- 11% of Wisconsin residents live in poverty, By Bill Glauber, September 1, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “More than 11% of Wisconsin’s residents – including one in seven children – lived in poverty in 2008, according to the second Wisconsin Poverty Report. Authors of the report, to be published Thursday, said they created a new Wisconsin-specific measure of poverty. ‘There are a lot of forces that can push poverty up or down,’ said Timothy M. Smeeding of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty, which produced the report. ‘This is a new poverty threshold that better reflects the cost of living in Wisconsin,’ Smeeding said. The new measure set the Wisconsin poverty line of $24,842 for a family of four. That figure was well above the official U.S. poverty line of $21,834 for a family of four. The overall poverty rate was slightly increased using the Wisconsin-specific measure…”
- State poverty rate worsens, By Mike Ivey, September 2, 2010, Madison Capital Times: “No surprise here but Wisconsin’s poverty rate worsened in 2008, with more than 11 percent of the state’s population living in need, including one in seven children and one in 10 elderly residents, according to a new report. Produced by the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at the UW-Madison, the report issued Thursday used direct interviews and a more complete accounting of the state poverty rate than traditional measures. Under that matrix, the state poverty rate was 11.2 percent vs. 10.2 percent according to the U.S. government figures. The national poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2 percent. ‘This 11 percent number in Wisconsin more accurately reflects what people told us,’ says Tim Smeeding, director of the IRP and La Follette School of Public Affairs faculty member. Milwaukee County was the poorest in the state, with a poverty rate of 18.8 percent, according to the IRP report. La Crosse (13.9%) and Dane (13.1%) percent were next poorest…”
Day: September 2, 2010
Millennium Development Goals
- UN reveals global disparity in broadband access, By Jonathan Fildes, September 2, 2010, BBC News: “The Central African Republic is the most expensive place to get a fixed broadband connection, costing nearly 40 times the average monthly income there. Macao in China is the cheapest, costing 0.3% of the average monthly income. Niger becomes the most expensive place to access communication technologies, when landlines and mobiles are also taken into account. ‘Access to broadband in an affordable manner is our greatest challenge,’ Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), told BBC News. The statistics were released ahead of the UN 2010 Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York on 19 September…”
- World leaders urged to act on poverty, By Danny Rose, September 1, 2010, Sydney Morning Herald: “The world’s aid and charity organisations have resolved to again urge governments to pump billions of dollars into the global fight against poverty. Any suggestion that they lacked the resources to do so was a ‘nonsense’, the final day of the United Nations DPI/NGO (Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental Organisation) Conference was told on Wednesday. A fraction of the world’s military spending would fund the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), said Professor Phil Batterham, convenor of the three-day conference in Melbourne. Around 1600 delegates represented more than 350 Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) at the conference…”
- Some have progress at their fingertips, but for others pain and poverty linger, August 28, 2010, The Age: “A street beggar’s dirty hand is drawn to his mouth in the universal sign for hunger. A busy foreigner bustles past and shrugs, indicating he does not have any local coins. ‘I take SMS,’ calls the beggar. This truly is the digital economy. While Melburnians struggle to work out how to use a myki card, Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, buzzes on a banking system based on short messages sent from mobile phones. Known as m-pesa – ‘pesa’ is Swahili for money – the mobile service works on a debit and credit principle. A vendor nominates a price, the buyer sends a text message to transfer funds between accounts. Should a person need hard currency, booths are dotted around the country so people can make withdrawals. The service is booming. Almost 12 million Kenyans used m-pesa in the past year, sending $A462 million in small transactions. Ready access to cheap mobile phones, even for the poor, gives the mobile money system many advantages over a traditional cash-based economy. Security is one thing – for Kenya’s many slum dwellers, finding a safe place to stash savings is tricky…”
General Assistance Medical Care – Minnesota
Fewer to get care with GAMC alteration, By Warren Wolfe, September 1, 2010, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “Because of a change made by state officials Wednesday, about 2,500 fewer people will get coordinated care in medical clinics taking part in a program for Minnesota’s poorest and sickest patients. Instead, those patients will need to find clinics that offer charity care, wait for a medical emergency so they can get free care in any hospital emergency room, or go without. A reduction in the overall number of people on General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) led the state on Wednesday to reduce the maximum number of patients who may choose coordinated care offered by four Twin Cities hospitals. As a result, three of the hospitals now are well above their GAMC patient limits, leaving only Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis with open slots. It has about 3,750 slots remaining, while 18,000 patients have not yet chosen a coordinated care program…”