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. Read the rest of this entry »

Oklahoma has the 6th highest infant mortality rate and 2nd highest black infant mortality rate in the country.  Among black babies, the infant mortality rate in Oklahoma today is comparable to the 1970s national average for all races.  This fantastic short film, Reducing Infant Mortality, by independent filmmaker Debby Takikawa explores the underlying and immediate causes of infant death.  The film interviews researchers, maternal health care providers, and public policy experts who delve into the complicated aspects of poverty, pregnancy and neonatal care in the age of modern medicine.

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?
  

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. Read the rest of this entry »

As we recover from the great recession, the need to create jobs is foremost in the minds of the public and the promises of politicians. But if too many jobs don’t pay enough to cover the basic needs of a family, we may only dig ourselves further into a hole and cripple our ability to support the next generation of Americans.

So what is an adequate income to meet those basic needs? The question is important, as it determines how we set goals, determine eligibility for public support, and understand many problems in society. Yet the tool most commonly used to measure this, the federal poverty level (FPL), is long out of date. It considers only cash income and expenses of three times the cost for a 1950s diet.  That was appropriate when the measure was created, as food took up a third of the typical household budget at the time. Today it is less than one-tenth. The measure also does not adjust for differences in the cost of living by region or family type. Read the rest of this entry »

The next lecture in the OKDHS Practice & Policy series, ‘The Economics of Oklahoma’s Single Parents’, will be presented by Dr. Larkin Warner and Dr. Jean Warner.  The lecture takes place between 12:00 and 1pm on March 24, 2011 at the Oklahoma History Center in the Chesapeake Room.

Larkin Warner is a former professor at Oklahoma State University who served as the Director of the Economic Studies Division at the Kerr Foundation.  Dr. Warner will use Census data to address the economics of Oklahoma’s single mothers and report on key factors that contribute to poverty in the state.  Co-presenter Dr. Jean Warner helped establish the Oklahoma Women’s Coalition, a non-profit organization that advocates for the state’s women and girls. The Journal Record named Dr. Warner one of the “50 Women Making a Difference in Oklahoma” in 2010. Her presentation will focus on innovative initiatives to improve the financial futures of single-parent families. Read the rest of this entry »

OK Policy recently featured a guest blog post from Scott Stanley about the Family Expectations Program, which is part of the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative. As part of the job application process, OK Policy’s two recently hired policy analysts also created posts in response to the question, “Should the state of Oklahoma be promoting marriage as a way to reduce poverty?” Read on to see both posts below, or you can jump straight to Gene’s post here or Kate’s post here.

Can we wed our way out of poverty?

by Gene Perry

In state rankings, Oklahoma too often appears near the top in categories that we’d rather not.

Not least among those are divorce rate (6^th highest), teen birth rate (5^th highest), poverty (7^th highest), and child well-being (44^th worst).

To some, the first two rankings are to blame for the second.  A number of researchers see decline in marriage as the primary cause of poverty.  Under this theory, the best remedy for lower-income individuals attempting to juggle work and child care responsibilities is a two-parent family. Read the rest of this entry »

Scott Stanley is a research professor at the University of Denver, co-Chair of Research Advisory Group for the Family Expectations Program, and co-developer of the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) which forms part of the basis of the Becoming Parents Program that is one component of the services provided in Family Expectations.

Something incredible is happening in Oklahoma!  It’s the innovative Family Expectations (FE) program in Oklahoma City. A large, rigorous federal study has now demonstrated that services to strengthen families successfully improved the stability and quality of unmarried parents’ relationships around the time of the birth of a child.  Run by Public Strategies —and funded by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services and the Administration for Children and Families —Family Expectations stands to make a major difference in the lives of children who gain an increased chance of being raised in a healthy, stable home.

Why does this matter? While many children raised by single parents or step-parents thrive, decades of research show consistent advantages for children raised by both of their parents within a low-conflict household.  Based on much of this research, Family Expectations engages financially vulnerable couples, both unmarried and married, in a wide range of services, including educational classes where they learn skills and principles to nurture and protect their relationship and parenting information about infant care and development. They also work one-on-one with family support coordinators who help these new parents to apply what they learn and to access other community services. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, December 6th, Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institute will be giving a lecture titled, “Creating an Opportunity Society” as part of the Policy and Practice Lecture series organized by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services and University of Oklahoma Center for Public Management. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held from noon to 1 pm at the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City. Click here for full details.

Dr. Haskins is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution and senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, MD. He is widely acknowledged as among the nation’s foremost experts on social welfare policy, having served as Senior Adviser to President George W. Bush for Welfare Policy and as a top Congressional staffperson. Dr. Haskins has published books and articles on a number of education-related topics, including intellectual development, day-care policy, federal expenditures on social programs and federal budget and tax policy, including Creating an Opportunity Society, a book that he co-authored with Isabel Sawhill.

His Oklahoma City talk will address indicators of poverty and policy recommendations founded on four values-based premises about the appropriate role of government.  The lecture is sponsored by the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative and OKDHS Family Support Services Division.

Last week, the Census Bureau released new data showing that one in seven Americans, including one out of every five children, are now living in poverty. This week, some one thousand advocates, program directors, community organizers, business owners, policy analysts and researchers are gathering in Washington for CFED’s biannual Assets Learning Conference to discuss emerging ideas for helping children and families achieve economic security and stability.

As part of the conference kick-off, several organizations that are leaders in the asset building field came together yesterday to release a new report, Lessons from SEED, a National Demonstration of Child Development Accounts. The SEED project is a comprehensive initiative, combining policy, practice, and research, designed to explore a national system of savings and asset-building accounts for children and youth. Child Development Accounts, or CDAs, are intended to give children in low-income families a “financial head start” towards economic opportunity by beginning savings from as early as birth. CDAs are generally “seeded” with an initial deposit from public or private funds, after which children and parents are encouraged to contribute to the account, often with the incentive of matching contributions. The accounts provide savings that can later be used as productive investments that provide the pathways to opportunity and security, by paying for college, buying a home, starting a business, or for retirement. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.S. Census Bureau today released its annual report on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage for 2009 based on its March Current Population Survey.  The data reflected the severity of the recession throughout 2009: the national poverty rate rose from 13.2 percent to 14.3 percent, as an additional 3.7 million Americans in 2009 lived in households with income below the federal poverty level (just over $22,000 for a family of four).  While acknowledging the extent of the hardships facing millions of Americans families, the White House emphasized the important role that increases in unemployment insurance benefits and Social Security payments that were part of the 2009 Recovery Act played in keeping millions of Americans out of poverty – indeed, the poverty rate for seniors actually declined this past year.  Meanwhile, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted that if low-income tax credits and non-cash benefit programs, such as food stamps, had been included, the rise in the poverty rate would have been considerably smaller.  (A new Supplemental Poverty Measure, which we discussed in this recent post, will include these benefits).

The national health insurance data showed a continuation and acceleration of long-term trends: an overall decline in the percentage of Americans with health insurance, with progress in increasing the ranks of insured children through expanded access to public insurance (Medicaid and CHIP) being more than offset by the erosion of employer-sponsored insurance, leading to growing numbers of uninsured adults. Overall, the number of Americans without health insurance increased by 4.3 million to 50.7 million, bringing the rate of uninsured to 16.7 percent. Read the rest of this entry »

An front-page USA Today article last week reported that government anti-poverty programs – including Medicaid health insurance coverage, food stamps, unemployment benefits and welfare cash assistance – are now assisting one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.  Anyone who has been following the monthly releases of our Numbers You Need bulletin is unlikely to be surprised by the trends reported by USA Today.  Oklahoma continues to see ongoing growth and record caseloads for Medicaid (just under 695,000 recipients) and food stamps (over 585,000), with fewer individuals receiving cash payments for unemployment benefits (weekly average of 36,000 initial and continuing claims) and TANF (21,640).

It so happened that USA Today published its report the day before the Oklahoma Asset Building Coalition held the first of five regional meetings around the state. These gathering are bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders to talk about  challenges facing low- and moderate-income Oklahomans and strategies for achieving economic security. The meeting began with a presentation on the Oklahoma Self-Sufficiency Standard, a tool for calculating the amount of income that families of different sizes and compositions need to meet their basic household expenses – housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, taxes and miscellaneous – without public or private support or subsidies. For a single working adult with one infant and one preschool child, the hourly self-sufficiency wage is $16.43 an hour in Cherokee County and over $21.63 an hour in Tulsa County. For a two-parent family with kids that age, each working adult would need to make $10.28 an hour in Cherokee County and $12.39 an hour in Tulsa to meet its basic needs. It’s worth mentioning that this is a basic family budget with an austere set of assumptions – it includes no meals out or entertainment, no one-time purchases, no loan payments or money put aside for savings. Read the rest of this entry »

Kurt Hochenauer, whose OkieFunk: Notes from the Outback blog provides consistently sharp and perceptive commentary on Oklahoma political issues, recently had a nice piece in the Oklahoma Gazette putting the recent rise in poverty in the state in its historical perspective. He notes:

But what’s probably needed more than anything else is for more Oklahomans to realize how poverty is deeply rooted in the state’s history and remains the foundation for so many of the state’s social problems.

Hochenauer cites Robert Lee Maril’s 2000 book Waltzing with the Ghost of Tom Joad, which provided a vivid ethnographic study of  how poverty plays out in the lives of eight Oklahoma families.

If you missed Doc Hoc’s commentary, it’s well worth a read.