. At best, microfinance seems to be failing to achieve its most noble goal: poverty alleviation. At worst, some lenders are contributing to a cycle of indebtedness and abuse, just like the loan sharks they sought to replace. Critics say the industry has grown too quickly for its own good, with too much rapaciousness and too little regulation. That has fostered a breakdown in lending discipline, with multiple loans to overextended borrowers, and allowed some unscrupulous players to thrive…”
• India’s poor need help to help themselves, By Sarika Bansal, March 7, 2011, The Guardian: “Until recently, microfinance has been the golden child of international development. Microfinance companies would lend small amounts of money to poor women who would, in the ideal scenario, use them to start small businesses. Their interest rates were typically lower than loan sharks’ but still high enough to make a profit. Around the world, development experts believed microfinance was an ideal way to alleviate poverty, a smart way to ‘do good’ while also ‘doing well’. How times have changed. In the last few months, many people have become newly critical. In November, politicians in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh started making bold claims about how microfinance’s crushing interest rates and strongman tactics were, among other things, leading to suicide among over-indebted borrowers…”

• For Milwaukee’s children, an early grave, By Crocker Stephenson, January 22, 2011, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “On a bitter January afternoon, a 22-year-old mother sits on the edge of her bed and feeds her infant daughter. The child, Rashyia, born in December, is healthy. She coos, eyes closed. She touches her mother’s cheek with her perfect hand. Rashyia and her mother, Lakisha Stinson, live in a small attic apartment on Milwaukee’s near north side. Three modest rooms. The kitchen has just three chairs and a table that is missing its glass top. The living room has no furniture. The bedroom has a bed and a Pack ‘n Play crib, a gift from Wheaton Franciscan-St. Joseph’s Hospital, whose staff, nurses and doctors brought Rashyia through a high-risk pregnancy and into the world. Rashyia and her mother live in a neighborhood where the rate at which African-American babies, such as Rashyia, die during their first year of life is worse than Botswana. Public health experts have long considered the infant mortality rate to be an essential indicator of a community’s well-being…”
• It takes a community to keep babies alive, Editorial, January 22, 2011, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Milwaukee’s littlest children are dying at appalling rates - rates that are among the worst in the country; rates that rival the world’s poorest nations. These are babies who never live to blow out their first birthday candle - three-quarters of them dead before they are a month old. They are babies such as the little boy born prematurely to Denelle McManus in January 2007. Denelle was in good health; she had good prenatal care; she didn’t smoke or drink. She was 32 years old when she lost her child. The boy, named Tavion, lived eight days before dying of a heart condition. Denelle’s mother, Patricia McManus, is chief executive of the Black Health Coalition of Wisconsin. An expert in urban issues, McManus has worked 30 years to reduce Milwaukee’s infant mortality rate and now believes that it will take a communitywide effort to save these children, an effort that is beginning to take shape with McManus as one of the leaders…”

• Poverty and recovery, Editorial, January 19, 2011, New York Times: “In 2008, the first year of the Great Recession, the number of Americans living in poverty rose by 1.7 million to nearly 47.5 million. While hugely painful, that rise wasn’t surprising given the unraveling economy. What is surprising is that recent census data show that those poverty numbers held steady in 2009, even though job loss worsened significantly that year. Clearly, the sheer scale of poverty - 15.7 percent of the country’s population - is unacceptable. But to keep millions more Americans from falling into poverty during a deep recession is a genuine accomplishment that holds a vital lesson: the safety net, fortified by stimulus, staved off an even more damaging crisis…”
• Where does the poverty line truly lie?, By Andrew Chambers, January 19, 2011, The Guardian: “Thailand is a development success story. The country is on target to meet or exceed all its millennium development goals (MDGs), and absolute poverty ($1 a day) is now less than 2%. However, do these statistics accurately measure what poverty is, and what is the next step in poverty reduction for middle-income countries like Thailand? How to define and measure poverty, therefore, is not just a dry academic debate, as these decisions greatly affect what policies are pursued…”

Who is poor? Many of America’s neediest may look a lot like you, Editorial, January 7, 2011, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Americans fuss and fight over many aspects of public policy, from climate change to health care reform. But here’s something about which there’s not much argument: If you fall below the federal threshold for ‘poverty,’ you are poor. You aren’t just needy or disadvantaged. At best, you hover somewhere between broke and destitute. It’s easy to prove. All you need is a pencil and the back of an envelope. The federal poverty threshold set by the U.S. Census Bureau for a family of four in 2009 was $21,954 a year. Deduct from that $650 a month for rent and utilities, $20 a day for food and $138 a month for two 30-day bus passes to get to work, and you end up with the princely sum of $14.72 a day to cover everything else - child care, household and personal care products, clothing, haircuts, school supplies, home furnishings and health care…”

• 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…”

• 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…”

• 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…”

• Latest unemployed: Stimulus-subsidized workers, By Tami Luhby, October 1, 2010, CNNMoney.com: “Tens of thousands of low-income workers lost their jobs Thursday as a stimulus-subsidized employment program came to an end. About a quarter of a million people in 37 states were placed in short-term jobs thanks to a $5 billion boost to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. States used about $1 billion to provide subsidized employment, with the remaining funds going to cash grants, food programs, housing assistance and other aid. About half the jobs were summer employment for youth and the rest were for disadvantaged parents. Each state configured its initiative differently. Some covered all the workers’ wages for a few months, while others paid for a portion of their salary. With the program expiring, many of the adults have been told not to report to work anymore. And it won’t be easy for them to find a new position at time when the unemployment rate continues to hover at 9.6%…”
• Stimulus aid ends for jobs program, By Richard Wolf, October 1, 2010, USA Today: “Cepeda White is a poster child for the $814 billion economic stimulus package passed by Congress and signed by President Obama last year. Today, he nearly became one of its first casualties. That’s because federal subsidies ran out for a $5 billion program funded by the stimulus law that has provided 235,000 jobs in 36 states for low-income parents and young adults. The program, ending in some states and on life support in others, paid White’s $10-an-hour salary at the Nice Twice Thrift Shop here. For months, Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, have tried to get the program extended. They ran into opposition from Republicans, including House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, who complained that the program funded direct welfare and emergency payments as well as subsidized jobs…”
• Despite latest poverty figures, Senate lets worthy jobs program lapse, Editorial, October 1, 2010, Washington Post: “The Census Bureau reported this week that more than one in four children in the District of Columbia lives in poverty. That includes 36 percent of African American children — compared with 3 percent for non-Hispanic white children. And the District was not alone in receiving grim news. The overall national child poverty rate is nearly 21 percent. Poverty rose last year in 31 states and fell in none. In some ways, the District is better off than most jurisdictions: The only places where median household income rose in 2009 were the District (2.8 percent) and North Dakota (5.1 percent). Children who grow up in poverty are more likely to be poor as adults. They lag behind early in intellectual development, tend to attend lower-quality schools and are more likely to drop out of high school. It’s not surprising that poverty would rise during an economic downturn. But the current recession — marked by increased levels of long-term unemployment and homelessness — could have a particularly brutal and long-lasting effect on the children hit by it…”

Debit card refunds for lower-income folks should work in Michigan, By Susan Tompor, September 12, 2010, Detroit Free Press: “The U.S. Treasury plans to test the delivery of tax refunds in plastic for lower-income individuals who do not have bank accounts, and Michigan seems to me like a no-brainer for a pilot program. ‘I think Michigan would provide fertile ground,’ said David Marzahl, president of the Center for Economic Progress, the nation’s largest tax-preparation provider for low-income families. The Chicago-based center leads the National Community Tax Coalition, a group of community-based tax and financial services programs that serve more than 1 million low-income families nationwide. Marzahl noted that communities in Michigan offer racial, ethnic and economic diversity. Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael S. Barr has a Michigan connection, too, having taught at the University of Michigan Law School. More important, consumers in metro Detroit — and other cities in the Midwest — have long been targeted by tax-preparation companies that pitch high-cost refund-anticipation loans to individuals who do not have bank accounts…”

• A tale of two recoveries, By Michael A. Fletcher, August 27, 2010, Washington Post: “The massive government effort to repair the damage from Hurricane Katrina is fostering a stark divide as the state governments in Louisiana and Mississippi structured the rebuilding programs in ways that often offered the most help to the most affluent residents. The result, advocates say, has been an uneven recovery, with whites and middle-class people more likely than blacks and low-income people to have rebuilt their lives in the five years since the horrific storm…”
• On Katrina anniversary, recovery takes hold, By Campbell Robertson, August 27, 2010, New York Times: “This city, not that long ago, appeared to be lost. Only five years have passed since corpses were floating through the streets, since hundreds of thousands of survivors sat in hotel rooms and shelters and the homes of relatives, learning from news footage that they were among the ranks of the homeless. For most of the last year, in many parts of the city, the waters finally seemed to be receding. In November, a federal judge ruled that much of the flooding after Hurricane Katrina was a result of the negligence of the Army Corps of Engineers, vindicating New Orleanians, who had hammered this gospel for four years. In January, the federal government cleared the way for nearly half a billion dollars in reimbursement for the city’s main public hospital, an acceleration of funds that led to the announcement this week that nearly two billion more would be coming in a lump-sum settlement for city schools…”
• Billions in Katrina relief funds still unspent, By Geoff Pender, August 27, 2010, Miami Herald: “More than a quarter of the $20 billion in Housing and Urban Development relief funds earmarked for Gulf states after Katrina remains unspent five years after the storm, a fact noticed by at least one congressional leader eager to spend it elsewhere. In June, U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, ordered data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development into how much remains unspent from the more than $20 billion in Community Development Block Grant hurricane relief funds earmarked for Gulf states after the 2005 storms. The answer: about $5.4 billion, including $3 billion of the $13 billion earmarked for Louisiana and $2 billion of the $5.5 billion for Mississippi…”
• New Orleans five years after Katrina: Chins up, hopes high, August 26, 2010, The Economist: “It is still obvious to any visitor-especially one who ventures out of the French Quarter, with its restaurants and night clubs, into the unstarred districts of the city. Something awful happened here in the not-too-distant past. The signs are everywhere: empty lots overgrown by weeds, ramshackle, leaning houses, derelict public buildings still awaiting restoration. Some houses feature ‘Katrina tattoos’ sprayed by rescuers as they completed house-by-house searches in 2005. Nobody at home. And yet New Orleans has undoubtedly recovered its essence. The old neighbourhoods are almost intact, and the city’s irrepressible people have mostly returned. Experts estimate that perhaps 360,000 people now live in a city that was home to around 100,000 more on the day disaster struck. Those who left were probably disproportionately black and poor. Yet the city’s large black majority, still there and mostly still poor, has ensured that the extravagant culture of New Orleans has survived the flood unharmed…”
• Disasters widen the rich-poor gap, By John Mutter, August 25, 2010, Nature.com: “As the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, recovery in New Orleans is patchy. The hurricane flushed out many of the poorer people. For those who remained, almost without exception, the poorer neighbourhoods have experienced the slowest repopulation and recovery of basic amenities such as schools, shops and petrol stations. The poorest district of New Orleans - the Lower Ninth Ward - has about 24% of its former residents, whereas the wealthy Central Business District has seen 157% repopulation. Low-income black workers were seven times more likely to lose their pre-Katrina jobs than higher-income white workers. And low-income people have found it more difficult to attain basic living conditions, including good access to health care - in 2008 there were 38% fewer hospital beds available in New Orleans than before the storm…”

• Governor signs bill to assist children aging out of foster care, By Doug Denison, July 20, 2010, Dover Post: ” Children aging out of the foster care system now have access to greater protections under the law thanks to legislation signed June 14 by Gov. Jack Markell. Under Senate Bill 113, former foster children between the ages of 18 and 21 will now be allowed to petition Family Court and continue to work with the Department of Services for Children, Youth and their Families to get help with housing, employment, education and health care. Court-appointed child advocates, former guardians and the foster children themselves will be able to bring cases to Family Court that weren’t previously within its jurisdiction. In the last fiscal year, 94 Delaware foster children aged out of the system, putting in jeopardy their ability to continue to receive various kinds of federal- and state-funded assistance. Ten years ago, half as many children were in that position…”
• Foster kids at 18 aren’t ready to go it alone in the world, By Kathy Markeland, July 24, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Each year, more than 7,000 Wisconsin children are removed from their parents’ homes and placed in foster care. Most of these children will live with relatives or foster parents for a short time and then be reunited with their families. Sometimes families can’t be reunited and children are connected to new families through adoption. But for up to 600 young people in Wisconsin each year, their stay in foster care ends when they turn 18 and ‘age out’ of their foster home. They ‘age out’ of the system that promised to protect them. The national data on the experiences of youths that age out of the foster care system are grim. Compared to their peers in the general population, these young people have a higher incidence of physical and mental health needs, yet are less likely to have health care coverage…”

The importance of healthy communities for boys of color, By Marian Wright Edelman, July 22, 2010, Madison Times: “A new report was released in June that sheds a sobering light on how many Black and Latino boys grow up in communities that are, in a number of ways, dangerous to their health. Called “Healthy Communities Matter: The Importance of Place to the Health of Boys of Color,” the report contained contributions from scholars and researchers at the RAND Corporation, PolicyLink, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, and the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice and the Department of Emergency Medicine at Drexel University. It was funded by the California Endowment. Some of its data and best practices focus on California but the lessons learned apply to communities across the country. The researchers found that boys and young men overall experience worse health outcomes than girls, that these health disparities are even more profound for Black and Latino boys, and that many of these disparities can be connected to community patterns. As they explain: “Negative health outcomes for African-American and Latino boys and young men are a result of growing up in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage, places that are more likely to put boys and young men directly in harm’s way and reinforce harmful behavior…”

Jobless Michigan teens can thank the minimum wage hike, By Michael Saltsman, July 21, 2010, Detroit News: “Teens have it pretty tough these days. From bullies and standardized tests to peer pressure and Facebook fights, modernity is adding stress to every aspect of the lives of young adults. This summer, you can add the death of the entry-level job to that list of woes. Young adults are facing unprecedented unemployment rates — and the figures for dropouts and minorities are even more staggering. No matter how you slice it, the numbers are bad. The unemployment rate for Michigan teens is averaging over 26 percent — more than one in four are looking for work and unable to find it. Vulnerable groups like high school dropouts and minorities have been hit especially hard. Dropouts between the age of 16 and 24 were dealing with 33 percent unemployment in April. African-American dropouts in the same age group suffered an eye-popping 60 percent unemployment…”

• Remember the War On Poverty?, By Saul Friedman, July 18, 2010, The Huffington Post: “Long before there was a war on terrorism and the war on drugs, the nation declared war on poverty. Specifically, Lyndon Johnson in his first State of The Union, in 1964, declared amid great cheers from the Congress, an ‘unconditional war on poverty in America’ and he pledged not to rest ‘until that war is won.’ In his last State of the Union in 1988, Ronald Reagan, who had been no fan of Johnson’s agenda, declared to snickering lawmakers, that in the War on Poverty, ‘poverty won…’”

• Programs meet growing teen jobless needs, By Mark Curnutte, July 9, 2010, Cincinnati Enquirer: “The ailing economy has left many of the region and nation’s youngest workers with little to do over the summer. The unemployment rate nationally for teens 16-19 in June was 29 percent, roughly the same as Ohio and Kentucky, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s twice the rate from June 2000. Yet some summer youth jobs programs have found new ways to keep teens productive and have evolved to include long-term career training and emphasis on education. One of Greater Cincinnati’s largest, Cincinnati-Hamilton County Community Action Agency’s Summer Youth Employment Program, expanded from 375 slots in 2009 to 990 this year. Applications increased from about 1,200 last year to 2,500 in 2010…”
• A jobs program that works, By Bob Herbert, July 2, 2010, New York Times: “Is it possible that there is a federal stimulus program that is putting many thousands of struggling individuals to work and is getting rave reviews not only from Democrats but from officials in conservative states like South Carolina and Mississippi? It may be hard to believe, but it’s true. The program, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, allows states to use federal dollars to temporarily subsidize the salaries of individuals placed in private- and public-sector jobs. More than 30 states are participating. The program, though small, appears to be working exceptionally well. States expect to have placed more than 200,000 individuals by this coming autumn. Some of those workers would otherwise have landed on welfare. The catch - there is always a catch - is that the program will expire at the end of September if Congress does not act to extend it…”

• Graduation rates drop in Miss., By Marquita Brown, July 12, 2010, Jackson Clarion-Ledger: “To encourage her son to stay in school, Kimberly Smith would use herself as an example. She only had a sixth-grade education. At times the family had no electricity, no food and sometimes no place to stay. ‘This is why you need to go to school,’ Smith would tell her son, Carlos. ‘You want to live like this the rest of your life? Or you want to do something about it?’ Carlos graduated this year as Wingfield High School salutatorian with numerous scholarships, including national awards, and will attend Jackson State University in the fall. Kimberly Smith represents an element education leaders say is needed to improve state graduation and dropout rates - parental involvement. Mississippi’s graduation rate for the Class of 2009 dipped to 71.4 percent from 72 percent, according to numbers released from the state Department of Education on Thursday. The drop was greater in Jackson Public Schools…”
• Dropouts: Budget strains hit weakest, Editorial, July 12, 2010, Jackson Clarion-Ledger: “In a competitive world, the lack of a high school diploma is an almost unsurmountable barrier to success. Yet, Mississippi still struggles with its high school graduation and dropout rates. The state Department of Education reports that graduation rates dropped slightly last year - from 72 percent to 71.4 percent. The state’s dropout rate increased slightly - from 16 percent to 16.7 percent. The negative trend, while slight, comes at a time when the state has been emphasizing high school dropout prevention. Worse, it could show a more vulnerable area as funding for education is being cut, putting a strain on districts seeking to provide help for students who are at-risk…”

• Administration broadens effort to fight homelessness, By Henri E. Cauvin, June 23, 2010, Washington Post: “The Obama administration released a strategy Tuesday to end homelessness by expanding programs to secure housing for veterans and families with young children and by building on efforts to help chronically homeless people. With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq highlighting the needs of veterans and the economic crisis straining more families, the administration’s plan widens the role envisioned for the federal government in curbing and ending homelessness. It does not commit additional federal money on top of the billions of dollars already budgeted by the various agencies involved in reducing and preventing homelessness. Instead, the 67-page strategy, drafted by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and unveiled Tuesday, details several smaller projects intended to spur collaboration among federal agencies and with local and state governments…”
• Obama builds on Bush success to help the homeless, Editorial, June 22, 2010, Christian Science Monitor: “To see what’s happening with the homeless population in America today, consider the following ’30s.’ In the last three years, during the great recession, the number of people who are considered to be chronically homeless has decreased by 30 percent. Over the same time period, the number of homeless families who are temporarily living in shelters has increased by 30 percent, according to a report last week by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The opposite trends show how far America has come in trying to solve homelessness, and where it needs to redouble its efforts. The Obama administration is attempting that extra effort with a national plan to eliminate homelessness. The plan, required by Congress, seeks to end chronic and veterans homelessness in five years - 10 years for families, youth, and children…”

• Senate cuts to recession relief bill favor special interests, By Janet Hook, June 23, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “As the Senate scrambles to scale back a $140-billion recession relief bill, the poor, the elderly and the unemployed are bearing the brunt of the squeeze. But NASCAR track developers, movie producers and other special interests are likely to escape unscathed. Those businesses stand to gain $32 billion in tax breaks as part of the bill, which has been stalled for weeks because of rising complaints about deficit spending. In the hunt for ways to cut costs, neither party has proposed curbing the panoply of narrow tax preferences, which Congress has routinely extended each year. Instead, Senate leaders have proposed a $25 cut in weekly unemployment benefits; temporarily allowed a 21% cut in Medicare fees for doctors; and are planning to withhold or scale back $24 billion in payments many states expected to help pay for Medicaid for the poor…”
• Cutting off the unemployed, Editorial, June 22, 2010, New York Times: “It was bad enough when the Senate left town for a long Memorial Day break without passing a bill to extend expiring unemployment benefits. It’s worse now. Back in session for nearly three weeks, the Senate still has not acted. That means that 900,000 jobless workers have already lost their benefits, a number that will swell to an estimated 1.6 million people if an extension is not passed by the July Fourth holiday. Lost benefits - the average check is $309 a week - deprives struggling Americans of cash they need for buying food, paying the rent or mortgage and other essentials…”

The unemployed held hostage, Editorial, June 14, 2010, New York Times: “Since June 1, when federal unemployment benefits began to expire, an estimated 325,000 jobless workers have been cut off. That number will swell to 1.25 million by the end of the month unless Congress extends the benefits. The Senate, so far, has failed to act. Some senators, including Democrats, have balked at an unrelated provision that would begin to close a tax loophole enjoyed by some of the richest Americans. You heard right. Desperately needed unemployment benefits have been held hostage to a tax break for the rich, and the Senate’s Democratic leadership has had to delay and finagle to get its own caucus in line…”

Drawing the line at poverty, By Sarika Bansal, May 19, 2010, The Guardian: “I recently had the pleasure of meeting a construction worker named Lakshmi while taking a walk in Mumbai. She was on a much-needed break, and I was feeling chattier than usual. Lakshmi told me that she moved to Mumbai 10 years ago with her husband, and that they gave birth to two lovely children before he died last year. When he died, she could no longer afford rent for their single-room flat, and was soon after evicted. Today, she and her children live under a blue tarp tent with patchy electricity, no running water and few physical assets to their name. She earns Rs 120 (£1.80) every day she works at the construction site. Most of her wages are used to purchase groceries, with which she usually cooks thin rotis and watery lentils. Is Lakshmi’s family poor? According to the government of India, she is not. Since her income is technically sufficient to provide her family three meals a day, her household is above the nationally defined poverty line…”

• A rich new poverty measure, By Nancy Folbre, May 10, 2010, New York Times: “The Census Bureau recently announced plans to develop a new Supplemental Poverty Measure (S.P.M.), also referred to as a Supplemental Income Poverty Measure (SIPM). If you want to remember the acronym, imagine a phone app that allows you to sip virtual coffee that increases your alertness to technical issues of poverty measurement. Poverty researchers like me will not require this imaginary app, as we are already overexcited. Most of us dislike the official poverty lines used to determine who, exactly, qualifies as poor. Most of us can recite at least five reasons why these measures (based on a mid-1960s assessment of the costs of a minimal food budget) are narrow, out of date and downright misleading. Most of us can also expound on how current methods of measuring poverty make it difficult, if not impossible, to accurately assess the impact of anti-poverty policies. Food assistance administered through the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) has been a mainstay of our safety net during the current recession. But since food stamps are not income, they don’t show up in our income-based poverty measures. The Earned Income Tax Credit (E.I.T.C.) is our largest cash-assistance program other than unemployment insurance in this recession. Our poverty measures are based on pre-tax, rather than after-tax, income. So, by definition, the E.I.T.C. does not reduce poverty. It’s hard to find anyone more passionate about these inconsistencies than Professor Timothy Smeeding, current director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin. He wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1975 on the importance of developing measures of post-benefit, post-tax income to better inform public policy…”
• Reaction mixed on proposed poverty measure, By Cheryl Wetzstein, May 14, 2010, Washington Times: “The Census Bureau’s formal release of an alternative way to measure poverty in the United States is 16 months away, but the rumblings of unease can already be heard about the politically sensitive indicator. The bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which will be released September 2011, is ‘a bogus and dishonest propaganda device,’ Robert Rector, senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told a Brookings Institution briefing recently. ‘It’s a Trojan horse,’ introduced under the name of poverty, but designed to find endless ‘income inequality’ that must be fixed with even more spending on anti-poverty programs, Mr. Rector said. The government will spend $900 billion on means-tested aid to poor and low-income persons this year alone, he added. Policy experts have been working for at least 15 years on a new poverty standard to supplement - or eventually replace - the measure that has been used since the 1960s, a measure that many critics say does not reflect contemporary realities and needs. The problem: some experts think the current measure overstates the number of poor Americans, while another group argues it vastly understates the number…”

Change the way we measure poverty, Editorial, May 3, 2010 Hartford Courant: “Starting next year, the federal government will take a few baby steps toward changing the way it measures poverty, something that is decades overdue. The government has used its official poverty guidelines to divide the haves and have-nots for 45 years. The income levels decide who qualifies for hundreds of state and federal programs such as food stamps. Any changes - at first, anyway - will just supplement the status quo. That’s too bad, because the income guidelines are inadequate, to say the least. The government yardstick has no more to do with the reality of making ends meet in the 21st century than the price of eggplants. Unfortunately, the measurements not only determine eligibility for government aid; they also shape the debate concerning problems of the poor…”

• Nashville’s fight for the poor could get help from new definition of poverty, By Janell Ross, March 24, 2010, The Tennessean: “Roslyn Burdett gets five children off to school before she starts her Baptist Hospital phone operator job at 7 a.m. It’s a tough scramble, but it beats being unemployed and living in a housing project. And she’d have never been able to make the change without Bethlehem Centers of Nashville, a nonprofit agency whose before- and after-school programs are the linchpin of her schedule. ‘I have to have a safe place to leave my children so that I can be at work at the time I have to be there,’ said Burdett, a single parent. Bethlehem’s programs are open only to impoverished families, the kind who would otherwise struggle to pay for child care. For decades, American poverty has been defined by an eight-line chart comparing family size with annual income. A family of four that earned $22,050 last year qualified for all sorts of programs. With a dollar more, they didn’t. But the Obama administration’s stance is that poverty isn’t so simple, and it announced this month that it will redefine the term by including expenses such as housing and health care - which vary from place to place - plus the value of tax credits and other government help…”
• Who is really poor in America?, Editorial, April 4, 2010, The Tennessean: “It’s an understatement, but a lot has changed across America during the past 50 years. For example, compare how the skylines in Nashville or Atlanta looked in 1960 with the way they look today. Consider that in 1960 we paid about 31 cents a gallon for gasoline, whereas we now pay more than $2.50. And if that’s not enough change for you, look at how the nation’s suburbs have exploded since John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the way we measure poverty in the United States. Starting in the mid-1960s, the federal government began gauging poverty based on an eight-line chart comparing family size with annual income. Today that way of measuring still stands, despite huge changes in the way Americans live…”

What kids in poverty really need, By Jerry Large, March 14, 2010, Seattle Times: “People who wind up in Washington’s child- welfare system are often beset by ‘profound deprivation.’ Mark Courtney, whose organization conducted a study of the system, told me the depth of poverty has been a surprise even to people who regularly deal with child welfare. Data from a new study shows half of those families had problems securing housing, some were homeless, and two-thirds were so broke they needed food stamps. The study is part of an effort to transform the way this state helps its most endangered children, and it underscores the need to address poverty as a core part of that effort…”

• A matter of fairness, Editorial, March 12, 2010, Baltimore Sun: “The last time Maryland updated its guidelines for calculating child support, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, ‘The Cosby Show’ was at the top of the ratings, and Corey Haim was at the pinnacle of his film career. The year was 1988, and under pressure from the federal government, Maryland developed a matrix of how much parents were expected to spend for their children’s food, clothing, housing and so on, based on their combined income level. The idea was that children should not have to suffer a lower standard of living just because their parents were divorced or separated, and that the parents should bear a responsibility for the costs proportionate to their income. The states were supposed to update their guidelines every four years based on changes in costs and spending patterns, but Maryland never did…”
• Md. is behind the times and the cost of living on child support, Editorial, March 12, 2010, Washington Post: “The last time Maryland calculated what parents should reasonably pay in child support was 1988. That’s when the price of a stamp was 22 cents, the average cost of a new home was $138,300 and a gallon of gas went for $1.08. It is time Maryland stop shortchanging children and approve a long-needed update of the guidelines governing child support…”

A snapshot of income disparity, By Tim Rutten, February 24, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “On the eve of our worst financial crisis since the Depression, the United States was — from an economic standpoint, at least — a less equal nation than at any time since the Gilded Age. The sputtering recovery now underway is producing few, if any, jobs to replace those that have been lost. Meanwhile, a variety of factors continues to push wages and most salaries lower. Thus, we’re likely to emerge from this downturn with even greater disparities in income, wealth and effective tax rates, and the forces pushing us in that direction are particularly strong in Los Angeles County. We have a pre-recession portrait of American inequality because, in 1992, the Clinton administration asked the Internal Revenue Service to begin tracking the incomes and tax payments of the country’s 400 richest households. During the George W. Bush years, the IRS continued to collect the data, but — you’ll be shocked to know — didn’t release it to the public. Last week, the figures for 2007 were quietly made available, and, as David Cay Johnston, who formerly covered tax policy for the New York Times and now teaches at Syracuse University’s law school, points out, ‘The incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high in dollars and as a share of all income in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low…’”

• Bill would require sick leave for most employees in Iowa, By Jennifer Jacobs, February 9, 2010, Des Moines Register: “All Iowa employees who work at least 20 hours a week would get paid when they are home sick, under a bill before the Legislature. Business owners and industry groups immediately expressed worries about how much that would cost. But Sen. Tom Courtney, who proposed the bill, said he thinks businesses could save money in the long run with greater employee retention and better productivity among healthy workers. ‘On the surface, this looks like this is going to be expensive for business,’ said Courtney, D-Burlington. ‘I think we need to get them over that feeling and help them realize this would be good for them. All the studies point to the facts that workers who have some sick leave are better workers, and that’s better for everyone.’ Democratic lawmakers said Monday the proposal likely will not go anywhere unless employers have a voice in crafting it. The bill is in the very earliest stages in the Legislature. A subcommittee considered the bill on Monday; the same group of senators will meet on the topic again Wednesday. As of last year, about 33 percent of full-time Iowa employees did not have paid sick days or flexible paid time off that can be used during an illness, state work force agency records show…”
• Businesses should provide sick leave, Editorial, February 11, 2010, Des Moines Register: “Last year, one-third of Iowans who worked full time did not have paid sick days or flexible paid time off to use when they were ill. More than 80 percent of part-time workers were not offered such time off, according to a survey by Iowa Workforce Development. Low-wage workers are less likely to have paid sick time - and more likely to work directly with the public in businesses such as restaurants and child-care centers. If they can’t afford to lose a day’s pay, they may have no choice but to go to work and potentially spread the bug. So it’s understandable lawmakers would want to help working Iowans on this issue. Senate Study Bill 3176 would provide those who work 20 or more hours a week the right to accrue up to 144 hours of paid sick time each calendar year. Workers could start using days off on the 60th day of employment…”

• Health Reform, the States and Medicaid, Editorial, January 9, 2010, New York Times: “The country needs health care reform, and Congress should move quickly to pass legislation. But as House and Senate leaders work to forge a consensus bill for final approval, they should look for ways to lessen the Medicaid burden on hard-pressed state budgets - and ensure that relief is fairly apportioned. One of the important goals is to extend coverage to more low-income Americans. The bills quite sensibly require the states to expand Medicaid and offer them generous federal support to do so. Even then, the states - whose Medicaid budgets are already badly stretched - will have to put up substantial money of their own…”
• Wary of health care reform, Gibbons weighs rejecting federal Medicaid funds, By David McGrath Schwartz, January 15, 2010, Las Vegas Sun: “In the latest in a series of conservative policy initiatives released by the Republican governor, Jim Gibbons is considering whether Nevada should drop out of the federal Medicaid program, one of the cornerstone safety net programs that provide health care to the poor, disabled and elderly and that cover thousands of Nevadans. Health and Human Services Director Mike Willden was asked to ‘take a serious look’ at opting out of the massive federal program this week. Triggering the interest is concern about the health care reform bill being debated in Congress, said Stacy Woodbury, Gibbons’ deputy chief of staff. The state has estimated that the federal requirement to expand Medicaid under the bill will cost Nevada $636 million from 2014 to 2019, when the 100 percent federal subsidy in the health care reform bill expires…”
• Governor suggests state exit Medicaid, By Ed Vogel, January 15, 2010, Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Gov. Jim Gibbons has asked staff members to explore whether the state can drop out of the Medicaid program, which provides free health care to more than 233,000 Nevadans. A Gibbons spokesman said Thursday that because of the bad economy, the state can no longer cover most Medicaid recipients, though the federal government provides most of the funding. He said things will only get worse if Congress approves the health care bill. Under the health care legislation being considered by a Senate-House conference committee, Nevada would pay an additional $613 million between 2014 and 2019, to provide health care through Medicaid for another 328,000 residents. It would pay no additional Medicaid costs in the three years before 2014. Daniel Burns, the governor’s communications director, said if the idea of dropping Medicaid proves feasible, the state would use its own money to continue to provide care for those who might otherwise be left behind, including the seriously ill and disabled…”
• Rising costs make Arizona’s health care program a budget challenge and a political football, By Paul Davenport (AP), January 12, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Arizona’s Medicaid program has become both a budget headache and a political football, with its costly burgeoning enrollment and the possibility that national health care legislation will add even more red ink on the deficit-plagued state’s bottom line. Enrollment in the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment Program has soared in the past decade, thanks to the recession and an earlier voter-mandated lowering of income eligibility thresholds. One in six Arizonans now is enrolled in AHCCCS, or one of every six state residents…”

Welfare-to-work program not working, audit finds, By Phil Kabler, January 11, 2010, Charleston Gazette: “It’s called ‘welfare to work,’ but a legislative audit released Monday found that only about 14 percent of the state program’s recipients actually find employment before their benefits end. The study of West Virginia Works welfare benefits from 2001 to 2006 found that, at the time recipients’ cases were closed, an average of only 14 percent had found employment. Another 14 percent were unemployed but looking for work, while roughly 72 percent were unemployed and not actively seeking employment. Those figures trended downward over the five years: In 2001, nearly 31 percent of welfare recipients were employed when their cases closed. By 2006, that figure was below 6 percent…”

• Poverty opened eyes of Haiti visitors, By Annysa Johnson, January 14, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “When Scott Hamel tries to describe the poverty that plagued Haiti even before Tuesday’s devastating earthquake, he always goes back to a young mother he met there a few years ago. She was living with her six children, two under the age of 1, in a hut the size of a walk-in closet. Her husband had gone to the Dominican Republic for work, and she had not heard from him in more than a year. She had no other family and was on the verge of being evicted. ‘Basically, she had the clothes on her back, no income and no way to feed her children,’ said Hamel of Madison, who has traveled to Haiti repeatedly as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Engineers Without Borders. ‘It was staggering to see this woman in her 30s who had nothing,’ he said. ‘It took me awhile to get my head around that.’ Nearly every story coming out of Haiti since the quake mentions its status as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. It is one thing to read about it, but many Wisconsinites have seen it firsthand, working alongside Haitians in health clinics, food kitchens, construction projects and more…”
• Impoverished, storm-prone Haiti is a magnet for disasters, By Seth Borenstein (AP), January 14, 2010, Worcerter Telegram and Gazette: “When it comes to natural disasters, Haiti seems to have a bull’s-eye on it. That’s because of a killer combination of geography, poverty, social problems, slipshod building standards and bad luck, experts say. The list of catastrophes is mind-numbing: This week’s devastating earthquake. Four tropical storms or hurricanes that killed about 800 people in 2008. Killer storms in 2005 and 2004. Floods in 2007, 2006, 2003 (twice) and 2002. And that’s just the 21st-century rundown. ‘If you want to put the worst-case scenario together in the Western Hemisphere (for disasters), it’s Haiti,’ said Richard Olson, a professor at Florida International University who directs the Disaster Risk Reduction in the Americas project. ‘There’s a whole bunch of things working against Haiti. One is the hurricane track. The second is tectonics. Then you have the environmental degradation and the poverty,’ he said…”
• Haiti, Editorial, January 14, 2010, New York Times: “Once again, the world weeps with Haiti. The earthquake that struck on Tuesday did damage on a scale that scarcely could have been imagined had we all not seen the photos and videos and read the survivors’ agonizing accounts - of the sudden crumbling of mountainside slums, schools, hospitals, even the Parliament building and presidential palace. Whenever disaster strikes, we are reminded that Haiti is the poorest country in the hemisphere. And each time there is a disaster, this country and others help - for a while. This time must be different…”
• Helping Haiti help itself, Editorial, January 14, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Haitians have long been prey to hurricanes and coups, their nation ravaged by erosion and corruption, mudslides and marauders, poverty and violence. Now the few economic and political gains made over five years of relative stability have been buried along with thousands of corpses in the rubble of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. The presidential palace, parliament, government ministries and hospitals — indeed most of the capital of Port-au-Prince — are in ruins. An already dysfunctional state now lacks even the edifices of government. Gone too are some of the buttresses: the archbishop and his cathedral; the head of the United Nations mission and some of his top aides, who died when their headquarters collapsed…”

• Kids Count: Report card mixed on the welfare of Saginaw County children, By Barrie Barber, January 12, 2010, Saginaw News: “The welfare of Saginaw County children received mixed grades in an annual report card released today. The Kids Count in Michigan Data Book 2009 report compiles federal and state information to chart children’s well-being. The county counted more kids in poverty and more child abuse and neglect cases, but the number of fourth- and eight-graders deemed proficient in state standardized math test was up and the high school drop-out rate declined, the report said…”
• Child health signs mixed in Michigan, By Elizabeth Willis, January 12, 2010, Battle Creek Enquirer: “It is no surprise that more children in Michigan were born into poverty in recent years, and that their health has been affected by it, according to a report released today. Calhoun County’s youngest children were among the most vulnerable in Michigan, according to the Kids Count in Michigan Data Book 2009, an annual project of the Michigan League for Human Services. The infant death rate increased significantly in Calhoun County, though the state rate declined. The county had the third-worst infant mortality rate among the 54 counties reporting. There are 83 counties in Michigan…”
• Report: Poverty rates for rural Michigan higher than Wayne County, Associated Press, January 11, 2010, MLive.com: “Some of Michigan’s relatively rural northern counties have a higher percentage of children living in poverty than the state’s big urban counties, according to a study released Tuesday. The latest Kids Count report says one of every five children in Michigan lived in a family with income below the federal poverty level in 2007. Poverty was defined as income below roughly $17,000 for a family of three led by a single parent or $21,000 for a family of four with two parents…”
• Child poverty, neglect on rise in Michigan, By Catherine Jun, January 12, 2010, Detroit News: “Childhood poverty, neglect and abuse continue to rise in Michigan, troubling signs that children continue to bear the brunt of the state’s economic woes, according to a report released today. More than 40 percent of Michigan students were eligible and received free or reduced federal lunches in 2008, according to Kids Count in Michigan, a report released by the Michigan League of Human Services. That’s up from 30.7 percent in 2001. Even in Oakland County, the state’s wealthiest county, more children (age 17 and younger) are falling into poverty: 11 percent compared with 8.6 percent in 2005. Statewide, one in five children lives in poverty…”
• Growing child poverty in Michigan must be addressed, Editorial, January 12, 2010, Detroit News: “A new Kids Count report shows that growing poverty is taking a toll in Michigan and serves as a reminder of the importance of a healthy education system. The report released today by the Michigan League for Human Services and Michigan’s Children finds state childhood poverty rose 6 percent between 2005 and 2007, with nearly one in every five children in Michigan living in poverty. The number of students receiving free or reduced-priced lunches increased 14 percent between 2006 and 2008 — meaning more than two of every five public school K-12 students participate in the school lunch program at free or reduced prices…”

Agencies must team up to serve poor better, Editorial, January 9, 2010, Detroit Free Press: “With one in seven Michigan residents now living in poverty and metro Detroit leading the nation in unemployment, state government must maintain a safety net and do more to move people out of poverty. That doesn’t always mean spending more, but it does mean working smarter — and more effectively. Government anti-poverty programs have for too long worked in silos. Narrowly focused agencies work on one set of issues, such as job training, day care or transportation. But training for a job that a worker can’t get to, for example, or can’t take because she lacks day care or has a drug problem isn’t going to help much. Michigan has aggravated the problem by gutting the adult education system over the last decade, decreasing funding from about $100 million to $22 million…”

A better way for payday loans, By Anne Stuhldreher, December 21, 2009, Los Angeles Times: “It’s a cycle that seems to repeat itself every legislative session in California. Advocates put forward a bill to curb the predatory practices of payday lenders. Then industry lobbyists squelch the effort, convincing state lawmakers that they’re the lenders of last resort, the only ones who haven’t abandoned low-income neighborhoods. Never mind that the lenders’ generosity comes with quick and costly paybacks — a blizzard of fees that can add up to an annualized interest rate of more than 400%. Indeed, the average borrower ends up borrowing again — and again — trying to pay back that first $300 payday loan, shelling out a shocking $800 for the privilege, according to the Center for Responsible Lending. But there’s finally been a break in the pattern. Last week, San Francisco unveiled a program that communities throughout the state would be wise to follow. It will be the first city in the nation to partner with local financial institutions to market an alternative to the pricey payday loans that are sending too many borrowers into economic spirals…”

• Poverty line drop could hurt Vermonters, By Daniel Barlow, December 15, 2009, Rutland Herald: “The federal government’s poverty level guidelines will drop in 2010 for possibly the first time ever, changing the qualifications for a host of programs ranging from state-subsidized health insurance to food stamps. The reduction in what the federal government considers poverty could result in Vermonters either losing benefits they now receive or seeing a decrease in their subsidies depending on their annual household income. For example, for a single person to qualify for a state or federal program that covers up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level they would need to make less than $906 a month. Starting next year, that benchmark changes to $899 a month for a single person…”
• Calculating poverty, Editorial, December 16, 2009, Rutland Herald: “It is hard to believe that poverty is decreasing in Vermont, but it appears the federal government may be preparing to make that declaration. The federal government establishes federal poverty level guidelines each year to determine who is eligible for a wide variety of assistance from state and federal programs. At present, the poverty level for a single person in Vermont is less than $906 per month. Officials in state government have learned that federal statisticians have run the numbers and found that the poverty guidelines for 2010 may fall for the first time since guidelines were established in 1965. This is alarming to those in state government who manage benefit programs, which include food stamps, welfare and health care programs. If poverty levels drop, people who now rely on federal and state assistance could see their benefits drop significantly…”

• Experts say welfare safety net inadequate to aid jobless, strapped families in recession, By Jim Abrams (AP), December 9, 2009, Los Angeles Times: “The 1996 law that ended an American’s right to welfare also frayed the safety net for some people trying to cope with the current recession. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program that grew out of that law has responded slowly to the increasingly number of people without jobs and descending into poverty, witnesses told the House Budget Committee on Wednesday. They said that contrasted with sharply increased activity in other safety net programs, including unemployment insurance benefits and food stamps…”
• Why welfare reform fails its recession test, By Peter Edelman and Barbara Ehrenreich, December 6, 2009, Washington Post: “We all like to imagine that there’ll be something to stop our fall if we hit hard times. Mulugeta Yimer, for example, is a 56-year-old Alexandria cabdriver who escaped poverty and persecution in Ethiopia 20 years ago only to be clobbered by the recession. Business is way down, and he’s facing possible foreclosure on his home. He says he is averse to government handouts, but when he contemplates what might be in store for his wife, who works part-time at a convenience store, and their two young children, he muses wistfully, ‘There’s always welfare, isn’t there?’ Actually, no. When President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law, he didn’t just end welfare as we knew it. For all practical purposes, it turned out, he brought an end to cash help of any kind for families with children in much of the country. While welfare reform was long ago declared a success in some quarters, it was deeply flawed from the beginning. The recession has shown how seriously unprepared it left us for hard times…”

• Can’t miss work, child sick…, By Suzanne Cassidy, November 29, 2009, Lancaster Sunday News: “If you have a fever, stay home from work. If your kids have a fever, they should stay home from school. That’s what the experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been saying for months, in an effort to wrestle H1N1 influenza into submission. It’s a pretty straightforward message. But for some people, heeding it is anything but simple…”
• Paid sick leave for the worker can benefit all, By Petula Dvorak, December 1, 2009, Washington Post: “The coughing starts in the middle of the night. And while you are watching your child’s poor little body in footed pajamas curl up with every hacking spasm, you are doing the calculations in your head, realizing that you are absolutely hosed if you miss work the next day. I’ve been there so many times. Practically every working parent I know has. Whether it’s a dwindling stockpile of sick days, the risk of no pay, a crucial presentation, a testy boss or a volatile job market deep inside a recession, that bedside decision of whether to stay home with a sniffly kid or send him to school has a new sense of urgency this year. In a world where hand sanitizers and masks are handed out at work and the president has declared H1N1 a national emergency, parents who cannot afford to miss a day of work and send their kids to school despite signs of illness are putting other children at risk…”

• Half of U.S. children will use food stamps, study finds, By Alfred Lubrano, November 18, 2009, Philadelphia Inquirer: “In a stark and surprising finding, about half the children in the United States will be on food stamps at some point during their childhood, a new study of 29 years of data shows. One in three white children and 90 percent of all black children - ages 1 through 20 - will use the program, according to the research, published this month in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. ‘This means Americans’ economic distress is much higher than we had ever realized,’ said Thomas A. Hirschl, a sociology professor at Cornell University and a coauthor of the study with Mark R. Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis. The survey finds that continued food-stamp usage signifies a kind of poverty that is ‘a threat to the overall health and well-being of American children, and, as such, represents a significant challenge to pediatricians in their daily practice.’ The persistent poverty described in the survey dovetails with the findings of a U.S. Department of Agriculture study released Monday. It determined that 49 million Americans - 17 million of them children - were unable to consistently get enough food to eat in 2008. Nearly 15 percent of households were having trouble finding food, the highest number recorded since the agency began measuring hunger in 1995…”
• Hunger in the United States, Editorial, November 17, 2009, New York Times: “Congress should make a priority of expanding federal nutrition programs that are aimed at helping millions of struggling families feed their children. The need to bolster these programs was underscored again this week in a dismaying Department of Agriculture study showing that a record number of households had trouble getting sufficient food at one time or another last year…”

• Recession bites the poor, By Jazmine Ulloa, November 7, 2009, Brownsville Herald: “At least ‘from a technical perspective,’ as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in September, some economists believe the recession is very likely over. But a study released this week emphasized high levels of poverty among children in the United States - a problem that has long been pervasive in the country, even during positive economic times, public policy analysts say. The study in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youth will be on food stamps at some point in childhood, and the most recent recession could push the numbers up. The findings come from an analysis of 30 years of national data in a time span of economic highs and lows, including the early 1980s recession…”
• Food stamps: a canary in the coal mine?, By Douglas C. Lyons, November 7, 2009, South Florida Sun-Sentinel: “It’s an eye-popping statistic, no matter how you cut it: 90 percent of all black youngsters in the United States will be on food stamps at some point of their childhood. The statistic comes from a Washington University in St. Louis study and published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Its author, Mark Rank, was quoted as saying the study ‘… shows that the period of childhood, rather than a period of safety and security, is really a time, for a lot of kids, of economic turmoil and risk…’”

Hope in the battle against homelessness, By Neal Peirce, November 8, 2009, Denver Post: “Veterans of America’s recent wars left homeless; abused women and their children seeking nightly shelter; out-of-sight medical system costs; rising tides of bankruptcies. What do they have to do with each other - and America’s current health care debate? A lot, it turns out. By failing to guarantee a roof over every American’s head, we’ve failed the test - as Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan puts it - of ‘a civilized society.’ On a typical night, 650,000 Americans have no place to call home. We created this crisis ourselves, by the states emptying out their mental hospitals and cities demolishing thousands of low-income rental units. The result was a huge gap in affordable shelter. Plus, by failing to restrain medical system costs or guarantee care for all Americans, we’ve forced thousands of families to go into bankruptcy. Today, alarming numbers are being forced to take to the streets where their health is even more endangered by extremes of pelting rain or stone-cold nights, unsanitary conditions and sometimes violence. Yet as grim as all this sounds, it’s possible to see strong glimmers of light…”

Who’s poor? Proposal aims for better measurement, By Ruben Rosario, November 4, 2009, Pioneer Press: “I need to cut a piece of wood that is precisely 36 inches long and 5 inches wide. I have two measurement tools at my disposal. I already know the distance between the tips of my outstretched thumb and pinky - 9 inches. I also have a tape measure. Both will do the job, but one will provide a more accurate and efficient measurement. Which leads me to a bill in Congress that, if passed, will change the way we define and measure poverty in Minnesota and across the nation for policy-making and public assistance purposes. Whether the proposed change will be significant, increasing or decreasing who’s officially poor and who is not, is open to debate. The Measuring Poverty in America Act of 2009 seeks to replace the current federal poverty-level guideline used to determine the nation’s poverty rate as well as an individual’s or a family’s eligibility for public assistance benefits that can range from food stamps to state-subsidized health care…”

• Missouri public defender system faces ‘caseload crisis,’ study says, By Mark Morris, October 25, 3009, Kansas City Star: “Missouri’s public defender system is facing ‘an overwhelming caseload crisis’ that has pushed the state’s criminal justice system ‘to the brink of collapse,’ a new study reports. The study, released Friday, underscores a similar 2005 report and notes that little has improved. The public defender system represents poor defendants charged with more than 80 percent of the felonies filed in Missouri. Offices throughout the state regularly report that their lawyers are working well above 100 percent of their recommended maximum workloads. Earlier this year, Laura Denvir Stith, then chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, warned legislators that the state’s courts could be forced to release ‘vast numbers’ of inmates from jail because their public defenders could not get them to trial quick enough. She also warned that the state was vulnerable to lawsuits challenging the adequacy of its public defender system…”
• Missouri Supreme Court must stanch public defender meltdown, Editorial, October 27, 2009, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “A new study of Missouri’s public defender system - which provides lawyers for indigent defendants in criminal cases - says the system’s lawyers are so underpaid, overworked and badly supervised that they’re like the pilots of the commuter plane that crashed into a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb in February. As a result, says the Spangenberg Group, a judicial consulting firm, and George Mason University’s Center for Justice, Law and Society, Missouri’s criminal justice system ‘is heading for disaster, one which is both predictable and preventable.’ Missouri’s public defender system ’stands at the bottom of its sister states in terms of resources,’ the report concludes, and ‘has reached a point where what it provides is often nothing more than the illusion of a lawyer.’ None of this is news, at least not to anyone familiar with the state’s criminal justice system. The Missouri Bar commissioned a similar study four years ago, and it reached similar conclusions…”

• Poverty study receives praise, By Amanda McElfresh, October 26, 2009, Daily Advertiser: “Local researchers who study poverty and its effects across the state say they are encouraged by the U.S. Census Bureau’s decision to release revised estimates of how many Americans are living in poverty. The new formula, developed in part by the National Academy of Science, shows that about 47.4 million Americans lived in poverty last year, about seven million more than originally estimated. In addition, almost 18 percent of children lived in poverty, a slight decrease from the number found using the traditional formula…”
• 3.6M older Americans living in poverty, By Saul Friedman, October 23, 2009, Newsday: ” We cannot take much comfort in the latest census figures on poverty among older Americans. It is true that the 2008 poverty rate, 9.7 percent among people 65 and older, was unchanged from 2007. But that 9.7 percent, according to the census tables, represents about 3.6 million people who are living on $10,326 a year, or $14,051 for a couple. That probably means Social Security is their only income; indeed, for half the population over 65, Social Security is the primary source of income. Yet, those figures don’t take into full account of the effects of the prolonged and deepening recession on older people…”
• U.S. needs better way measure poverty, By Terry Haven, October 23, 2009, Salt Lake Tribune: “On Oct. 19, the Census Bureau released alternate poverty rates based on recommendations from a National Academy of Sciences panel on measuring poverty. No state data were given in the report, but new figures show a national poverty rate of 15.8 percent rather than the 13.2 percent poverty rate released just weeks ago using the traditional formula. The poverty rate for the Western Region rose from 13.5 percent to 19 percent. There is increasing agreement among policymakers and advocates that the current federal poverty measure is broken and outdated. The advent of these poverty figures is a good time to reflect on the inadequacies of our poverty measure and the crucial need to update this outdated statistic…”

• The lesson to learn from failure of IBM contract, Editorial, October 21, 2009, Fort Wayne News-Sentinel: “Gov. Mitch Daniels’ cancellation of IBM’s $1.37 billion contract to deliver welfare services will undoubtedly win praise from Republicans (he realized a mistake and corrected it) and criticism from Democrats (there was evidence to end it a lot sooner). There is some truth in both those positions, but the governor should be given credit for the honesty of his announcement. Daniels said it wasn’t a lack of resources that made the experiment in privatization fail. Nor was it a lack of effort…”
• Much to learn from state’s FSSA mistake, Editorial, October 18, 2009, South Bend Tribune: “There have been many concerns voiced throughout Gov. Mitch Daniels’ experiment in privatizing the Family and Social Services Administration intake process. Undoubtedly there will be many more in the months to come. But now, as Indiana pulls the plug on its $1.34 billion, 10-year contract with IBM to deliver crucial welfare services, the top priority must be the transition back to a state-operated system…”
• Welcome move to fix privatization of welfare, Editorial, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: “Last Thursday, after almost three years of missteps that interrupted vital services for some, Gov. Mitch Daniels admitted the welfare-privatization concept didn’t work and canceled the contract with IBM. The governor deserves credit for owning up to the failure. His persistence in getting problems fixed in the Bureau of Motor Vehicles suggests he will now redouble efforts to improve services provided through the Family and Social Services Administration. We wish him only success…”
• Back to the state for personal touch, Editorial, October 17, 2009, Indianapolis Star: “Large, troubling questions remain about the fate of a public assistance system that affects one in every six Hoosiers. How will the transition back to the state from a failed privatization effort be accomplished? Will IBM express its ire over losing a $1.34 billion contract in the form of legal action, or a threat of legal action serious enough to prompt an expensive buyout? How long will it take, and at what cost, to clean up a mess that has cost countless elderly, poor, sick and disabled people vital services and imperils countless more?…”
• Local lawmakers got FSSA job done, By Mizell Stewart III, October 18, 2009, Evansville Courier and Press: “Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ move to cancel the contract that privatized many of the intake functions of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration is a victory for benefit recipients and Southwestern Indiana lawmakers alike. The move was a disaster by nearly every account, notably because it turned much of the work of determining benefit eligibility over to call centers and Web sites. That’s fine for doing business in most instances, but it didn’t work at all for the poor, frail and elderly…”
• Cancelled contract, Editorial, October 18, 2009, Evansville Courier and Press: “Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was right to cancel the state’s deal with IBM Corp., for privatizing the welfare application process. But let us not kid ourselves: the problems will not be corrected overnight. Daniels will be returning welfare application operations to the control of the Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration. However, remember that before privatization, applications were the responsibility of the state agency and it was a mess, fraught with errors and fraud. It was that way for years before Daniels came to office. It was that poor record of performance that led Daniels, an advocate of privatizing government services and assets, to seek a business-run welfare program. Unfortunately, that private system came with its own flaws…”

We need to fix how we measure poverty, By Anne Stuhldreher, October 13, 2009, Sacramento Bee: ” From climate change to redistricting, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have teamed up on a number of issues. It’s time to add another to the list — updating the antiquated and misleading way we measure poverty. It may seem like an odd concern for the Republican duo. But Bloomberg took the lead on the issue last year when conditions in New York City were similar to those California faces today: The economy was down; need was rising; and public resources were constrained. A number-cruncher by trade, Bloomberg turned to statistics to shed light on those suffering in the economic gloom. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” he was quoted as saying. His questions were basic: What people and places in New York have the greatest need? How could the city best deploy its limited public dollars to meet them? And what impact were its current programs having?…”