Fact of the Week: A Quarter of Americans Live in Concentrated Poverty Areas
Lecia Imbery,
July 10, 2014
Over 25% of Americans – more than 77 million people – lived in areas of concentrated poverty in 2010, up from 18.1% in 2000. The percentage of people living in these “poverty areas,” defined in the Census Bureau report released last week as an area where more than 20% of...
Head Smacker: Close to Independence Day, Supreme Court Threatens Independence for People with Disabilities
Deborah Weinstein,
July 3, 2014
The Supreme Court ignored some time-honored rules on Monday when it decided against unionized home care workers. Such as: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and its corollary, “if it’s working, don’t break it.” In Harris v. Quinn, Justice Alito wrote an opinion for the 5-vote majority that qualifies...
Fact of the Week: US Has Less Child Poverty than Romania, but is Worse than 28 Other Developed Nations
Lecia Imbery,
July 1, 2014
The U.S. ranks 28th out of 29 developed countries surveyed in terms of relative child poverty, placing it between Latvia and Romania, according to a report by UNICEF. More than 23% of American children live in households where disposable income is less than half of the national median, earning the...
You Are Not Alone: The White House Summit on Working Families
Deborah Weinstein,
July 1, 2014
Decades ago, I remember women slowly awakening to the fact that their dissatisfaction about roadblocks to working outside the home was not just their personal problem. It was a hard slog to get from blaming yourself to recognizing that the “system” needed changing. It felt like that again at the...
Shoebox of Money
Natalie Kramer,
June 26, 2014
One of the central themes of conversations among social workers is recognizing one’s privilege. I quickly realized my privilege on June 16th as the panelists for the discussion on financial literacy for foster youth, organized by the Senate Caucuses on Foster Youth and Financial and Economic Literacy, began to tell...
