America's Poorest Are Getting Virtually No Assistance

[orange you glad]

by Jared Bernstein, The Atlantic

People who pay attention to poverty, including the poor themselves, know one thing all too well: Over the past few decades, anti-poverty policy in this country has evolved to be “pro-work.” This means that if you’re a low-income parent who’s well connected to the job market, the government will help you in a variety of ways. But, if you’re disconnected from the job market, public policy won’t help you much at all.

How do people in that second group survive?That’s a question that Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, a sociologist and a social-work professor, answer in their new book, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. It is, as the title suggests, a devastating portrait of families struggling to get by on impossibly low incomes.

A few of their strategies: availing themselves of charities and public spaces (like libraries), selling food stamps for cash (illegal, and they typically get just 60 cents on the dollar on the street), relying on relatives (who can be as hurtful as helpful), selling scrap metal or aluminum cans, selling plasma (which involves considerable angst as to whether a person’s blood’s iron levels are sufficiently high, especially difficult around menstruation), receiving some public support (housing vouchers, nutritional support, disability payments), occasionally holding a job, and—the most common strategy of all—just going without.

It is important to recognize that what Edin and Shaefer call $2-a-day poverty doesn’t mean that their subjects really survive for long periods on nothing but $2 a day, and I fear that too many readers will be thrown off by this distinction. Do not go there, as it’s an unnecessary distraction. The authors explicitly acknowledge that no one could survive in this country if that was all they had to live on over an extended period. What they call “$2-a-day poverty” means spells of scraping by on almost no regular, reliable income, though many may be able to access the dicey income sources just noted above.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/welfare-reform-americas-poorest/403960/

[appalachiablue]

1. K & R. The rapidly growing 'sharing economy' where nothing is

actually shared but marketed. Blood is not the only body part sold. After WWII some Germans and Europeans sold their children in desperation and to survive. Same in the Depression and 19th century US, Haiti and elsewhere today.

[TexasTowelie]

2. K&R

[brer cat]

3. K&R

[historylovr]

4. K & R

[Doctor_J]

5. And the reason such people don't vote is that

no one running for office is going to do a damn thing about their dire situation. They don't give a shit about abortion rights when they don't have food money.

Rec

[Igel]

9. And yet abortion is a good option.

Because often one of the biggest contributors to poverty is that first kid.

Yet that's often a kid that the mother-to-be, upon hearing about, is happy about. Engaging in the activity that produces the child is a bad choice; having the child is a bad choice; retaining the child post-parturition is a bad choice. Yet it's the preferred choice because of emotional needs. They pay a very heavy price for satisfying those emotional needs.

It means a harder time finishing school high school, if they're still in in secondary; or college, if they're in post-secondary. Which education would give them a much improved chance of being connected to the labor "market." That lifetime income loss won't be recouped. It'll lead to diminished wealth and worse outcomes for the kid, damning her before she's born.

It means restricted work opportunities, since you now have to worry about being responsible for the child at an age when it needs 24/7 care and you're most likely to have trouble finding a job with flexible hours. Again, a $200k decision. At least.

It means increased expenses, when your earning power is pretty much the lowest it will ever be. Esp. since it's statistically unlikely to be the last. The poorer your are, the more kids you'll have--thus making you even poorer, in terms of monthly income and accumulated wealth.

Then you're statistical fodder for somebody who insists on not recognizing that a lot of outcomes are rooted in decisions. Then again, causality is so 19th century.

[TexasBushwhacker]

12. And sex education and free contraception is ever better

But the "pro-life" lobby is against that too.

[antigop]

10. thank you. I've made that point for some time. People have to eat. PERIOD. nt

[yuiyoshida]

6. K&R

[Scruffy1]

7. I see this every day.

Every time i set some thing on the curb it is completely picked over. Old bicycles with a small trailer loaded with cans, wires or anything else. I use save some for the regulars who come by, but it's skinny pickings. It would cost more to drive the htree miles to the recycling yard than the stuff is worth. Beggars on every busy corner, lineups to sell plasma. this whole country is just liek the opening of "A Tale of Twp Cities."

[ananda]

8. Thank you. It's time that we have ..

.. serious discussions about poverty every day.

[Hydra]

11. We need to look at why we're so obsessed with a culture of work

When we're not committed to having work for everyone, let alone work that pays enough to survive on.

What we're doing is slow torture for the people stuck in the musical chairs game. The rich never have to play that.

I vote for minimum income- the 1% don't need subsidies if they are as awesome as they think they are, and we could use that money to make sure everyone has what they need.