Poverty, Plunging – The New York Times

news7f09/14/2022

1 5 minutes read

When President Bill Clinton signed a bipartisan bill to tighten welfare eligibility rules in 1996 – and make many benefits workable – critics on the left predicted there would be terrible effects.

Some members of the Clinton administration dropped out in protest. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned of a dramatic increase in child poverty. The New Republic declared, “Wages will go down, families will be broken, and millions of children will be more miserable than ever.”

A quarter of a century later, these predictions seem wildly wrong. As my colleague Jason DeParle wrote this week:

A comprehensive new analysis shows that child poverty has decreased by 59% since 1993, with demand declining on most fronts. Child poverty has decreased in every state, and it has fallen to the same extent among white, black, Hispanic and Asian children living with one or two parents. , and in indigenous or immigrant households.

How did this happen? The Welfare Act of 1996 turned out to be a case study of how different political ideologies came together to produce an outcome better than any one party could have produced on its own.

Some of the conservative critiques of the old welfare, Jason told me, contain important insight. Poor single mothers (primary welfare beneficiaries) are better able to find and keep jobs than many freelancers expect. Over the past few decades, increased employment among single mothers has been one reason for the decline in child poverty rates, according to a study conducted by Child Trends, a research group.

But the biggest cause is the expansion of government aid. And progressives are the main force behind this expansion. With benefits less generous, Democrats (sometimes allied with Republicans) have pushed for policies to help low-income workers, such as extending the earned income tax credit and food stamps. Increase in State minimum wage also play a role.

“I don’t know where I would be right now without that help,” said Stacy Tallman, a mother of three and a waitress in Marlinton, W.Va., of Medicaid, the tax credits. and food. stamp.

After welfare reform, the focus of the government’s anti-poverty efforts shifted from those who didn’t work to those who – and thanks in part to the generosity of new programs, child poverty has decreased sharply. Dana Thomson, co-author of the study, said the scale of this drop “is unmatched in the history of measuring poverty”.

Dolores Acevedo-Garcia of Brandeis University points out that 12 million more children would be poor today if poverty rates remained as high as they were in the 1990s. The reasons to cheer for this development are both immediate and long-term: Children who experience an even modest amount of time in poverty earn less and are on average less healthy than adults, research has shown.

Hiding in a clear sign

I guess many readers are surprised to learn that the percentage of children in poverty has dropped dramatically since the 1990s. I will confess that I have – and I have studied economics for most of the past two decades. As Jason told me, “It’s strange that such a drastic drop in child poverty went almost completely unnoticed.”

In part, the lack of attention stems from a topic I covered previously in this newsletter: bad news bias. Journalists and academics are often more comfortable reporting on negative developments than on positive developments. We worry that we will become blasphemous or Pollyannaish when we bring good news.

Poverty statistics add to the confusion because there are so many different versions. The measure that the Census Bureau calls “official” does not include government aid, that’s so weird, as Vox’s Dylan Matthews noted. And every measure has a limit. The way Jason uses it in his story overestimates the impact of the earned income tax credit and underestimates the impact of food stamps, for technical reasons. (Doesn’t change the underlying conclusion, as Robert Greenstein, a longtime progressive policy adviser, says.)

However, I understand why many people do not want to focus on poverty reduction. America has yet to solve the problem of poverty. More than 20 million Americans today are poor, and many others above the poverty line also struggle to have a decent life. As successful as President Biden was in overcoming many parts of his agendaCongress did not pass some of his anti-poverty proposals. Those measures would expand access to childcare and increase the child tax credit, among other things.

Despite these warnings, poverty reduction still deserves a major news story. One thing is surprising: Even Jason – who spent more time write about poverty in America than almost any other journalist — admitting that welfare reform was less damaging than he expected, in part due to subsequent aid expansions.

At a time of deep skepticism about government, the falling poverty rate is an example of Washington’s success with something big. “The reduction in child poverty is very, very dramatic, and it is due to the increasing effectiveness of government programs,” Greenstein said.

Idea

Ukraine’s recent victories also Biden’s, Bret Stephens write.

“We’re in a worse place than I expected”: David Wallace-Wells Interview with Bill Gates on poverty and climate progress.

Tense traditional icebreaker. Games are a better way to Get to know your colleaguesThe Atlantic’s says Kate Cray.

COMPOSITION READING

Advice from Wirecutter: Find right ceiling fan.

Life Lived: Photographer William Klein has built his reputation with dreamlike images of city life, faces in crowds blurred by motion or as if glimpsed in trance. He died at the age of 96.

SPORTS NEWS FROM ATHLETIC

Las Vegas leads 2-0: A’ja Wilson scored 26 points and won 10 rebounds in the Aces ‘win 85-71 on the Sun last night. No WNBA team has yet to return to a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five finals series.

The owners of the Sun and Mercury are suspended: NBA Robert Sarver suspended for a year and fined him $10 million after an investigation found he fostered a toxic work environment.

Closing history: Aaron Judge has 20 games and the remaining five houses to break Roger Maris’ home run record in the American League after launching a double last night. Opposing pitchers do not know what to do with Judge at this point.

ARTS AND IDEAS

‘Hamilton’? Must to.

Wie wird ein Bastard / der vom Schoß einer trostlosen Dirne kroch / Aus ‘nem gottverdammten, verlor’nem Loch in der Karibik / Ohne Titel, ohne Mittel, ohne Werte / Am Ende doch ein Held und ein Gelehrter?

Those are the opening lines for “Hamilton.” In German.

Sera Finale, a musician and rapper, and Kevin Schroeder, a stage translator, translated the musical – with more than 20,000 words and 47 songs – for production in Hamburg, Germany, the first translation in a single language. it is not English.

Finale and Schroeder had to interpret the original show’s dense references to hip-hop and American history, while preserving meaning for German audiences. That usually means writing new lyrics, which they send to the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Listen to examples from both versions.