America's Poor and the Great Recession

John D. Graham, Kristin Seefeldt

Description

The poor, the near-poor, and the new poor during and after the Great Recession

Millions have entered poverty as a result of the Great Recession's terrible toll of long-term unemployment. Kristin S. Seefeldt and John D. Graham examine recent trends in poverty and assess the performance of America's "safety net" programs. They consider likely scenarios for future developments and conclude that the well-being of low-income Americans, particularly the working poor, the near poor, and the new poor, is at substantial risk despite economic recovery.

Foreword by Tavis Smiley
Introduction
1. The Great Recession: Definition, Duration, and Impact
2. The Impact of the Great Recession on Poverty in America
3. The Performance of America's Safety Net
4. Risks to the Safety Net in the Aftermath of the Great Recession
5. Policy Options in a Politically Polarized Environment

Sujets

• Social Work
• Public Policy
• Social Science
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Sociology
• Public administration
• Welfare economics
• General officer
• Politics
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 29 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253009777
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

America s Poor and the Great Recession
AMERICA S POOR
AND THE
GREAT RECESSION
Kristin S. Seefeldt and John D. Graham
with the assistance of Gordon Abner Joe A. Bolinger Lanlan Xu
Foreword by Tavis Smiley
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
2013 by Kristin S. Seefeldt and John D. Graham
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-00967-8 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-00974-6 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-253-00977-7 (e-book)
1 2 3 4 17 16 15 14 13
Contents
Foreword by Tavis Smiley
Preface
Introduction
1 The Great Recession: Definition, Duration, and Impact
2 The Impact of the Great Recession on Poverty in the U.S.
3 Philanthropy and America s Poor
4 America s Partial Safety Net
5 Risks to the Safety Net in the Aftermath of the Great Recession
6 Policy Options for Strengthening the Safety Net
Notes
Index
Foreword
I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits .
- DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR .
When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he spoke of a bold vision in which everyone on earth would enjoy safety and security. He believed wholeheartedly in a coming age in which every person would have enough to eat, access to education, and the respect owed to each human being. His statements echoed those of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in 1941 also called for a future in which people everywhere in the world would experience not only freedom of expression and freedom of religion, but also freedom from want and freedom from fear.
For both these leaders, the vision of a just and peaceful planet rested on universal access to basic necessities. FDR and MLK recognized that when people go hungry, when they don t have a decent place to live, when they can t get access to transportation or medical attention-much less an education or vocation-they are not truly free.
In America today, however, poverty has become an impolite topic. We don t often talk about the poor in mainstream discourse, and when we do, it is rarely with concern over their standard of living. Far from embracing the idea that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, it has become the norm to disparage poor people as failures, as stupid or lazy, or as criminals or drug users or frauds exploiting the system. Occasionally, a politician or pundit makes a nod toward the deserving poor -a term that itself demonstrates the contempt in which poor people are held.
More commonly, financial hardship in America is described in terms of a struggling middle class. The irony of that characterization is that what the middle class is so desperately struggling against-and what portions of it have now fallen into-is poverty.
Facing Facts
What does poverty in America really look like? Together with my abiding friend and public radio co-host, Princeton University Professor Emeritus Cornel West, I set out to answer this question in 2011. Our Poverty Tour took us around the country, meeting and giving voice to our brothers and sisters who are living beneath the poverty line. We sought to hear and share the stories of the men and women, children and seniors, families and individuals who are trying to get by with too little.
Before starting the tour, we needed a clear understanding of the true scope and magnitude of American poverty. We had to know how many people in our towns and cities could not meet their basic needs, and what they had access to in terms of assistance. We wanted a detailed portrait of America s poor-not only the color of their skin, but also how they live and work and take care of their families. We were also determined to understand how the country s present economic conditions and policies were affecting the poor, and what could be done to make those policies more responsive to the needs of low-income Americans.
For this factual foundation, we turned to Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs Dean John D. Graham and Assistant Professor Kristin Seefeldt. Along with their team of graduate assistants, they prepared for us a white paper titled, At Risk: America s Poor During and After the Great Recession, which formed the basis for this book. Through their rigorous research, they described the characteristics and patterns of American poverty and how these features interact with the country s economic history, reality, and forecast.
What their work revealed was not only informative and illuminating but also atrocious and appalling.
Some 50 million Americans are living in poverty, and that number keeps on growing. Between 2006 and 2010, the number of poor Americans increased by 27% although the country s population only grew by 3.3% during that period. Millions of people who were once solidly middle class can no longer feed their families. More people are experiencing long-term unemployment than at any time since the statistic was first recorded. Fellow citizens hit worst by the Great Recession were those who had historically suffered from previous economic downturns: African Americans, Hispanics, and households headed by women. Poverty grew even faster among children, with 16 million of our precious children-one out of every five-now growing up without enough money for basic necessities like food, clothing, and utilities.
Here in this prosperous nation, we are seeing the type of poverty that is typically associated only with the poorest of developing countries. Close to 3 million American children and their families now live on less than $2 a day.
Poverty, much of it abject poverty, is the new American norm.
Don t Call It a Recovery
There is a strange term that elected officials and media commentators use to describe America s economy after the Great Recession: jobless recovery. Presumably, someone is making money, but it s not the tens of millions of Americans who want full-time work and can t get it. Talking about a jobless recovery misses the point in the same way that talking about a minimum wage obscures the need for a living wage, and referring to the working poor ignores the question of why someone who is working is still poor.
What Dean Graham and Professor Seefeldt have done in their analysis is to unflinchingly examine how this jobless recovery affects the swelling ranks of the poor. As the researchers so compellingly demonstrate, for those who are already struggling to make ends meet, the hard times are about to get worse.
On The Poverty Tour, we saw firsthand how poor people were living, and we knew that no tiny uptick in the GDP was going to solve their problems. In America s Poor and the Great Recession , we learn why this is so: though the poor suffered disproportionately during the recession, they would have suffered more without the 2009 federal stimulus package. These funds have now been expended. State and federal legislatures are scrambling to address their budgets, making cuts to assistance all but inevitable.
Meanwhile, without new jobs, long-term unemployment compounds as job prospects become more remote the longer an individual remains jobless. Additionally, because a number of financial assistance programs are reserved for those with earned income, people who have lost their jobs are also cut off from previously available government resources.
Poor workers employed at the minimum wage may have barely escaped the jobless aspect of the economy, but they instead suffer from the recovery. With their income fixed at $7.25 (or a state-mandated minimum), their earnings are worth less as the economy improves and the value of their paycheck decreases due to inflation.
Shared Security
My goal, along with Professor West, has been to push the topic of poverty to the forefront of American consciousness. Until now, it has been possible for the few who still have means to collectively deny, disregard, and disparage their 50 million fellow citizens who are struggling to break out of poverty. As more and more people who thought they were safe fall backward into insolvency, however, poverty becomes a middle class problem.
We are well past the days of protecting the fragile psyches and delicate sensibilities of those who would turn a blind eye to the poor. When huge swaths of Americans are either entrenched in poverty, or just one layoff or unforeseen expense away from financial crisis, we have no choice but to act. This downward economic spiral is claiming an ever-increasing proportion of Americans, proving at last that what is in the interests of the poor is in everyone s interest. It may have taken the Great Recession for America to finally wake up to the notion that Dr. King and President Roosevelt articulated decades ago, but the country must see it now: There is no security except shared security