Commentary:
Total Poverty Awareness
by David K. Shipler, February 21, 2004
For more articles like this
visit
https://www.bridges4kids.org.
CHEVY CHASE, Md.
— Thanks to the focus by John Edwards on the "two Americas," the
working poor have become a topic in the Democratic presidential
race. Let's hope they will remain so as we move into the general
election. Yet nearly 40 years after the national War on Poverty
began, much of the public conversation and official response
remains disconnected from the real lives of poor families.
Instead of approaching poverty as a whole made up of many parts,
we tend to address it bit by bit. It's like having all the
pieces of a puzzle before you, but letting them lie scattered
and unlinked.
Some educators and other specialists speak of a "culture of
poverty" as if it were a collection of mores, values and
rituals. But poverty is not a culture. It's more like an
ecological system of relationships among individuals, families
and the environment of schools, neighborhoods, jobs and
government services. Professionals who aid the poor witness the
toxic interactions every day. Doctors see patients affected by
dangerous housing, erratic work schedules, transportation
difficulties and poor child-rearing skills. Teachers see pupils
undermined by violence at home and malnutrition.
About 35 million Americans live below the federal poverty line.
Their opportunities are defined by forces that may look
unrelated, but decades of research have mapped the web of
connections. A 1987 study of 215 children attributed differences
in I.Q. in part to "social risk factors" like maternal anxiety
and stress, which are common features of impoverished
households. Research in the 1990's demonstrated how the paint
and pipes of slum housing — major sources of lead — damage the
developing brains of children. Youngsters with elevated lead
levels have lower I.Q.'s and attention deficits, and — according
to a 1990 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine
— were seven times more likely to drop out of school.
Take the case of an 8-year-old boy in Boston. He was frequently
missing school because of asthma attacks, and his mother was
missing work so often for doctors' appointments that she was in
danger of losing her low-wage job. It was a case typical of poor
neighborhoods, where asthma runs rampant among children who live
amid the mold, dust mites, roaches and other triggers of the
disease.
Pediatricians at the Boston Medical Center did what they could
with inhalers and steroids, and then dispatched a nurse to
inspect the family's apartment. She found a leaky pipe and a
wall-to-wall carpet where mites could survive the most vigorous
vacuuming. The mother asked the landlord to repair the pipe and
remove the rug. Nothing happened. The nurse wrote the landlord a
letter. Nothing.
So the pediatrics department turned to its staff of five
lawyers, hired for just this kind of situation. "After two
telephone conversations with our lawyer," said Dr. Barry
Zuckerman, the department's chairman, "the landlord took up the
carpeting and fixed the leaky pipe." Within weeks, the boy was
back in school regularly and his mother was able to keep her
job.
This is a model of what needs to be done for low-income
families. Unfortunately, it is employed too rarely by private
and government agencies, which tend to tackle only the problem
the poor present to a particular office. The assistance is often
shallow and temporary and, as a result, leaves people vulnerable
to the next crisis.
Most doctors, teachers and police officers have no way to reach
outside their jurisdictions. That is why Dr. Zuckerman, using
donations, has hired lawyers and social workers to help patients
press for safe housing, Medicaid and other benefits. He
estimates that about 25 clinics around the country are doing the
same. "As pediatricians," he says, "we see failed social
policies on the faces and bodies of children daily."
Government is especially bad at connecting the dots. Health is
over here, housing over there; budgets are separate and are
protected by officials with entrenched interests. Practically
every program has its own eligibility requirements and forms,
and many working people simply can't take time off the clock to
trek from waiting room to waiting room. One-third of those
eligible don't get food stamps, according to the Census Bureau,
and about 30 percent of the poor who are entitled to Medicaid
are not enrolled.
One remedy, tried by community action centers created by the War
on Poverty, put a variety of specialists under one roof. Their
effectiveness unsettled politicians. "Mayors didn't like them
because they were doing something that was very good," recalls
Frances Fox Piven, a professor of political science and
sociology at City University of New York. "They were badgering
municipal agencies to provide services." The money for the
centers eventually dried up.
Decades later we are still testing this idea, now called
"one-stop shopping," as if it were some dubious proposition.
Since last July in five California school districts,
applications for subsidized lunches have been used as
applications for Medicaid as well. What has to be proven for the
rest of the state to follow? In Chicago, schools get
computerized lists of children who are enrolled in the lunch
program but not in Medicaid. Why not in all of America's
schools? Job placement is done at a few public housing sites;
why not at every one?
We need more than patchwork projects. We need a sweeping
national program to create what could be called gateways. At
private and public institutions that are frequented every day —
clinics, schools, food banks, housing projects, police precincts
and the like — a person should be able to find easy referrals to
child-rearing instruction, drug treatment and other assistance.
What works is an intensive, holistic approach like the one used
by the Maya Angelou Charter School in Washington. The school
brings its 100 students in for breakfast and keeps them until
after dinner. They have small classes, homework sessions with 75
volunteers and counseling from three full-time social workers
and a psychologist. Most students arrive in 10th grade reading
at sixth- or seventh-grade levels; three years later 70 percent
go to college. The cost isn't low — it runs over $25,000
annually per student — but it is a humane investment, one that
is helped in part by donations. With more money, the school
could become a platform for supporting whole families.
The amalgam of charity and government can be effective, but the
full force of the nation's financial power can be mobilized only
by the federal government. Only then can we alter the ecology of
poverty.
David K. Shipler, a former Times correspondent, won the 1987
Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. He is the author, most recently,
of "The Working Poor: Invisible in America."
back to the top ~
back to Breaking News
~ back to
What's New
|