- Unemployment benefits expire as Congress debates extension, By Clement Tan, April 6, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “As unemployment benefits expired Monday for tens of thousands of jobless workers, Democrats and Republicans renewed their haggling over whether to vote for an extension when Congress returns from its spring break next week. At the heart of the dispute is whether the extension should be offset by spending cuts, as Republicans are demanding, or whether it constitutes an emergency, as Democrats say. The expiration means 212,000 unemployed people will lose benefits this week, according to figures provided by the National Employment Law Project…”
- Unemployment benefits to run out for some, By David Welna, April 5, 2010, National Public Radio: “Nearly 400,000 jobless Americans are going to see their long-term unemployment benefits cut off after Congress failed to pass a short-term extension before taking a two-week break. Members of the House already had voted to extend jobless benefits and went home for the spring break. Everyone knew those benefits would be running out Monday should the Senate fail to act. On the Senate’s last day in session, Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin pleaded with his Republican colleagues on the Senate floor: ‘Let’s have a little heart. Let’s have a little compassion. Let’s have a little understanding of what these people are going through every day in their lives, the stress that they have. Let’s do the right thing, and extend the unemployment benefits for one month.’ Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn objected. He said he was all for extending unemployment benefits as long as they were paid for, which they were not in the measure the House passed…”
Day: April 6, 2010
Poverty Alleviation and Measurement – Nashville, TN
- Nashville’s fight for the poor could get help from new definition of poverty, By Janell Ross, March 24, 2010, The Tennessean: “Roslyn Burdett gets five children off to school before she starts her Baptist Hospital phone operator job at 7 a.m. It’s a tough scramble, but it beats being unemployed and living in a housing project. And she’d have never been able to make the change without Bethlehem Centers of Nashville, a nonprofit agency whose before- and after-school programs are the linchpin of her schedule. ‘I have to have a safe place to leave my children so that I can be at work at the time I have to be there,’ said Burdett, a single parent. Bethlehem’s programs are open only to impoverished families, the kind who would otherwise struggle to pay for child care. For decades, American poverty has been defined by an eight-line chart comparing family size with annual income. A family of four that earned $22,050 last year qualified for all sorts of programs. With a dollar more, they didn’t. But the Obama administration’s stance is that poverty isn’t so simple, and it announced this month that it will redefine the term by including expenses such as housing and health care – which vary from place to place – plus the value of tax credits and other government help…”
- Who is really poor in America?, Editorial, April 4, 2010, The Tennessean: “It’s an understatement, but a lot has changed across America during the past 50 years. For example, compare how the skylines in Nashville or Atlanta looked in 1960 with the way they look today. Consider that in 1960 we paid about 31 cents a gallon for gasoline, whereas we now pay more than $2.50. And if that’s not enough change for you, look at how the nation’s suburbs have exploded since John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the way we measure poverty in the United States. Starting in the mid-1960s, the federal government began gauging poverty based on an eight-line chart comparing family size with annual income. Today that way of measuring still stands, despite huge changes in the way Americans live…”
US Teen Birth Rate
Data: U.S. teen birth rate on decline, By Rob Stein, April 6, 2010, Washington Post: “The rate at which teenage girls in the United States are having babies has dropped, according to the latest government statistics released Tuesday, raising hopes that an alarming two-year increase in teen births was an aberration. Births among U.S. girls ages 15 to 19 fell 2 percent from 2007 to 2008, according to the federal analysis of birth certificates nationwide, reversing two consecutive years of increases that had interrupted a 34 percent decline and caused alarm that one of the nation’s most successful social and public health successes was faltering…”