By Claudia Rowe, Equal Voice>
For much of her adult life, Tinsa Hall felt like she had it made, at least relative to where she’d been. She lived in a six-bedroom home on a wide, tree-lined street in a solidly middle-class neighborhood. Her husband fixed computers for a living. They had three healthy children, and Hall, who’d had some difficulty with her own academic career, attended every school board meeting she could, vowing that her kids would get a better start in life than she. Until last year, that appeared to be the case.
But things have changed. Hall, 36, now lives in a squat, dark rental on the other side of town, where the sidewalk is jagged and the streets are pocked with holes. Her grand old home was gutted by fire last spring, and her marriage was in tatters months before that. She supports her family on $19,080 a year – poverty-level wages, according to the federal government – earned training local youth in alternatives to violence. Often, the job keeps her late into the evening, meaning that her teenage son and two daughters are on their own for dinner.
Hall, however, is glad to have the work. Unemployment in her home state, Mississippi, is over 14 percent for African Americans, and with no college degree, she sees little opportunity to earn more. Rent eats up a third of her monthly income, and after utility bills, food, her car payment and gas, there is nothing left to save. “I feel like I’m starting all over again,” she said.
Though the split with her husband touched off Hall’s economic plunge, the broad outlines of her financial crisis are now shared by millions – more each month as figures tracking home foreclosures, food stamp use and unemployment continue to hover at rates not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Since 2008, about 44 percent of American families have experienced a job loss, reduction in hours or pay cut. Nearly 15 million adults are currently unemployed, and even without the most recent data from 2009, 14 million children, like Hall’s, were growing up in poverty. Rather than being publicly labeled as “reduced-lunch kids” in front of their friends, many prefer to leave school hungry.
“Simply put, poverty is not good for the economy,” said John S. Irons, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute. When children grow up poor, they have higher drop-out rates, less education overall and vastly diminished job prospects. Some economists estimate that childhood poverty costs Americans about $500 billion per year in lost productivity and increased spending on health care and criminal justice.
Hall may not have those numbers at her fingertips, but she is well aware of the overall trend. As president of the Greenville High School Parent Teacher Association and a member of the statewide PTA board, she routinely lobbies for children in the all-black Greenville public schools when officials might prefer to treat them as percentiles. Proudly, she displays her son’s and daughters’ academic trophies.
Now she wonders whether any of it will matter. “You got kids who are coming out of college with degrees and can’t find a job, so college – for what?” she said, nervously rubbing her hands up and down her legs.
Indeed, in March 2010, there were 2.3 million unemployed college graduates, almost triple the number looking for work three years ago.
Although it is no secret that family wealth shapes opportunity – financing an education, say, or startup costs for a new business – less known is the fact that 13 percent of white households had zero net worth in 2004. More than 29 percent of black households were in that category.
Despite projections about a slow but steady economic turnaround, economists say this recession will leave deep scars beneath the surface – especially for those who were already struggling. Irons, of the Economic Policy Institute, believes crushed education and employment opportunities will affect “the future prospects of all family members – including children – and will have consequences for years to come.”
Yet the American Dream is built on the concept of upward mobility, the notion that families can leave poverty behind if they simply work hard enough. The corresponding belief – that the poor are poor due to their own bad choices – resounds through our society. Yet research showing that 45 percent of children who grow up in poverty remain poor as adults suggests this may be myth more than reality.
“When you have high inequality combined with low mobility then you have a country that is not the America that we think of, a country of opportunity,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist who specializes in policy affecting low-wage workers. “That’s not the American promise.”
Even in good times, the ability to transcend class depends on a complex constellation of factors – the right education, job opportunities, role models and, not least, a child’s aspirations – all of them potentially stunted by economic tremors like those of the past two years. As of last fall, one in seven mortgages was delinquent, and by Christmas foreclosure notices had gone out to nearly 3 million people. Some economists predict that another 5 million families could lose their homes this year.
Those are not only homeowners who have hit rock bottom. One out of every three families with children are getting by on less than $44,000 a year, which the federal government considers “low income.” Some 29 million kids fall into that category.
One of them is Alexis Walker, 17, who lives in Long Beach, Calif., with her mother, older sister and 5-year-old nephew. Each day at 2 a.m., Ursula Walker leaves for her $20-an-hour job as a mail sorter. She never knows how much the postal service will have her work in a day – three hours, four, eight? – which means Ursula is never sure how much she’ll earn. All she knows is that overtime has vanished during the last year and her regular hours keep dwindling. To help, Alexis buys school clothes with a community center stipend.
“I don’t know what’s in between barely surviving and middle-income, but we’re there,” Alexis said. “People like us, we get overlooked a lot.”
Claudia Rowe is long time social issues journalist and now works for the Marguerite Casey Foundation. She is a former reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and frequent contributor to The New York Times. This piece is part of a series on Equal Voices that will examine poverty and economic policy in our country.
PHOTO: Tinsa Hall of Greenville, Mississippi: Getting by on $19,080 a year, “There’s nothing left to save.”(By Mike Kane)
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