Poverty in America: The Good, The Bad and Preparing for the Future

1
Poverty in AmericaThe Good, The Bad and
Preparing for the Future
Advanced Symposium on Poverty, Twentieth Annual
Social Action Summer Institute A Joint Project
OfThe Roundtable Association of Diocesan Social
Action Directors USCCB Social Development And
World Peace, Catholic Charities USA, Catholic
Campaign For Human Development, Catholic Relief
Services

• July 17th 2006
• john a. powell
• Williams Chair in Civil Rights Civil Liberties,
  Moritz College of Law
• Executive Director, Kirwan Institute for the
  Study of Race and Ethnicity
• The Ohio State University
• http//www.kirwaninstitute.org/

2
Understanding Domestic Poverty

• Poverty in the US is unlike poverty experienced
  in other parts of the globe
• Unlike developing countries, the US does not
  suffer from a lack of resources, in fact it is
  the most resource abundant nation in the world
• Poverty in the US is largely about our national
  story/narrative and the meaning adopted within
  this narrative
• This narrative in the US context, has been
  heavily influenced by our societys racial
  conflict and injected with our fear of the
  racialized other

3
What is our Narrative Today?

• What is our national story or narrative to
  address poverty
• Self sufficiency and anti-government (ownership
  society)
• Government viewed as harmful, creating dependency
  and hindering self sufficiency
• Responsibility tied only to the individual
• Deserving (children/innocence) and undeserving
  poor (most people of color)
• Inspired and reinforced by racial attitudes and
  racially discriminatory structures
• This narrative will always produce durable,
  persistent and racialized poverty
• Narrative built around just accepting and
  tolerating this societal problem by framing as an
  individual problem

4
Todays Discussion

• The bad
• Growing poverty problems in our nation
• Frames and paradigms to view poverty
• Your frame will determine the best response
• The good
• Growing local responses to poverty
• Taking the next steps

5
Poverty The Bad

• Growing economic insecurity
• Increased economic sorting (polarization)
• Reduced public investment in our social and
  physical infrastructure and its consequences
• No coherent national policy to address poverty

6
Heightened Economic Insecurity and Vulnerability

• Conditions of economic insecurity were
  highlighted by Hurricane Katrina, but are found
  in every community
• Poverty is increasing
• Decline of the middle class
• Continuing conditions of economic insecurity,
  lack of health insurance, increased bankruptcy,
  and housing cost increases will continue to
  propel these trends
• Historically, the decline of the middle class has
  triggered a misplaced racialized response
• We can not repeat this mistake

Storm Survivors in New Orleans Photo from
Katrinahelp.com
Storm Survivors in New Orleans Photo from
Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital
Area
7
Growth in Poverty

• The number of people in poverty in the US
  increased by 5.4 million or 17 between 2000 and
  2004
• The nations poverty rate has increased by 12
  between 2000 and 2004
• The number of uninsured has increased by 6.7
  million or 17 between 2000 and 2004
• In 2004, more than 45 million Americans had no
  health insurance and 37 million were in poverty

Source U.S. Census Bureau
8
Consolidation of Power/Wealth/Sorting

• Both locally, nationally and globally there is
  greater consolidation of wealth/power, sorting of
  people and hoarding of opportunity
• More wealth/power for corporations, individuals
• More people sorted into high and low opportunity
  communities
• Decline of the middle class
• Why is this happening?
• Organizations that create voice and collective
  power are on the decline
• People feel this growing insecurity and feel
  powerless to stop it, trying to gain some control

9
Economic Polarization

• Decline of the middle class
• Research by the Brookings Institute has found
  that the number of middle class neighborhoods has
  decreased by 30 since 1970
• In some metropolitan areas, wages for high paid
  workers are rising twice as fast as wages for low
  income workers

Sources Brookings Institute and Washington Post
10
Retrenchment of Public Resources

• Despite the scope of these challenges, public
  resources for infrastructure investments (both
  social infrastructure and physical
  infrastructure) are on the decline
• Social infrastructure
• Resources for social safety net programs are
  continually being reduced or responsibility for
  programs is being shifted to States
• Physical infrastructure
• Physical infrastructure investments are on the
  decline, while aging infrastructure and sprawling
  growth require more resources

11
Social Infrastructure

• In 2005 the Presidents budget looked to remove,
  or severely scale back, over 150 government
  programs
• The Presidents 2006 budget plan again reduces
  social infrastructure, directly and
  disproportionately impacting low-income
  households
• Proposed budget cuts Women, Infants and Children
  Nutrition Program (WIC) by 459 million in 2009
• Vocational and adult education cut by 1.5
  billion
• Low-income home energy assistance program cut by
  1.9 billion
• National Institutes of Health cut by 2.5 billion

Source Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
12
Physical Infrastructure

• Our national physical infrastructure (roads,
  sewers etc.) represents an investment of more
  than 10 trillion, but this investment needs to
  be constantly renewed, because this
  infrastructures lifespan can be measured in
  decades
• In 2005 1.6 trillion was needed to prevent
  further deterioration of public infrastructure,
  but only 900 million was made available
• For example, drinking water systems across the US
  need more than 11 billion for upkeep and are
  routinely allocated 850 million

Source National Resource Council and Disasters
waiting to happen. New York Times. September
11, 2005.
13
Retrenchment of Public Resources

• Poor infrastructure caused much of the
  devastation in New Orleans
• This trend is also reflected in the disruption
  (flooding, sewer back ups) created by recent
  heavy rains in the DC region
• This represents a collective failure to invest in
  ourselves and our future
• This shared vulnerability impacts everyone,
  illustrating our linked fate and interconnection

14
What is our National Poverty Policy?

• Despite the growth in poverty and other growing
  indicators of economic insecurity in the US, no
  coherent or comprehensive national agenda is
  addressing the nations poverty problem
• In contrast, at this time of growing insecurity,
  public resources are being pulled away from
  already insufficient programs to address the
  needs of the impoverished
• Health care, housing, TANF, transportation,
  community development etc.

15
Various Frames and Paradigms to View Poverty

• Stratification of poverty
• Urban vs. rural, African American vs. White,
  Working poor
• Divergent views on the cause of poverty
• Personal/family failure or structural failure
• Frames impacting the response
• US vs. Europe, International (Human Development
  Index), Poverty and Race

16
The Stratification of Poverty

• Poverty in the domestic context can not be easily
  categorized and significant differences exist for
  various impoverished groups throughout the nation
• Urban vs. rural
• African American vs. White
• Working poor
• In addition, these various sub-categories of the
  impoverished are suffering from distinct
  impediments and require unique strategies to
  address poverty issues

17
Urban vs. Rural Poverty

• Urban and rural poverty are distinct issues in
  the US, urban poverty is often linked to
  concentrated poverty while rural poverty is more
  regional in scope
• Urban concentrated poverty
• In urban areas, many of the impoverished are
  hypersegregated into pockets of extreme high
  poverty within metropolitan areas, in recent
  years these pockets of poverty are being found in
  some inner suburban areas
• Rural regional poverty
• Rural poverty often is represented regionally,
  with vast isolated or historically depressed
  rural areas
• Both urban and rural poverty represent an
  isolation from opportunity, but operate at
  different geographic scales, both are also highly
  racialized

18
Urban Concentrated Poverty
East Coast
Examples of Neighborhoods of Concentrated Poverty
in Baltimore and Philadelphia Source Brookings
Institution
19
Urban Concentrated Poverty
Midwest
Examples of Neighborhoods of Concentrated Poverty
in Detroit and Cleveland Source Brookings
Institution
20
Urban Concentrated Poverty
South
Examples of Neighborhoods of Concentrated Poverty
in Atlanta and Dallas Source Brookings
Institution
21
Urban Concentrated Poverty
West Coast
Examples of Neighborhoods of Concentrated Poverty
in Los Angeles and Oakland Source Brookings
Institution
22
Areas of Severe Rural Poverty by Race in America
2000
23
Racialized PovertyAfrican American vs. White

• Despite media depictions and popular opinion,
  Whites in poverty outnumber other racial groups,
  although proportionally African Americans and
  Latino populations contain more poverty
• The conditions in which impoverished Whites and
  African Americans live differ significantly
• Impoverished Whites are more likely to be
  located in areas with better opportunity
  structures
• Impoverished African Americans are highly
  segregated into areas of concentrated poverty,
  which are isolated from most opportunity
  structures

24
Race and Concentrated Poverty
Nearly 3 out 4 of the 7 million People Living in
Concentrated Poverty are African American or
Latino
25
The Working Poor

• Todays service sector based economy, is
  bifurcated producing large number of low wage
  employment growth, while traditional blue collar
  employment opportunities have declined
• After adjusting for inflation, todays minimum
  wage of 5.15 an hour is worth 30 less than its
  value in 1968 (Congress recently rejected an
  additional increase of the minimum wage)
• As a result of these trends a large and growing
  portion of the US population are categorized the
  working poor
• Employed workers who can not earn enough income
  to move out of poverty
• These workers are often extremely sensitive to
  cost of living increases in other areas such as
  transportation and housing

26
The Working Poor

• 63 of families in poverty have a family member
  working
• A quarter of all jobs pay less than a living
  wage (wage needed to keep a family of four out
  of poverty)
• More than 28 million workers earned less than a
  living wage in 2004

Sources Penn State, Business Week and US Bureau
of Labor Market Studies
27
Divergent Views on the Cause of Poverty

• Viewed as personal/cultural failure
• The dominant, historical perspective in American
  society, the conservative frame
• Emphasizing poverty as a result of personal or
  family failure to take advantage of opportunities
  or lack of motivation
• The poor deserve to be poor
• A highly racialized perspective
• Linked to the narrative of the American Dream
• Few are able to succeed in this narrative, but
  those who do pull them selves up by their boot
  straps are used as examples to reinforce this
  concept

28
Divergent Views on the Cause of Poverty

• Viewed as structural failure
• A frame that recognizes poverty as the result of
  inequitable access to opportunities necessary to
  generate wealth and succeed
• A Failure of Opportunity
• This frame helps explain cycles of
  intergenerational poverty and the relevance of
  disparities based on race, ethnicity and class
• The dominant frame of the left
• But, current debates of the left are lacking,
  focusing more on the class dimensions of this
  issue and not race
• This oversight ignores that fact that most
  structural arrangements producing poverty are
  racialized and race plays a prominent role in the
  conservative frame

29
Frames to View Poverty Help Determine the Response

• The US Model
• Policies which reflect frame of personal failure,
  serving capitalism
• Framing of poverty and race
• The European Model
• Policies tied into serving democratic society
• The International Model
• Human Development Index
• A Structural Model

30
US v. EU Policy Response

• While the U.S. devotes 11 percent of its GDP to
  transfers and other social benefits, the EU
  countries contribute more than 26 percent of
  their GDP to social benefits
• There are more poor people living in poverty in
  America than in the sixteen European nations for
  which data is available
• EU countries also have higher minimum wage,
  better unemployment benefits, and generous family
  leave packages
• Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream How Europes
  Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the
  American Dream (2004)

31
Social Policy to Serve a Democratic Society

• The variation in European and US social policy
  reflects two distinct ways of conceptualizing the
  purpose of the state
• The Hobbesian (US) perspective that the purpose
  of the state is to serve and protect property (or
  capitalism)
• Therefore social programs should only be
  sufficient enough to meet basic needs in order to
  avoid social upheaval or revolt
• The countervailing (more European) perspective is
  that the purpose of the state is to promote a
  democratic society
• In order to meet this need the state must invest
  significantly in its population so they can meet
  their human potential and best serve as members
  of a democratic society

32
US v. EU Policy Response
Source Alesina and Glaeser, Fighting Poverty in
the US and Europe
33
Explaining this Difference

• Constitutional differences
• European constitutions were written more
  recently, reflecting the influence of a stronger
  left
• US Racial fractionalization
• White resistance to redistributive policies that
  disproportionately benefit people of color
• The existence of strong labor or populist parties
  
• Influenced by both geography and racial conflict

Source Alesina and Glaeser, Fighting Poverty in
the US and Europe
34
US v. EU policy response

• Why this difference?
• By more than six to one, Americans believe that
  people who do not succeed in life fail because of
  their own shortcomings, not because of society
• The poor in the U.S. have been disproportionately
  people of color, and it is easier to dismiss
  people in persistent poverty as different
  (lacking) due to their biology or their
  culture
• Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream How Europes
  Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the
  American Dream (2004).

35
Race and the US Narrative Around Poverty

• The perception of poverty is still highly
  racialized in US discourse and this racial
  perception enables the historical viewpoint which
  lays blame on impoverished people
• This racialized narrative has long been used to
  starve infrastructure and support (shrinking the
  public space) for the entire nation
• Our existing racial disparities also help
  reinforce this narrative, one a population is
  oppressed it is easy for society to resent them,
  viewing them as alien
• People of color become the undeserving poor and
  are used as a rational for cutting social
  programs for all

36
Racializing Poverty in Public Discourse

• Both US policies, political debate and the media
  feed into this narrative
• Reagan (focus on personal merit, demonizing the
  welfare queen)
• Media depictions and news coverage of low income
  people of color and social programs
• Popular social programs such as social security
  are never categorized as African American
  programs
• The shift in social programs from social
  responsibility to personal responsibility
  (ownership society, social security debate)

37
Expanding our Understanding of Poverty Human
Development Index

• Poverty (and wealth) is measured by more than
  income, but by the capability to live the life
  one can value and contribute to society, a stable
  and sustainable existence
• Poverty is the deprivation of basic capabilities,
  including health and education
• Being poor in a rich country can be a great
  capability handicap (i.e. the necessity of
  buying a car)
• People in poverty cannot fully exercise their
  freedoms
• Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999)

38
What is freedom?

• Freedoms are many and varied, and they complement
  and strengthen one another
• Sens Five Freedoms
• Political freedoms
• Economic facilities
• Social opportunities
• Transparency guarantees
• Protective security
• Economic development and social development are
  complementary, not competing, freedoms
• Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999)

39
Capability inequalities

• Individual responsibilities and capabilities are
  affected by health, gender, income, geographic
  location
• Therefore, we need to look not just at income
  inequality, but at inequalities in
• Education
• Health Care
• Housing
• Geographical (regional) inequalities

40
The Human Development Index

• What is the HDI?
• The UN measures human development through three
  measures
• GDP per capita (income)
• Life expectancy (health)
• Literacy and school enrollment (education)
• According to this Index, the U.S. ranks 10th,
  after Norway, Iceland, Australia, Luxembourg,
  Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, and Belgium
• Source UN Human Development Report (2005)

41
The Human Development Index(International
Ranking 2003)
Dark Green Best Red/Brown Worst Based on Index
of life expectancy, literacy, school enrollment,
and gross domestic product.
Source United Nations and Wikipedia
42
Toward a StructuralPerspective on Poverty

• The traditional focus on wealth or income,
  ignores the complex ways in which structures and
  arrangements may inhibit individual and societal
  outcomes
• The Human Development Index and Sens work point
  to a critical factor that needs to be examined
  institutional structures and arrangements
• There is a cluster of institutional arrangements
  that mediate the achievement of life outcomes,
  and these institutional arrangements vary from
  society to society (education, housing, health
  care, sustainable employment, mobility, security,
  etc.)

43
Thinking Beyond Poverty and Deprivation when
Addressing Need

• What is our most important need for membership in
  our society? (Participation fully understood)
• Need is defined in terms of being a full member
  of civic society - not just in terms of poverty
• Need is defined in terms of being an effective
  participant in civic society with a view that all
  other participants are political equals
• Civic freedom, which serves to open up for
  broader discussion the possibilities of social
  and economic development
• The right and capacity to further define needs

44
Toward a StructuralPerspective on Poverty

• What does this mean for advocacy efforts to
  address poverty here in the US?
• We must move toward addressing the structural
  impediments that inhibit the capacity of
  marginalized populations
• Recognizing that poverty is a symptom of a larger
  problem-isolation and disconnection from the key
  opportunity structures needed to grow and succeed
  in our society
• Not a personal failure but a failure of
  opportunity

45
Poverty The Good

• Growing local responses to poverty, addressing
  structural impediments to economic and social
  health
• Highlighted initiatives
• Connecting people to opportunity (examples)
• Housing (Baltimore)
• Education (Minneapolis)
• Health Care (Chicago)
• Spiritual social action

46
Housing Thompson v. HUD

• Intervention
• Litigation based intervention to link Baltimores
  public housing residents to communities of
  opportunity
• Structural Component
• By affirmatively connecting residents to
  opportunity structures such as high performing
  schools, safe neighborhoods and employment in the
  Baltimore region, the remedy will improve the
  life outcomes for participants, in addition the
  remedy will allow new possibilities for
  redevelopment in Baltimores distressed inner
  city neighborhoods

47
Housing Thompson v. HUD

• Plaintiffs propose providing desegregative
  housing opportunities in the regions high
  opportunity neighborhoods to remedy HUDs fair
  housing violations
• With the goal of providing nearly 7,000
  affordable housing opportunities in high
  opportunity communities to public housing
  residents who volunteer to relocate in ten years
• Aligned with proposals to provide support
  services for residents who volunteer for the
  program

48
Education The Choice is Yours, School Mobility
in Minneapolis

• Intervention
• School mobility program designed as part of a
  remedy to a school funding adequacy case
• Structural Component
• By connecting students to low poverty suburban
  schools, the program remedies the economic and
  racial segregation facing inner city students and
  impacting their educational outcome

49
Education The Choice is Yours, School Mobility
in Minneapolis

• Background
• The Choice is Yours is a school choice program
  for families qualifying for free or
  reduced-priced lunches who live in the City of
  Minneapolis
• The program allows students to access suburban
  public schools as well as magnet schools (also
  providing transportation and academic support)

50
Health Care SEIU, MAC West and Hospital
Disinvestment in Chicago

• Intervention
• Organizing/advocacy initiative to stop hospital
  closures and patterns of disinvestments in
  hospitals located in communities of color
• Structural Component
• Hospitals are critical anchor institutions with
  wide spread implications for their nearby
  neighborhoods, impacting both economic
  opportunities but also the availability of health
  care (and likelihood of finding primary care
  physicians) in these communities of color

51
Health Care SEIU, MAC West and Hospital
Disinvestment in Chicago

• Working collaboratively with Service Employees
  International Union (SEIU), MAC has worked on a
  successful campaign to address the undermining of
  a significant anchor institution
• Their work identified racialized redlining by
  Advocate in their spending and investment
  patterns
• The coalition is now advocating for a Community
  Reinvestment Act style of health care legislation
  for IL

52
Spiritual social action today

• Dioceses across the country helping to organize
  parishioner support for just immigration reform
• Louisiana Bucket Brigade fighting for
  environmental justice (grant funds from Catholic
  Campaign for Human Development)
• Point 7 Now conference to mobilize against
  global poverty scheduled in San Francisco,
  October 2006
• Season of Prayer and Calls to Action for people
  and communities affected by Hurricanes Katrina
  and Rita
• http//www.linkedfate.org

53
Taking the Next Steps

• Thinking of poverty as a failure of opportunity
• Thinking structurally
• Looking for key levers
• Framing issues to avoid resistance
• The politics of meaning
• Emphasizing our linked fate
• Targeted universalism

54
Poverty as a Failure of Opportunity

• We must think, act and advocate within a lens
  that recognizes poverty as a failure based on
  inadequate access to opportunity in our society
• Reflecting on the Human Development Index
• We need integration with opportunity to have a
  truly just society
• A society where all people would have access to
  the means essential to living a life they have
  reason to value
• A society where a demographic identifier would
  not predict an individuals life chances

55
Thinking StructurallyStrategic Interventions
and Action

• Target energy toward Strategic Interventions
• Big problems do not necessarily require big
  solutions
• In a structurally oriented initiative, small
  interventions can be critical to creating change,
  but these interventions must explicitly target
  the structural arrangements causing disparity
• Identifying key levers Numerous potential
  solutions exist, prioritize and identify those
  solutions that are most impactful and which can
  be implemented
• Grabbing the lowest hanging fruit on the tree

56
Reshaping Our Nations Narrative around Poverty

• We can not win in promoting structural change
  unless we promote impact meaning and our
  nations narrative around poverty
• What is an alternative narrative?
• All fates linked within our society
• Government useful in facilitating people being
  connected to opportunity, so that they can
  succeed (European Narrative)
• No one is undeserving, all are deserving and
  capable of becoming full members of our society
• Unless we acknowledge issues of race, it will
  impede the embrace of this narrative

57
Framing Issues The Politics of Meaning

• How are poverty issues and policies being
  presented and framed?
• Be aware of and influence of the politics of
  meaning
• Historical precedent
• The deserving and undeserving poor (Reagan)
• This issue raises particular challenges in
  promoting racially explicit equitable policies
• How can we circumvent this?
• Targeted Universalism

58
Structures and Framing

• In advocacy efforts and designing remedies to
  poverty we need to move away from the historical
  and dominant frame of focusing on the personal
  blame for poverty
• Need to reorient discussion and efforts toward
  structures and how structural arrangements pull
  resources away from low income people and block
  access to opportunities for low income people

59
The Politics of MeaningEmphasizing our Linked
Fate

• All members of a society share a linked fate
• Inequality is a sign of an economically/socially
  inefficient society, where proper investments are
  not made in human capital, and where much of the
  population can not meet its creative potential
• These disparities and inequities make our nation
  less competitive, reducing our vitality,
  depressing opportunities for all
• We must learn to advocate and organize around our
  linked fate
• It is not so much a matter of having exact rules
  about how precisely we ought to behave, as of
  recognizing the relevance of our shared humanity
  in making the choices we face. (Sen, 1999)

60
A New Paradigm Targeted Universalism

• Through collective imagination, we need to define
  what the future should look like
• A New Paradigm! Targeted Universalism
• What is our alternative vision?
• A model where we all grow together
• A model where we embrace collective solutions
• This vision requires collective action and will
  require coalitions to be successful

61
Questions or Comments? For More Information
Visit Us On-Linewww.KirwanInstitute.org