"What am I worth to you?"

My friend, Joe is dying.  Joe has advanced stage cancer. 

I've known him for about three years.  I met him on a street corner.  Almost all of that time Joe has been homeless and on the street. 

Thanks to a public health benefit, Joe's health care as he reaches the end of his life has been really excellent. Ironically, Joe's had the best living situation of his life during his time in a couple of local hospitals and a rehabilitation center. 

Joe and I have stayed in touch by phone, and I've visited him in the care centers where he's been receiving treatment. 

Earlier this week I visited him in the hospital.  He is weak, battling pneumonia and the cancer.  As always, he was glad to see me.  We visited for a while, and then, I had to go to get to another appointment. 

As I prepared to leave, Joe asked me. "Larry, can I get a $20 bill from you?"

I said, "Sure, Joe, that's an easy one," as I lifted the bank note from my wallet. 

"Here you go!  Are you going to buy you something better to eat," I asked and motioned to his untouched, cold meal the nurses had set before him. 

"Yeah, man, I'm going to find me a great buffet," he exclaimed, flashing his broad smile.

As I turned to leave, he called out, "Larry, how long's it been since I asked you for a $20?" 

"Long time, Joe, long time," I answered. 

"I love you man," I told him.  "I'll be back by."

"I love you, too, Larry," he replied.

As I walked to my car, I remembered our street routine, repeated so many times.  Joe would ask me for money.  Usually, I gave him $20 at a time for something to eat. He needed a little help because he hated the shelters and preferred the freedom of the street, as cruel and unforgiving as it was.  At least with the street, he could deal on his own terms. 

As I recalled those times, it hit me.  Joe didn't really need my $20.  He wasn't going to any buffet.  He's headed to hospice. 

What Joe needed was to know that I'd still honor his reqeust. Joe needed to know that he was worth something to me, that he was special, that we were, after all, friends. 

As I pondered in my flashback mode, I realized that is all Joe ever needed from me.  The money possessed varying degrees of value to him, depending on his circumstance.  But being able to approach a friend and have a request honored, there was what he really sought. It all translated to his own sense of worth.

My, my. 

Joe, old pal, you're worth so much more than you understand, so much more. 

Tough reality often overlooked, not understood

From The New York Times                                    

 How Expensive It Is to Be Poor

JAN. 18, 2015    

Charles M. Blow            

 

Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center released a study that found that most wealthy Americans believed “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”

 

This is an infuriatingly obtuse view of what it means to be poor in this country — the soul-rending omnipresence of worry and fear, of weariness and fatigue. This can be the view only of those who have not known — or have long forgotten — what poverty truly means.

 

“Easy” is a word not easily spoken among the poor. Things are hard — the times are hard, the work is hard, the way is hard. “Easy” is for uninformed explanations issued by the willfully callous and the haughtily blind.

 

Allow me to explain, as James Baldwin put it, a few illustrations of “how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

 

First, many poor people work, but they just don’t make enough to move out of poverty — an estimated 11 million Americans fall into this category.

So, as the Pew report pointed out, “more than half of the least secure group reports receiving at least one type of means-tested government benefit.”

 

 

And yet, whatever the poor earn is likely to be more heavily taxed than the earnings of wealthier citizens, according to a new analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. As The New York Times put it last week:

 

“According to the study, in 2015 the poorest fifth of Americans will pay on average 10.9 percent of their income in state and local taxes, the middle fifth will pay 9.4 percent and the top 1 percent will average 5.4 percent.”

 

In addition, many low-income people are “unbanked” (not served by a financial institution), and thus nearly eaten alive by exorbitant fees. As the St. Louis Federal Reserve pointed out in 2010:

“Unbanked consumers spend approximately 2.5 to 3 percent of a government benefits check and between 4 percent and 5 percent of payroll check just to cash them. Additional dollars are spent to purchase money orders to pay routine monthly expenses. When you consider the cost for cashing a bi-weekly payroll check and buying about six money orders each month, a household with a net income of $20,000 may pay as much as $1,200 annually for alternative service fees — substantially more than the expense of a monthly checking account.”

Even when low-income people can become affiliated with a bank, those banks are increasingly making them pay “steep rates for loans and high fees on basic checking accounts,” as The Times’s DealBook blog put it last year.

 

And poor people can have a hard time getting credit. As The Washington Post put it, the excesses of the subprime boom have led conventional banks to stay away from the riskiest borrowers, leaving them “all but cut off from access to big loans, like mortgages.”

 

One way to move up the ladder and out of poverty is through higher education, but even that is not without disproportionate costs. As the Institute for College Access and Success noted in March:

 

“Graduates who received Pell Grants, most of whom had family incomes under $40,000, were much more likely to borrow and to borrow more. Among graduating seniors who ever received a Pell Grant, 88 percent had student loans in 2012, with an average of $31,200 per borrower. In contrast, 53 percent of those who never received a Pell Grant had debt, with an average of $26,450 per borrower.”

And often, work or school requires transportation, which can be another outrageous expense. According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights:

“Low- and moderate-income households spend 42 percent of their total annual income on transportation, including those who live in rural areas, as compared to middle-income households, who spend less than 22 percent of their annual income on transportation.”

 

And besides, having a car can make prime targets of the poor. One pernicious practice that the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. — and the protests that followed — resurfaced was the degree to which some local municipalities profit from police departments targeting poor communities, with a raft of stops, fines, summonses and arrests supported by police actions and complicit courts.

 

As NPR reported in August:

“In 2013, the municipal court in Ferguson — a city of 21,135 people — issued 32,975 arrest warrants for nonviolent offenses, mostly driving violations.”

The story continued:

“ArchCity Defenders, a St. Louis-area public defender group, says in its report that more than half the courts in St. Louis County engage in the ‘illegal and harmful practices’ of charging high court fines and fees on nonviolent offenses like traffic violations — and then arresting people when they don’t pay.”

 

The list of hardships could go on for several more columns, but you get the point: Being poor is anything but easy.

Who are "the poor"?

What follows is not to be read as a listing of stereotypes.  Rather, these descriptions get at characteristics that various low-income persons exhibit.  I've encountered thousands of people over the last two decades here in Dallas who come to mind as I lay out this list. 

So, "who are the poor" anyway? 

1.  The poor are intelligent.  Income is no failsafe measure guaranteeing wealth or success financially.  And, being impoverished doesn't mean a person is stupid.  To the contrary, I've known highly intelligent people who live in poverty.  The vast majority of people are not poor because they are stupid.

2.  The poor want work.  In conversation after conversation, I've had men, women and youth begging me for work, for a job, for gainful employment.  Whether its in a formal workforce training effort or on the street with the homeless, the subject of jobs always come up. 

3.  The poor are often under-educated and low skilled.  Again, almost all people can learn, grow and develop.  But the fact is some poverty is caused by being under skilled.

4.  The poor are hard working.  Low-income people who have jobs work like crazy!  Countless families with whom we work have more than one job.  Poor folks aren't afraid to work.

5.  The working poor need more money.  Self-evident it would seem.  But most of us don't understand the pressure to survive under which these families and individuals live.  Low or inadequate skills lead to low wages.  We have a wage crisis in our nation. 

6.  The poor love their children.  Nothing more to say really.

7.  The children of poor people are under-experienced and under-exposed to the largeness of the world.  The funds needed to place children in enrichment activities is simply not available to the poor.  Thus, children miss out on lots that others of us take for granted. 

8.  The poor are often compromised by poor health.  Forced to use the ERs as makeshift medical homes, the poor suffer disproportionately with all sorts of chronic conditions not as prevalent among the more well-to-do. 

9.  The poor battle "toxic stress."  The daily pressure to provide the bare essentials of life place people in positions of stress and psychic strain that just doesn't let up.  A growing body of research substantiates the negative impact of this unresolved, unrelenting stress. 

10.  For the most part the poor don't eat healthy diets.  Limited funds drive people to cheap, processed food high in calories.  The combination of lack of income and accessibility often blocks poor people from healthier food selections. 

11.  The poor are loyal.  Friendship and human connections bind folks together in low-income communities. 

12.  The poor are amazingly generous.  It would be impossible to recount all of the times I have witnessed very poor people sharing from their meagre holdings to benefit someone else in need. 

13.  Basically, the poor are like you and me. . . just without the financial resources.

Poverty in Dallas

Last week 231 people showed up for a 7:00 a.m. meeting at Paul Quinn College to talk about poverty. 

But more than that, they showed up to make plans to do something about it. 

The Mayor's Task Force on Poverty heard from outside leaders/experts on the subject.  Linda Gibbs, Deputy Mayor in New York City's Bloomberg Administration and Thad Williamson, a professor at the University of Richmond and director of the new Office of Community Wealth Building for that city, both shared with the group. 

Then, for almost three hours, task force members divided up into focus groups and played "If I were Mayor of Dallas, I would __________," when it comes to the various focus groups' assigned topics. 

At the event, Mayor Mike Rawlings called us to  action and to ideation. 

His urgency rolled my stomach. 

But, it's time for urgency.

Between 2000 and 2012, Dallas' population grew by a modest 5%. 

During that same period, Dallas poverty grew by 41%!

We will keep working. 

Dallasites will hear from our mayor soon. 

We will keep battling poverty with a new fierceness.

James Baldwin on "Poster Children" outcomes

Krys Boyd, host of the KERA radio jewel, THINK, interviewed me earlier this week.  We talked about poverty and my assignment as chair of Mayor Mike Rawlings' new "Task Force on Poverty."  During the course of the interview, she asked me about the poor who battle through and "make it" to a better life.  I acknowledged that a very few do manage to find better lives on their own.  I call them poverty's "poster children."  The whole discussion reminded me of what James Baldwin once said about the idea.  He was quoted  in an Atlantic Monthly essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  

Here's what Baldwin said:

The people, however, who believe that this democratic anguish has some consoling value are always pointing out that So-and-So, white, and So-and-So, black, rose from the slums into the big time. The existence -- the public existence -- of, say, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. proves to them that America is still the land of opportunity and that inequalities vanish before the determined will. It proves nothing of the sort. The determined will is rare -- at the moment, in this country, it is unspeakably rare -- and the inequalities suffered by the many are in no way justified by the rise of a few.

A few have always risen -- in every country, every era, and in the teeth of regimes which can by no stretch of the imagination be thought of as free. Not all these people, it is worth remembering, left the world better than they found it. The determined will is rare, but it is not invariably benevolent. Furthermore, the American equation of success with the big time reveals an awful disrespect for human life and human achievement. This equation has placed our cities among the most dangerous in the world and has placed our youth among the most empty and most bewildered. The situation of our youth is not mysterious. Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. They must, they have no other models. That is exactly what our children are doing. They are imitating our immortality, our disrespect for the pain of others.

Asset Poverty: "One Crisis Away"

COMMUNITIES FOUNDATION OF TEXAS & KERA PRESENT 

‘ONE CRISIS AWAY’

On February 27 @ 7pm KERA’s Krys Boyd Moderates Free Public Forum
on Asset Poverty in North Texas at Dallas City Performance Hall 

DALLAS/FORT WORTH – Imagine being so close to the financial edge that a single life event could push you and your family over. According to a study by the Corporation for Enterprise Development, 29 percent of North Texans are classified as "asset-poor" – meaning they don’t have sufficient assets to live for three months at the federal poverty level if they lose their income. KERA, the North Texas public broadcasting station, and Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) present One Crisis Away, a free public forum discussing asset poverty in North Texas at Dallas City Performance Hall on Thursday, February 27 at 7 p.m.

The free public forum is the culmination of the ongoing One Crisis Away news series launched by KERA News in November 2013, following four families bravely telling their stories of living on the financial edge. The news series includes radio and video stories; conversations on KERA FM’s Think; and a television program of the public forum scheduled to broadcast Thursday, March 27 at 7 p.m. on KERA TV.

“KERA partnered with Communities Foundation of Texas to build awareness around the growing issue of asset poverty,” said KERA President and CEO Mary Anne Alhadeff. “Almost one-third of all North Texans are a step away from financial ruin, which means it could be your friends, neighbors or family members. Or, it could be you. One Crisis Away explores what living with ‘asset poverty’ means and elevates public dialogue about this increasing reality.”

Moderated by KERA’s Krys Boyd, the One Crisis Away event will feature an in-depth discussion on asset poverty with three leading experts: Andrea Levere, president, Corporation for Enterprise Development; Alfreda Norman, vice president and community development officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; and Larry James, president & CEO, CitySquare. Join the discussion by submitting questions for the panelists on Twitter @keranews using the hashtag #onecrisisaway.

“Asset poverty extends far beyond those living below the federal poverty line,” says Alfreda Norman, vice president and community development officer of Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “One-third of those households that earn $45,655 to $70,000 annually is asset poor or has less than three months of savings, and one in five of those that earn $70,015 to $107,000 could not weather a job loss without falling into poverty.”

"These stories of local families bring the data to life. They give a startling revelation of how many of us are in or very close to serious financial trouble," says Brent Christopher, president and CEO of Communities Foundation of Texas. “We applaud KERA for creating programming that educates and empowers families in our community with the skills to sustain themselves through a crisis if or when the time comes.”

The One Crisis Away forum will begin promptly at 7 p.m. at Dallas City Performance Hall. The event is free but seating is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 6:15 p.m., so arrive early for best seats. To attend the One Crisis Away free public forum, please RSVP by Tuesday, February 25.

KERA’s One Crisis Away project is funded in part by Communities Foundation of Texas, Allstate Foundation, Dallas Women's Foundation, The Fort Worth Foundation, Thomson Family Foundation, and United Way of Metropolitan Dallas.

Last chance to lend a hand to our neighbors in 2013! Help us reach our goal!

Check in on our year-end fund drive right here!

We've one more day to break through our $1MM goal from November 1 to December 31!

Gifts of all sizes are gladly accepted and desperately needed!

Join our effort today!

Authentic faith

A Difficult Truth I am a shepherd who, with his people, has begun to learn a beautiful and difficult truth: our Christian faith requires that we submerge ourselves in this world. The world that the church must serve is the world of the poor, and the poor are the ones who decide what it means for the church to really live in the world. Archbishop Oscar Romero Add your thoughts at inward/outward

Chance and grace

Nicholas Kristof asks "where is the love" in his recent opinion piece in The New York Times.  He raises a needed challenge to us all as 2013 runs its tough course:

John Rawls, the brilliant 20th-century philosopher, argued for a society that seems fair if we consider it from behind a “veil of ignorance” — meaning we don’t know whether we’ll be born to an investment banker or a teenage mom, in a leafy suburb or a gang-ridden inner city, healthy or disabled, smart or struggling, privileged or disadvantaged. That’s a shrewd analytical tool — and who among us would argue for food stamp cuts if we thought we might be among the hungry children?

 

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, let’s remember that the difference between being surrounded by a loving family or being homeless on the street is determined not just by our own level of virtue or self-discipline, but also by an inextricable mix of luck, biography, brain chemistry and genetics.

 

For those who are well-off, it may be easier to castigate the irresponsibility of the poor than to recognize that success in life is a reflection not only of enterprise and willpower, but also of random chance and early upbringing.

 

Invest your time wisely, read on here!

Amazing, interactive map

If you are interested in analyzing the poverty/income data for any zip code in the Untied States, look here.

What you'll find is an amazing, interactive map with the data buried just beneath your cursor!

An interview with Steve Blow

Yesterday, Dallas Morning News columnist, Steve Blow published comments on a conversation that he and I enjoyed last Tuesday.

 The subject:  income inequality and "the poor" in general.

Read it here!

An under-appreciated reality crushing our neighbors

In a ranking of the median wealth of its citizens, the United States comes in 27th in the world. Fifteen countries have a median worth of their citizens more than double that of the United States. The median wealth of a United States citizen is only $38,786. These numbers point up the growing challenge of basic household asset poverty. The long recognized measures of extreme poverty remain much lower, but the impact of these numbers from our neighbors just up the economic rung unsettle anyone who is paying attention to the state of our society.

Low wage realities. . .

[Many of us don't understand the plight of the working poor in the United States today.  The fact is most of us work.  And, most poor people work.  As a result, millions of our neighbors don't earn enough to provide even the basics for themselves and their families.  We face this harsh reality every day here at CitySquare.  When I saw the following clip from Bill Moyers, it connected for me.  The fact is our national programs that assist the working poor turn out to be wonderful investments in our people.  And, take it from me, far too many of our people need the hand up.  Watch the program and let me know what you think.]

Cash First!

Randy Mayeux sent an interesting essay from Slate.com my way recently.  In it Matthew Yglesias argues that  the best way to really assist the world's poor is to provide direct cash transfers to them.

I find Yglesias' analysis fascinating and, in may ways, counter intuitive to much thinking in the nation today.

In much the same way that "housing first" provides a super-charged solution to homelessness, the idea of "cash first" offers up life, incentive and initiative for recipients.  Take a look at the article here.

50 Million of us are poor by definition!

The number of Americans living in poverty has spiked to levels not seen since the mid-1960s, classing 20 per cent of the country’s children as poor.

It comes at a time when government spending cuts of $85 billion have kicked in after feuding Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a better plan for addressing the national deficit.

The cuts will directly affect 50 million Americans living below the poverty income line and reduce their chances of finding work and a better life.

To read the entire report click here.

What people are saying about "The Wealth of the Poor"

I'm back from vacation and finished your wonderful book. . . . To me your book was all about taking risks, especially taking the risk of really getting to know people as individuals and uniting with them as neighbors.  I also loved how you took risks - like being honest that what you need most is financial support versus well-intentioned gifts of volunteerism that don't involve true personal investment. . . . I love how you say, again and again, that we are really all the same and that it is the simple things that people often need the most like the freedom of privacy. My favorite part of the book was Principle 5 and I agree completely with you!  Some times you just have to hold hands and jump.  And of course I completely agree with you that it is time to move beyond the concept of charity.

Michelle Corson, CEO

Champion Impact Capital

_____________________________________

Your book is already as dogeared as a college freshman recycled textbook. The wisdom, insight, humility, and acknowledgement that we all need to remain both student and teacher, is highly respected and deeply appreciated. 

Michael Samuelson

The Health and Wellness Alliance for Children

_______________________________________

If you haven't got a copy of Larry's book, you need to!  

Dr. Bob Biard

Texas A & M Adjunct Professor

________________________________________

This book should be read by anyone interested in urban ministry in America today.

 Dr. Jerry Jones

_______________________________________

 

It is a good read--I learned a great deal about your early efforts that I didn't know.

John McStay

Dallas business leader

_______________________________________

 

Simply put, this is the best, most readable, and most powerful book on the social implications of the Christian religion that I have read.

Richard T. Hughes

Distinguished Professor of Religion at Messiah College

Director of the Sider Institute for Anabaptist, Pietist, and Wesleyan Studies

_______________________________________

 

Larry James is an inspiration to my life.  Each time he speaks, I learn something.  May God use this book to do for many what Larry has done for me:  to remind us of the value of every single human being.

Max Lucado

Bestselling author

_______________________________________

Thank you for sending me your book--a testimony in the most profound sense. You lived and wrote in the open, which opened up space for others to find their own way. I love your idea of a business card with an asterisk. And I love that the credo of CitySquare on the next to the last page could be true.

I would have left out a lot of the running argument with the parts of the church that still want to ask about evangelism. And there was more bible than needed. I looked for your honest statement once that you said "I believe more and more in less and less." The church--at least the part of it that has a heartbeat--is emerging there, I think. So I argue less and less with the old church, hanging with people who believe deeply, but simply. So I wonder if you, like me, are still waiting for the moment to write an honest theology.

Your book does make me long for time together.

In the meantime, you'll see the book sales leap by at least a dozen or more copies as I recommend it. 

 

You've done a good thing.

Gary Gunderson

VP Faith and Health Ministries

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

____________________________________

Call today, toll free  1-877-816-4455 to order your copy of The Wealth of the Poor:  How Valuing Every Neighbor Restores Hope in Our Cities by Larry M. James.

 

Spent: play the game

CitySquare team members worked with well over 50,000 different people during 2012.

The vast majority of these neighbors are not homeless.  Rather, they are people who work, but who don't earn enough to make ends meet, or they are children, disabled and/or elderly.

The challenges facing these individuals and families define our work and our mission.

During 2013, we've set an audacious goal for ourselves:  to move at least one person onto the road out of poverty or to see a person move above the poverty line every day during the year.  For a family of four success will mean the ability to earn more than $23,050 annually or $1,921 per month.  For a single individual the goal is to earn more than $11,170 a year or $931 monthly.

The benchmark of success for us is objective.  Still, there are a couple of matters that we must keep in mind as we venture out into the new year.

First, earning $1 above the dividing line doesn't really mean that a person is not facing the challenges of poverty any longer!  But $1 above the line is real progress for a family currently earning less than $20,000 per year, which is true of a sizable portion of the inner city population in Dallas.

Second, we must work hard to capture the stories and the data necessary to document success in our rather ambitious goal:  1 person every day above the poverty line during 2013.  But, we are willing to do the work to document the progress and to evaluate our effectiveness.

Most of us have no understanding of the day-to-day realities that poverty delivers to thousands and thousands of our neighbors in a city like Dallas.

To get a sense of the difficulty factor try playing a game of "SPENT" by clicking here.

Christmas, again

Thursday, I sat down on

The Porch

Where I meet up with real guys,

Men who've lost all of 

What they once had;  for a

Few that meant a lot, for 

Most there never was much to lose.

I'm learning the

Street

Is all about loss--

Lost families,

Lost children,

Lost health,

Lost hope,

Dreams shot to hell and back over

Stupid stuff and some tragedies.

Thursday, I sat down on 

The Porch,

Billy's porch,

Where I met up with real guys, we drank

Coffee together; and

I expect we lied about our lives;

Not a few made 

Fun of money and efforts to help. 

Some, 

Covered in pre-Christmas 

Depression could 

Hardly talk without a 

Tear trickling down, deep down in the

Voice.

Merry 

Christmas, again,

Out here. 

Ain't got no home. . .

Over the past two decades, I've met so many men who could sing this song!

Back to the 60s

Last week the following grim report put the spotlight on what we've known for a decade here at CitySquare.  Namely, poverty has been on a steady rise since the early 2000s.  The numbers explain our dramatic increase in persons seeking us out for assistance.  We can do better than this, can't we?

 

US poverty on track to rise to highest since 1960s

HOPE YEN | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.

"I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.

Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz's college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training.

Now she's living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can't find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don't know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.

In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz's case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.

"The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.

He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs.

"I'm reluctant to say that we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon," Edelman said.

Stacey Mazer of the National Association of State Budget Officers said states will be watching for poverty increases when figures are released in September as they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states generally assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will hesitate if the findings show otherwise. "It's a constant tension in the budget," she said.

The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.

The analysts' estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 6, were poor last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began calculating poverty figures.

Poverty is closely tied to joblessness. While the unemployment rate improved from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population ratio remained largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers simply stopped looking for work. Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty, also grew.

Demographers also say:

—Poverty will remain above the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels — 15 percent to 16 percent — will last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent and weak wage growth.

—Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will increase again in 2011.
—Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in 2010, will rise to a new high.
—Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels, buoyed by Social Security cash payments.
—Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.

Analysts also believe that the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent.

"I've always been the guy who could find a job. Now I'm not," said Dale Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters Union forklift operator and convention hand who lives outside Las Vegas in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks highest in the nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid increase in poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.

Szymanski, who moved from Wisconsin in 2000, said he used to make a decent living of more than $40,000 a year but now doesn't work enough hours to qualify for union health care. He changed apartments several months ago and sold his aging 2001 Chrysler Sebring in April to pay expenses.
"You keep thinking it's going to turn around. But I'm stuck," he said.

The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack Obama's stimulus package.

An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the social safety net has worked and it is now time to cut back. He worries that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify additional spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

A new census measure accounts for noncash aid, but that supplemental poverty figure isn't expected to be released until after the November election. Since that measure is relatively new, the official rate remains the best gauge of year-to-year changes in poverty dating back to 1959.

Few people advocate cuts in anti-poverty programs. Roughly 79 percent of Americans think the gap between rich and poor has grown in the past two decades, according to a Public Religion Research Institute/RNS Religion News survey from November 2011. The same poll found that about 67 percent oppose "cutting federal funding for social programs that help the poor" to help reduce the budget deficit.

Outside of Medicaid, federal spending on major low-income assistance programs such as food stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been mostly flat at roughly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975 to the 1990s. Spending spiked higher to 2.3 percent of GDP after Obama's stimulus program in 2009 temporarily expanded unemployment insurance and tax credits for the poor.

The U.S. safety net may soon offer little comfort to people such as Jose Gorrin, 52, who lives in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens. Arriving from Cuba in 1980, he was able to earn a decent living as a plumber for years, providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour in 2007 and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the occasional odd job.

His unemployment aid has run out, and he's too young to draw Social Security.

Holding a paper bag of still-warm bread he'd just bought for lunch, Gorrin said he hasn't decided whom he'll vote for in November, expressing little confidence the presidential candidates can solve the nation's economic problems. "They all promise to help when they're candidates," Gorrin said, adding, "I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don't know where else I can go."
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Associated Press writers Kristen Wyatt in Lakewood, Colo., Ken Ritter and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas, Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami and AP Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.