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Center for Poverty and Inequality Research
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Poverty News

Overview March 8, 2012

News and Articles About Poverty

Coverage of poverty related stories in the media.

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Article May 4, 2015

An Atlas of Upward Mobility Shows Paths Out of Poverty
New York Times, May 4, 2015

In the wake of the Los Angeles riots more than 20 years ago, Congress created an anti-poverty experiment called Moving to Opportunity. It gave vouchers to help poor families move to better neighborhoods and awarded them on a random basis, so researchers could study the effects.

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Article April 15, 2015

Driver’s License Suspensions Create Cycle of Debt
New York Times, April 14, 2015

LEBANON, Tenn. — The last time Kenneth Seay lost his job, at an industrial bakery that offered health insurance and Christmas bonuses, it was because he had been thrown in jail for legal issues stemming from a revoked driver’s license. Same with the three jobs before that.

In fact, Mr. Seay said, when it comes to gainful employment, it is not his criminal record that is holding him back — he did time for dealing drugs — but the $4,509.22 in fines, court costs and reinstatement fees he must pay to recover his license.

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Article December 17, 2014

A food stamps success story
PBS, December 10, 2014

It is an understatement to say that the welfare reforms of the 1990s were intended to give a little spring to the social safety net.

The intention was much more radical. The reforms involved a major make-over of income support, and turning what was imagined as a net ensnarling many Americans behind a welfare wall, into a springboard that would incentivize work and allow them to ride a wave of prosperity to higher incomes that would lift their children out of poverty.

But this kind of reform is hardly what is needed when times turn bad.

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Article November 19, 2014 Erin R. Hamilton State Health Insurance Policy and Insuring Immigrant Children

A strong case for executive action
The Houston Chronicle, November 19, 2014

Deported parents face no good solutions to the dilemma of forced separation from their children: Either they remove their children from their country of citizenship, or deportees return to rejoin their children, facing harsh penalties if caught.

Many in Houston regularly face the terrible prospect.

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Article August 28, 2014

More emergency food assistance going to working Americans, study finds
Public Broadcasting Service, August 18, 2014

Roughly one in seven people in the United States rely on food banks or other charitable organizations for basic nutrition, according to a new study by the nonprofit Feeding America. That number includes 25 percent of active military families, and an increased number of adult college students. Deborah Flateman, executive director of the Maryland Food Bank, joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss the crisis.

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Article August 15, 2014

Working Anything but 9 to 5
New York Times, August 13, 2014

SAN DIEGO — In a typical last-minute scramble, Jannette Navarro, a 22-year-old Starbucks barista and single mother, scraped together a plan for surviving the month of July without setting off family or financial disaster.

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Article August 15, 2014

Is a Hard Life Inherited?
New York Times, August 9, 2014

YAMHILL, Ore. — ONE delusion common among America’s successful people is that they triumphed just because of hard work and intelligence.

In fact, their big break came when they were conceived in middle-class American families who loved them, read them stories, and nurtured them with Little League sports, library cards and music lessons. They were programmed for success by the time they were zygotes.

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Article August 14, 2014

From ‘Good Times’ To ‘Honey Boo Boo’: Who Is Poor On TV?
National Public Radio, August 5, 2014

Like it or not, television has the power to shape our perceptions of the world. So what do sitcoms, dramas and reality TV say about poor people?

In life and on TV, “poor” is relative. Take breakfast: For Honey Boo Boo’s family, it’s microwaved sausage and pancake sandwiches; for children in The Wire’s Baltimore ghetto, it’s a juice box and a bag of chips before school; and on Good Times, set in the Chicago projects back in the 1970s, it was a healthier choice: oatmeal.

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Article July 28, 2014

Summer Program For Hungry Kids Gets Creative With Food Delivery
National Public Radio, July 23, 2014

More than 21 million children get free or reduced priced meals during the school year. But in the summer, that number drops to only three million.

The big question is what happens to all the other children. Do they get enough, and the right food, to eat?

This summer, government agencies and are making a massive push to get millions of meals to kids who might otherwise go hungry as part of the nationwide . And they’re doing some creative things to reach them.

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Article July 22, 2014

A Push to Give Steadier Shifts to Part-Timers
New York Times, July 15, 2014

As more workers find their lives upended and their paychecks reduced by ever-changing, on-call schedules, government officials are trying to put limits on the harshest of those scheduling practices.

The actions reflect a growing national movement — fueled by women’s and labor groups — to curb practices that affect millions of families, like assigning just one or two days of work a week or requiring employees to work unpredictable hours that wreak havoc with everyday routines like college and child care.

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Article July 2, 2014

Boom Meets Bust in Texas: Atop Sea of Oil, Poverty Digs In
New York Times, June 29, 2014

GARDENDALE, Tex. — From the window of her tin-roofed trailer, Judy Vargas can glimpse a miraculous world. It is as close as the dust kicked up by the trucks barreling by but seems as distant as Mars.

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Article June 27, 2014

Where Are the Hardest Places to Live in the U.S.?
New York Times, June 26, 2014

Annie Lowrey writes in the Times Magazine this week about the troubles of Clay County, Ky., which by several measures is the hardest place in America to live.

The Upshot came to this conclusion by looking at six data points for each county in the United States: education (percentage of residents with at least a bachelor’s degree), median household income, unemployment rate, disability rate, life expectancy and obesity. We then averaged each county’s relative rank in these categories to create an overall ranking.

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Article June 18, 2014

Uncertainty About Jobs Has a Ripple Effect
New York Times, May 16, 2014

THE immediate impact of the recession — widespread buyouts and layoffs — may be fading, but the fear of losing a job hangs over workplaces like a cloud of worry.

“Perceived job insecurity,” as it is called, may be here to stay, and the latest studies show it has even more wide-ranging and serious effects on workers and companies than was once thought.

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Article June 9, 2014

In Texarkana, Uninsured and on the Wrong Side of a State Line
New York Times, June 8, 2014

On a hazy, hot evening here, Janice Marks ate a dinner of turkey and stuffing at a homeless shelter filled with plastic cots before crossing a few blocks to the Arkansas side of town to start her night shift restocking the dairy cases at Walmart.

The next day, David Tramel and Janice McFall had a free meal of hot dogs and doughnut holes at a Salvation Army center in Arkansas before heading back to their tent, hidden in a field by the highway in Texas.

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Article May 1, 2014

Changed Life of the Poor: Better Off, but Far Behind
New York Times, April 30, 2014

Is a family with a car in the driveway, a flat-screen television and a computer with an Internet connection poor?

Americans — even many of the poorest — enjoy a level of material abundance unthinkable just a generation or two ago. That indisputable economic fact has become a subject of bitter political debate this year, half a century after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty.

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Article April 22, 2014

50 Years Into the War on Poverty, Hardship Hits Back
New York Times, April 20, 2014

When people visit with friends and neighbors in southern West Virginia, where paved roads give way to dirt before winding steeply up wooded hollows, the talk is often of lives that never got off the ground.

“How’s John boy?” Sabrina Shrader, 30, a former neighbor, asked Marie Bolden one cold winter day at what Ms. Bolden calls her “little shanty by the tracks.”

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Article April 14, 2014

Finding A More Nuanced View Of Poverty’s ‘Black Hole’
National Public Radio, April 2, 2014

Ask Anne Valdez what poverty means for her, and her answer will describe much more than a simple lack of money.

“It’s like being stuck in a black hole,” says Valdez, 47, who is unemployed and trying to raise a teenage son in Coney Island, New York City. “Poverty is like literally being held back from enjoying life, almost to the point of not being able to breathe.”

For years, researchers have complained that the way the government measures income and poverty is severely flawed, that it provides an incomplete — and even distorted — view.

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Article January 29, 2014

U.S. Agriculture Secretary ‘Convinced’ Rural Revitalization Plan Will Work
National Public Radio, January 15, 2014

President Obama is hoping to fight poverty, in five so-called “promise zones.” The government is targeting those areas for economic revitalization. Host Michel Martin and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack take a look at the rural communities involved, and the special challenges to fight poverty there.

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Article January 21, 2014

What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?
New York Times, January 18, 2014

Growing up poor has long been associated with reduced educational attainment and lower lifetime earnings. Some evidence also suggests a higher risk of depression, substance abuse and other diseases in adulthood. Even for those who manage to overcome humble beginnings, early-life poverty may leave a lasting mark, accelerating aging and increasing the risk of degenerative disease in adulthood.

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Article January 8, 2014

Kentucky County That Gave War On Poverty A Face Still Struggles
National Public Radio, January 8, 2014

Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson stood before Congress and declared an “unconditional war on poverty in America.” His arsenal included new programs: Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start, food stamps, more spending on education, and tax cuts to help create jobs.

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Article January 7, 2014

50 Years Later, War on Poverty Is a Mixed Bag
New York Times, January 4, 2014

WASHINGTON — To many Americans, the war on poverty declared 50 years ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson has largely failed. The poverty rate has fallen only to 15 percent from 19 percent in two generations, and 46 million Americans live in households where the government considers their income scarcely adequate.

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Article December 18, 2013

In the War on Poverty, a Dogged Adversary
New York Times, December 17, 2013

When President Lyndon Johnson declared his war on poverty on Jan. 8, 1964, almost exactly 50 years ago, 19 percent of Americans were poor.
Economic Scene

“The richest nation on earth can afford to win it,” he reasoned, as he proposed a clutch of initiatives from expanding food stamps to revamping unemployment insurance. “We cannot afford to lose it.”

A half-century later, our priorities have changed.

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Article November 25, 2013

Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Unemployment Insurance: How Tight Are the Strands of the Recessionary Safety Net?
United States Department of Agriculture, November 2013

This report provides nationally representative annual estimates for 2004-09 of households’ multi-program or “joint” participation patterns in both the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program, including breakouts of household types categorized by household income relative to poverty, race/ethnicity, and education level. SNAP and UI are two strands of the Nation’s recessionary safety net—the subset of safety-net programs for which participation is responsive to the business cycle.

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Article November 12, 2013

Poverty in 13 states is worse than we thought
Washington Post, November 8, 2013

There’s some good news and some bad news about poverty in America.

First, the bad: Poverty rates are higher than previously thought in 13 states and D.C. The good? Poverty rates are lower in 28 other states.

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Article November 12, 2013

Cut in Food Stamps Forces Hard Choices on Poor
New York Times, November 7, 2013

CHARLESTON, S.C. — For many, a $10 or $20 cut in the monthly food budget would be absorbed with little notice.

But for millions of poor Americans who rely on food stamps, reductions that began this month present awful choices. One gallon of milk for the kids instead of two. No fresh broccoli for dinner or snacks to take to school. Weeks of grits and margarine for breakfast.

And for many, it will mean turning to a food pantry or a soup kitchen by the middle of the month.

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Article October 29, 2013

Ohio Governor Defies G.O.P. With Defense of Social Safety Net
New York Times, October 28, 2013

COLUMBUS, Ohio — In his grand Statehouse office beneath a bust of Lincoln, Gov. John R. Kasich let loose on fellow Republicans in Washington.

“I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor,” he said, sitting at the head of a burnished table as members of his cabinet lingered after a meeting. “That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

“You know what?” he said. “The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A.”

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Post October 16, 2013

Richmond Awaits a Bold Antipoverty Plan
New York Times, October 14, 2013

RICHMOND, Va. — Dressed on an unseasonably warm day, as ever, in a tailored suit, tie and pocket square, Mayor Dwight C. Jones, a fourth-generation pastor, arrived at a late-afternoon meeting this month to talk about his ambitious — some say quixotic — plan to subdue poverty in this city, once the capital of the Confederacy and now one of the nation’s poorest urban areas.

Many Richmond residents live in public housing, but the mayor has been promoting mixed-income communities.

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Post October 10, 2013

L.A. County leads California in poverty rate, new analysis shows
Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2013

Los Angeles has the highest poverty rate among California counties, according to a new analysis announced Monday that upends traditional views of rural and urban hardship by adding factors such as the soaring price of city housing.

The measurement, developed by researchers with the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, found that 2.6 million, or 27%, of Los Angeles County residents lived in poverty in 2011. The official poverty rate for the county, based on the U.S. Census’ 2011 American Community Survey, is 18%.

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Post October 10, 2013

Growing Divide Between Young People Able to Go It Alone and Those Who Live at Home
Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2013

The gap between America’s best-off and worst-off is widening—and driving a wedge between young people with the resources to strike out on their own and those for whom living with family or friends has become, at least for now, an economic necessity.

The odds that a young adult in the U.S. will become the head of a household, whether as an owner or renter, has fallen more between 1990 and 2010 than in previous decades, accelerating a trend that began with the Baby Boomers, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by Emily Rosenbaum, a demographer at Fordham University.

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Post October 10, 2013

California weighing cost of running federal programs during shutdown
Los Angeles Times, October 8, 2013

Facing the prospect of a prolonged federal government shutdown, Gov. Jerry Brown will soon need to decide if the state will shoulder the cost to keep running federal programs used by millions of Californians.

State officials say there’s no guarantee that critical social services in California — such as food stamps, subsidized school meals and nutrition assistance for pregnant women and infants — could run without interruption in November.

The Brown administration has not yet said if it plans to plug the gaps for social programs at the end of the month.

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Post July 24, 2013

Being In The Minority Can Cost You And Your Company
NPR, July 24, 2013

The racial wage gap in the United States — the gap in salary between whites and blacks with similar levels of education and experience — is shaped by geography, according to new social science research.

The larger the city, the larger the racial wage gap, according to researchers Elizabeth Ananat, Shihe Fu and Stephen L. Ross, whose findings were recently by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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Post June 30, 2013

Paid via Card, Workers Feel Sting of Fees
NYTimes, June 30, 2013

A growing number of American workers are confronting a frustrating predicament on payday: to get their wages, they must first pay a fee.

For these largely hourly workers, paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.

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Post June 15, 2013

Living on Minimum Wage
New York Times, June 15, 2013

At least one part of the labor force has expanded significantly since the recession hit: the low-wage part, made up of burger flippers, home health aides and the like.

Put simply, the recession took middle-class jobs, and the recovery has replaced them with low-income ones, a trend that has exacerbated income inequality. According to Labor Department data, about 1.7 million workers earned the minimum wage or less in 2007. By 2012, the total had surged to 3.6 million, with millions of others earning just a few cents or dollars more.

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Post May 28, 2013

Poor hit hardest by Washington budget cuts
By Jennifer Liberto
CNNMoney
May 24, 2013

Forced federal spending cuts intended to be equal and across-the-board have lately fallen harder on the nation’s poor, sick and elderly.

At the other end, the top brass of federal employees are on track to receive bonuses. And workers who impact the food and airline businesses, like meat inspectors and air traffic controllers, have managed to get a break from Congress.

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Article May 24, 2013

Though Enrolling More Poor Students, 2-Year Colleges Get Less of Federal Pie
By David Leonhardt
The New York Times
May 22, 2013

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Article May 16, 2013

Poverty as a Childhood Disease
By Perri Klass, M.D.
New York Times
May 13, 2013

Poverty is an exam room familiar. From Bellevue Hospital in New York to the neighborhood health center in Boston where I used to work, poverty has filtered through many of my interactions with parents and their children.

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Article February 22, 2013

Long Prison Terms Eyed as Contributing to Poverty
John Tierney
NY Times
February 18, 2013

WASHINGTON — Why are so many American families trapped in poverty? Of all the explanations offered by Washington’s politicians and economists, one seems particularly obvious in the low-income neighborhoods near the Capitol: because there are so many parents like Carl Harris and Charlene Hamilton.

For most of their daughters’ childhood, Mr. Harris didn’t come close to making the minimum wage. His most lucrative job, as a crack dealer, ended at the age of 24, when he left Washington to serve two decades in prison, leaving his wife to raise their two young girls while trying to hold their long-distance marriage together.

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Article February 19, 2013

Growth in Means-Tested Programs and Tax Credits for Low-Income Households
Congressional Budget Office
February 11, 2013

CBO finds that during the past 40 years, federal spending for 10 of the major means-tested programs and tax credits for low-income households more than tripled as a share of GDP. In 2012, such spending totaled $588 billion, one-sixth of all federal outlays. Over the next decade, spending on those programs will continue to rise under current law, CBO projects, driven mainly by growth in Medicaid and other means-tested health care programs.

The report was written by Will Carrington, Molly Dahl, and Justin Falk, with assistance from other CBO staff.

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Article January 29, 2013

Legislation proposed to help California launch healthcare overhaul
Los Angeles Times, January 29, 2013

SACRAMENTO — The state Legislature gaveled in a special session on healthcare Monday, pushing forward with sweeping proposals to help California implement President Obama’s healthcare overhaul.

The measures, including a major expansion of Medi-Cal, the state’s public insurance program for the poor, would cement the state’s status as the nation’s earliest and most aggressive adopter of the federal Affordable Care Act. Beginning in January 2014, the law requires most Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty.

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Article December 19, 2012

After Recession, More Young Adults Are Living on Street
Susan Saulny, New York Times

Across the country, tens of thousands of underemployed and jobless young people, many with college credits or work histories, are struggling to house themselves in the wake of the recession, which has left workers between the ages of 18 and 24 with the highest unemployment rate of all adults.

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