Poverty rate growing in state

[aoxamaxoa]

Does not seem to be up for discussion here.

When the subject is difficult for many here to recognize, there would be ten posters already by now if the rate were going down....

What are the reasons for this situation?
http://tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=070829_1_A1_spanc44663

Better yet, what are your suggestions for dealing with it?

[cannon_fodder]

Wow, that really is a rather large increase.  From 13.2 to 15.4%.   Oklahoma and other rural based states will always have higher poverty rates than larger states, simply because of the way the statistic is generated ($$$ goes a lot farther in rural Oklahoma).  However, to see that number rise is the real indicator that things are off.

I'm afraid I do not know what could account for this.  Oklahoma has one of the lowest unemployment rates, a booming oil and industrial sector, and the cities have seen solid white collar job growth in the last couple years.  The only thing that I can think of is that farm income was down last year when the drought battered rural Oklahoma.

Keep in mind that government subsidies are not counted when calculating poverty.  Food stamps, section 8, welfare, WIC, free child care, title 19, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, tax credits (handouts) and FARM SUBSIDIES do not count as income (meaning that while XYZ % of the population's earnings is below the poverty line, they are likely living off of a higher actual income).  I know last year was bad enough that farm subsidies kicked in for most Oklahoma farmers.  I wonder if that was high enough to account for the shift?  

That's my only thought.  The article does not really attempt to explain why and the state does  seem to have a good records database on the subject.  I could go to the Employment Statistics database from the fed... but that's a ton of work.

Nationwide poverty was down to 12.3% while uninsured went up. In Oklahoma, poverty went up and the number of insured went up.  Strange deal.

and just for Shadow's, remember the good old days in the late 50's and early 1960's when everything was awesome and happy and no one went without?  Turns out poverty levels were twice what they are today.  I need a pair of those rose glasses.

Pretty graph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Poverty_59_to_05.png

Actual Data:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf  (has the same graph in it, but a 3.4mg pdf)

[Breadburner]

Some folks just flat refuse to get off there donkey and go to work......Although I will consider the source of information.....

[aoxamaxoa]

quote:Originally posted by Breadburner

Some folks just flat refuse to get off there donkey and go to work......Although I will consider the source of information.....

Yes, TulsaWhirled does a half donkey job.....

Why not make suggestions Burned instead of your usual smart alleck immature comments?

[swake]

quote:Originally posted by aoxamaxoa

Does not seem to be up for discussion here.

When the subject is difficult for many here to recognize, there would be ten posters already by now if the rate were going down....

What are the reasons for this situation?
http://tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=070829_1_A1_spanc44663

Better yet, what are your suggestions for dealing with it?

This data is statewide, not Tulsa specific, but it goes to something I was posting on this thread.

http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7389&whichpage=2

quote:Originally posted by swake


My guess would be that the upper third of the earners in Tulsa do very well compared to national numbers, and that the middle third does just about average and that the bottom third does well worse than average, mostly due to a lack a union presence here and our "by your own bootstraps" culture where society looks down on the poor and doesn't really seem to want to help their situation. I think you would find that the divorce rate also hits that bottom third hard as well. Our crime rate is at least partially an outgrowth of that underlying weakness.

Even in Tulsa, people in the bottom tier of earners are struggling, despite our improving economy. This problem is more pronounced statewide than it is in Tulsa, thus the article you are quoting. Oklahoma is no longer in the bottom ten poorest states, but we still have a problem with poverty.

Much of the problem is due to the fact that poverty is not purely an economics driven issue. Our high rates of divorce, unwed mothers, increasing new immigrant population (legal and not) and our high percentage (as a state) of people in rural areas all impact these numbers. These areas are poor and aging.

These factors are all going to impact our poverty rates, and none of them have to do with the state's economy.

There are solutions, some that we are working on and others that Oklahoma should be working on:

Lower the divorce and unwed mother rate
Improve education at the elementary and secondary levels, especially in rural areas
Increase job opportunities in rural areas
Raise the minimum wage
Do something about illegal immigrants that work outside of labor laws (get rid of them or legalize them, I'm not advocating a decision here one way or another, but something should be done).

[iplaw]

quote:Lower the divorce and unwed mother rate

This is interesting.  What do you actually think can be done about this one?  This seems like a tall order.

[cannon_fodder]

quote:Raise the minimum wage

Raising the minimum wage has never had an effect on poverty levels.  It simply bumps everything up a notch and knocks off some jobs at the bottom.   Since poverty is based on relative earnings, raising the min. wage would not necessarily raise  increase real wages as everything goes up in price and other pay scales are adjusted accordingly.

Not to mention, not even Wal-Mart or McDonald's pays the minimum wage.  Its effect on full time employees would be pretty close to zero.  Unless, of course, you meant generally raising the bar on the lower wages... which would be nice and SHOULD be happening as demand for employees outstrips supply.  At least at the companies that want the best.

But certainly the other factors you mentioned would be of infinite value.  How to accomplish them, I do not know.

[Townsend]

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

quote:Lower the divorce and unwed mother rate

This is interesting.  What do you actually think can be done about this one?  This seems like a tall order.

Education Education...so nice I said it twice

[iplaw]

What type of education would lower these two stats?

[Conan71]

I did a cursory scan of the report, if you want to read all 78 pages of it:

http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/p60-233.pdf

Poverty level being defined as $20,614 for a family of four means equates to roughly a $10.25 an hour.

Seems that the majority jobs our CoC has been working on bringing to Tulsa are for non-skilled call center jobs which pay $9 to $11 per hour to start.

Perhaps we don't set our goals high enough for what types of jobs we attract, or perhaps Oklahoma is seen as having a great pool of un-skilled labor and it's a perception issue.

Maybe more emphasis on higher education wouldn't hurt.

[guido911]

quote:Better yet, what are your suggestions for dealing with it?

AOX, the answer is right in front of you--Blame Bush.

[aoxamaxoa]

quote:Originally posted by guido911

quote:Better yet, what are your suggestions for dealing with it?

AOX, the answer is right in front of you--Blame Bush.

I must not be the only one that thinks the Idiot in Charge has contributed to this mess....

You don't understand mild personal attack removed[/red[?

THE AXMAN!

Editorial
A Sobering Census Report: Americans' Meager Income Gains


Published: August 29, 2007 NYT
The economic party is winding down and most working Americans never even got near the punch bowl.

The Census Bureau reported yesterday that median household income rose 0.7 percent last year — it's second annual increase in a row— to $48,201. The share of households living in poverty fell to 12.3 percent from 12.6 percent in 2005. This seems like welcome news, but a deeper look at the belated improvement in these numbers — more than five years after the end of the last recession — underscores how the gains from economic growth have failed to benefit most of the population.

The median household income last year was still about $1,000 less than in 2000, before the onset of the last recession. In 2006, 36.5 million Americans were living in poverty — 5 million more than six years before, when the poverty rate fell to 11.3 percent.

And what is perhaps most disturbing is that it appears this is as good as it's going to get.

Sputtering under the weight of the credit crisis and the associated drop in the housing market, the economic expansion that started in 2001 looks like it might enter history books with the dubious distinction of being the only sustained expansion on record in which the incomes of typical American households never reached the peak of the previous cycle. It seems that ordinary working families are going to have to wait — at the very minimum — until the next cycle to make up the losses they suffered in this one. There's no guarantee they will.

The gains against poverty last year were remarkably narrow. The poverty rate declined among the elderly, but it remained unchanged for people under 65. Analyzed by race, only Hispanics saw poverty decline on average while other groups experienced no gains.

The fortunes of middle-class, working Americans also appear less upbeat on closer consideration of the data. Indeed, earnings of men and women working full time actually fell more than 1 percent last year.

This suggests that when household incomes rose, it was because more members of the household went to work, not because anybody got a bigger paycheck. The median income of working-age households, those headed by somebody younger than 65, remained more than 2 percent lower than in 2001, the year of the recession.

Over all, the new data on incomes and poverty mesh consistently with the pattern of the last five years, in which the spoils of the nation's economic growth have flowed almost exclusively to the wealthy and the extremely wealthy, leaving little for everybody else.

Standard measures of inequality did not increase last year, according to the new census data. But over a longer period, the trend becomes crystal clear: the only group for which earnings in 2006 exceeded those of 2000 were the households in the top five percent of the earnings distribution. For everybody else, they were lower.

This stilted distribution of rewards underscores how economic growth alone has been insufficient to provide better living standards for most American families. What are needed are policies to help spread benefits broadly — be it more progressive taxation, or policies to strengthen public education and increase access to affordable health care.

Unfortunately, these policies are unlikely to come from the current White House. This administration prefers tax cuts for the lucky ones in the top five percent.

[cannon_fodder]

AOX, that article is rife with problems.  This is seriously one of the weakest editorials I have ever read.   There are plenty of holes in the economy that could be punched, this guy chose the wrong battles and constructed them poorly.

1) Dis proves its own premise.
The premise was:  recovery is not good for lower income Americans.  But in the very first paragraph  we learn that the poverty level fell.  The poverty level is, by definition, a measure of the lower income.

2) It changes between statistical comparisons and numbers.
5 Million more in poverty!  Gasp.  Or to compare apples to apples, 1% more.

3) 2000 was the peak of the bubble.  
This same editorial board was blabbing about how it wasnt "real wealth" when the dotcom boom was going on, now they compare numbers to the dotcom boom to show how bad things are now.  You can not have it both ways.  Either the numbers then were exaggerated and thus not a good comparison, or the numbers then were valid and the editorial board has somehow changed history.

4) Median Household Income
Last week, during the article about median income being up, you argued that it was not a good measurement of over all wealth.  Somehow it has become so again, when comparing current numbers with the fictional wealth of the dotcom - which, by all accounts, created a greater disparity than any other economic boom in history (and under a democrat no less... gasp!).

Is it a valid measurement or not?  Is disparity of wealth more important than it was during the dotcom years when the haves really ran the bank?  What has changed to make it so?

5) See, the rich get richer!
"Over all, the new data on incomes and poverty mesh consistently with the pattern of the last five years, in which the spoils of the nation's economic growth have flowed almost exclusively to the wealthy and the extremely wealthy, leaving little for everybody else."

No support.  No backing.  Not even an argument, just a blanket statement left to stand in contrast to the point of the article - THAT POVERTY RATES FELL.  Again, poverty rates are a measure of wealth at the lower level...

6) and the punchline:

quote:What are needed are policies to help spread benefits broadly — be it more progressive taxation, or policies to strengthen public education and increase access to affordable health care.

The government sucks, what we need is MORE government.  "More progressive taxation" are you kidding me?  Currently the bottom 50% don't pay anything at all.  What more could you want?

Not that I am surprised.  You could just skip the NYT and AOX editorials and replace them with "what we need is socialism."  More government:  usually the answer because it has done so well thus far!

7) Tax cuts for lucky 5%.
Odds are, if you are in the top 5% of wage earners you are not there by luck.  The entire notion that rich people are lucky is usually a joke.  The wealthiest people I know have work way harder that I am willing to in order to get where they are.  A person starts a company, goes to law or medical school, or creates a life changing invention and you write him off as lucky?

I guess that's the entire problem, the outlook.  I see successful people and say "what do I have to do to get there."  You see them and say "stupid lucky jerk, I wish the government would take what he has."  I deplore that attitude.

[YoungTulsan]

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

What type of education would lower these two stats?

Education systems that succeed in educating people?   The public education system is not equal everywhere, people are receiving better, more effective education in urban and suburban especially, areas than rural ones.

*spell cheks his post since we are talkeing abowt edukatchuns*

[TheArtist]

It would be interesting to see the change in poverty rates by county.  

But, didnt I see a statistic a while back that said Tulsas high school drop out rate was about 30%!  I dont care how much better the economy gets, if your a high school drop out, your likely to be poor.

Not to mention if the drop out rate is so high one has to wonder about these kids parents. They aren't likely to be all that competent or successful. Don't know what other words to use. Large percentage of drop out kids is more likely the result of a large number of, well, not too competent adults. High obesity rates, high rates of bad health, high divorce, etc. etc.

All of these thing point to a large underclass that make bad choices, has a poor set of "tools", attitudes, thought processes, belief systems, etc. with which to navigate life.  

One of the best things we could do to remedy that situation is to improve our quality and intensity of educational services. May not be able to help the adults because you cant force them to learn and grow. But you may be able to break the cycle with better education for their children. This would require more teachers per student, especially those students who are the poorest. More mentoring. Whatever it takes to get these kids in contact with competent adults and institutions that can impart important life lessons, attitudes, etc.

However when our state spends less than even the local median on such things, I cant see how we are going to be willing to pay more than the median, which is what it would take to have the intensity of effort it would take to make a real difference.

Thats the only thing I can think of anyway. Other than a massive volunteering effort.