2014 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard Shows Many Oklahomans are “Treading Water”

It’s been a slow recovery. With the January release of CFED’s annual 2014 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard, we have further proof of this fact. The report, Treading Water in the Deep End, shows many American families are financially insecure, and this includes a growing number of Oklahomans.

In Oklahoma, it is estimated 49% of households live in a persistent state of financial insecurity, with no little or no savings to cover emergencies. This is up from last year’s estimate of 43.8% of Oklahomans who were considered “liquid asset poor.” Poor showings in areas related to income, assets, healthcare and education contributed to Oklahoma’s overall rank of 31, compared to other states.

The Assets and Opportunity Scorecard examines the financial security of Americans by assessing states based on 69 different outcome measures. The measures are grouped into five broader categories: 1) Financial Assets and Income, 2) Business and Jobs;

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Millions Are Working Full-Time for Poverty Wages

Poverty is not isolated to families where adults are unemployed or underemployed. According to 2011 data from the National Center for Children in Poverty, 33% of children living in poverty in Oklahoma have at least one parent who works full-time, year-round.

Oklahoma also has one of the highest proportions of hourly paid workers earning at or below the federal minimum wage in the country, at 7.2%. Only Idaho and Texas have higher rates. And escaping poverty level wages is not as easy as applying for a new job. The Alliance for a Just Society released a report December 4^th that found,

“For every projected job opening above a low-wage threshold of $15 an hour, there were 7 job-seekers in 2012.”

Furthermore, while jobs lost during the Great Recession were not exclusive to any one sector, a 2012 report from the National Employment Law Project confirms most job losses were concentrated in mid-wage occupations. In contrast, the recovery has seen gains in the number of lower-wage occupations.

Low-wage occupations that increased during and after the recession include “retail salespersons, food preparation workers, laborers and freight workers,

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The Poverty Rate is Just the Begining of the Story

Every year, the U.S. Census Bureau issues a report on annual poverty data from the American Community Survey. Last month, the Census Bureau reported the poverty rate for 2012 was 15%, virtually unchanged since 2011. For Oklahoma, the rate was 17.2%, also the same as last year.

When the current poverty rate is measured against the historically low rate of 11.1% in 1973, the news seems disheartening. Yet, as Sheldon H. Danziger points out in a recent New York Times opinion piece, comparing 2012 to 1973 without further context can give people the wrong idea about the true state of the war on poverty.

One thing to keep in mind is that poverty measures do not capture all the relief provided to low-income families under current safety net policies. Non-cash benefits,

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Cliff Effects: A Barrier to Escaping Poverty

Work support programs are designed to sustain low-income earners and encourage work. In this they have been successful, as SNAP alone lifted an estimated 3.9 million Americans out of poverty in 2009.  And according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ blog “public programs lifted 40 million people out of poverty in 2011, including almost 9 million children.”

Most of us know families must fall below certain income limits in order to qualify for government benefits. In many cases, individual states administer federally funded safety net programs and often set certain eligibility requirements for benefits such as SNAP or child care subsidies. For some benefits, the state or federal government also sets asset limits, meaning in some states even a modest savings account can disqualify families from receiving assistance.

Yet another harsh side effect of eligibility guidelines is called the “Cliff Effect.” It refers to situations where a small increase in income leads to an abrupt end to a critical benefit. Two work support benefits often associated with income limits are child care assistance, which makes daycare affordable for working parents, and food assistance, which often includes work requirements.

The dilemma posed by cliff effects is that it penalizes people who are slowly working their way out of poverty and into higher income brackets. As income increases,

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The August Recess Has Begun and SNAP Funding (Still) Remains Uncertain

In May I wrote about upcoming cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and said it was anyone’s guess where a compromise would leave the program. Now August is here, Congress is in recess, and still nothing has been done to stave off cuts scheduled for November; cuts that will lead to a decrease in benefits for nearly 652,000 Oklahomans.

Further cuts still seem inevitable. For the first time since 1973, the House of Representatives approved a version of the Farm Bill without including provisions for SNAP benefits at all. Since then, reports say the House has begun working on a plan to propose cutting $40 Billion from SNAP. This effectively doubles the cuts they proposed in their failed attempt to pass a Farm Bill in June.

Still, the Senate has yet to act on the House’s version of the Farm Bill, so the fight is not over. However, the Food Research Action Center (FRAC) is justifiably alarmed by recent developments, seeing them as an “assault on SNAP.” Robert Greenstein, President of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, issued a statement on the subject last Friday calling the new proposal “stunningly harsh.” And while the policy debate on further cuts goes on in Washington, the current Farm Bill is set to expire in September.

The future of SNAP is unknown, but the history of the program is not. And to fully appreciate why SNAP is a vital part of the government’s safety net, it is important to look at this issue from a historical and scientific perspective. Why do we have food programs, including SNAP, in the first place?  Why are these programs still needed today?

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Rally4Babies: Advocating for Early Learning

In case you missed it last month, on July 8^th Rally4Babies hosted a virtual rally on Google+. Rally4Babies is a partnership sponsored by Zero to Three (The National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families). The event, hosted by Soledad O’Brien, featured guests Secretary Arne Duncan, U.S. Department of Education, and Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Department Health and Human Services.

O’Brien and her guests talked about the success of Head Start, Early Head Start, Home Visiting Programs and other programs offering early childhood education.  Secretary Sebelius described how babies are learning every day, and emphasized that a safe, secure and stimulating environment both inside and outside the home can “make a world of difference” in language development and other fundamental skills.  Along those same lines, Secretary Duncan is concerned because low-income children who do not have the advantage of quality early learning experiences can start Kindergarten a year, to a year and a half, behind their peers.

Backed up by research from Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, we know babies begin developing the skills necessary for lifelong learning shortly after birth. The Center’s InBrief report, Executive Function: Skills for Life and Learning, tells us the optimal window for dramatic growth occurring between ages 3 to 5.

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KIDS COUNT 2013: Childhood Poverty in Oklahoma

The Annie E. Casey Foundation released their annual KIDS COUNT Data Book this week.  Oklahoma’s profile shows childhood poverty has worsened in recent years. This is worrying because of the potential negative impacts on education, behavior and health. The report details child well-being across the United States by measuring and ranking states in four specific areas: Economic Well-Being, Education, Health, and Family and Community. The numbers serve as important markers because in measuring the well-being of Oklahoma children, they provide feedback to agencies that implement programs designed to address health, education and poverty.

KIDS COUNT estimates 216,000 Oklahoma children, or 23% of our state’s child population, were living in poverty as of 2011. Around 35,136 of Oklahoma kids in poverty are located right here in Tulsa County, according to a 2010 estimate by the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, which directs Oklahoma KIDS COUNT.  Oklahoma’s 2013 rate is a slight improvement over last year’s data, but childhood poverty is now relatively the same as it was in 2005. And while Oklahoma’s overall Child Well-being rank rose to 36^th overall, up from 40^th last year, both the number of children living in poverty coupled with the lack of significant progress in decreasing this rate is troubling.

The Academic Pediatric Association (APA) task force on childhood poverty recently called it “the most important problem facing children in the United States today.” According to the APA, childhood poverty has been linked to

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Thoughts on “A Place at the Table,” Part Two

Last week I wrote about attending the Tulsa premier of A Place at the Table. The film and the discussion that followed raised so many important issues I decided to write a two-part report.  My previous post focused on the film. This second installment will focus on the discussion that followed.

A Place at the Table opened at the Circle Cinema on March 8^th, and was followed by a panel discussion featuring three local advocates.  These three local experts were:

• Eileen Bradshaw, Executive Director of the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma.
• Jan Figart, Associate Director of the Community Service Council; and
• Rev. Ron Robinson, Director of A Third Place, a grassroots organization serving neighborhoods in North Tulsa and Turley;

For a little over an hour, an audience crowded the lobby of the theater as panelists talked about the local story. The conversation brought home the fact that hunger is a disturbingly local problem. Despite the continuing efforts of local organizations, the panelists were not there to report they were meeting all the needs of their clients – they were there to tell us the need is still greater than their resources.  Here are just a few of the important points the panelist covered:

• Oklahoma is Among the Leaders in U.S. Hunger: The panel began with facts about hunger in our city and our state, and if you visit the Community Food Bank’s “Hunger Fact” page  it presents a similar foundation of relevent facts about food insecurity (The “Hunger Fact” webpage is no longer available.  You can visit Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap and click on Oklahoma for relevent information instead.)  Here are two quick indicators that Oklahoma has a problem with hunger: 1) In 2011, the USDA ranked Oklahoma fourth

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Thoughts on “A Place at the Table,” Part One

A couple of weeks ago, in my previous post, I promised to write about the Tulsa premier of A Place at the Table and the discussion that followed.  It’s impossible to sum up every issue brought up by the film.  It is equally impossible to write a single post about the film and the discussion that followed; too many important topics to cover.  So this will be a two-part report highlighting some of the issues that I found particularly relevant.  For this first installment, I want to talk about the film itself, with the understanding this in no way represents the entire list of issues raised by the documentary.   

A Place at the Table draws its power from the personal stories of people struggling to afford healthy food.  Experts on nutrition and hunger push the message further by explaining the negative effects long-term food insecurity has on a person’s health, education and potential. After watching this documentary, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that this problem is bigger than any one charity can tackle; it is bigger than the current funding of our social safety net can address. These are just three of the reasons why:

• The rate and requirements of SNAP benefits are out of sync with the cost of living.  As the film tracks the story of Barbie, a single mother in Philadelphia, this fact becomes clear. Barbie loses her SNAP benefits entirely when she begins to earn more money, but despite a slightly higher paycheck her overall financial situation has not improved. Her children are still eating canned noodles instead of a balanced diet and their mental and physical development will be impacted as a consequence.
• The school lunch program, launched under the Truman administration, was a great idea but is currently underfunded.  The film points out that less than a dollar a day per child is actually spent on food for lunches, and then demonstrates how it is impossible to make a quality meal that meets dietary needs on that budget.

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Helping the Underfed in America: Conversations about “A Place At the Table”

I last blogged about the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma in September as part of Hunger Action Month.  At the time, local restaurants were helping the food bank raise money for their Food for Kids program.  Now, the food bank is sponsoring a movie screening to raise awareness about American’s underfed families. The screening will feature a new documentary called A Place at the Table.  The film, brought to us by the people responsible for Food, Inc. (2006), combines the stories of real people with commentary from experts on hunger and nutrition.  The film’s creators, as well as groups around the country, are hoping the film will spark a nationwide conversation about how to end hunger for nearly 50 million Americans.

Starting an honest conversation is important, because there is an ongoing problem with misconceptions and misinformation when it comes to hunger in America.  Proponents of food programs are constantly trying to set the record straight. In February, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities discredited many of the details behind recent efforts to incorrectly portray safety net programs as wasteful spending.  OKPolicy Blog just discussed how an Oklahoma proposal to increase work requirements for SNAP recipients would penalize underemployed Oklahomans. (SNAP is the program formerly known as food stamps).  OKPolicy rightly pointed out that many

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