Asset poverty data shows many have no cushion to fall back on

As the economic downturn continues to take its toll in Oklahoma and across the nation, how financially prepared are families to deal with extended periods of unemployment and underemployment. Newly-released data (PDF) from CFED that focuses on “asset poverty” confirms… Read more [More...]

State Unemployment Insurance fund feeling the strain but still holding up

A stark indicator of the extent of Oklahoma’s job losses over the past year is the state’s Unemployment Insurance (UI) Trust Fund account. Going into 2009, the Trust Fund enjoyed a very healthy balance of $824 million. Now, twelve months… 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...]

Nothing but a strand of the net: One in 37 Oklahomans has food stamps, nothing else

The New York Times this weekend ran an important feature on one important and disturbing sign of the impact of the recession – the large and growing population of food stamp recipients that report zero household income: About six million… Read more [More...]

What does it take? Oklahoma Self-Sufficiency Standard calculates what families need to get by

How much does an Oklahoma family have to earn to meet its basic needs? What are the major costs of a family budget, and how do these vary for different family types and in different parts of the state? How… Read more [More...]

2009 Oklahoma Self-Sufficiency Standard

The Self-Sufficiency Standard for Oklahoma 2009 calculates the amount of income Oklahoma families need to meet their basic needs. The report was prepared by Dr. Diana Pearce of the Cenetr for Women’s Welfare at the University of Washington for the… Read more [More...]

More Than Just Getting By: The importance of assets for promoting opportunity for Oklahomans

OK Policy’s issue brief, More Than Just Getting By, serves as an overview of asset building in Oklahoma. A major segment of the population has few, if any, assets, despite the fact that they are a key element in developing… Read more [More...]

Saved by the net: Food assistance programs help mitigate recession’s impact

This week we released the November issue of Numbers You Need (PDF), our monthly look at key data on the state’s economy  and budget. As we reported in the bulletin, one of the clearest signs of the depth and length… Read more [More...]

Snapshot of Oklahomans in poverty

Oklahoma’s Poverty Profile: 2008 is a new two-page fact sheet of graphs and analysis that spotlights some of the salient characteristics of the population living in poverty in our state. The information is all assembled from the U.S. Census Bureau’s… Read more [More...]

College savings plan–time to get serious

We’ve recently joined with CFED, a national organization dedicated to expanding economic opportunity, and the Oklahoma Asset Building Coalition, in releasing the 2009-2010 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard. Our earlier post summarized the Oklahoma results, as did several media reports. One… Read more [More...]