Women and Poverty

I had a friend in college whose mother was widowed. I don't remember what she did for income, but I remember her moving into my neighborhood from a beautiful ranch house on the outskirts of town. She moved into a house that was about 900 square feet. Later, as a single parent, I moved into a house very similar. There were two bedrooms, a living room, a very small kitchen (we could reach the refrigerator from the table), a bathroom with bathtub, sink and toilet. There was a laundry room off the kitchen that was big enough for the appliances and a few shelves. The house I rented had a garage. I don't remember what if my friend's mother did. It seemed so harsh for her to have to move there just because her husband died, but no one came to her aid with a better job. This was the status of women when I was growing up. It was fine for men to ask to be paid a sufficient amount to raise a family, because they were often the breadwinner for the family. Men who drove trucks (like my dad) made good money because they had a union and because they had a family. They weren't expected to get by with less. Now I know there are a lot of families out there that did not have that experience, but those were the general expectations of the fifties and sixties.

In 1970, I read an amazing book: The Economics of Being a Woman, by Dee Dee Ahern. There are still about 40 copies on Amazon, if you shop there. It taught me about the assumption that women's work was worth less than men's. that women often gave up valuable years of income to raise a family, which was never recouped. That affected their social security benefits, so that in later years, they had less income as well. In effect, women who stayed home and raised the family were doing it for free. As such, they were not entitled to some of the monetary benefits men received. At that time, the average woman's salary was 70% of a man's.

In 2001, census results revealed that:

"Of the 100 million people 15 and over who were full-time, year-round workers with earnings in 2001, 41 percent were women and 59 percent were men. Women were more likely to have lower earnings. For example, 4.4 percent of women, compared with 2.8 percent of men, reported earnings of less than $10,000. At the opposite end of the earnings distribution, only 5.5 percent of women reported earnings of $75,000 or more in 2001, compared with 15.8 percent of men.

Of the 109 million families in 2001, 5 percent had an income below $10,000, 64 percent had an income of $10,000 to $74,999, and 31 percent had an income of $75,000 or more. The type of family also matters, because often both spouses are employed. Among married-couple families in 2001, only 2 percent had an income below $10,000 and 37 percent had an income of $75,000 or more. Of the families maintained by women with no spouse present, 17 percent had an income below $10,000 and only 8 percent had an income of $75,000 or more. In contrast, of the families maintained by men with no spouse present, only 8 per- cent had an income below $10,000 and 17 percent had an income of $75,000 or higher.

In 2001, 12.9 percent of the female population and 10.4 percent of the male population lived below the poverty level. Poverty rates were highest for children: the proportions of boys and girls (those under 18) who were poor were not statistically different (16.4 percent and 16.2, respectively). From ages 18 to 64, the poverty rate was11.6 percent for women and 8.5 percent for men. For those 65 years and over, the poverty rate was 12.4 percent for women com- pared with 7.0 percent for men."*

Fast forward to 2016, or even the census of 2010. Women now earn 80% of men's salaries. At this rate, my great-great-great-granddaughters will be close to earning the same as men. Some of the changes that have occurred since I was a child are the cost of housing (now requires two incomes), the cost of medical services (now requires insurance) and the cost of food (did it ever go down when gas prices went down?). Most concerning of all these statistics is the poverty rate for the children, which I will tackle in a future post. If children tend to attain the same educational level as their mother (and I can't cite the source on this, I heard it on NPR), then our future civilization needs to examine why women tend to receive less pay, less retirement income and less ability to attend school or send their children to school.

*United States Census Bureau, 2003, Women and Men in the United States 2003 Population Characteristics, P20-544, http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p20-544.pdf, retrieved 28 Mar 2016.

A Few Facts on Poverty

Aside from drunks on skid row, I had not experienced homeless people until I traveled to Bogota, Colombia in 1972. I saw men living on the street and wondered what kind of a society would allow that. It was then considered a “third-world” country and I shrugged it off. When a friend and I went to a small restaurant to get “fresas con crema” (fresh strawberries with whipped cream), we saw two young girls outside the restaurant digging for food in the trash container. At first we wrinkled our noses, but when one of them took out a carton of milk and began drinking it, we both lost our appetite and gave the girls our treats. Central and South America were known for the gaps in inequality there. It was acceptable. I was a tourist and what could I do? I was in my twenties and didn’t see my responsibility for making the world a better place.

On January 8, 1964, I was a junior in high school, full of optimism and happy with the government of Kennedy and Johnson. I remember Lyndon Johnson declaring the War on Poverty, in which every home would be able to secure food and shelter. We’re not talking fancy food or fancy shelter, and there was no mention of cars, so the nation got behind it. With the new set of voters from the Voting Rights Act of 1965, attention was turning to their living conditions. The poverty rate had risen to 19% and the government felt that was too high. After all, the unemployment rate in the Great Depression had been 30%. The way poverty was computed was to add up the cost of living for a family of four, not counting housing or meat.

This remained in effect until the 80s under President Reagan. Conservatives began to portray welfare recipients as single-parent minority families, who only have children to collect benefits. Poverty levels are much higher for blacks and Hispanics. Reagan reduced benefits, claiming it was a waste of money because it didn’t get rid of poverty. Calculated in the poverty level now are the benefits they poor receive, making it seem they are wealthier than they are. If you have ever had to live in this “safety net” you will know you can’t do it on your own. Our present poverty rate is 14.8 and increases in the last year surprisingly affected people with a bachelor’s degree or more and married-couple families.



Source citation: DeNavas-Walt, Carmen and Bernadette D. Proctor, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-252, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2014, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2015.

A Year of Studying Poverty

For many years now, I have wanted to write about poverty. I have purchased books that sit laughing on my shelves, unread, and I have delved into homelessness and the worst poverty - refugees, thanks to the Internet. I am encouraged in my efforts by something my mother said thirty years ago. “Poverty is the worst thing that can happen to children.” She said this because she knew what grinding poverty was. She lived on a farm during the Great Depression and her father was a Swedish Covenant minister. They ate what they raised or were given and, since ministers relied on God’s grace for income, there was no money for ice cream or even gas for the car. My mother remembers her father bundling up her mother’s sterling silver and selling it for a nickel.

The first post I will make will be of my own personal experiences with poverty, both mine and others. I’d like to share just a bit of what I learn over this year in the hopes that I will have something meaningful to say. I hope that I can find ways for all of you to do whatever you can to eliminate poverty, however insignificant your actions. Believe me, nothing you will do will be insignificant.

My family’s poverty begins in Sweden, where one of my ancestors was living on a bowl of soup a day and decided to come to the United States. She was eighteen and brought her one-year-old infant with her. That’s not very good genealogy, but it is a starting point, a place to jump off. I can’t imagine moving to another country with no hope of returning to home, but she survived. I think that is what poverty is to me, survival. We can survive under the most horrendous of circumstances, but what does it do to our psyche?

We know that lack of stimulation in early childhood leads to delays in language development, fine and gross motor development, and social-emotional development. Without an enrichment program to overcome these delays, they can become crippling and permanent. As a retired Early Childhood Special Educator, I notice people in interviews on the news whose vocabulary is severely limited; lots of uhs, ers, and “things.” There is a speech disability called word-finding but that is not the same. Children who have never been to the zoo won’t know an opossum from a raccoon. Children who have never ridden on a train cannot picture the conductor taking tickets. Books help bridge this gap, but poverty impairs the parents’ ability to have books in the home. Even a bus ride can be an expense to a low-income family and can impair the ability to use the library. Parents may be working two jobs, children maybe told to stay inside and watch TV after school, pets are too expensive. Even the basic health of the young child is impaired if they don’t get proper food and exercise.

My Swedish ancestor, my mother, and my children and I have experienced poverty. When I separated from my children’s father and moved away, I was not able to secure a full-time job for six months. I was substitute teaching, earning less than my monthly rent, and our refrigerator was very empty. My sons got home at 2:30 and 3:30 and my daughter was in kindergarten. If my parents hadn’t helped me out, I don’t know what I would have done. Our first Christmas tree cost $10, shed most of its needles before it was in the stand, and leaned to one side. I purchased clothing gifts from the outlet store for a pittance (what girl doesn’t need a bikini in December?) and I don’t remember much else. I had gotten us into income-based counseling, though, and we started a new custom that was free: turning off the lights and singing Christmas carols around the tree. My parents were there when the kids were sick so I didn’t have to miss work. When I secured a job for a teacher on medical leave in January of that year, we began to get back on our feet. I don’t ever want to go through that again. I was not given tenure for three years, and I feared losing the children and living on the street for years afterwards.

There is poverty in this country. There is poverty in this world. I hope to begin an examination of poverty that will lead to a lessening of that poverty wherever it exists. Some say Matthew 26:11 means that we have to accept the fact that there always will be poverty. I do not. I do not say that. I do not accept that. Let’s seek an understanding together. Please comment as you see fit.

Atonement

Atonement


They come from Syria,
walk in, boat in, seek trains
to ride to safety, carry only
their children and some money.

A three-year old washes ashore,
thousands are herded into a train station,
with no food, one water source.
Disaster continues.

Germany has seen mass migration before,
now opens its arms to the suffering,
does not know how it can succeed,
only that it cannot refuse.