Dallas, Texas: Poverty "snap shot"

The myth of welfare's survival

What Happens When Welfare Disappears

By Oscar Perry Abello | September 9, 2015

 

(Photo by Ildar Sagdejev)

“They don’t give that out anymore.”

“I don’t know anybody who gets it.”

“They told me to come back next year.”

“What’s that?”

These are just some of the things families said to Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer when they asked about Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), the U.S. federal government’s cash assistance welfare program.

Edin and Shaefer are the authors of $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, released last week. The book takes a long, hard look at what happens to the people and families left behind when welfare disappears.

They studied 18 families, and featured eight in the book. The stories put a human face on trends Edin and Shaefer found in U.S. Census Bureau data, which showed roughly 1.5 million households (with around three million children) were surviving on cash incomes of less than $2 per person, per day, in any given month.

Read more. 

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings offers his thoughts regarding the challenges facing the city related to the dramatic growth of poverty and the work of his "Task Force on Poverty." 

Clearly, there is much work to be done to recover and sustain opportunity for our weakest neighbors. 

The Line

If you are concerned about poverty in the U. S. and/or if you work to overcome the devastating consequences of poverty on men, women and children, this is a video resource that you need to see and be able to use.  Available on October 2, 2012!

Poverty--understanding scale

The following appeared in Blacklisted News.  Lots to think about here!

100 Million Poor People In America And 39 Other Facts About Poverty That Will Blow Your Mind
July 25, 2012

Source: Michael Snyder, BLN Contributing Writer

Every single day more Americans fall into poverty. This should deeply alarm you no matter what political party you belong to and no matter what your personal economic philosophy is. Right now, approximately 100 million Americans are either “poor” or “near poor.”  For a lot of people “poverty” can be a nebulous concept, so let’s define it. 

The poverty level as defined by the federal government in 2010 was $11,139 for an individual and $22,314 for a family of four. Could you take care of a family of four on less than $2000 a month? Millions upon millions of families are experiencing a tremendous amount of pain in this economy, and no matter what “solutions” we think are correct, the reality is that we all should have compassion on them. Sadly, things are about to get even worse. . . .

The following are 40 facts about poverty in America that will blow your mind….

#1 In the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.

#2 It is being projected that when the final numbers come out later this year that the U.S. poverty rate will be the highest that it has been in almost 50 years.

#3 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

#4 Today, one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the poverty level.

#5 According to the Wall Street Journal, 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial benefits from the government. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

#6 It is projected that about half of all American adults will spend at least some time living below the poverty line before they turn 65.

#7 Today, there are approximately 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

#8 During 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.

#9 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of “very poor” rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.

#10 Since Barack Obama became president, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by 6 million and the number of Americans on food stamps has risen by 14 million.

#11 Right now, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#12 It is projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18 years of age.

#13 The poverty rate for children living in the United States is 22 percent, although when the new numbers are released in the fall that number is expected to go even higher.

#14 One university study estimates that child poverty costs the U.S. economy 500 billion dollars a year.

#15 Households that are led by a single mother have a 31.6% poverty rate.

Continue reading here.

AmericanPoverty.org

Click here to contect to a powerful, revealing and prophetic photo journalism site that focuses on poverty in the United States.

Will we wake up?

U. S. poverty on rise

Those of us who work daily alongside and among low-income Americans hate to hear news like this. It is crucial that we respond as a nation to this sort of pain and suffering. Forty-six million of our neighbors live in poverty. But, notice how even a report on the growth of poverty ends up reporting on the U. S. stock market. The folks with whom we deal daily live no where near the market. Mainstream media typically ignores the poor and the real difficulties created by the growth of domestic poverty.