Tag: Poverty

Assets can build the bridge from the safety net to self-sufficiency

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… Read more [More...]

Tom Joad dances on

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… Read more [More...]

Crossing the Threshold: Families in poverty no longer paying state income tax

An interesting new report from our friends at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities looks at whether families with income below the federal poverty level (FPL) in each state are subject to state income taxes. It finds that for… Read more [More...]

Guest Blog: Will Oklahoma be first to discriminate against military spouses in divorces?

From time to time, we will use the OK Policy blog to post submissions we receive from Oklahomans who have interesting perspectives on important policy issues for the state. This submission is from Karin Brandenburg, an Oklahoman who works in… Read more [More...]

New national data on income, poverty and the uninsured shows recession’s initial effects

Yesterday, the U.S. Census Bureau released its annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage for 2008  from its Current Population Survey. You can or click here for fact sheets and links to all the data or click here… Read more [More...]

Summer Re-run: Oklahoma is not a poor state – we just continue to play one on TV

Note – Occasionally we plan to re-run blog posts on topical subjects that you may have missed the first time around. Recently, the Annie E. Casey released its annual Kids Count report measuring how states are faring on a range… Read more [More...]

Casual Friday on the blog–some different approaches to poverty

Have you visited TED.com? TED gathers smart people for topical conferences and then offers us the speeches in video form, organized both by topic and by user classification–persuasive, beautiful, funny, etc. You’ll find people you’ve heard of, like Al Gore… Read more [More...]

Oklahoma is not a poor state – we just continue to play one on TV

Back in March, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released 2008 data on state personal income, which is the most widely used measure of a state’s relative prosperity. We took note of it at the time in our April Numbers You… Read more [More...]