Reducing Poverty - Not a High Priority

u u u

Here at home, our not-so-humble state of Connecticut has achieved a special honor in regard to the poor. We are one of only two states where the average income of the poorest fifth of the population has actually inched downward since 1991.

And you’ll no doubt be shocked (shocked!) to hear that income for the wealthiest fifth simultaneously rose 32 percent. Ho-hum.

Nationally, that bottom fifth did much better than in Connecticut, its income rising by 16 percent while ours declined. But not all the bottom fifth is actually "in poverty." To qualify for that distinction, a family of four must suffer an income below $19,000. Plenty do; 12.6 percent of us to be exact. Losing a job, or falling sick, or a mental illness, can submerge you to that level very quickly.

So can a low-paying job. After all, full-time minimum wage employment these days is only good for about $12,000. And when the new Democratic Congress gets through, it should be worth about $17,000, but not until 2008. That’s still poverty.

Besides, what family of four can live on $19,000 anyway? They’d need food stamps, Section 8 and Medicaid, plus a lawyer to navigate all those bureaucracies. There wouldn’t be time left to hold a job.

u u u

To soften poverty’s blow, some cities have been fussing with a "living" wage. This concept usually applies to municipal contractors and to companies that receive city subsidies. The typical required pay scale runs about $10 per hour, plus health care. (Yes, many public contractors pay less). New Haven, Waterbury and Manchester have now taken this step, with others in the pipeline. Chicago has even applied it to Wal-Mart.

One mitigating factor in olden times was state welfare’s local office. It aided the downtrodden in claiming their rightful due under the statutes. Well, it still does, but there are not nearly as many of them now. As an example, in our beloved Norwalk, the city closed its own welfare shop for budgetary savings, figuring that the needy could just use the state government office instead. Smooth, but then the state closed its shop too. Now, in this tony region, applicants must travel to Bridgeport for help, while avoiding losing their jobs for taking so much time off.

u u u

The whole nation is like that. Poverty is not a problem to be solved; it’s a problem to be avoided. When conservative congressmen speak of cutting the budget, they don’t mean for the rich, for the military or for themselves. They mean for the poor. The rich and the Pentagon enjoy permanent entitlements. Only the poor must prove their needs year after year.

So we now live in a land of downward mobility. Perhaps the new Congress can do better.