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 »

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 »