Half in Ten Campaign Releases Annual Report on Poverty Indicators

The Half in Ten Campaign yesterday released its annual poverty indicator report for 2013. This is the third report since the Campaign “started the clock” toward the goal of cutting poverty in half between 2011 and 2020. Essentially based on three measures (the official poverty rate, the supplemental poverty measure, and income inequality), the Campaign’s annual reports provide a useful pulse check each year to assess the nation’s progress with regard to Americans’ economic situation. This year, Half in Ten’s metrics reveal a bleak picture of a stagnating economy and little progress toward cutting poverty in half by the beginning of the next decade.
While the story told in the report does not depart significantly from the past two years, the 2013 report is special for its unique historical context. The end of this year into the beginning of 2014 marks the 50^th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration of the War on Poverty inviting myriad comparisons of that 1964 initiative to the efforts today. Just as the nation saw a nearly 50 percent reduction in poverty between 1964 and 1973, Half in Ten continues its current campaign to cut poverty in half by 2020. But despite the similar inspiration of the War on Poverty and the Half in Ten Campaign, the report notes important differences between the social and economic contexts of the times.

Back then, as now, the rich were getting richer, but at that time “the numbers and incomes of the middle class [also] grew steadily, leading to a dramatic and historic fall in the poverty rate.” Now, “growth is only being felt by those at the very, very top”: “Household incomes for the top 5 percent of Americans have grown 5.2 percent in the past three years. Over the same time period, incomes for workers in the bottom fifth of the income distribution have fallen by 0.8 percent,” the report explains.

Even the one seemingly positive indicator from all this, the falling unemployment rate, is marred with a deeper, negative explanation. While it’s true the unemployment rate has declined, this measure does not take into account those who are working part time, even at a time when more people are forced to take jobs at which they are underemployed or take fewer hours than they need to keep their families afloat.

The report offers some proposals to address the situations underlying these negative indicators. For one, the Campaign recommends ending sequestration, and more broadly, to stop cutting budgets solely “for the sake of cutting.” Instead, we should change the conversation to one that supports investing in programs we know work. Pointing to the tragic and counterintuitive fact that minimum wages are poverty wages, the Campaign sensibly recommends raising the minimum wage as a straightforward way to cut the poverty rate. No family that works hard to contribute to society should have to live in poverty.

Since promoting savings and asset building must be an important part of any effort to sustainably reduce poverty in the long term, the report also notes the imperative of eliminating asset limits for public assistance and developing policies to support savings for low- and middle-income Americans. California’s Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program is specifically mentioned as a viable model for a savings program to be developed in other states and at the federal level. We at the Asset Building Program strongly support these recommendations and commend the Half in Ten Campaign for its efforts thus far to advance of the goal of cutting poverty in half by 2020.