Poverty, 1965-1985

...and, • many more children would have been poor without social security or welfare...

...And not just money in any form, but a money source that is at least minimally adequate, indexed to rise with inflation, and provided through a system with a broad political base...

...So fee question of responsibjlity IN poverty lurks just fceiow fee surface <rffee«8ii^ib»%st^N«K»^WN...

...The first quotation comes from "Counting the Poor," Mollie Orshansky's now "classic" 1965 article proposing a way to establish the poverty line, profiling the poor as of 1963...

...Afew years ago two-thirds of geneial liberal tax reveaaes were spent on two items: military spending and interest on fee debt...

...B) Without a working parent, a child is almost sure to be poor...

...not surprisingly, more is also known about the operation and evaluation of programs intended to deal with some aspect of poverty, and about what exacerbates the problem .Just within the last five years, for example, a growing list of studiesfrom agencies of the Congress as well as private and academic research organization has concluded that recent cutbacks in prorans like those providing income or job benefits (as well as change in tax laws in tax laws) account for an ¦ estimated ene-fifth to one-third of the dramatic increase in poverty since 1978...

...KANCYAMms fiVeney Anddn, recipkm of the Kenny tittd Marimm Rogers 1984 World Hunger Media Award, is the former director of the Food ResmrchmdAttiwCenter in Wash* ington, D.C) 21 June 1985: 365...

...But having a working parent is no guarantee against poverty...

...Since the "war on poverty" was declared by President Johnson two decades ago, congressional committees, special commission, task forces, white House conference, and an endless stream of reports and presidenttial piedges all today, the existeace of what Midiael Harrington once called the "other Anaerica" is no longer known to only a few Rather, the statistics detailing the rise and fall and rise again of American poverty are government statistics, and /many of the reports, full of ways deal with the consequences of poverty, were commissioned by one or another level goverment...

...Of the...

...They represented...

...Yet mote than half of all poor families report that trie head currently has a job...

...one-third of all poor children in married-couple families...

...vigorously, publicly, repeatedly, in „ every conceivable forum...

...The second quotation comes from "Children in Poverty," a May 1985 report by the Library of Congress's Congresatonal Research Service and the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office...

...A profile of poor children as of 1983, mis newest report is much fatter, and benefits bom from &e votaminous research that has been done on poverty in recent yean and from the many sophisticated new tech•kfoes being developed for analyzing poverty data...

...Between 1969 and 1979, the rate varied, but moved generally upward...

...During those intervening years we've also learned a great deal more about poverty, American-style...

...It is not that nothing has happened in the years between the two reports...

...children under age eighteen counted as poor, about [38 percent] were in the family of a man or woman who had a full-time job...

...Both in 1963 and in 1983: • roughly the same proportion of poor families with children were headed by a full-time worker, • families headed by a man who worked full-time, all year, ran virtually the same risk of still ending up poor (though the percentage of full-time workers who are poor has gone up by one-third just since 1978...

...But the similarities between the two periods — two decades apart — are almost eerie...

...POVERTY, 1965-1985 A CHALLENGE FOR THE BISHOPS BEAD THESE quotations from two reports dealing with poverty among children, and see if you can put dates on tbcra: (A) In our work-oriented society, those who cannot or do not wok must expect to be poorer than those who do...

...economic expansion was shown to have limited value in lifting families with children out of poverty (even with sustained economic growth of 3 percent per year, it would take a decade or more simply to reduce poverty to its 1979 level...

...The reasons are clear enough: people without a source of income, when given a source of income, become lest poor...

...In other words, when the problem is poverty: money works...

...Second, fee bishops have & singular opportunity to provoke fee equally vigorous &fosfe teqaired to change fee , ^p^licandpoJioyn^essaitojlM#(^^^esf$ei^o a»e poor and fee programs fee* depend on...

...First* fee bishops' Jeiti^s^Ei^aafcia, * jpositiort feat is vety dHfere«t team fee president^ m A? needs to be defended...

...In all, more than 2.5 million children with at least one parent who worked more than 2,000 hours a year . . .were poor...

...but that is only most resent contribution to the issue...

...Today, that applies to neai% fefee-fourfes of aU federal spending, m& by 1990 feose two iterns will absoffe" »6 percent pf all revenues collected, jf,Afeps^itoi a&A Congress insist on tax revisions feat do nofeing tobring in , more revenue, fee issue of a federal role in preventing or alleviating poverty will belaigely ai^enAi ihe^Bestions posed by fee bishops wm't eyea apply...

...that represented significant progress...

...The nation has also had twenty years experience in learning what works...

...Meanwhile, economists working on Capitol Hill now talt of Sfercent unemijloyment as the ^politically stable** rate — *e rate below which no ose in political Me need: "",iwiagr ^aW i» namber of poor ^«teen with Mlyemployed parents continues to elirab...

...Back »n 1965, MoJBy Orshansky eoneluded fey m$w$* •>Ine poor have beea abated many times* It renaains now to count fee ways by which to b$$ fe<», j$i%a w?^ t identity...

...Commonweal: 364 If had done for families with children (through a taxable children's allowance, or at the very least through a elderly, the latest report on "Childrenin poverty'' might have the same good news as reports on poverty among the aged...

...government may ao longer be movei t©,m&$& -&0m [ *¦ peverly and its ^aseqeeaces^ W:mm$^^$®fcmSj wifeoat a fight em bm®y be teea&e# $s .H^m#P^%' } aaMonal policies *ith a p^twseM^m^x^^m^, Our government has never acted on to$^j&§ilm$&^Z wifeout pressure, and fern $m 'm:m0#®yt $$&&>***','' moved effectively to create fee pressure lor positive .. <&m$e: not fee i^^dhar^al^i^si^i^^i^^ ' local governments, «ad b«^ fee J»ir8b^^»t%, ' Two things we iKgeatty aeefedi* andonbofetheMsiJops can play a critical tote...

...In the decade from 1959-1969, the poverty rate for children was cut nearly in half...

...Tte £»l 0fpwe%|s*i't »e«f» ^tt two jfttings have changed-th«carrentpresi#ntdoes not believe Aatprevent¦ inga|idaneviatingpover^areaniongthcprop«!rrolesofthe federal goveAinent...

...Since 1979 mere has been a sharp increase in poverty among children...

...This held true even though the kind and value of available social welfare benefits changed frequently during the years since 1968 when the Panel Study began...

...Thanks to the "Panel Study of Income Dynamics" carried out by the University of Michigan, for example, it is now clear mat persistent, long-term poverty is rare, the exception among the poor, not the rule, and that heavy dependence on welfare is even rarer...

...A»4 aliiough there has been little debate of the issue, and no carefully considered weighing of It is not just that federal policies are no longer naeasured in , effective programs have been scrappy a|ong wife fee bad...

...As many have noted during the recent congressional debate over Cost of Living Adjustments — COLAs — for people on social security, there has been marked progress in reducing poverty among the elderly...

...Other studies carried out in the interim have dealt with such questions as whether women nave babies to get welfare (they don't), and whether poor families are willing to work (about two-thirds include wage-earners, up from about two-fifths in 1959...

...much has...