- Record number in government anti-poverty program, By Richard Wolf, August 30, 2010, USA Today: “Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand. More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That’s up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007. ‘Virtually every Medicaid director in the country would say that their current enrollment is the highest on record,’ says Vernon Smith of Health Management Associates, which surveys states for Kaiser Family Foundation. The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. ‘Private physicians are already indicating that they’re at their limit,’ says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers. More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years. Caseloads have risen as more people become eligible. The economic stimulus law signed by President Obama last year also boosted benefits…”
- As unemployed lose benefits, more seek welfare benefits, By James Osborne, August 30, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “One morning in July, Lisa Carstarphen climbed out of her husband’s car and walked into the beige brick building that houses the offices of Camden County’s social services, wondering how at age 46 she ended up there. Two years ago, she was laid off from her $35,000-a-year job at Comcast. Now, with her unemployment benefits exhausted, she was broke. She stepped through the building’s glass doors into a crowded, fluorescent-lit room to wait her turn to sign up for welfare. As a child, she had accompanied her mother to the welfare office and swore she would never end up the same way. But here she was, surrounded by dejected faces, just as in her youth. Memories of nondescript jars of peanut butter and big blocks of government cheese came rushing back, and Carstarphen struggled to keep it together. ‘It was like going back in time. But I had no choice. My refrigerator was bare,’ she said. ‘For someone who has worked their whole life, it’s awful to ask for a handout. When my husband picked me up later, I busted out in tears.’ For the first two years of the recession, welfare caseloads followed the same steady decline of the decade and a half after President Bill Clinton’s transformation of welfare from a social-assistance program into what is essentially a job-training program for low-income families. But over the last six months, caseloads have begun to creep up, the product, experts say, of the continued sluggishness of the job market. Unemployed workers who have run out of unemployment benefits, like Carstarphen, are being pushed into the system…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty