The number of children living in poverty in Massachusetts would be twice as high as it is if low income families did not receive help from effective anti-poverty programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly called food stamps), WIC nutrition programs, and the Child Tax Credit. Together these programs help lift 1 in 7 children in Massachusetts out of poverty. Yet, another 1 in 7 children still live in poverty in Massachusetts. These findings are detailed in a study released today, Measuring Access to Opportunity in the United States, by the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s national KIDS COUNT project of which MassBudget and the KIDS COUNT Advisory Council is the state affiliate.
To provide an overview of what’s working, what’s holding back progress, and how to fix what’s broken, MassBudget created the infographic below. For a more in-depth discussions of these issues, see our reports and resources on expanding economic opportunity, support for kids, jobs and the economy, education, and taxes.
I think that we need a radical new approach toward solving poverty. We simply need to give people jobs at wages that allow them to succeed.
We hem and haw around the edges, trying to “create opportunities”, particularly for younger people. This has largely been a failure – like a seed thrown among rocks, providing considerable opportunities to people without an environmental capacity to succeed at them is just money wasted.
We don’t need to roll this out statewide. Let’s do a trial program, pick 100 impoverished people in the state and give them simple work that they are capable of (picking up litter, whatever), pay them about $35k/year for this work, and see what happens.
Oh, and while we’re at it, we should really reform our welfare programs to stop penalizing women who live with an “able-bodied man”. That view of welfare is very 1950s, when all it took to get a job was being able-bodied. When we penalize a woman for living with a man by taking away public assistance, the end effect of that is to marginalize men – they become liabilities rather than assets. That means that women are being forced to choose between public assistance and a two-parent household. That’s a heck of a choice to have to make.
… wanting to know why we’re expanding child poverty in MA…