What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.

This week OK Policy and the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) co-released the 2012 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard, which showed that more than one in four Oklahoma households are “asset poor,” meaning they have little or no financial cushion to rely on in an emergency.  The Tulsa World and the Oklahoman covered Oklahoma’s Scorecard results in depth.

We pointed out that if legislators make the choice to prioritize tax cuts, they cannot pretend to be blameless when funds aren’t available for crucial services.  We hosted a debate about whether or not to require a prescription for pseudoephedrine, featuring Jessica Hawkins, the Director of Prevention Services for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, and former state Senator Ed Long.

Finally this week, the Associated Press quoted us in an article on a regional trend of GOP action to axe state income taxes. The Tulsa World presented a summary of our issue brief defending the income tax. The Journal Record cited our work on worsening poverty in Oklahoma and legislative proposals that would make it even harder to be poor. The OK Policy Blog featured a short video about ‘community schools,’ a comprehensive approach to education that makes the school the hub of the community.

Numbers of the Day

• $136 – Average tax increase on elderly Oklahoma couples with $35,000 in income under a legislative proposal to eliminate a slate of broad-based tax credits and exemptions.
• 8,100 – Number of manufacturing jobs added in Oklahoma from January to December of 2011, up 8.4 percent for the year.
• 178, 020 – Number of Oklahoma children under age 6 who need daily child care during the week because their primary caregiver/s participate in the labor force, 2009
• 6,592 – Number of Oklahomans who tested for their GED in 2009; 70.1 percent received their GED, just above the average national pass rate of 69.4 percent.
• 11^th – Oklahoma’s rank among the states in percentage of households with no computer in their home, 2010

In The Know, Policy Notes

• The Foundation for Child Development finds that states with higher taxes and greater investment in public programs score highest for Child Well-Being.
• The Economic Policy Institute points out that the massive tax cuts propose by GOP presidential candidates don’t square with professed concerns about public debt.
• Demos shows that the pay premium gained by joining the federal workforce is reserved largely for less-skilled workers, and rather than disparaging public sector pay levels, we should embrace them as standards from which the private sector has shamefully deviated over the last three decades.
• The Shriver Center examines the trend of states issuing public benefits through bankcards and the implications of card fees for low-income people.
• Bloomberg Businessweek reports on falling premiums for Medicare Advantage, a private health insurance option for Medicare beneficiaries.

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Growing numbers of Americans have almost no savings or other assets to fall back on if they lose their jobs or face a medical crisis.  Without those savings, few will be able to invest in a more economically secure future, including buying a home, saving for their children’s college educations or building a retirement nest egg.

The 2012 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard offers a comprehensive look at Oklahomans’ ability to build wealth, fend off poverty, and create a more prosperous future. The Scorecard compares states along 52 different measures of how residents fare in five issue areas: Financial Assets & Income, Businesses & Jobs, Housing & Homeownership, Health Care and Education.

Oklahoma ranks 33rd overall and earns a “D” in Financial Assets & Income, with above-average income poverty and an over-reliance on predatory lenders and subprime credit. In Health Care, the state ranks 46th in the overall uninsured rate and 47th in uninsured low-income parents. We rank 43rd in residents with two- or four-year college degrees. The one bright spot among the five issue areas for Oklahoma is in housing and homeownership. The state earned a “B” on the Scorecard and ranks 14th in overall homeownership and housing affordability.

The Scorecard also highlights a dozen policy solutions that can help Oklahoma increase opportunity and promote financial stability.  To address asset and income poverty, Oklahoma should fund a state Individual Development Account program to help its low-income population build wealth. To improve its below-average secondary and post-secondary educational outcomes, Oklahoma should increase funding to schools, especially in high-poverty districts, and match savings for college in 529 accounts. In addition, to protect assets and avoid the pitfalls of predatory high-cost loans, Oklahoma should increase access to safe financial products and limit high interest rates and other harmful practices of payday lenders.

Oklahoma Policy Institute is co-releasing the Assets & Opportunity Scorecard as part of an ongoing commitment to advance anti-poverty policies in Oklahoma that prioritize wealth creation and asset-building for low- and middle-income households.  Oklahoma Policy Institute Director, David Blatt, interprets the scorecard results to mean that, “Too few Oklahomans have a college degree and too many are living in asset poverty, without the savings to weather a financial setback or invest in their future. We need better policies that ensure that all Oklahomans are on a path to prosperity and we must protect existing policies, like tax credits for working families, that help hundreds of thousands of households make ends meet.”

The Scorecard paints a picture of a country where middle class families continue to fall further behind more than two years after the official end of the recession.  For ‘asset poor’ families, making ends meet from day to day is a constant struggle and investing in the future is all but impossible.  Locally, a new organization is committed to promoting those policies that improve the outlook for poor, near poor, and middle class Oklahomans.  The mission of Oklahoma Assets is to advocate policies and programs, like the ones just outlined, that create a more inclusive economy – one in which financial success, economic stability, and opportunity are available for all.

To download a summary of Oklahoma’s Scorecard click here.

To view all Oklahoma data from the 2012 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard click here.

To access the complete Scorecard, including data from all 50 states click here.

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Let’s assume that you stand on principle that it’s not the government’s role to engage the health care system.  Then we have a gravely serious problem.  We are very nearly the unhealthiest state in the country and we’re getting worse.  Individual behaviors – smoking, diet, fitness - certainly affect health, but it’s by no means certain that they’re the most important factors.  What we’re facing in Oklahoma is bigger than the sum of each individual resident’s health choices.  Acute structural defects in the state’s health care system demand solutions that are bigger than each of us and addressing them will benefit all of us.

First, we do not have enough doctors, nurses, and health care providers in Oklahoma.  If you live in an urban area, this will be hard to relate to, but it’s true.  We rank 49th in availability of primary care physicians, with only about 82 physicians per 100,000 Oklahomans.  The consequences of this fact should be obvious.  Without access to regular preventative care and treatment when you’re sick, minor health problems can become catastrophic illnesses.  Rural Oklahomans could be making healthy choices, but end up unhealthy because of lack of access to care.  We need government support for efforts that promote access to care, like schools of community medicine, graduate student loans, and incentive programs for doctors who settle in remote areas.  How can we attract modern economic development to a state where many residents haven’t ever had a doctor?

Second, we have hundreds of thousands of households living in poverty.  Poverty affects a person’s health in innumerable ways that are beyond their control.  Not being able to afford medical care, even if you have a doctor nearby, can be an insurmountable hurdle to well-being.   Children living in poverty are especially vulnerable, as their health choices are totally dependent on caregivers who are already struggling to meet other basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter.  The state and federal governments, through the SoonerCare/Medicaid program, currently subsidize medical care for 472,111 Oklahoma children who might otherwise go without.  If you don’t think that government has a role to play in the overall health of our citizens, then you’d better be prepared to count those children out.

Other structural conditions, many perpetuated by living in poverty, also contribute to poor health:

• Lack of medical care, malnutrition, and second-hand smoke as an infant or during early childhood has lifelong effects on health.
• Limited access to healthy groceries coupled with abundant access to fast food in urban areas (‘food deserts’) significantly constrain household diet choices.
• Poor air quality exacerbates chronic conditions like asthma and other respiratory disorders.
• Fewer gyms and public parks in low-income areas make consistent exercise more challenging.
• Insufficient income to purchase nutritious food coupled with lack of knowledge about healthy eating stacks the deck against low-income households.

Government can and should invest in improving the structural conditions that destine impoverished people to a lifetime of poor health outcomes. There is no other alternative.  Oklahoma households cannot continue to work, save, and invest as more and more of their labor and income is taken up caring for ailing parents and grandparents.  The economic development goals of the state cannot be met with an ever-sicker, ever-poorer workforce.  Individual health problems eventually become public health problems that the state must address.  If we don’t come to terms with the grim reality of our health care situation on the ground, we cannot expect the state to enjoy continued, broad-based prosperity.

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What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.

This week at OK Policy, we interviewed Steven Dow about recent controversy at the Oklahoma Commission for Human Services.  We pointed out that state leaders can’t rely on growth revenue to fund infrastructure repair and other priorities if they continue to cut (or even eliminate) the income tax.

Former State Treasurer Scott Meacham explains on the OK Policy blog that Oklahoma’s Rural and Small Business Tax Credit initiatives end up costing the state hundreds of millions in tax revenues.  The blog also featured a post on asset-building as an anti-poverty strategy.  Our director David Blatt was a guest this week on Studio Tulsa, discussing the importance of the income tax in adequately funding state government and essential services for Oklahomans.  Oklahoma Policy Institute’s director was also quoted in two articles this week on federal income tax liability for low-income households and the role of unemployment benefits during a recession.

In the Know, Policy Notes

• Tthe Economix blog examines whether it is more cost-effective to direct resources to college students or to preschoolers and kindergarteners in order to increase college completions over the longer term.
• Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder discover that immigration is correlated with falling crime rates.
• Bloomberg reports on how municipalities and state agencies, including the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, are taking advantage of historically low interest rates to refinance bond issues and save money.
• The National Employment Law Project warns that if Congress doesn’t renew extended unemployment insurance by the end of this year, we risk plunging millions into deeper financial crisis and putting yet another obstacle in the path of economic growth.
• The National Academy of State Health Policy released a paper detailing efforts by state agencies to identify and act on racial and ethnic health disparities.

Numbers of the Week

• 16.43 inches – Amount statewide average precipitation was below normal this water year (October 1-September 30), the 2nd driest year on record for Oklahoma.
• 1,865 – Number of foreclosures in Oklahoma in August, down 5.8 percent from the same month in 2010
• $31,600 – Minimum amount in salary and fringe benefits earned by a first-year Oklahoma public school teacher with a bachelor’s degree, 2011-2012
• 80.3 – Number of primary care physicians per 100,000 people in Oklahoma, compared to 120.5 nationally.  Oklahoma ranked 49th in availability of primary care physicians, 2010
• 29 percent – Percentage of Oklahoma’s K-12 children who are on their own after school, 2009

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What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.

This week the Census Bureau released new state-level data on income, poverty and health insurance coverage in 2010.  The Tulsa World interviewed our Director David Blatt on the rising poverty rate in Oklahoma.  Yesterday’s OK Policy blog post – Poverty rises in Oklahoma; children especially bearing the brunt -  concludes that despite experiencing a comparatively less severe recession than most other states, the situation for those at the bottom in Oklahoma is more fragile than ever.

On Monday we ran another post in our ongoing series examining the federal health care law; IT incentives and investments under the federal health care overhaul are propelling an industry that still relies primarily on paper records into the 21st century.  Watch a ten-minute documentary on our blog featuring interviews with Medicare families struggling to keep up with health care costs and other necessary household expenses on a fixed budget.

A guest post from attorney Noble McIntyre makes the argument for increased spending on public safety education in Oklahoma.  OK Policy analyst Gene Perry was quoted in a NewsOK article about state subsidies for the coal industry.

In the Know, Policy Notes

• The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has 3 new fact sheets on why state tax cuts don’t create jobs.
• The Century Foundation analyzes exactly how the Affordable Care Act will both strengthen health insurance protections and save money.
• Stateline reports on how Arkansas has largely avoided the fiscal problems experienced by other states during the recession.
• The Policy Shop explains why spending cuts will hurt economic recovery more than tax increases.
• The AARP reports that material conditions have deteriorated significantly for older households during the last decade.

Numbers of the Week

• 42,000 – Number of children in Oklahoma who are eligible for Medicaid (SoonerCare), but are not enrolled, 2011
• 4,614 – Number of alcohol-related traffic crashes in Oklahoma in 2010; 6.6% of all traffic crashes in the state (69,805) were alcohol‐related.
• 15.1 percent – Percentage of Americans living in poverty in 2010; a family of four is living in poverty if their annual income is less than $22,113.
• $1,430 – Amount in payroll tax relief an Oklahoma household with $46,000 in annual income would receive under the proposed American Jobs Act.
• 85 percent – Percentage of recent bachelor’s degree holders who remain and work in Oklahoma one year after graduation.

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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:

Oklahoma’s poverty rate is up .7 percentage points from last year and 1 percentage point since 2007.  The national poverty rate is rising faster than the state rate, up 1 percentage point from last year and 2 percentage points since 2007.  Compared to the rest of the country, Oklahoma has the 14th highest poverty rate among individuals.

The largest one-year increase in poverty occurred among children, which rose from 22.2 percent in 2009 to 24.5 percent in 2010.  Nearly one in four Oklahoma children now live in poverty.  This chart displays the state poverty rate by age from 2009 to 2010:

Racial and ethnic disparities in poverty remained unchanged in 2010, with every minority group seeing higher levels of poverty than their white counterparts.  The poverty rate among African American’s (30.1 percent) in Oklahoma is more than twice that of whites (13.9 percent).

While the poverty rate in Tulsa rose from 19.5 to 20.1 percent, Oklahoma City was the only city in the Census survey to see a decline in poverty in 2010.  The poverty rate in Oklahoma City dropped by 1.3 percentage points, from 18.1 to 16.8 percent between 2009 and 2010.  The new poverty data was front page news in this morning’s Tulsa World, which discussed poverty in the context of continuing unemployment and lack of health insurance coverage.  OK Policy Director David Blatt described current trends as “pretty distressing” and highlighted the partial nature of Oklahoma’s economic recovery:

Even though we have seen some encouraging economic signs over the last 12 months, we are dealing with a very partial recovery, which is not extended throughout the population.  So we continue to see large numbers of people who are struggling to find work.

In addition to rising poverty, Oklahoma continues to experience increased demand for social services.  Participation in the SNAP program (formerly food stamps) rose to more than 614,000 people in July 2011.  Howard Hendrick, director of the Department of Human Services noted in August:

This is the highest average monthly SNAP participation in the history of the state.  We’re up 45 percent from where we were three years ago.

These data show that despite experiencing a comparatively less severe recession than most other states, the situation for those at the bottom in Oklahoma is more fragile than ever.  For thousands of families living in poverty, it’s a struggle to pay even basic household expenses, and social services like the food stamp program are crucial to their well-being.  We cannot lose sight of our poorest and most vulnerable residents in the coming months and years, even as economic indicators bring welcome news of continued improvement overall.

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For more information on the role Medicare plays in these and other families lives, click here for a companion report to this video from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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

A tale of two (Oklahoma) cities

Living Through the Oklahoma Dust Bowl

Reducing Infant Mortality

What is Sharia Law?

Panic Nation

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Erin Lamey is the KIDS COUNT/Research Director for the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy. KIDS COUNT is a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, dedicated to tracking child well-being.

Many young people entering Oklahoma’s workforce year-after-year are unprepared for the challenges that life in the “real world” brings. In fact, one out of four workforce-aged adults in Oklahoma lack the basic skills needed to succeed in an occupational training course or knowledge-based job. This is troublesome to Oklahoma employers seeking to recruit and retain qualified applicants. Employers want employees who are productive and require little supervision.

Oklahoma KIDS COUNT released a new issue brief today that discusses strategies to improve workforce development. We have highlighted four areas that research shows to be most effective in workforce development.

Provide children with a healthy start. By the time children turn 3, approximately 85 percent of their core brain structure has developed. Healthy brain development is key to many life skills including language ability, problem solving, and social skills. A solid foundation of healthy attachments with caring adults, proper nutrition, and language development increase a child’s ability to learn. Children living in impoverished households are more likely to face challenges that hinder healthy brain growth. Parental support is critical in such households. Programs that offer parental support, such as evidence-based home visitation services, are important in protecting children in their earliest years. The state of Oklahoma invests in three home visitation programs: Children First and Start Right through the Oklahoma State Department of Health and Oklahoma Parents as Teachers through the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

Increase school readiness in Oklahoma. If a child has a healthy start they will be more likely to have the tools they need to be successful for the rest of their life. School readiness and language development are key predictors of academic success.  Children in low-income households are the least likely to receive a high-quality early childhood education. This results in a school readiness gap that begins when children enter kindergarten and never narrows. Access to early childcare programs is necessary for success.

Ensure that children read by third grade. Three out of four students who read below grade level at the end of third grade continue to read below grade level in high school. Reading proficiency at the end of third grade is also a reasonable predictor of whether or not they will graduate from high school. There is a huge gap between the reading proficiency level of children from low-income homes and children who are not low-income. This gap exists, without exception, in all 50 states in the nation, according to the KIDS COUNT Data Center. Forty-nine percent of Oklahoma’s children are low-income. Strategies that increase literacy are vital to the future success of our workforce.

Increase academic awareness and discipline in the middle grades. A recent study determined that “The level of academic achievement that students attain by eighth grade has a larger impact on their career and college readiness…than anything that happens academically in high school.” When the proper academic and social foundation is laid, students are the most successful. If remediation is delayed until high school it is seldom effective. Teaching career awareness and academic discipline before the end of middle school has been shown to increase college and career success.

By investing in these four critical areas, the high school graduation rate will improve, the college remediation rate will improve and the future of Oklahoma’s workforce will be brighter. Investing in children to ensure they reach their full potential is the key to a capable, productive and technology-driven workforce.

The opinions stated above are not necessarily those of OK Policy, its staff, or its board. This blog is a venue to help promote the discussion of ideas from various points of view and we invite your comments and contributions. To see our guidelines for blog submissions, click here.

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Visit www.reducinginfantmortality.com to learn more about the film and about strategies for reducing infant death.  Visit the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy online to learn about initiatives in the state that promote healthy mothers and babies.

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

• Panic Nation film trailer
• What is Sharia Law?
  

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Amina Benalioulhaj filming at a women's prison with children in the Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program. Photo by Sarah Warmker.

Women Behind Bars is a new documentary about female incarceration in Oklahoma by University of Oklahoma student Amina Benalioulhaj. The film premiered in a packed showing at the deadCENTER Film Festival earlier this month.

A Tulsa screening will be held on Thursday, June 30, from 4 to 6 pm at the Tulsa Community College West Campus Auditorium, 7505 W 41st Street South. Proceeds will benefit Girl Scouts Beyond Bars, which provides counseling and helps young girls to visit their mothers in correctional facilities.

OK Policy spoke with Amina about her experience making the film.

First, could you say a little about the subject of your documentary and where it was filmed?

WOMEN BEHIND BARS: The Voices of Oklahoma’s Incarcerated Women and Their Children is a documentary film that I directed and produced under the guidance of Presidential Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the University of Oklahoma, Dr. Susan Sharp. The film uses Dr. Sharp’s research along with first-hand interviews and visual aids of female correctional facilities to illustrate the impact of incarcerating women for non-violent drug crimes on their children. It was filmed in Taft, OK, at Eddie Warrior Correctional Center, and McCloud Oklahoma, at Mabel Bassett Correction Center. Some footage was also gathered at the Oklahoma State Capitol, various locations in Oklahoma City, and in Norman.

What made you interested in the issue of women’s incarceration?

I majored in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Oklahoma and worked as Dr. Sharp’s research assistant for a semester. She’d encouraged me to read the research she’d been conducting on Oklahoma’s incarcerated women, and when I found out that Oklahoma had the highest female incarceration rate per capita in the United States, I was shocked. I also read about their life-histories: over 90 percent of Oklahoma’s incarcerated women suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder related to their childhood encounters with sexual and physical abuse in the home, and over 3/4^ths will experience domestic violence in their adult lives. Over 80 percent are also mothers. The majority of them are in prison on short-term, low-level property and drug sentences. Studying these women, I began to realize that every issue faced by women at large – domestic violence, the feminization of poverty, sexual assault, single motherhood, abortion, and gender discrimination – affected these women particularly. As a marginalized group, prisoners in the United States lack a voice. But female offenders in particular have a deeper story to tell – they’ve encountered marginalization long before winding up in a prison cell. The first-hand accounts I read in Dr. Sharp’s research made me want to meet them face to face. It made me want to show people, first-hand, who these women were and what we were doing.

Did you have preconceptions about incarcerated women that changed when you started digging into the issue? Were there any big surprises?

Well, I think in general, most people who have never had a family member or friend in prison have misconceptions/preconceived notions about the American prison system. I’d never set foot in a prison before I made this documentary. It was really eye opening. I encountered many of my own tendencies to separate myself from the inmates in my mind – I was actually surprised they wanted to talk to me and seemed like REGULAR PEOPLE. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did. I really opened up to them, they to me. I made friends while I worked on the film, interviewing them and their children. I think in the end it made me a lot less frightened of people in general – those who would-be considered criminals, and those who work in law enforcement as well. We’re all human, and to an extent, we’re all victims of the criminal justice system – if you’d like to call it that.

What impacts did you see incarceration of women having on their children? What resources do these families need to minimize the harms caused by incarceration?

Dr. Sharp’s research discusses in depth the effect of incarcerating mothers. Their children are five times as likely as their peers to wind up in the criminal justice system. They suffer higher rates of depression, experience a drop in grades in school, and are more likely to drop out of school entirely before graduating. Many of these women find themselves in situations that land them in prison due to poverty – so I believe that their incarceration is a symptom of poverty, a lack of education, a lack of support. These families need counseling, community support, ways to channel their energy constructively. They need decent public education, decent wages, and alternatives to incarceration, such as drug/mental health courts and rehabilitation centers. Their children need community programs that build self-esteem and allow for an open dialogue about what they are encountering with the loss of a parent due to incarceration. In fact, the centerpiece of my film is a program that is working on doing just that: reconnecting incarcerated mothers with their children. The program director, Sheila Harbert, has called it “Girl Scouts Beyond Bars.” Several times a month, they pack lunches and bus girls out to visit their mothers in various correctional facilities. They provide family counseling and a support group for these women and their children. It is the only program of its kind currently running in Oklahoma.

What has been the reception of your film by Oklahomans? What impact do you hope it will have?

The reception of this film, thus far, has been overwhelmingly supportive. Of course, we have also received solid critique – and we are still editing the film to improve what we can. But, for the most part, I’ve heard good responses – people feel that it achieves its goal: consciousness raising. It brings a face to a name – it shows people first-hand the effects of incarcerating women for low-level property and drug crimes. It explores the issue. All I have wanted was to inspire and educate people with this film, and I feel I am doing that. It makes me very happy.

Based on your experience making the film, what policy changes would you like to see in Oklahoma?

I’d like to see drug policy changes. I’d also like to see our state legislators focusing on what we can do to reduce poverty in this state, instead of what we can do to make it more difficult for those who suffer from symptoms of poverty.

How can someone interested in Women Behind Bars get to see it? Are there any upcoming showings, or will DVDs be available?

Please plug our showing on the 30^th in Tulsa! This would be incredibly helpful. It is a fundraiser for the Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program. We are still working on finding someone who would like to fund distribution and some more post-production work on the film.

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