The Face of Poverty

January 15 is the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.  He is honored as an icon of the Civil Rights movement and his speeches and leadership helped guide that movement.  However, his involvement in working for economic justice is not as well remembered.  Before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, he had begun to focus his efforts on the Poor People’s Campaign.  He recognized the importance of economic justice in the fight for equality between the races but also as a basic human right.

Now, more than 40 years later, there are still too many poor among us.  Take a look at these statistics:

¨ In 2010, the Census Bureau reported 46.2 million Americans living below the poverty line.

¨ In that same year, there were almost 50 million Americans without health insurance. 

¨ In December 2011, 13.1 million Americans were unemployed, with 5.6 million of those being long-term unemployed, meaning they had been unemployed 27 weeks or more.  In addition, there were 8.1 million categorized as involuntary part-time workers (who had their hours cut back to part time or were unable to find full-time jobs). 

¨ According to the USDA, in 2007, 3.3 million households were food insecure for the children living there, meaning that those households lacked consistent access to food for the children in the household.  Of those 3.3 million households, 85% had one or more adults who were working; 70% had one or more adults working full-time.

I remember seeing a video clip of George W. Bush at a campaign rally, where he was praising one of his supporters who was on the stage with him because that person was working three jobs to support her family.  Come on!  No one should have to work three jobs to support their family.

America is the richest country in the world.  And yet, we have many people who do not have adequate food, housing, employment or health care.  There are many people and politicians who would say that those Americans who are living in poverty could lift themselves out of poverty if they wanted to.  But, with a minimum wage that is not a living wage, that’s not easy to do.  The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.  A person who works full-time for that wage will earn just $14,500 per year.

When he was president, Ronald Reagan told a story about a Welfare Queen who was able to acquire so much money through the welfare system that she was able to purchase a Cadillac with the money.  The story created a lot of outrage against the welfare system among Americans.  It turned out the story wasn’t true.  However, it helped develop a mindset among many Americans that people on welfare and poor working people don’t deserve the aid that our social safety net programs provide.

It seems to me that one of the reasons we don’t provide adequate help to other Americans in need is that many of us focus on policies and politics instead of people.  I remember reading that, when respondents to a survey were asked whether they favored specific social programs (e.g., welfare, food stamps), a majority were not in favor of them.  However, if they were asked whether they thought we should help others who were in need, a majority were in favoring of helping them.

Today, with so much unemployment and so many home mortgage foreclosures, perhaps each of us knows a relative or friend or neighbor who has fallen on hard times.  Perhaps we know someone who wants to work but can’t find a job; someone who was talked into a mortgage they couldn’t afford and has now lost their home; someone who is homeless because of not being able to find work; someone who is physically or mentally disabled and is unable to work; a vet returning from war who has PTSD and is unable to work.  Perhaps putting a human face on the issue of poverty will make a difference in the way we approach the issue of poverty and the social safety net programs that help those people.