Homeless Dolls and Homeless Famiies

Family homelessness has migrated into the playrooms of privileged children, thanks to Gwen the homeless doll. Gwen is the latest creation of the American Girl Doll Company, which specializes in selling lovely and expensive dolls and their equally lovely and expensive accessories to the offspring of affluent families. And affluent parents expect more for their dollar than just entertainment: the dolls represent girls from specific historical periods and ethnic groups and are marketed with books that describe their lives. Playtime with a nudge toward AP history and one small step toward the Ivys- what could be better?
But Gwen, the latest doll, goes a bit farther. She is homeless, and her accompanying story describes the difficulties that she and her single mother have experienced. Gwen has provoked a great deal of controversy: Is she a further iteration of the poverty spectacle, a sanitized version of bum-bashing? Does she understate the difficulties of poverty- she is, after all, clothed neatly and has combed and styled blond hair. Is it wrong to allow affluent children to amuse themselves by playing with the less fortunate?
Maybe. But Gwen provides a new sort of learning. She shows us the developing face of homelessness, providing a valuable corrective to the dominant portrayal. We've all seen the dominant story, usually accompanied by photos that portray homeless individuals as a collection of pathologies. The homeless, they tell us, are are too disabled to work, won't take their psychiatric medication, are dirty, unkempt, and disruptive. This is an incomplete picture, and is, unfortunately, the portrayal that has become the the 'public' face of homelessness.
But the face of homelessness in contemporary America is increasingly the face of Gwen and her mother. Homeless families are a growing share of the population. In the majority of these families, the parents or parent work, or are looking for work. Like Gwen's fictive mother, they try to keep their children neat and to normalize their lives as they move from shelters, to vehicles, to friends' sofas. Their public face, in other words, is much like that of any other American family: a portrait gallery of this homeless population would look like families pictured in ads for Target or Sears.
It is amazing, in fact, that Gwen has made it into the American Girl line, because her story ought to be quite disturbing to the families who purchase her. The playrooms and designer-decorated bedrooms where Gwen lives with the other American Girls might not be forever: an increasing number of real Gwens have made the journey from similar environs to relatives' sofas. And there is something else: the playrooms and lovely bedrooms, the money to purchase Gwen and her expensive accessories and American Girl companions are produced by a system in which wealth at the top increasingly depends on the poverty and insecurity of families like Gwen's.
In real life, the Gwens live in one or two parent families where the parents or parent piece together multiple low-wage jobs, working wildly varying shits, and receiving no benefits.. And even these jobs are not secure: there are frequent layoffs, and taking a day off because you, or your child, is ill are grounds for termination. There is another thing about Gwen's real world- the parents who put forth this effort cannot always afford to provide stable housing. Gwen, in other words, reminds us that there are no storybook endings for an increasing number of American girls, their siblings, and the families in which they live.
For a discussion of the Gwen controversy, see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/29/american-girls-homeless-d_n_302981.html

Homeless Families: A Growth Industry in a Jobless Recovery

The population of homeless families with children has surged, The New York Times reports, overwhelming schools and shelter systems. A number of recent studies have similarly observed that the homeless population is increasingly composed of families. They typically focus on the proximate cause - unemployment, foreclosures and evictions cause by the recession.
But this misses an important point. The recession simply provided a stressor that revealed underlying weaknesses in the paradigm that structures national policies toward the homeless.
The paradigm that had structured homeless policies since the passage of the McKinney-Vento Act incorporated a set of assumptions about homelessness. These policies focused on providing assistance to the "chronically homeless," who were defined as "unaccompanied single individuals". Further, they assumed that most of these individuals were homeless due to disability. Patterns of funding followed this paradigm. Since disability rather than poverty was taken to be the major cause of homelessness, and since the chronically homeless were taken to be single individuals, programs to house them became top priority. These "supportive housing" programs provided intensive services to relatively small numbers of individuals who were single and severely disabled. Even as Section 8 vouchers that provided rental assistance to individuals and families who were simply too poor to afford market-rate housing were cut, experimental "supportive housing" programs expanded.
Why did this occur? There are two major reasons. First, homeless disabled adults were more visible and more disruptive than homeless families. Homeless families, for instance, were rarely seen sleeping on steam grates or panhandling at intersections. Secondly, families- including minimum-wage working families- are more likely to be homeless simply because they are too poor to afford housing. Policies ignore the connection between poverty and family homelessness because this connection suggests that the economic arrangements that benefit some of us leave others- literally- out in the cold.
A perverse sort of efficiency is at work here. By prioritizing service to the most disruptive and visible group of homeless individuals, status quo housing policies purchase the appearance of progress. And by focusing attention on a group of individuals who have multiple problems, these policies also distract attention from the more disturbing fact that our economy is structured in ways that create families who are too poor to afford to keep a roof over their heads.
And the truth is that our economy, as it is currently structured, requires more and more economically marginalized workers to maintain the status quo. Beneath the abstract talk of underemployment and a jobless recovery are simple facts: if real estate prices recover while employment markets continue to shed jobs, then family homelessness is a growth industry.






For an article on the surge in homeless children, see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/education/06homeless.html?scp=1&sq=family%20homelessness&st=cse

Latest Census Bureau Report on Poverty, Income and Health Insurance in the US-(2008) Released 9/10/09

INCOME, POVERTY AND HEALTH INSURANCE
COVERAGE IN THE UNITED STATES: 2008

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that real median household income in the United States fell 3.6 percent between 2007 and 2008, from $52,163 to $50,303. This breaks a string of three years of annual income increases and coincides with the recession that started in December 2007.

The nation’s official poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 2007. There were 39.8 million people in poverty in 2008, up from 37.3 million in 2007.

Meanwhile, the number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008, while the percentage remained unchanged at 15.4 percent.

These findings are contained in the report Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008. The following results for the nation were compiled from information collected in the 2009 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC):

Income

Race and Hispanic Origin (Race data refer to people reporting a single race only. Hispanics can be of any race.)

• Between 2007 and 2008, the real median income of non-Hispanic white households declined 2.6 percent (to $55,530); for blacks, it declined 2.8 percent (to $34,218); for Asians, it declined 4.4 percent (to $65,637); and for Hispanics, it declined 5.6 percent (to $37,913). Except for the difference between the declines for non-Hispanic white and Hispanic households, all other differences between the declines were not statistically significant.

Regions

• Between 2007 and 2008, real median household income declined in the South by 4.9 percent (to $45,590), declined in the Midwest by 4.0 percent (to $50,112) and declined in the West by 2.0 percent (to $55,085). Income in the Northeast was statistically unchanged ($54,346). The apparent differences in the declines in median household income between the South and Midwest, and the Midwest and West were not statistically significant. The apparent difference between the median household incomes for the West and Northeast was not statistically significant.

Nativity

• Native- and foreign-born households, including those maintained by a naturalized citizen, had declines in real median income between 2007 and 2008. Income was statistically unchanged for households maintained by a noncitizen. The decline for native-born households was 3.5 percent; the decline for foreign-born households was 5.3 percent; and the decline for those maintained by a naturalized citizen was 4.8 percent. The apparent differences among the declines in median income for native-born, foreign-born and naturalized citizen households were not statistically significant.

Earnings

• In 2008, the earnings of women who worked full time, year-round was 77 percent of that for corresponding men, not statistically different from the 2007 ratio.
• The real median earnings of men who worked full time, year-round declined by 1.0 percent between 2007 and 2008, from $46,846 to $46,367. For women, the corresponding drop was 1.9 percent, from $36,451 to $35,745.

Income Inequality

• Income inequality was statistically unchanged between 2007 and 2008, as measured by shares of aggregate household income by quintiles and the Gini index. The Gini index was 0.466 in 2008. (The Gini index is a measure of household income inequality; 0 represents perfect income equality and 1 perfect inequality.)

Poverty

Overview

• The increase in the poverty rate between 2007 and 2008 was the first statistically significant annual increase since 2004. The 2008 poverty rate (13.2 percent) was the highest since 1997.
• In 2008, the family poverty rate and the number of families in poverty were 10.3 percent and 8.1 million, respectively, up from 9.8 percent and 7.6 million in 2007.
• For married-couple families, both the poverty rate and the number in poverty increased — 5.5 percent (3.3 million) in 2008, up from 4.9 percent (2.8 million) in 2007. Both measures, however, showed no statistical change in 2008 for female-householder-with-no-husband-present families (28.7 percent and 4.2 million) and for male-householder-no wife-present families (13.8 percent and 723,000).

Thresholds

• As defined by the Office of Management and Budget and updated for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, the weighted average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2008 was $22,025; for a family of three, $17,163; for a family of two, $14,051; and for unrelated individuals, $10,991.

Race and Hispanic Origin (Race data refer to people reporting a single race only. Hispanics can be of any race.)

• In 2008, the poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic whites (8.6 percent in 2008, up from 8.2 percent in 2007), Asians (11.8 percent in 2008, up from 10.2 percent in 2007) and Hispanics (23.2 percent in 2008, up from 21.5 percent in 2007). The poverty rate in 2008 was statistically unchanged for blacks (24.7 percent).

Age

• The poverty rate increased for children younger than 18 (19.0 percent in 2008, up from 18.0 percent in 2007) and people 18 to 64 (11.7 percent in 2008, up from 10.9 percent in 2007), while it remained statistically unchanged for people 65 and older (9.7 percent).
• Similar to the patterns observed for the poverty rate in 2008, the number of people in poverty increased for children younger than 18 (14.1 million in 2008, up from 13.3 million in 2007) and people 18 to 64 (22.1 million in 2008, up from 20.4 million in 2007) but remained statistically unchanged for seniors 65 and older (3.7 million).

Nativity

• Among the native-born population, 12.6 percent (33.3 million) were in poverty in 2008, up from 11.9 percent (31.1 million) in 2007.
• Among the foreign-born population, the poverty rate and the number in poverty increased to 17.8 percent and 6.5 million in 2008, up from 16.5 percent and 6.2 million, respectively, in 2007. The poverty rate in 2008 for naturalized citizens, 10.2 percent, was statistically unchanged from 2007, while the poverty rate for those who were not U.S. citizens rose to 23.3 percent in 2008, up from 21.3 percent in 2007.

Regions

• The Midwest and West experienced increases in both their poverty rate and the number in poverty. The Midwest poverty rate increased to 12.4 percent (8.1 million) in 2008, up from 11.1 percent (7.2 million) in 2007, and the West poverty rate increased to 13.5 percent (9.6 million) in 2008, up from 12.0 percent (8.4 million) in 2007. The poverty rates for the Northeast (11.6 percent) and the South (14.3 percent) were both statistically unchanged.

Health Insurance Coverage

Overview

• The number of people with health insurance increased from 253.4 million in 2007 to 255.1 million in 2008.
• The number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008.
• Between 2007 and 2008, the number of people covered by private health insurance decreased from 202.0 million to 201.0 million, while the number covered by government health insurance climbed from 83.0 million to 87.4 million. The number covered by employment-based health insurance declined from 177.4 million to 176.3 million.
• The number of uninsured children declined from 8.1 million (11.0 percent) in 2007 to 7.3 million (9.9 percent) in 2008. Both the uninsured rate and number of uninsured children are the lowest since 1987, the first year that comparable health insurance data were collected.
• Although the uninsured rate for children in poverty declined from 17.6 percent in 2007 to 15.7 percent in 2008, children in poverty were more likely to be uninsured than all children.

Race and Hispanic Origin (Race data refer to those reporting a single race only. Hispanics can be of any race.)

• The uninsured rate and number of uninsured for non-Hispanic whites increased in 2008 to 10.8 percent and 21.3 million, from 10.4 percent and 20.5 million in 2007. The uninsured rate and number of uninsured for blacks in 2008, meanwhile, were not statistically different from 2007, at 19.1 percent and 7.3 million. The uninsured rate for Asians in 2008 rose to 17.6 percent, up from 16.8 percent.
• The percentage of uninsured Hispanics decreased to 30.7 percent in 2008, from 32.1 percent in 2007. The number of uninsured Hispanics was not statistically different in 2008, at 14.6 million.
• Based on a three-year average (2006-2008), 31.7 percent of people who reported American Indian and Alaska Native as their race were without coverage. The three-year average uninsured rate for Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders was 18.5 percent.

Nativity

• The uninsured rates for the native-born and foreign-born populations were statistically unchanged at 12.9 percent and 33.5 percent, respectively, in 2008. Among the foreign-born population, the uninsured rates for both naturalized citizens (18.0 percent) and noncitizens (44.7 percent) were statistically unchanged.

Regions

• At 11.6 percent, the Northeast and the Midwest had lower uninsured rates in 2008 than the West (17.4 percent) and the South (18.2 percent). The 2008 rates for the Northeast, Midwest and South were not statistically different from their respective 2007 rates. The uninsured rate for the West increased to 17.4 percent in 2008, up from 16.9 percent in 2007.

The CPS ASEC is subject to sampling and nonsampling errors. All comparisons made in the report have been tested and found to be statistically significant at the 90 percent confidence level, unless otherwise noted.

For additional information on the source of the data and accuracy of the estimates for the CPS, visit <http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/p60_236sa.pdf>

Great John Maynard Keynes Quote

"Some austere and puritanical souls regard [the Depression] both as an inevitable and a desirable nemesis on so much 'overexpansion,' as they call it. ... It would, they feel, be a victory for the mammon of unrighteousness if ... prosperity was not subsequently balanced by universal bankruptcy. We need, they say, what they politely call a 'prolonged liquidation' to put us right.... I do not take this view.... And I do not understand how universal bankruptcy can do any good or bring us nearer to prosperity."

Healthy Children in a Sick Country

To the extent that this country has had a commitment to anything like universal health care, that commitment has focused on children. And the current decision to extend health care for low-income children in California makes it clear that the commitment is, at least in some places, bipartisan.
But something is missing from the calculations that justify public health care only for low-income children. As a housing advocate in western Pennsylvania, I routinely saw human examples of this failed calculus. Working homeless parents who had serious health issues but lacked insurance and were over the (very low) income limit for Medicaid would tell me on intake that they h ad personally not seen a doctor for the past two years, although the last one they saw mentioned that they had hypertension or diabetes.
Some reported health-related problems at work. The boss was threatening to fire one father because he passed out when he picked up heavy bags of concrete. A mother was having trouble keeping her fast food job because her leg went numb if she stood too long.
The good news was that these parents had children who were up to date on shots and had seen a doctor right on schedule. The bad news was that these healthy children had parents who were chronically ill.
Ugly ironies turned up daily. There was the single mom who brought her child in so that I could help with filling out the paperwork needed to get braces for his crooked teeth. The state's low-income insurance program for children would pay for the braces once the right boxes had been checked. The mom had been about to lose the family's trailer when her hours got cut at the gas station where she worked. Then she had a spot of luck- she got hired on part-time at Walmart. With two jobs, she could just manage.
But, as always happens in the low-income world, things went south again. The local Walmart notoriously found reasons to fire cashiers who lost front teeth. Too-visible dental problems gave a poor impression and upset the customers. The mom, who hadn't been to the dentist in more than eight years, bit into an apple one day and left a front tooth in its flesh. Mom was still on probation at Walmart. She had no dental insurance, made too much for Medicaid, and lost her job.
As I filled out the paperwork for her child's braces, the family was heading into the sort of semi-homelessness common in the low-income world. Mom, her son, and his new braces would have to move out of their trailer. They would be joining a former sister-in-law and her three kids in a single-wide, one and a half-bedroom trailer in the worst trailer park in town.
Cancer was worse. Some of the uninsured low-income parents who came for housing help had advanced stage cancer- they hadn't been to the doctor for years, nothing was ever caught early Sometimes you could solve the problem of providing income if they couldn't work, but that did little to solve the real problem. Too many children were faced with the possibility that mom or dad might die in the near future and, while waiting to die, mom or dad was usually too shell-shocked and ill to do much effective parenting. Early detection, of course, would not have prevented all these scenarios, but the thing is this: Our country doesn't even try.
The really amazing thing was that no uninsured parent, no matter how ill, ever made the obvious comparison between his or h er lack of medical and dental care and the services available for his or her children. No-one ever expressed envy, became angry, or questioned the arrangement- there was just acceptance of the situation, and pride that the kids had their immunization paperwork in order and had a regular doctor.
It is not just these parents who are at risk of serious untreated illness, however. The society that permits these untenable choices is on the critical list and on the way to an ethical flat-line.

Nicholas Kristoff Column on Health Care Reform

Both Kristoff's Sunday, 8/30 column and the comments on his column are well worth reading. The
url is below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/opinion/30kristof.html

Job Insecurity Increases Health Problems

According to a recent study by the University of Michigan, job insecurity is more harmful to workers' health than actual job loss or unemployment. The study, conducted by Dr. Sara Burgard at the University's Institute for Social Research, found that in one of the groups studied, job insecurity was a stronger predictor of poor health than either smoking or hypertension.
This study has important implications. It suggests that the structure of the economy is an important source of health disparities. While many studies of health disparities focus on changing the "unhealthy" habits of low-income and minority individuals, this study suggests that these groups have simply been the canaries in the coal mine. For individuals in these groups, job insecurity is a way of life.
The connection between poor health and job insecurity suggests that our economic arrangements are a vector of disease. The short-run efficiency represented by a "flexible" labor force that is chronically on the verge of layoffs, shift changes, benefit reductions, or more punitive management practices has long term costs. In the long-term, the "unhealthiest" behaviors may be those that we exhibit as a society and as individual consumers when we support this business model.
A report on this study can be found at:
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7282