Our friends at Prosperity Works have created an excellent video on the ins-and-outs of IDAs.  What is an IDA?  It is not, as some Facebook users suggested, internet dating advice or the International Department of Awesome.  IDA stands for individual development account.  It’s a matched savings account for low and moderate income earners to save for important assets like a college education, a home, or a business.  Watch this animated short video to find out more or click here to find an IDA near you.

View other clips from OKPolicy’s “Watch This’ video series:

Elderly parole

Long term unemployment, 1967-2011

Packed Oklahoma prisons, rising costs

Creativity & Learning

Assets mean economic security.  Yet impoverished families frequently lack the means to build assets.  Some are even sanctioned by public assistance programs from accumulating the wealth they need to escape poverty.  Oklahoma earned a “C” grade from the Corporation for Enterprise Development in a national report ranking states on opportunities for wealth creation and protection, particularly for low-income residents.  That same report says 23 percent of Oklahoma households are asset poor, lacking sufficient net worth to subsist at the poverty level for three months if their income was disrupted. Read the rest of this entry »

In September, the US Department of Agriculture released its annual report on household food security. For the 3-year period from 2008-10, an average of one in six Oklahoma households, 16.4 percent, experienced food insecurity. This means that “at times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for foods.” This was the 6th highest rate in the nation, up from 14.6 percent for the period from 2004-06. Nationally, 14.2 percent of households were food insecure in 2o10.

Given Oklahoma’s population of 3.75 million, and assuming that households experiencing food insecurity are the same size as the average of all households, some 607,000 Oklahomans live in households that struggle with access to adequate food.  Imagine that on a Saturday afternoon this fall, the population in households that experience food insecurity in Oklahoma were all invited down to Norman and Stillwater to attend the football games.

The food insecure could fill OU’s Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium (capacity: 82,122) AND OSU’s Boone Pickens Stadium (capacity: 60,218)  four times over… with enough people left over to fill University of Tulsa’s H.A. Chapman Stadium (capacity: 30,000).

To find out ways to help fight hunger and food insecurity in Oklahoma, contact the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma or the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.

May everyone have a joyful and healthy Thanksgiving holiday.

Note: This is an updated version of a blog post we first ran in November 2010.

Source: The Working Poor Families Project

Earlier this fall, the Census Bureau released its annual report on poverty in the United States. In 2010, 15.1 percent of Americans, or 46.2 million persons, lived below the poverty level, which was $22,050 for a family of four. Among children the poverty rate was 22.0 percent, while for seniors, it was 9.0 percent. In Oklahoma, the poverty rate overall was 16.9 percent, with just under one in four children living in poverty (see our Oklahoma Poverty Profile fact sheet and this blog post).

As a measure of a household’s financial situation, the official poverty measure is deeply flawed. As we noted a year ago:

 Census Bureau numbers [are]  based on a measure that looks strictly at a household’s cash income and that is pegged to the cost of a 1950′s basic food diet, adjusted for inflation.  The measure has long been criticized as inadequate: among other limitations, it fails to reflect the real costs families face in meeting basic needs; it fails to adjust for regional differences in the cost of living; and it excludes non-cash income and benefits received by low-income families.

This year, the Census Bureau took a major step toward addressing some of the flaws with the official poverty measure by releasing the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). Unlike the traditional poverty measure, the SPM determines poverty status by comparing a more expansive definition of family’s income with a more meaningful threshold designed to reflect the cost of meeting basic needs, like food, clothing, and shelter. The SPM counts tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and Making Work Pay credit, and non-cash benefits, such as food assistance and housing vouchers, as income that help families afford basic needs. It also acknowledges the burden of work expenses, like child care, and out-of-pocket health expenses for many Americans. The Poverty and Policy blog provides a clear summary of the new measure’s assumptions and methodology. Read the rest of this entry »

Sara Amberg is Manager of Agency Capacity Building of the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma.

The day before the February 2011 blizzard plowed through the Midwest, I heard a meteorologist report that he had never seen every radar system, every method of weather prediction all pointing to the same outcome.  This is serious, he warned. That turned out to be an understatement. The squall produced record snowfall, paralyzing Eastern Oklahoma and racking up millions in recovery costs. The historic “North American winter storm” now has its own Wikipedia page.

Indicators in the past months all forecast another dangerous storm for Oklahomans – one with a far more devastating outcome.

The USDA’s 2010 report on Household Food Security was released in September. While the nation’s food insecurity rates have declined slightly, Oklahoma’s rates continue to increase. We are officially tied with Arkansas for the highest percentage of families with very low food security. Read the rest of this entry »

Update: Click here for our 2010 Poverty Profile based on the Census Bureau data

Despite Oklahoma’s comparatively modest unemployment rate and steady wage growth over the last two years, many of the state’s low income residents continue to be left behind by the economic recovery.  According to data released today by the Census Bureau, the state’s individual poverty rate rose from 16.2 percent in 2009 to 16.9 percent in 2010.  There were 616,610 people living in poverty in 2010 – about one in six Oklahomans.  A family of four is below the poverty level if they earn less than $22,113 a year.  The chart below shows state and national poverty rates over the last four years:

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by flickr user jukebox909 used under a Creative Commons license.

Hardly a day goes by without news of the latest opinion poll surveying the attitudes of Americans or Oklahomans. While many polls are carefully worded and fairly presented, some issue polling is so sloppy or biased that one suspects its only purpose is to promote the political agenda of the pollster or their client. This certainly seemed to be the case with a recent Rasmussen poll of American’s attitudes on poverty, welfare, and immigration.

The poll, which was released to coincide with the fifteenth anniversary of the 1996 welfare reform law, seems at first glance to suggest that Americans are unhappy with the nation’s welfare system and believe too many undeserving people are receiving public assistance.  But a closer look suggests that the poll reveals next to nothing about what Americans think. Read the rest of this entry »

OK Policy had the pleasure of meeting with Sara Amberg recently, an advocate for the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma (CFBEO).  Food banks across the state, including the CFBEO and the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma and its affiliates, work tirelessly to feed and inspire families facing food insecurity.  Food insecurity – defined as “limited or uncertain unavailability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods” – affects thousands of Oklahomans.  One in seven Oklahoma households, or 14 percent were food insecure in 2008; the national average is 12.2 percent.

The economic downturn continues to strain family food budgets and increase demand on both private charities and public programs for food assistance.  Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program) increased by 44.9 percent between February 2008 and February 2011, adding 187,506 participants.  Programs like SNAP not only serve a social welfare role by providing families with food, they also have a significant impact on Oklahoma businesses, pumping millions of dollars each month directly into the grocers, markets, and convenient stores of local economies. Read the rest of this entry »

The Oklahoma legislature is poised to deal a major blow to non-profits and faith-based organizations who help administer the WIC program.  The Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program is a federally-funded, state-administered nutrition service for low-income women, infants and children under five.  WIC subsidizes nutritious foods, infant formula, education on healthy eating and breastfeeding, and screening and referrals for other health and welfare services.

On average in 2010, Oklahoma WIC clinics provided 133,002 low-income mothers $37.18 dollars in food and formula each month.  WIC clinics are operated by health departments, tribal governments, faith-based organizations, community health centers and non-profits.  For instance, the clinic in Variety Health Center in south Oklahoma City serves an average of 8,066 low-income women and children each month.  The Edmond Ministerial Alliance’s Hope Center Health Clinic serves 1,611 average monthly participants. Read the rest of this entry »

Ron Haskins, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, was this month’s speaker at DHS’ Practice and Policy Lecture Series. Haskins looked at causes and offered solutions to the persistence of poverty in the United States. He attributed poverty to four main causes:

1. Low rates of working and low wage rates. Only 83 percent of working-age adults had full-time jobs in 2008, down from 89 percent in 1980. The rate is dramatically lower, 42 percent, for African-Americal males. Haskins attributes the increase for that group in part to higher incarceration rates and blames relatively generous welfare and retirement systems for some of the general decline in working rate. At the same time, low- and middle-income workers are not seeing meaningful gains in wages.
2. Changing family composition. The marriage rate has declined greatly, mainly for less-educated women. Forty-one percent of births are now to single mothers, almost all of them with less than a college education. Given the clear link between single-mother family status and child poverty, Haskins suggested higher marriage rates would reduce poverty. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the US Department of Agriculture released its annual report on household food security. They found that for the 3-year period from 2007-09, an average of 15.2 percent of Oklahoma households experienced food insecurity, which means that they “had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources.” This was the 5th highest rate in the nation, up from 14.6 percent for the period from 2004-06 and 13.1 percent from 1996-08. Nationally, food insecurity from 2007-09 averaged 13.5 percent.

Given Oklahoma’s total population of 3.7 million, and assuming that households experiencing food insecurity are the same size as the average of all households, this means that some 560,000 Oklahomans live in households that struggle with access to adequate food.  To get a clearer sense of how many people this is, imagine that on a Saturday afternoon this fall, the population in households that experience food insecurity in Oklahoma were all invited down to Norman and Stillwater to attend the football games.

Give or take a few thousand people, the food insecure could completely fill OU’s Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium (capacity: 82,122) AND OSU’s Boone Pickens Stadium (capacity: 60,218) four times over.

To find out ways to help fight hunger and food insecurity in Oklahoma, contact the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma or the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.

May everyone have a joyful and healthy Thanksgiving holiday.

Over the past year, one of the high points for me each week has been the hour I spend early Wednesday mornings in the kitchen of Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Tulsa helping with basic food prep tasks for the Iron Gate soup kitchen. As Iron Gate Executive Director Connie Cronley wrote in this guest blog, Iron Gate is a 26-year old organization with a simple mission: To feed people. As a kitchen volunteer, I’ve known that the food I help prepare goes to the roughly 1,500 to 2,000 guests who receive a hot meal at Iron Gate each week. This past Tuesday, Election Day, I decided to finally spend a morning with those Iron Gate serves – and to take some notes for the blog .

I arrive at the Church at 8:30 just as a line-up of some 75-100 people is being led through the outside doors to the medium-sized dining room. Iron Gate actually serves two meals each morning: a breakfast at 8:30, followed by a lunch starting around 9:00 (on weekends they serve a single morning meal). The guests – as they are always called – eat well at Iron Gate. I am quickly put to work dishing out large helpings of  Cream of Wheat and biscuits for the first meal, which goes along with sausages and applesauce. Once the sausages run out, the second meal quickly materializes – chicken pot pie, a green salad, and a croissant, along with fruit salad and a donut for dessert. Their food comes from a variety of sources – baked goods and fresh produce from Reasor’s, canned goods from the Food Bank, meat and other supplies from donations. Read the rest of this entry »