Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor

A Short Story by John Cheever
December 1949


Christmas is a sad season. The phrase came to Charlie an instant after the alarm clock had waked him, and named for him an amorphous depression that had troubled him all the previous evening. The sky outside his window was black. He sat up in bed and pulled the light chain that hung in front of his nose. Christmas is a very sad day of the year, he thought. Of all the millions of people in New York, I am practically the only one who has to get up in the cold black of 6 a.m. on Christmas Day in the morning; I am practically the only one.

He dressed, and when he went downstairs from the top floor of the rooming house in which he lived, the only sounds he heard were the coarse sounds of sleep; the only lights burning were lights that had been forgotten. Charlie ate some breakfast in an all-night lunchwagon and took an Elevated train uptown. From Third Avenue, he walked over to Park. Park Avenue was dark. House after house put into the shine of the street lights a wall of black windows. Millions and millions were sleeping, and this general loss of consciousness generated an impression of abandonment, as if this were the fall of the city, the end of time. He opened the iron-and-glass doors of the apartment building where he had been working for six months as an elevator operator, and went through the elegant lobby to a locker room at the back. He put on a striped vest with brass buttons, a false ascot, a pair of pants with a light-blue stripe on the seam, and a coat. The night elevator man was dozing on the little bench in the car. Charlie woke him. The night elevator man told him thickly that the day doorman had been taken sick and wouldn’t be in that day. With the doorman sick, Charlie wouldn’t have any relief for lunch, and a lot of people would expect him to whistle for cabs.

Read it all here.

Anxiety About New Poverty Guidelines

Steve Liss's photo reveals the abject poverty of the most vulnerable Americans. 

Though difficult to measure, poverty debilitates and robs people of a sense of value. How will the poor fare under new policies that are coming?

The Trump administration has been exploring alternative inflation measures to deal with the problem of poverty. Under a better measure of inflation, the poverty level would grow slightly less each year.

Writing here, Senator. Bob Casey and Indivar Dutta-Gupta point out:

The National Center on Children in Poverty created the Family Resource Simulator to illustrate the impact of work supports, including income tax credits and child care assistance, offering a more complete picture of how family resources change as earnings increase. NCCP suggests families typically need nearly twice as much as the official poverty level to make ends meet thanks to factors like rent and utilities, child care, health insurance premiums, out-of-pocket medical expenses, transportation, debt and payroll taxes. The Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budgets, MIT’s Living Wage Calculator and the University of Washington’s Self-Sufficiency Standards all came to similar conclusions.
Simply put, the common, necessary expense categories not fully accounted for in the official poverty measure means the costs we all face are substantially higher than what it implies.

The US Census Bureau dropped its annual load of statistics on American poverty and the data shows Americans were no better off in 2018 than they were in 2017. 2.3 million more people snagged full-time jobs and the official poverty rate fell half a percentage point. However, fewer people have health insurance, there is still not parity between men and women's earnings, and middle-class incomes hardly budged.

During President Donald Trump’s second year in office, income from safety net programs such as food stamps and housing subsidies kept 47.7 million people out of poverty. That’s 2.8 million more people compared to 2017.

Whatever policy and guideline changes come, poverty will continue to haunt many Americans, especially the most vulnerable. Relying on the government does not dispel anxiety. More service organizations, churches, synagogues and mosques should consider should identify the poor in their communities and befriend them in a way that restores dignity. As Mother Teresa advised, "Do not wait for leaders; Do it alone, person to person."


Related reading: Paid Parental Leave for Federal Workers; A Cynical Way To Make People Poor; A Cynical Way to Make People Disappear; US Government 2019 Poverty Guidelines

Motivation to Serve the Poor

The December topic at Ethics Forum is poverty and serving the poor, for as it is said, "Tis the season of giving."

During the holiday season we are asked to donate to charities and many good causes. On "Giving Tuesday" we are solicited online. The Media reports on projects to feed the hungry and clothe the homeless. Charles Dickens' novella "A Christmas Carol" appears in various renditions on television to remind us not to be greedy and to take care of the less fortunate.

Sadly, the focus on caring for the poor is rarely sustained beyond December. Perhaps this is why Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you." (Matthew 26:11)

Helping others requires motivation beyond the cheery mood of the holidays. It needs to be profitable in some way to the giver. What profits you depends on what you value.

In monastic communities that are called to serve the poor the reward is knowing the community's mission is being fulfilled. In corporate environments with charitable foundations a similar reward can be felt. However, most of us do not live in monastic communities, nor are we in the position to endow through charitable foundations. Many of us live on the edge of survival ourselves and sharing with others can be a true sacrifice.

Sacrificial giving can be a reward to those who recognize the value of sacrifice. Those who do not recognize the value of sacrifice usually defer to government agencies to take care of the poor. That is the attitude of Mr. Scrooge who was approached by the charity collectors.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"

"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.

Later, the Spirit of Christmas Present mocks Scrooge's insensitivity by hurling his own words back at him. That is part of Scrooge's transformation. Sometimes we need a mirror held up before us to reveal our true selves. May December show us what we need to be more caring toward our fellow human beings.

Related reading: Serving the World's Poor, Profitably; Will Selling to the Poor Pay Off?; Learning From a True Leader

Galway's Baby Burial Grounds

The ancient custom in Ireland was to bury unbaptised children, strangers, suicides and criminals in mass graves. Here is a map of all of the “children’s burial grounds” in Galway, taken from a National Monuments Service interactive map.

Michael Cook

The Catholic Church in Ireland and its ferocious nuns are being pilloried over yet another tranche of decades-old crimes. “Galway Historian Finds 800 Babies in Septic Tank Grave” is the headline in the Boston Globe. As the story snowballs don’t be surprised if you read about “the killing fields of Ireland”.

The remains were found on the site of a home for unmarried mothers and their children run by the Bon Secours Sisters between 1925 and 1961 in Tuam, County Galway. Sketchy accounts which are appearing in the media evoke images of murdered children and secret burials. Guardian columnist Emer O’Toole wrote in an incandescent fury: “Do not say Catholic prayers over these dead children. Don't insult those who were in life despised and abused by you. Instead, tell us where the rest of the bodies are.” A Government Senator from Galway, Fine Gael’s Hildegarde Naughton, has called what happened “manslaughter”.

But the fires of indignation burn hottest and highest when they are uncontaminated by facts. Before politicians and columnists launch into their well-rehearsed litanies denouncing sadistic nuns and misogynist clerics, it might be wise to scout whether there are enough facts to justify the scaremongering.

Read the real story behind Ireland's mass graves here.

Harvesting Organs from the Poor

Organ trafficking and illicit transplant surgeries have infiltrated global medical practice. But despite the evidence of widespread criminal networks and several limited prosecutions in countries including India, Kosovo, Turkey, Israel, South Africa and the US, it is still not treated with the seriousness it demands.

Since the first report into the matter in 1990, there has been an alarming number of post-operative deaths of “transplant tour” recipients from botched surgeries, mismatched organs and high rates of fatal infections, including HIV and Hepatitis C contracted from sellers' organs. Living kidney sellers suffer from post-operative infections, weakness, depression, and some die from suicide, wasting, and kidney failure. Organs Watch documented five deaths among 38 kidney sellers recruited from small villages in Moldova.

Distressing stories lurk in the murky background of today’s business of commercialised organ transplantation, conducted in a competitive global field that involves some 50 nations. The World Health Organisation estimates 10,000 black market operations happen each year.

Read it all here.


Related reading:  Organ Harvesting in Belgium; China Crackdown on Organ Trafficking; Costa Rican Organ Trafficking

HGTV Racist Statement

Last night House Hunters International (HGTV) aired a show about an American couple from Washington DC who moved to Zimbabwe. The HGTV narrator said something very racist like "imagine having a higher standard of living (more living space for the dollar) in Africa than in the US."

It is a fact that the average African has a higher standard of living than the average person living in most parts of India. Yet when HGTV airs shows about couples who move to Mombai, India, there is no such attitude expressed.

More people live in poverty in eight Indian states than in the 26 poorest African countries, according to the UN-backed Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which  looks beyond income at a wider range of household-level deprivation, including services.

The study found that half of the world's MPI poor people live in South Asia, and just over a quarter in Africa.

There are 421 million MPI poor people in eight Indian states alone Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and 410 million in the 26 poorest African countries combined.

Read more here.

US Wants Gaddafi's Assets to Aid Libyans

The Obama administration wants to use some of the billions of dollars in frozen assets belonging to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and his government to provide humanitarian and other assistance to the Libyans affected by the country's ongoing civil war, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.

The move, announced at a high-level meeting in Rome on how to shore up Libya's rebels, appeared to be the first time a country has sought to tap some of the massive Libyan wealth blocked by U.N. sanctions in February.

For more information, go here.

More Americans Poor but still Honest

More Americans are poor, but fewer of them are suffering the effects of crime, an intriguing fact for social scientists.

The US Census Bureau reported this week that the poverty rate (the US has had an official measure since 1960) hit 14.3 per cent last year. That represents 4.8 million more people who fell below the threshold based on $22,000 annual income for a family of four. Among working Americans the rate was also the highest it has been -- 12.9 per cent -- since 1965, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

There is no mystery about that, of course; the recession and job loss would account for it. In fact, some economists say that the climbing unemployment rate should have produced even higher poverty figures.

The real mystery -- given the long assumed link between poverty and crime -- is that both violent crime and property crime continued to drop last year. (As we noted recently, child abuse has also, counter-intuitively, declined.) The FBI reports that it was the third straight year of falling crime rates in a row. Even with California unemployment higher than 12 percent, car thefts declined in Los Angeles by 20 percent last year over 2008.

At the least, the trends show that America, for all its Hollywood violence fantasies and its occasional mass murders, remains at heart an orderly republic, where police, judicial jurisdictions, and even vigilant neighbors keep a reasonable check on society's darker inclinations – even when the society itself is strained.

Explanations for the trend include “smarter policing” in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, and high incarceration rates, which together have targeted specific lawbreakers and high crime areas; government safety nets; less mobility among Americans and so more stable communities. With more people out of work and at home they can keep a better eye on their property -- and on the young people.

Perhaps, too, there is something about a general recession that teaches us that decent people can be poor, and poor people can be decent.

From here.

Big Pharma and Human Guinea Pigs

Roberto Abadie has just published The Professional Guinea Pig: Big Pharma and the Risky World of Human Subjects. It is a startling look into a dark American underworld where people risk their health and their lives by participating in clinical drug trials for easy cash. We interviewed him about his findings.


BioEdge: Not long ago I was in Boston and I noticed gigantic advertisements in the subway stations for human guinea pigs. How many are there in the US? Can you actually support yourself by enrolling in clinical trials?

Abadie: We don't know exactly how many professional healthy paid subjects there are in the US because there is no centralized registry. But every year hundreds of new investigational drugs are tested involving thousands of paid subjects.

There are basically two groups of subjects. One is the group I focused on my study -- healthy research subjects who make a living by testing drug safety in Phase I trials. Phases II and III test both drug safety and efficacy. They usually involve patients who have the condition the drug is supposed to address. If it's a cancer drug, it would be cancer patients, for HIV, HIV positive patients and so on.

For comparative purposes, I also studied a group of HIV patients testing different drugs or drug regimes in Philadelphia. While money was important for them, they volunteered to gain knowledge about disease, track the virus load and take and active participation in their treatment. These trials can last for years and they involve visits every month or so. For every visit patients would receive a bus token or two and around $30. I recently learned that at other research sites poor patients seem to do more than one at a time or one after the other to maximize financial gain.

This is a disturbing fact because these patients are very sick and vulnerable and serial participation in trials might expose them to serious, life-threatening risk.
 
Read it all here.

Kenyan Children Suffering Needlessly

Kenyan children in acute and chronic pain suffer needlessly because of government policies that restrict access to inexpensive pain medicines, a lack of investment in palliative care services, and inadequately trained health workers, according to the lobby group Human Rights Watch.

In a recent report it claims that most Kenyan children with diseases such as cancer or HIV/AIDS are unable to get palliative care or pain medicines. Health care workers lack training in pain treatment and palliative care, and even when strong pain medicines are available, they are often reluctant to give these medicines to children.

The World Health Organization considers oral morphine an essential medicine for treating chronic pain, as does Kenya's own drug policy. A daily dose can cost as little as a few cents. Yet, the Kenyan government does not purchase oral morphine for public health facilities as it does other essential medicines. As a result, oral morphine is available in just seven of the country's 250 public hospitals.

"The Kenyan government, and donors, should be working to improve pain treatment for everyone," says Juliane Kippenberg, of HRW. "And they should make sure that the youngest and most vulnerable sufferers, sick children, are not left out. They should not be suffering needlessly." ~ Human Rights Watch, September 9

Is President Obama a Muslim, a Socialist or Confused?

Time Magazine reports that 24% of Americans believe that the current occupant of the Oval Office is a Muslim. The White House felt it necessary to defend the President, saying that "President Barack Obama is a Christian who prays daily as it looked to tamp down growing doubts among Americans about the president's religion."

White House spokesman Bill Burton added, 'The president is obviously a Christian. He prays everyday.'"

So do Muslims, Bill.

H/T: Rick Lobs Blog and there's a good discussion on this at Midwest Conservative Journal.

From all that I've seen and read it appears that the President is conflicted.  It is more likely that he is a socialist sympathetic to Islam for emotional reasons. Traditional Islam is not sympathetic to socialism, however.  The poor are cared for through the distribution of alms handled by clerics and Islamic charities, not through tax-payer funded government agencies.

Poverty Worse in India than in Africa

LONDON: More people are mired in poverty in eight Indian states than in the 26 poorest African countries, according to a new UN-backed measure of poverty out Tuesday.

The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) looks beyond income at a wider range of household-level deprivation, including services, which could then be used to help target development resources.

Its findings throw up stark statistics compared to regular poverty measures.

The study found that half of the world's MPI poor people live in South Asia, and just over a quarter in Africa.

There are 421 million MPI poor people in eight Indian states alone Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and 410 million in the 26 poorest African countries combined.

The researchers said that the extent of poverty in India had often been overlooked, by figures comparing percentages of poor people in countries as a whole rather than sheer numbers.

According to the index, 64.5 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa are MPI poor. In South Asia, 55 percent of people are MPI poor. Both figures are higher than the number considered extreme income poor living on less than 1.25 dollars per day.

The new index was created by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University in southern England, and the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme.

“Our measure identifies the most vulnerable households and groups and enables us to understand exactly which deprivations afflict their lives,” said OPHI director Sabina Alkire.

“The new measure can help governments and development agencies wishing to target aid more effectively to those specific communities.”The MPI will be used in the forthcoming 20th anniversary edition of the UNDP Human Development Report. It supplants the Human Poverty Index, which has been used since 1997.

The index takes into account that people living in MPI poverty may not necessarily be income poor: only two-thirds of Niger's people are income poor, whereas 93 percent are poor by the MPI, it found.

It also showed that “multi-dimensional poverty” varies a lot within countries. In Delhi, 15 percent of people are MPI poor, compared to 81 percent in the northeastern Indian state of Bihar. – AFP

Haiti: A Failed State

Harvard professor Robert I. Rotberg is the director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution at Harvard University and president of the World Peace Foundation. He is an expert on failed states and on Haiti. He spoke to MercatorNet about the aftermath of the disastrous earthquake in Haiti.

MercatorNet: You literally wrote the book about "failed states". Is Haiti, with its weak government, poverty and corruption a failed state?

Rotberg: Yes, the internal conflict of this century tipped Haiti from endemically weak (on my scale) to failed. It produced before the earthquake almost no political goods for its citizens. Plus it was rife with corruption and conflict. Now the earthquake tragedy has plunged a failed state toward the classification of collapsed.

MercatorNet: Do you ever wonder whether the independent nation-state model will persist through the 21st Century for nations like Haiti?

Rotberg: We often wonder about and, indeed, my colleagues and I routinely suggest Haiti and similar places for “tutelage” – a type of UN trusteeship. Haiti badly needs to be guided by outsiders now because its own security forces and bureaucracy are weak if not non-existent.

MercatorNet: Why is Haiti so poor and so incapable of keeping pace with its Caribbean neighbours? Does it have to do with its history as a nation of emancipated slaves?

Rotberg: When Haiti became independent in 1804 it was isolated by the world because it had overthrown slavery. Throughout the next 100 years or so Haiti had a succession of corrupt and cruel governments. Indeed, Haiti has never known good governance. That is the problem, and one explanation for its intense poverty. My 1971 book, Haiti: The Politics of Squalor, explains why and gives details.


Read it all here.

Aristotle and Poverty

"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime." - Aristotle

Poverty is relative, is it not? When the average American complains of being "poor" it is difficult to feel sympathic. Here poverty likely means that he or she can't afford the latest technological device or designer clothes. Or it may mean he or she is deeply in debt. Rarely would such a statement be taken to refer to poverty in the things of God.

Aristotle was a great observer. Surely he observed that many who are poor remain decent citizens. Most do not revolt and do not commit crimes. Indeed many who are poor in the things of this world are rich in the things of God. In our society we make too little of this fact.

Charity Turns to Tragedy

KARACHI, Sept 14: An act of charity turned into a tragedy near Karachi’s Khori Garden on Monday when a stampede caused the death of 20 women and girls who had thronged an outlet where a wholesaler was giving out food items for free. Fifteen people were injured.

Jodia Bazaar, the city’s biggest wholesale market, saw heart-rending scenes of poor families retrieving bodies instead of sacks after organisers of the free distribution were overwhelmed by the needy multitudes. “Tokens for free ration were being given away by the distributor at the rooftop of the rice dealer’s three-storey outlet while a 10-kg sack of rice was being handed to women from a nearby ground floor warehouse,” an eyewitness said.

The Kharadar police said that the rice dealer, Chaudhry Mohammed Iftikhar, a resident of the Defence Housing Authority, had been arrested and booked for “negligence and unintentional killing” of the women.

A woman whose seven-year-daughter was injured in the incident told Dawn that the stampede began at around 2.30 pm after the rice dealer left his office due to the unmanageable crowd, saying he would distribute tokens after Iftar. An injured woman said panic set in when a group of women tried to elbow others out of the way. This prompted a baton-charge by the trader’s employees, leaving a number of women on the ground. A stampede followed and in no time wails and moans rent the atmosphere.

The Capital City Police Officer, Waseem Ahmed, said that 18 people were killed in the incident. “Fifteen of them have been identified,” he added. The bodies and the injured were shifted to the Civil Hospital. Dr Hamid Padhiyar, a police surgeon, told Dawn that 14 bodies were brought to the mortuary and one of the injured women died at the hospital. “The bodies were handed over to the victims’ relatives after medico-legal formalities,” he added.

However, the hospital’s medico-legal sources said that three bodies were taken away from the hospital without completion of formalities while two were taken away by relatives from the scene of the tragedy.

For a list of the dead, go here. May God have mercy upon their souls.

Homeless Islamabad Christians Need Our Help!

Local doctors and experienced news correspondents are shocked by the appalling conditions being endured by some 2,000 Christians in downtown Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. Despite being only ten minutes from health centres, two people have died in the 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) heat, with many more in danger of dying from dehydration, infection or the cumulative effects of poverty.

How did they end up here? Approximately a year ago, around 214 Christian families were promised land in the Chak Shahzad district of Islamabad. The Capital Development Authority (CDA) of Islamabad arranged their move and told the families to set up tents there until possession had been finalised. Then three months ago the CDA changed their minds forcing the Christian families to live in the road amidst squalid conditions, where their only water supply runs all too close to an open pit latrine and a waste dump. There are up to 20 people sharing one tent, which only adds to the discomfort.

Our partners in Pakistan commented, “Since Christians are discriminated against by the majority population, nothing has been done to help them.”

Whilst the Pakistan authorities are still to act, Barnabas has been able to secure a way to provide practical aid to the families now. This aid will take the form of food items including rice, lentils, onions and cooking oil for each affected family, as well as buckets and water containers to reduce the risk of typhoid affecting the tightly packed camp.

For only £34.75 ($56.94 or €40.33) you can feed a whole family for a month. Five water containers each capable of carrying 20 litres, costs only £7.40 ($12.15 or €8.60). Any one of these items could be a lifesaver.

Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, International Director of Barnabas Fund says, “Here is a real opportunity to save lives. Our brothers and sisters in Islamabad are in dire need of material assistance to prevent disease ravaging their already stricken camp. Please be praying that we can raise the necessary funds quickly to meet this life-threatening need.”

To donate, see here.

1,800 Migrants Have Returned Home

More than 500 undocumented migrants in Morocco from several sub-Saharan African countries have benefited from voluntary return over the last 18 months under the auspices of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

The migrants, mostly young people from Congo Brazzaville, Ivory Coast, Guinea Conakry and the Democratic Republic of Congo, have requested aid from the IOM after having spent years isolated in Morocco without adequate resources.

According to IOM, upon their return, migrants will be granted funds to undertake income generating projects to earn a better living. The grants are received from Belgium, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands and Switzerland and will be disbursed by the Moroccan government in collaboration with migrant’s countries of origin.

"It is essential to provide support for sustainable reintegration of those migrants who opt for voluntary return," Stéphane Rostiaux, Head of IOM Mission in Morocco said. He said migrants returning home empty handed will be stigmatised in communities. At present, IOM assesses the impact of programmes in Congo Brazzaville, Guinea Conakry and Senegal to improve the help given to the reintegration of irregular migrants seeking to return voluntarily.

Since 2005, over 1,800 undocumented migrants from 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have benefited from the program of voluntary return. With new funding from the European Commission, Italy, Switzerland and United Kingdom, another 1,000 immigrants are eligible for aid for the return and reintegration in the next 12 months.

Read the report here.

Moses Baranuic: Snapshot of Virtue

Teenager Moses Baranuic, a Moldovan immigrant living in Boise Idaho, found and returned $10,000.

Moldova is probably the poorest nation in western Europe. To put this in perspective, Moldovans consider Romanians to be rich.

When asked about his ethical action, Baranuic cited his Christian faith.

This young man is a breath of fresh air! May God bless him and his family.

Addressing Chronic Poverty

Four years ago, the Chronic Poverty Research Centre published the Chronic Poverty Report 2004-05. This was the first major international development report to focus on the estimated 320 to 445 million people who live trapped in chronic poverty – people who will remain poor for much or all of their lives and whose children are likely to inherit their poverty. These chronically poor experience multiple deprivations, including hunger, under-nutrition, illiteracy, lack of access to safe drinking water and basic health services, social discrimination, physical insecurity and political exclusion. Many will die prematurely of easily preventable deaths.

If the first report examined the dimensions of the problem of chronic poverty, the Chronic Poverty Report 2008-09 looks at possible solutions. Through our research we identify five main traps that underpin chronic poverty – insecurity, limited citizenship, spatial disadvantage, social discrimination and poor work opportunities – and outline key policy responses to these.

We argue that the development of a ‘just social compact’ between citizens and states must be the focus for poverty eradication. Development actors can nurture such a compact through social protection, public services, effective anti-discrimination action, gender empowerment, economic growth and fiscal policy, and the management of migration and urbanisation processes.

To show the human face behind the statistics and policies, we intertwine the life stories of seven chronically poor people from across Asia and Africa into the report. The descriptions of the lives of Angel, Moses, Txab, Vuyiswa, Bakyt, and Maymana and Mofizul, help the reader to better appreciate the complex and varied causes of chronic poverty.

Most people in chronic poverty strive and work to improve their livelihoods, and to create a better future for their children, in difficult circumstances. They need real commitment matched by actions and resources, to support their efforts and overcome the obstacles that trap them in poverty.

We argue that tackling chronic poverty is the global priority of our time and that eradicating poverty by 2025 is a feasible goal – if national governments and international organisations are willing to make the necessary political commitments and resource allocations.

Read it all here.

Poverty in America

August 29th, 2008 by Dr. Amy K. Glasmeier

The annual release of federal statistics on poverty rates and the number of Americans without medical insurance occurs like clock work. Today’s release of the 2007 statistics highlights two short term developments: the poverty rate is essentially unchanged and the number of individuals without health care has modestly declined. At this particular moment, timing is everything. These statistics do not capture the last 12 months of economic turmoil felt by millions of Americans. The decline in the housing market and the rise in the price of oil are impacting America’s low wealth families in powerful ways. Statistics from the Center for American Progress, portend a dark near term future for America’s families:

Foreclosures are up: 1.2 million Number of foreclosure filings in 2006. This number is up 42 percent from 2005.

The percentage change in foreclosures is up: 700 Percentage increase in foreclosures from 2005 to 2006.

Sub prime loans are a large percentage of outstanding mortgages: 13: Percentage of outstanding mortgages accounted for by subprime loans.

Predatory loan practices impact as a large number of home owners of low and middle income.

20: Percentage of borrowers surveyed who face foreclosure due to predatory loan terms and multiple refinances.

All but ten metropolitan areas in the country experienced price decreases on recently sold homes.

While the housing crisis is looming in the background, the rapid rise in the price of oil is having an immediate impact on the budget of families regardless of income. From 2006-June of 2008, the proportion of American family disposable income spent on transportation-related fuel increased from two to four percent of income. In early March of this year, Senator Christopher Dodd held hearings on the impact of rising fuel prices on American families. Out of this discussion the following statistics emerge:

The U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates that this year, it will cost $1,962 to heat a home with oil, a 33% increase from last year and 117% increase since 2004. The cost of heating a home with natural gas has gone up 30% since 2004. The cost of heating with propane, which heats homes in many rural areas across the nation, has increased 23% in the last year and 73% since 2004.

Perhaps the biggest disconnect between the recently released statistics on poverty and current economic conditions is the recent rise in unemployment and the stagnation in family incomes.

Over the years of 2000-2006, median family income did not change appreciably. In 2006, median family income was two percent below 2000. During the same period, earnings for men declined 3 percent while women experienced a 2.3 percent decline in their incomes. According to the Center for American Progress, even with the reported increase of 1.7 percent in median household income from 2006 to 2007, incomes are still .6 percent below the level of 2000.

Underlying all of these statistics is the continuing pattern of uneven distribution in income, its distribution among our citizens, and the resulting lived experience of our children and the economically vulnerable of our nation. We are still a nation where large differences exist between members in our society and among geographic areas, both at a regional and a rural urban scale.

A few key statistics highlight this continuing differences. In non-metro areas, Real Median Household Income remains 25 percent below that of families in metro areas. Poverty rates for children rose over the last two years from 17.8 to 18 percent. Finally, ten states saw an increase in the number of citizens without insurance coverage. Most of these states are found in the South and many are rural in character.

Read it all here.