Annie Lowrey writes in the Times Magazine this week about the troubles of Clay County, Ky., which by several measures is the hardest place in America to live.
The Upshot came to this conclusion by looking at six data points for each county in the United States: education (percentage of residents with at least a bachelor’s degree), median household income, unemployment rate, disability rate, life expectancy and obesity. We then averaged each county’s relative rank in these categories to create an overall ranking. Continue reading Where Are the Hardest Places to Live in the U.S. | NYTimes→
Fifty years after Freedom Summer, Mississippi education remains separate and unequal
Myrtle School, Union County, 1956 (courtesy of Bill and Rita Bender)
Fifty years ago this month, Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act outlawing segregation in all public facilities. The Brown v. Board of Education decision desegregating public schools was already a decade old. Nevertheless, nearly all of Mississippi’s schools still operated under the pretense of “separate but equal.”
It was obvious to anyone who cared to look that Mississippi was more interested in separation than equality. White schools had the appearance of modernity, even if they often lacked the quality of more affluent states. Black schools, meanwhile, were often rustic and ramshackle. One-room schoolhouses had not yet gone extinct in some areas. The state spent 50 percent more on white education than black education, while districts supplemented white school funding with an average of four dollars for every dollar spent on black schools. Disparities in some districts reached 80 to one. Continue reading Fifty years after Freedom Summer, Mississippi education remains separate and unequal | Rethink Mississippi→
The prospect of electing an intemperate Tea Party candidate who was openly nostalgic for Confederate days was so repellent to many black voters in Mississippi that they did a remarkable thing on Tuesday, crossing party lines to help give the Republican Senate nomination to Thad Cochran, in office for 36 years. Now it’s time for Mr. Cochran to return the favor by supporting a stronger Voting Rights Act and actively working to reduce his party’s extreme antigovernment policies.
In Mississippi, as in many Southern states, politics has become so racially polarized that blacks generally vote for Democrats and whites for Republicans. But after Mr. Cochran came in second during the first round of primary voting earlier this month, he made an unusual appeal for help from black voters in the runoff. Many responded, the precinct results showed, and the reason was clear: Chris McDaniel, who was challenging Mr. Cochran, threatened to return the state to an era they loathed. Continue reading Editorial: Thad Cochran’s Debt to Mississippi | NYTimes→
It is way too common in this town to run into people who think that poor people are poor because they don’t work. Influential Congressman Paul Ryan has referred to safety net benefits as “a hammock” that create “poverty trap” and a culture of non-work, a rap as old as poverty itself. Various critics of poverty programs argue that their benefit structure dis-incentivizes work and are increasingly calling for more work requirements.
Matthew Desmond is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Studies at Harvard.
Patrice is, in many ways, typical. A low-income woman, she’s struggling to find affordable housing in Milwaukee. The 24-year-old single mother of three shares a two-bedroom apartment with her mother, her three young children and her three siblings. It’s on the same block as abandoned buildings and memorials for victims of shootings. The back door does not lock, the kitchen window is broken, the toilet and shower remain stopped up for days, and the apartment crawls with roaches.
Over the past three decades, Congress has conducted a major experiment in anti-poverty policy. Legislators have restructured benefits and tax breaks intended for the poor so that they penalize unmarried, unemployed parents — the modern day version of the “undeserving poor.” At the same time, working parents, the aged and the disabled are getting larger benefits.
Before 1996, Aid to Families With Dependent Children was the single most important program that provided direct cash payments to poor families, the overwhelming majority of which were headed by single women. Just under 60 percent of adult recipients were never-married mothers, and 24 percent were divorced or separated mothers. Continue reading Thomas Byrne @Edsall: Cutting the #Poor Out of #Welfare – NYTimes→
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently published new data on the role that American fathers play in parenting their children. Most of the CDC’s previous research on family life — which the agency explores as an important contributor to public health and child development — has focused exclusively on mothers. But the latest data finds that the stereotypical gender imbalance in this area doesn’t hold true, and dads are just as hands-on when it comes to raising their kids.
In fact, in its coverage of the study, the Los Angeles Times noted that the results “defy stereotypes about black fatherhood” because the CDC found that black dads are more involved with their kids on a daily basis than dads from other racial groups: Continue reading .@ThinkProgress: The #Myth Of The Absent #BlackFather→
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. His blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting.
Efforts to alleviate poverty are often seen as being separate from the debate on overall economic policy, with the former involving a distinct set of issues that only marginally overlap with the latter. This is unfortunate, since the health of the economy and specifically the level of unemployment, has an enormous impact on the prospects of the poor. In fact, there are few policies that are likely to have as much effect on improving the plight of the poor or near poor as a genuine commitment to full employment economic policies.
There are three separate channels through which a reduction in the unemployment rate is likely to benefit low-income people. The first is simply by increasing their probability of finding jobs. Unemployment is not evenly distributed throughout the workforce; the less-educated and disadvantaged see the sharpest rises in unemployment when the economy goes into a downturn. Continue reading @BillMoyersHQ: The Full #Employment Route to #Poverty Reduction→
The official blog of life, the universe, and everything
