Bridging the Gap

Here is the last of my three essays on poverty from the 2003 Colby College Collection.  (Please excuse the strange formatting on the Works Cited.)

Bridging the Gap

One spring day in 1985 as I pull into the parking lot, I silently ask God to help me make the $25 I have for this week’s groceries stretch.  I have to feed my husband, my two and a half year old daughter, and myself, four months pregnant.      

So I begin my march through the grocery store.  Because my husband raids store dumpsters weekly, I don’t have to buy fresh fruits or vegetables—we eat the rather wilted variety that stores throw out.  We eat very little meat since alternate sources of protein such as beans and brown rice are much cheaper.  There’s no money for prepared foods in my budget.  I’ve already made up my menu plan and only purchase the essentials to get us through another week.  But today I’m longing to yield to a major temptation that we cannot afford:  a half gallon of premium ice cream.

            We can’t really survive indefinitely on $25 per week for food, even though that is what is necessary in order to have the money to pay rent, utilities, and miscellaneous bills.  Fortunately, there are charity and the government.  One week I am surprised with a $50 gift certificate for food from an anonymous church member, so I stock up on the basics.  Sometimes we’re on food stamps.  We also get the free government commodities once a month, and much of the time I qualify for the WIC food vouchers, which provide milk, cereal, and cheese.

            Is my story really so different than that of others who struggle to survive on low wage jobs?  Ours was a poverty just a notch above welfare but an endless distance from what is called a “living wage” (Ehrenreich 213).  No matter what the underlying causes, poverty proves to be a trap from which escape is difficult if not impossible despite the best efforts of welfare reform.

            First, is there actually a problem with poverty in the United States?  Compared to people of some third world countries, everyone in the United States is rich.  Yet our welfare rolls are full, homelessness is rampant, and millions of people in our country scrape by on a meager existence as I did for ten long years.  Simply looking at the numbers tells us that poverty is, indeed, a widespread problem in the US.   In the early 1990s, 14.5% of the population subsisted below the poverty level.  Translated into numbers, that means that “[s]ome 36.9 million persons from nearly 8 million families lived below the US federal poverty level in 1992” (“United States” 358).  According to The 2002 HHS Poverty Guidelines, the poverty level is currently $18,100 per annum for a family of four.  For a family of three, it is $15,020 (2).

            Next, how is poverty measured?  The formula, surprisingly, has nothing to do with housing and utility costs.  Instead, the formula merely factors in food:

[T]he official poverty level is still calculated by the archaic method of taking the bare-bones cost of food for a family of a given size and multiplying this number by three.  Yet food is relatively inflation-proof, at least compared with rent. (Ehrenreich 200)

Clearly, the poverty formula grossly underestimates how much money it really takes to survive.  A more reliable indicator has been provided by The Economic Policy Institute, which “recently reviewed dozens of studies of what constitutes a ‘living wage’ and came up with an average figure of $30,000 a year for a family of one adult and two children’ (213).  That is a $15,000 gap between being officially poor and being able to financially survive in today’s economy.  I believe the problem our nation must face is how people can bridge that gap.  Obviously, moving welfare recipients from poverty level to a “living wage” is going to take more than welfare reform.

How well does welfare reform actually work?  Much has been written about the welfare poor and how to help them rise above poverty.  Welfare reform emphasizes getting people off public assistance and into the workplace (Danziger et.al 2).  In fact, the U.S. government spends huge amounts of money to fight poverty.  However, “the large outlays have not produced the promised results” (Weidenbaum 222).  A study of 700 single mothers in California bears this out.  According to the study, “[t]he majority of the 700 women found work, but their paychecks provide little more than what they got from welfare alone—an average of about $12,000 a year [. . .]” (May 1).  Even though welfare reform has succeeded in reducing caseloads, it has not succeeded in alleviating “material hardship and financial strain” (Danziger et al. 13).  Those coming off welfare typically earn the low wages of entry-level jobs (Danziger et al. 2). 

Well-known writer and reporter Barbara Ehrenreich knows from personal experience just how difficult survival on minimum wage can be.  In the late 1990s she undertook an experiment to see if she could survive on low wage jobs; this endeavor is reported in her book, Nickel and Dimed:  On (Not) Getting By in America.  Her three month experiment took her to three states and involved work as a waitress, a maid, and a Wal-mart employee.  She refutes the idea of “poverty [being] a consequence of unemployment” (219) as well as the myth that “’hard work’ [is] the secret of success” (220).  In fact, despite her long shifts of grueling labor, especially as a waitress and a maid, she found it extremely difficult just to make ends meet despite her advantages:  $1,000 to launch her, good health, a reliable car, and the knowledge that this was just a temporary way of life that she could escape at any moment (6).  Speaking of the “hard work” myth that she heard so much growing up, she says this:  “No one ever said that you could work hard—harder even than you ever thought possible—and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt” (220).

Based on Ehrenreich’s experience as well as studies of welfare mothers who have returned to work, we can see that welfare reform does not work and is, in fact “a catastrophic mistake” (Ehrenreich 217).  Some may disagree with Ehrenreich’s conclusion and would cite the reduction in the welfare rolls as proof that people on welfare can lift themselves out of poverty if they will simply work.  For example, Edin and Lein claim that “a substantial majority” of people on welfare get “off the rolls within two years” (4).  However, it is important to remember that getting off welfare does not necessarily mean rising out of poverty.  Single mothers especially face a “triple whammy” as they enter the workforce:  they earn less than men, have children to arrange care for, and don’t have another adult to help at home (Tilly and Albelda 83-86).   Besides that, there is the problem of “work-related expenses” such as “increased costs for child care, transportation, medical care, housing, and work clothing” (Danziger et. al 3).  Thus, the former welfare mother is now faced with making, at best, slightly more than she did from welfare while juggling the complexities of work and home.  In addition, she has little time and energy to spend in her chief role as parent.

If welfare reform does not work, what is the answer?  Unfortunately, there is no simple solution for poverty.  Perhaps the best that can be done is to recommend some courses of action, none of which are perfect.

A place to start is with the individual.  Undoubtedly, welfare reform is at least partially based on the idea that the welfare recipient must take personal responsibility in order to escape the trap of poverty.  I am all for personal responsibility, though I do not believe that it alone will solve the problem.  Two solutions that have been proposed in the past are marriage and education. 

Marriage, perhaps, is the more startling of the two.  The Rev. LeHavre Buck calls marriage “the Number 1 way to get out of poverty” (Johnson-Elie 2).  After all, marriage provides “financial benefits:  homeownership, insurance coverage for spouses and increased rates of saving” (2).  While marriage can certainly be considered an option that may work for some, it certainly won’t work for all.  Besides, married couples can be poor, too (2), as I well know from personal experience. 

A more commonly proposed solution for the individual is education or job training.  Murray Weidenbaum believes that finishing high school is one of the key elements to rising above poverty (223).  In today’s world, though, some vocational or college training beyond high school is usually needed.  Some of the poor can use education as a means to escape poverty; that is exactly what I did.  However, that was only possible because I was married at the time so could live off my husband’s meager income while I went to school, and I had the background and brains to be successful in that venture.  Not all are as fortunate as I was.  Sometimes adding school onto work and parenting is simply impossible, whether due to financial considerations, poor health, or stress.

Individual efforts to climb out of poverty should be supported.  Personal motivation is key, though it is not always enough.  Often a temporary support system outside of, and sometimes in addition to, welfare reform is needed.  Extended family often bridges the gap by providing housing and child care.  I believe that churches should also become involved in the process.  So many options are possible.  Churches can offer free or reduced price childcare, food pantries, financial counseling, and free car maintenance.  Or they can promote an individual approach, a sort of adopt-a-struggling-family ministry.  Of course, to promote personal responsibility, such programs can be offered with strings attached.  In other words, the road out of poverty need not be a handout.  Certain conditions may be required for, let’s say, a single mother to receive help through church programs.  Those conditions could include measurable progress toward the training or education sought, continued employment, even church attendance and volunteer work.  

While individual responsibility as well as family and church support are viable solutions, they still are not enough.  Governmental assistance can further help to bridge the gap between the welfare poor and those earning a “living wage.”  It is common knowledge that the government already offers assistance to those below poverty level in the form of food stamps, welfare checks, Medicaid, and housing subsidies.  But what about those families who are too “rich” to qualify for such help but too poor to survive on their own? 

I believe the government needs to make more sweeping changes in the war against poverty.  Already some states such as Kansas have made a start by offering medical benefits to children of families who cannot afford medical insurance but do not qualify for Medicaid.  Another desperately needed measure is to significantly increase minimum wage.  Some would say that such an increase is unneeded.  However, one needs only to do some simple math to discover that two people who work full-time and make minimum wage still earn less than $20,000 a year.  Shouldn’t that be a sign that something is drastically wrong with our wage scale?  Beyond increasing minimum wage, I believe closer scrutiny is needed concerning wages in lower-paying professional fields such as public service and education.  Sometimes even a college degree and a professional career are barely enough to provide a “living wage.”  Finally, providing more low-income housing or housing subsidies would be another step in the right direction. 

A combination of individual responsibility, help from family and church, and governmental assistance are viable options for bridging the gap between the official poverty level and a “living wage.”  For me, bridging the gap took governmental assistance in the form of low-income housing, two years devoted to earning my master’s degree, and various helps from extended family and church. My 1989 contract to teach at Colby Community College brought my family earnings closer to a “living wage.”  I can finally buy fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, prepared foods, and even premium ice cream without busting the budget. 

Works Cited

The 2002 HHS Poverty Guidelines.  24 April 2002.  U.S. Department of Health and

Human Services.  20 Sept. 2002  http://aspe.os.dhhs.gov/poverty/02poverty.htm.

Danziger, Sandra, et al.  “Work, Income and Material Hardship After Welfare Reform.”

Joint Center for Poverty Research:  Child Welfare Information Clearinghouse.

Jan. 2000.  Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  09 Dec. 2002.  www.jcpr.org 

Edin, Katherine, and Laura Lein.  Making Ends Meet:  How Single Mothers Survive

Welfare and Low-Wage Work.  New York:  Russell Sage, 1996.

Ehrenreich, Barbara.  Nickel and Dimed:  On (Not) Getting By in America.  New York:

            Henry Holt, 2001.

Johnson-Elie, Tannette.  “Marriage: the Missing Ingredient in Poverty.”  Milwaukee

            Journal Sentinel  16 July 2002:  1-4.

May, Meredith.  “Welfare Reforms Not Ending Poverty.”  San Francisco Chronicle

            16 April 2002:  1-3.

Tilly, Chris, and Randy Albelda.  “A Lack of Opportunities Keeps the Poor on Welfare.”

Welfare:  Opposing Viewpoints.  Ed. Charles P. Cozic.  San Diego:  Greenhaven, 1997.  83-88.

“United States of America:  Income.”  Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations:  Americas.  V. 3. 

New York:  Gale Research, 1995.

Weidenbaum, Murray.  “Lack of Commitment Perpetuates the Underclass.”  Poverty:

Opposing Viewpoints.  Ed. Katie de Koster.  San Diego:  Greenhaven, 1994.  221-24.