Neil deMause

You may have noticed the recent spate of articles on the Census Bureau’s decision to replace the old “poverty line” with a spate of different alternative measures of poverty, in hopes of eventually settling on one that makes sense. I’ve written before about why this is a good thing to do — more interesting at the moment is the Economic Policy Institute’s take on what the new numbers mean.

What EPI has done is sliced and diced the poverty figures to show how the poverty rate changes as you account for various government programs. (The official poverty line counts welfare and other cash transfers as income, but not food stamps or the earned income tax credit, which is one reason why people want a new poverty measure.) The upshot of their analysis: “Social Security is the most important anti-poverty program in the United States.” To wit:

There are other interesting takeaways from this chart, not least of which is that without government programs, nearly one American in four would be living in poverty; and that, even if you count government-supplied medical care as cash income, still more than one American in ten counts as poor. But “Social Security is the most important anti-poverty program in the United States” is a pretty good start — especially given some of the rumors floating around.

More light, and murk, shed on the legality of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed food-stamp soda ban:

In this corner: Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to grant New York City a two-year waiver to ban the purchase of soda with food-stamp cards, saying it’s a matter of public health. In the far corner: Joel Berg, New York Coalition Against Hunger director and food program expert, who says it’s not only a dumb idea, it’s illegal.

When we last left our two contenders, they were engaged in a fierce game of “Is not!” “Is too!” about what exactly the USDA can and can’t approve without going back to Congress to ask for a rewrite of the law. So what does, you know, the law say? Here are the results of an Exclusive Village Voice Investigation:…

Lots of ink spilled today about Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed ban on food stamps being used to buy soda, but few have asked: Can he legally do it, and should he?

If you’ve been remotely awake today (or at least clicking on your morning Runnin’ Scared links), you’re no doubt aware that Mayor Bloomberg has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow New York City to bar its 1.7 million citizens with food-stamp cards from using them to buy soda. “This initiative will give New York families more money to spend on foods and drinks that provide real nourishment,” declared the mayor, while Governor Paterson — who actually co-sponsored the measure, but is getting ignored in the media because nobody remembers that he’s still governor — added that allowing food stamps to be used to purchase soft drinks “subsidizes a serious public health epidemic.”… [read more]

The culture clash over New York’s falling welfare rolls — are they a sign of policy success or failure? — rears its head at a city council hearing:

On one thing there is no argument: Since 1995, when it reached a peak of 1.1 million, the number of New Yorkers receiving cash assistance has dropped dramatically, falling to a low of 334,000 in late 2008 before rising slightly and then falling again during the recession.

But despite the passage of years since the Giuliani administration launched welfare reform, and substantial policy changes under Mayor Bloomberg, a fundamental issue still divides city welfare officials on the one hand, and some New Yorkers receiving welfare and the social-service workers who advocate for them on the other: Is the city blocking people from receiving benefits to which they are entitled?… [read more]

Today the Christian Science Monitor — which in general has been doing some outstanding reporting since going online-only last year — hands over a page in its business section to the old argument, favored by conservatives, that poverty rates don’t really measure poverty, because they don’t account for increases in the standard of living. And what does the Monitor (and the economist it cites, Notre Dame’s James Sullivan) come up with?

For examples, back in 1960:

• A 21-inch black-and-white Philco tabletop TV cost about $1,800 in today’s dollars and could receive only a handful of channels;
• A refrigerator with freezer cost the equivalent of $1,510 in today’s dollars;
• A two-speed automatic washing machine, primitive by today’s standards, cost the equivalent of $1,100;
• Only 12 percent of homes had air-conditioning (versus 84 percent last year);
• Only 8 percent of the population had completed four years of college (versus 27 percent today).

That’s all well and good, but when most of us think about poverty in 1960, it’s not the horrors of not being able to watch the Golf Channel. (As Superchunk’s Jon Wurster said before attempting a cover song at last night’s show: “If you’d told me in 1982 that I’d be looking up Misfits lyrics on a cellphone … I’d have asked, ‘What’s a cellphone?’”) Rather, it’s not having enough food, or livable housing, or the knowledge of where your next dollar was coming from — in other words, the same stuff that the poverty rate measures today, albeit imperfectly.

To be fair, Sullivan does say that “the great recession is a significant setback,” and worries that advances in access to washing-machine techology, et al., have come to a halt. Still, putting the focus on technological improvements, instead of the bread-and-butter issues that continue to define poverty in the U.S., only gives fodder to those who’d argue that poverty is no longer an issue because the rich and poor alike have the right to sleep under air-conditioned bridges.

New York’s farmers markets and farm share co-ops are spreading like crabgrass, but if you rely on food stamps for your shopping dollars, many still remain out of reach:

Sometime in the last year, New York City reached a milestone: More than one-quarter of its adult residents are now receiving food stamps. Thanks in large part to the outreach efforts of the Bloomberg administration–with an added boost from the crappy economy–1.7 million New York City residents are now receiving food stamps (or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, as they’ve been officially known since 2008), up from 800,000 at its low point in the final month of the Giuliani Administration in December 2001.

Finding places to effectively spend those food stamps is another story… [read more]

I’ve been plenty critical of the media’s promises to pay attention to poor people since the economy collapsed, so I should give credit where it’s due: The New York Times has a front-page story today by Peter Goodman on people facing the hard choice between welfare and low-income work — and it goes way beyond the usual “poverty sucks” platitudes to actually focus on a serious policy concern: the lack of affordable child care that makes it nearly impossible for many low-income Americans, especially single parents, to escape poverty.

The story leads with an irresistable narrative hook: Alexandria Wallace is a 22-year-old single mom who wants to work, but can’t because her home state of Arizona has cut subsidized child care to any families not under the supervision of child protective services or on welfare. She had arranged a child-care swap with a friend, but that fell apart, leading to a crisis that will be all too familiar to anyone who’s tried to hold down a job while being a sole caregiver at the same time:

Her first month, she brought home about $500. She felt confident her clientele would grow.

Then, her friend canceled the swap, forcing Ms. Wallace to bring Alaya to the salon, where she tried to keep her occupied with cartoons in a back room.

Soon her car broke down, forcing her to rely on family and the public bus to get to work, which did not always happen.

Her boss had been kind, but patience wore thin.

“She was like, ‘Your baby sitter bailed on you, your car broke down. What do you have left?’” Ms. Wallace said. “She said, ‘If you can’t get something worked out, I’m going to have to let you go.’”

If there’s a flaw in the story, it’s that it only profiles two welfare recipients — Wallace and another single Arizona mom who lost her job for lack of child care — both of whom were working up until the state cut back child-care funds. But as the article notes in an easily missed aside, even back in 2000, only one in seven children whose families were eligible for subsidized child care were getting aid.

Also, Wallace in particular is counterposed to the regular poor people she’s suddenly forced to join on public assistance — the “lazy people who con the system,” as the Times describes her impression of welfare recipients, while she herself worries that she’ll “fall back to — I can’t say ‘being a lowlife.’” Without any portrayal of those who went on welfare when child care was only partly inaccessible, readers could still be left thinking that the problem is that child-care cuts are forcing the deserving poor to hobnob with the undeserving.

Meanwhile, over at Business Week, Bloomberg News reporter James Warren takes note of another poverty issue, puzzling over the falling welfare rolls in many states despite rising unemployment. “Something doesn’t compute,” he concludes, before noting that a March Government Accountability Office report blamed “rules mandating job-related searches; declining cash benefits, which ‘have not been updated or kept pace with inflation’; and sanctions tied to the search process.”

All of which is great for Business Week to be paying attention to, but it would have been nice if someone had noticed, oh, thirteen years ago when these trends first became apparent. But accepting “better late than never” is an American tradition — except, of course, when you’re trying to explain being late for work because the babysitter didn’t show.

New York City and state are getting more and more isolated in their stance in favor of fingerprinting food stamp applicants:

The Obama administration has waded into the running debate over New York’s practice of fingerprinting food stamp applicants, with a top Agriculture Department official urging the state to discontinue a practice he deems costly and ineffective.

“More cost-effective alternatives to finger imaging [an electronic fingerprinting method] should be actively considered both as a cost savings and as a means of program simplification,” wrote USDA Under Secretary Kevin Concannon in a letter to state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance deputy commissioner Elizabeth Berlin that was sent on May 7, but first made public on Friday… [read more]

Yes, three articles in one day. In this one, I delve into a much-hyped Bloomberg anti-poverty program that didn’t deliver as hoped:

When Mayor Bloomberg announced in 2007 that he was launching a pilot program to give cash incentives to poor New Yorkers for changing their behavior—including bonuses for such activities as attending parent-teacher conferences and holding down a job—the hope was to come up with a novel approach to ending poverty.

“Even though it turns my stomach to pay a mother $10 to see a doctor,” Chinese-American Planning Council executive director David Chen, a member of Bloomberg’s poverty commission, told City Limits at the time, “in a practical sense it works.”

Or maybe not… [read more]

When is a welfare scam not a welfare scam?

If you read the Which Lazy Bastards Are Ripping You Off section of yesterday’s tabloids — you can find it after the Who Is Sandra Bullock Not Sleeping With/Adopting section — you may have spotted the story that the Post headlined “Millionaires’ welfare ‘con’”: The Brooklyn DA’s office was prosecuting 32 New Yorkers for receiving nearly $1 million in welfare benefits they weren’t entitled to. The Post zeroed in on a couple of landlords with “three luxury vehicles” who’d lied about their assets to get taxpayer cash; for NY1, the hook was a married Brooks Brothers employee who claimed to be a single mom on her application, raking in $460,000.

Only one problem with the headlines (and Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes’ press release that started the whole thing): Welfare benefits — aka public assistance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or whatever the government is calling the cash it allots to poor people to use for expenses other than food and medical care — turn out not to be involved at all… [read more]