Woes mount for poor
Report finds many in
N.J. face daunting obstacles
By RICK MALWITZ, from
the Home News Tribune Online, January 31, 2007
The majority of poor households in
New Jersey are headed by someone who works, do not receive government assistance
and would need about $8,000 more annual income just to reach the official
poverty line.
These are some of the major findings in "Poor in the Garden State:
Beginning to Assess New Jersey's Progress in Addressing Poverty," a report
released Sunday by the Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute.
The report — using figures available for 2005, the most recent year for which
data is complete — is intended to be a benchmark study of poverty in one of the
wealthiest states in the nation and be updated annually by the institute.
"Our findings support the conclusion that experiencing poverty means facing the
daily reality of income that does not cover the cost of basic needs like rent,
health care, child care, and food," said Serena Rice, managing director of the
Poverty Research Institute.
"In a high-cost state like New Jersey, a single parent with two young children
must earn more than $44,300 a year to have enough income to cover expenses.
By this measure, more than 1.8 million people in New Jersey faced true poverty
in 2005," according to Rice.
Using the federal poverty guideline, which set the poverty-level income
threshold for a family of three at $15,577, almost 740,000 state residents lived
in poverty.
The research found the gap between the poor and the rich is growing faster than
in the rest of the nation. Between the early 1980s and the early 2000s the
income of the lower fifth of the state's households rose by 24.4 percent.
The income of the highest fifth rose by 78.7 percent.
The study found concentrations of poverty within certain demographic groups,
with factors linked to gender, race, education and marital status.
The poverty rate is higher among women (9.13 percent) than men (6.03 percent),
among blacks (18.22 percent) than whites (5.70 percent) and among those with
less than a high school diploma (17.80 percent) than those with a college degree
(2.78 percent.)
The largest gap is a result of the breakup of the traditional family.
Households with children and headed only by a female have a poverty rate of
28.83 percent. Households with children and two parents have a poverty
rate of 3.73 percent.
The results of living in poverty, according to Rice, are felt in several ways.
"We found that New Jersey's poor are more likely to lack health insurance, face
housing costs that consume more than half of their income, and confront
restricted choices about where they can live because of the high cost of living
in parts of the state," said Rice.
A belief that the poor do not work, and that the poor can escape poverty with
work, is what the report termed, "persistent myths."
The report noted, "Work is vital to both avoiding and escaping poverty. It
is a necessary tool for achieving self-sufficiency and providing for a family's
security. Unfortunately, when jobs are short-term or pay low wages, the
alarming fact is that work is not a sufficient anti-poverty tool."
The report also identified the location of poverty. The counties of
Morris, Somerset and Hunterdon make up a wealth belt, with average household
incomes above $84,010. In the counties of Hudson, Essex, Passaic and
Cumberland the average falls below $46,061.
Middlesex County is closer to the wealth belt with an average household income
of $68,080. However, finding affordable housing in Middlesex County is
daunting for the poor. It takes 132 hours of work per week at the minimum
wage to afford to pay fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment. That
132-hour figure is matched only by the wealthier counties of Somerset and
Hunterdon.
The safety net commonly known as welfare is not as generous as it was a
generation ago. Only 21 percent of families living below the poverty line
receive welfare benefits, and rates have been frozen since 1987.
When measured in constant 2005 dollars, the typical welfare grant has dropped
from $8,556 in 1987 to $5,088 in 2005.
The report is online at:
www.lsnj.org/PovResrch.htm.
Posted 1-29-07
rmalwitz@thnt.com.
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