SPEA looks into poor’s struggles

While the Great Recession ended in 2009, struggling families in poverty are still at risk as the economy slowly begins its rebound, according to a new study released by professors in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and IU alumnus and broadcaster Tavis Smiley.

The report found that the number of those living in poverty in the United States increased significantly — 27 percent — between 2006 and 2010. Approximately 46.2 million Americans live below the official poverty level as of 2010 — about 15.1 percent of the population. That number is expected to increase.

“At Risk: America’s Poor During and After the Great Recession,” was authored by Kristin Seefeldt, assistant professor in SPEA, John Graham, dean of the SPEA, and a number of doctoral students. Smiley commissioned the report to serve as a factual basis for his recent national poverty tour.

“This has been a particularly difficult recession, with a record number of people who are poor and with large, large numbers of people who have been unemployed long term,” Seefeldt said.

“The economy seems to be sputtering along, but given the depth of these problems, it’s going to take some time for these problems to get better.”

Authors of the report gleaned data from existing sources, such as the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, to create a more comprehensive look at poverty in America today.

“One of the struggles that we highlight in the report is that there is going to be a real dilemma faced by policy makers,” Seefeldt said. “On the one hand, there is all of this need out there. There is also pressure from certain parties that we need to rein in spending. How to balance those competing desires to help struggling families and reign in spending is a real dilemma.”

A main finding of the report shows the Great Recession produced the largest number of long-term unemployed workers since records started in 1948.

More than four million American workers report they have been unemployed for more than 12 months, and while the unemployment rate has fallen over the last two months, Seefeldt said it could be due to both seasonal hiring and discouraged workers who have stopped looking for work. 

“The general trend, if we look at past recessions, is that poverty rates don’t fall in conjunction with economic recovery. They lag behind,” Seefeldt said.

Another concern raised by the report is the weakening of safety-net programs such as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Unemployment Insurance.

The study concluded that while the 2009 stimulus package aided struggling Americans, that relief is coming to an end.

“Studies have shown that it really made a difference and kept families out of poverty,” she said. “That said, most of those provisions will expire or already have expired. So many will argue that the stimulus didn’t go far enough.”

If unemployment insurance benefits run out for the long-term unemployed before the economy can steadily produce jobs, increasing numbers of citizens may become part of the growing poverty statistic, the report noted.

Seefeldt acknowledged that a point of contention regarding poverty statistics is how poverty is actually measured in the U.S. She said the method has largely remained the same since the 1960s and does not fully take into account changes in standard of living and living costs.

“It is true that there are a lot of problems with the way the poverty measurement is designed,” she said. “That said, I think it’s also important to note that when analysts and researchers calculate poverty in new ways, it’s not as if things are a whole lot better.

“There are criticisms of the way poverty is measured in the U.S., and we can argue about the conclusion, but in the end poverty rates won’t look very different.”

In the end, however, the report is meant to provide facts, not to make judgments.

 “We very much did not view the white paper as a place to make policy recommendations,” she said. “We’re just proving the background for people to draw their own conclusions.”