Page 123 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

The fact is economic hardship is perpetuated by deliberate policy choices . Only a change in those choices will result in eliminating the present double bind that so many New York families face now .
Poverty persists today, and even increases, because present policies work to manage rather than eradicate inequity . Families face the challenge of rising costs and stagnant income, and are no longer well served by safety net policies—that is, policies that help people meet their basic needs but don’t do much more . To seek to manage, rather than to eradicate, poverty is not just to stand still but, given the reality of present day economics, to go backwards at an alarming rate .
A “safety net” strategy is not enough . We must certainly preserve and maintain support for a safety net that ensures that individuals have the means to feed themselves and their families—the means to maintain their dignity and basic livelihood .
But to be truly effective, any support given must aid families in regaining—and retaining— self-sufficiency . We can’t just help a family from day to day . We have to earnestly apply policies designed and implemented to move people out of poverty into independence and self-sufficiency .
We must eradicate poverty, not just alleviate its symptoms .
To work toward this end, we must commit to building a city of equal opportunity . Because income directly correlates with opportunity, impacting current and future generations, we need a full-scale effort to develop policies and programs that materially improve wages, educational experiences, and living conditions . There are three tenets we must work toward in order to create the opportunity we need: reduce poverty by ensuring individual and families across generations can meet their basic needs; advance upward mobility by driving a policy agenda that promotes the ability of the unemployed, underemployed, and low-wage workers to move up the economic ladder during their lifetime; and create shared prosperity by increasing fairness, opportunity, and equity in jobs, career pathways, education, and health .
Accepting our shared values and interests in creating a just and caring society compels us not only to weave a concrete safety net, but also to work to identify a path that enables our most needy neighbors to achieve economic stability .
We have research demonstrating that, with appropriate and targeted investment in a combination of policies, we can begin to meaningfully alleviate poverty while opening the doors to opportunity . A recent study and report, commissioned by the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies with Catholic Charities of New York and United Jewish Appeal Federation, and conducted by The Urban Institute, analyzed six existing public policies and simulated a new tax policy to inform federal, state, and city government policymakers on how to effectively invest in anti-poverty programs, both to reduce and, dare we dream, eradicate poverty .14
The report utilized 2012 American Community Survey (“ACS”) data and the TRIM3 (“Transfer Income Model version 3”) microsimulation model to determine baseline data that served as the foundation of the poverty analysis . Using this baseline data, we were able to assess the impact of seven policies, three directly tied to employment and earnings, three in-kind benefits, and one new tax credit for non-workers .
14 linda giannarelli, laura wheaTon & Joyce morTon, research reporT: how much could policy changes reduce poverTy in new york ciTy? (2015) available at http://fpwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Anti-Poverty-Report-Final.pdf.
Lessons from New York City
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