A Glimmer of Positive News: Wages Rose for Bottom 10 Percent (Unlike for Everybody Else)

In a report released this week, I found that 2014 continued a 35-year trend of broad-based wage stagnation. Real, inflation-adjusted hourly wages stagnated or fell across the board, with one notable, glimmer of positive news: Unlike the rest of the wage distribution, wages actually increased at the 10^th percentile between 2013 and 2014.

The figure below shows changes in real hourly wages throughout the wage distribution between 2013 and 2014. What is particularly striking is that almost every decile and the 95th percentile experienced real wage declines from 2013 to 2014, with two exceptions. First, there was a very small increase at the 40th percentile wage, up 3 cents, or 0.3 percent. But a more economically significant increase occurred at the 10th percentile where hourly wages were up 11 cents, or 1.3 percent.

So, why did wages at the bottom tick up when they fell for nearly everyone else? What is so special about that wage that sits below 90 percent and above 10 percent of workers (i.e., is not generally earned by particularly privileged workers)?

The answer is simple: we still have some labor standards that provide wage protections. More specifically, 18 states increased their minimum wage in 2014 (either through legislation or through automatic inflation adjustments). The states with minimum wage increases in 2014, displayed in green below, represent 57 percent of the workforce.

When we compare states with and without a minimum wage increase, we find clear evidence that the minimum wage is the reason people at the 10^th percentile wage didn’t see the negative trends found elsewhere in the workforce. The figure below compares the wages in these states with those in states without minimum wage increases. Wages at the 10^th percentile rose by 1.6% in states with minimum wage increases, while in states without such an increase, they pretty much stagnated—increasing by a scant 0.3%.

The great news in this story is that policy can actually affect the labor market. And, it is imperative that we use all the policy levers at our disposal to help rejuvenate the economy, create jobs, and build stronger wage and income growth for the 99%.

After the killing of Michael Brown last summer, the nation’s attention turned towards Ferguson, Missouri – a small town with a history mirroring that of many communities across the country. Over a period of just a few decades, white residents largely disappeared from the town, concentrated poverty became rampant, and the criminal justice system has disproportionately targeted black residents. In the months after the shooting, the town became a central focus in the media’s narrative, revealing how decades of disinvestment and a history of racially biased policies enabled this tragedy. In short, where you live matters.

It is within this context that the new book, REACH: 40 Black Men Speak on Living, Leading, and Succeeding, must be understood.

Co-edited by former NAACP President Ben Jealous, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, the book celebrates black men through the personal essays of entrepreneurs, artists, teachers, philanthropists, and activists. By chronicling each man’s path to success, the first person narratives in Reach also serves as a counterpoint to the negative images of black men that saturate the media.

One of the more subtle yet significant aspects of the book is how it reveals the critical role that communities play in the black experience. Contributors address everything from Jim Crow laws and the Great Migration to life in inner cities and current concerns over gentrification.

Derrick Johnson, State President of the Mississippi NAACP, captures some of the most seminal moments in the rise and fall of black communities when he writes: “The previous generation of my family had migrated to Detroit from the South in order to get good jobs in the auto industry, but after Reaganomics and the decline of the unions, those jobs went away.” He continues, “By the early 1980s, when I was coming up, it was drugs and poverty all around.”

Every contributor shares his unique story, and stitched together, they form a tapestry of the black experience in towns and cities across the country.

Success is determined by your zip code, by your race and ethnicity, and by your parents’ wealth status.

More importantly, the book reveals how the community you grow up in shapes your long-term life prospects. For example, Dr. Emmett D. Carson, CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, recalls an incident when a young man was shot outside of his Chicago home and his father came to the man’s aid. Shortly afterward, Carson and his family moved a short distance away for better opportunities.

“I had moved thirty blocks, and all of a sudden, everything was in front of me – I was told every opportunity could be mine if I worked for it,” he writes. “And yet I had friends and family in the old neighborhood who were not going to be exposed to the same opportunities.” He continues, “We don’t have a society where we can say that success is random. Success is determined by your zip code, by your race and ethnicity, and by your parents’ wealth status.”

Carson’s words summarize the consequences of living in concentrated poverty, and how the opportunity to live in a better area can change the trajectory of one’s life. In fact, research shows that a person’s zip code has more to do with their life expectancy than their genetic code. For instance, poverty has been shown to genetically age children, and exposure to neighborhood violence impairs cognitive ability. Further, living in high poverty communities often means having little or no access to services that many people take for granted. Shaka Senghor, Director of the Atonement Project at the University of Michigan, highlights this at the beginning of his powerful essay. After becoming a victim of gun violence, he explains, “I was bleeding profusely waiting for the ambulance as long as I could – you know, in the ‘hood, we have no expectations of the ambulance coming.” He goes on, “I was exposed to probably every horrific thing you can imagine in that environment.”

Given that Reach takes on the heavy burden of combating the negative images of black men that flood America’s collective conscious, it would be tempting to select stories of individuals with spotless backgrounds. Instead, Jealous and co-editor Trabian Shorters rightly include the stories of men who were tangled up in crime and violence, highlighting how their communities became fertile grounds for such destruction. As Yusef Shakur, CEO of YBS Consulting, writes of his own turn down the wrong path: “When we think of ‘undeveloped’ places, we tend to think of third world countries. But here in Detroit we have third world neighborhoods. These communities don’t have the nurturing influence of families, of strong businesses or strong churches. The mentality of the streets is filling those voids.”

Inclusion of these stories is significant as black men are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system. Due to structural racism and hyper-criminalization, black men are incarcerated at a rate six times higher than that of white men, and 49 percent of black men have been arrested by age 23. Not only is it important for young black men who may have criminal records to see that the paths to success are often winding, it is also critical for the public to understand the humanity of people who have borne the weight of handcuffs.

It would be easy to point to these stories as evidence that it is possible to “pull yourself up from your bootstraps,” but that interpretation entirely misses the important lesson of the book. We shouldn’t be satisfied with people succeeding despite the conditions of their communities; we want people to succeed because of them.

Reach serves as a reminder that there are children of color living in communities across the country who are still waiting on this nation’s promise of opportunity. Leaders must work together to right the wrongs of past policies that created these communities, and ensure that, as President Obama stated in announcing the Promise Zones Initiative, “A child’s course in life should be determined not by the zip code she’s born in, but by the strength of her work ethic and the scope of her dreams.”

The year 2015 marks the 50^th anniversary of Medicare’s establishment and the signing of the first Older Americans Act. In 1966, President Johnson called for substantial increases in Social Security benefits, which were approved by Congress in 1967. In large part due to these measures poverty among the elderly is much lower today than it was then. In 1966, nearly 29 percent of elderly Americans had incomes below the poverty line, compared to about one in ten (9.5 percent) today.

Still, one in ten is far too high. Moreover, despite the passage of landmark civil rights and equal pay legislation in the 1960s, substantial gender, racial and ethnic gaps remain among older Americans living below the poverty line. As the accompanying graphic shows, older adult women are generally at a considerably greater risk of living in poverty than elderly men. Elder white, non-Latino women are nearly twice as likely to live in poverty as white men.

Click on the chart to see an expanded version

Similarly, older adult blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans all have much higher poverty rates than white, non-Hispanic elders. The gap is greatest for older Latinos, who are nearly three times as likely to live in poverty as older white, non-Latinos.

There are also significant gaps by race and ethnicity in retirement savings and wealth. Gaps in wealthy by race and ethnicity are much larger than the income gaps. Researchers at the Urban Institute have documented that among today’s seniors, the average family wealthy wealth for white, non-Hispanics is roughly ten times that of blacks and Latinos.

Why do these gaps exist? To a large extent, they reflect policy-driven disparities in the labor market experiences and living standards of elders during their working lives. Compared to white workers, Hispanic and black workers are much more likely to earn poverty-level wages and lack health insurance, retirement and other employer benefits. Even today, women working full-time make only 78 cents for every dollar men earn working full-time earn. While this gender wage narrowed considerably in the 1980s and 1990s, it has improved little over the past decade. By and large, gender and racial gaps in wages are not explained by differences in education, for both African Americans and women, the gaps exist among those with similar levels of education

The case of Evelyn Coke, who sued to reverse a loophole in federal labor regulations that exempted home-care agencies from having to pay overtime, provides a stark example of policy-driven disparities can have a disproportionate effect on women and people of color. Coke, a mother of five who died recently at age 74, worked as a home health care aide for decades after immigrating to the United States from Jamaica. Despite regularly working more than 40 hours per week, Coke’s wages remained very low, about $7 an hour, and she received neither overtime pay nor health benefits.

Like Coke, home care workers—and many other workers in care-related jobs that pay low wages and provided limited or no benefits—are disproportionately women and people of color. Last year the Department of Labor extended minimum wage and overtime protections to home care workers who had previously been excluded, but the home care industry has mounted a federal court challenge to the fair pay requirement.

Beyond modest steps like this, broader disparities in pay and benefits mostly remain unaddressed. These disparities mean women and people of color have less money, if any, socked away at retirement. And, because retirees’ initial Social Security benefit levels are set based on their average earnings, there are disparities in the benefits they receive. For example, both women and people of color are overrepresented among the 1 in 5 Social Security beneficiaries—who receive sub-poverty benefits when they retire.

In addition to wage gaps, time spent caring for children or other family members contribute to these gaps. Caregivers don’t receive any credit from Social Security for the unpaid caregiving they provide, making them more likely to not be eligible at all or have lower benefits. As Sara Moore, an 80-year Chicagoan provided years of care to a disabled father and other family members put it, “I put my family first, but all my years of caregiving amounted to zero wages and zero contributions toward Social Security. [Now] I receive less than $1,000 a month in Social Security benefits which is barely enough for me to survive.”

Greater longevity also increases women’s poverty risk because health-related expenses increase over time, and the likelihood of losing one’s partner increases. As a consequence, in 2013, there were more women age 75 and up living in poverty (nearly 1.5 million) than there were elderly men of any age below the poverty line.

So what can we do to close these gaps? First, we need to boost wages and benefits for poorly compensated workers, including by increasing the minimum wage and equal pay for women. Higher, fairer wages would mean a better retirement for today’s poorly compensated workers. Second, Social Security should be strengthened in ways that improve coverage and benefit adequacy for workers who are poorly compensated, including by increasing the minimum benefit and providing at least some credit for unpaid care work

Finally, we need to modernize and improve means-tested programs that supplement Social Security (or provide the only income) for elderly people living in poverty, including Supplemental Security Income, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program and housing assistance.

In particular, federal policymakers need to reform Supplemental Security’s woefully outdated rules that strictly limit the amount of income and assets that seniors receiving benefits can have. For example, in SSI, a very low-income senior living alone is ineligible for help if they have more than $2,000 in assets, an amount that has barely budged since the SSI was created in the early 1970s.

In short, addressing the gender and racial gaps in elderly poverty requires concerted action on multiple fronts. This may seem like a lot, but when you consider the consequences—millions of elderly Americans who have little to show for years of hard work—it’s the least we can do.

Originally published in Aging Today, January –February 2015. Copyright © 2015 American Society on Aging; all rights reserved. This article may not be duplicated, reprinted or distributed in any form without written permission from the publisher: American Society on Aging, 575 Market St., Suite 2100, San Francisco, CA 94105-2869; e-mail: info@asaging.org. For information about ASA’s publications visit www.asaging.org/publications. For information about ASA membership visit www.asaging.org/join.

I’m tired of hearing that I need to be a “voice for the voiceless.” And, unfortunately, I hear it often. Brochures and commercials and inspirational speeches regularly call for me to be this “voice.” Most often, the so-called “voiceless” are individuals living in poverty. And here’s the thing: while they’re muffled, hushed, pushed down and left out—they are not voiceless. They do not need our voices; at least not in the way many people think they do. What they really need—these folks who are working two jobs but are unable to make ends meet, or deciding between buying groceries or paying the electric bill—is for us step out from behind the microphone, make room at the table, and give them a chance to speak.

Recently, I attended a small event in the South Texas town of Alamo, right on the U.S.-Mexico border. It was a gathering of individuals from across the country, all of whom had a stake in the Summer Meals Program: program administrators from the Texas Department of Agriculture, high-ranking officials from the USDA, and a few individuals who traveled to Texas from their offices in the White House. We were all there to kickoff a summer meals program run by a local organization called ARISE.

ARISE was founded in 1987 by one woman, Sister Gerrie Naughton of the Sisters of Mercy order. She was living and serving in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. She understood that for things to improve in her community, change needed to be led by the community members themselves—particularly the women of the community.

ARISE was based on respecting the dignity of every individual and recognizing the existing strengths of women in their communities. Through these values, the organization has identified needs and strengthened the very fabric of the communities it works with for more than 20 years. When it first set up shop in Alamo, a small Toyota truck served as the group’s “community center.” But the women of ARISE needed a place to gather—a place to house education and job training classes, as well as provide a safe setting for their children. So they purchased a small home and began to focus on connecting their community with any resource they could.

What they really need is for us step out from behind the microphone, make room at the table, and give them a chance to speak.

Over the last several years, ARISE helped Alamo get better police protection, more streetlights, and a park. Its leaders have partnered with the local sheriff’s office, the county commissioner, and the public school systems in order to achieve these goals. I made my way to Alamo because the women of ARISE recognized that children in their community were going without meals during the summertime; they reached out to the Texas Hunger Initiative where I serve as director to connect with the Summer Meals Program.

As a result, ARISE served hundreds of meals this past summer while also offering children educational and afterschool programs. The gathering I attended was a celebration—a celebration of kids getting the meals they need, and a celebration of envisioned women from a colonia serving their own community. This was not an initiative conceived by a visionary nonprofit leader from an affluent community or implemented by program experts from Washington. This positive change happened because the women of ARISE saw a need and made their voices heard. The women of ARISE—living on the U.S.-Mexico border in unincorporated colonias—fit the characterization of the so-called “voiceless” perfectly, but clearly they are far from voiceless. The question is whether people will listen.

Thankfully, there are other groups across the county working to create opportunities for low-income people to speak out and be heard. The Center for Hunger-Free Communities at Drexel University—and specifically its Witnesses to Hunger project—works with mothers and caregivers of young children who have experienced hunger and poverty, and helps them find avenues to advocate for their own families. These real experts on poverty and hunger tell their own stories in their own words and document their experiences through photography. By sharing their testimonials and photographs with local organizations as well as state and federal policy makers, these women (and some men) are working to create lasting, systemic change. As Witness to Hunger member Tianna Gaines-Turner put it in her testimony to the House Budget Committee last July: “My neighbors and I know what’s going on in our own communities, more than anyone else. We’re fighting already for our families and our neighbors. We need to be taken more seriously by our state and federal governments.” Yet all too often, policy makers, the press, and even advocates, don’t make sure that people who experience poverty are at the table when decisions are made and their expertise matters most.

During my years in anti-hunger work, the work of the anti-hunger community continues to get better and better. We have developed efficient systems for getting food to individuals who need it. We have galvanized policy experts and advocacy to help pass significant pieces of legislation. But we’re still falling short when it comes to involving low-income individuals as an active part of the solution. Food-insecure families have, in large part, been seen and served as clients rather than as people who are fundamental to finding the solutions we need to address hunger and poverty. While our intentions might be good when we try to be a “voice for the voiceless,” the fact is that if we continue to exclude low-income people from participation in decision-making then we are contributing to their oppression.

Want to find lasting and sustainable solutions to poverty and hunger? Stop speaking for the so-called voiceless, and start working alongside them to make their powerful voices heard.

Video content provided by Media Matters

Once again, FOX News has completely mischaracterized the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), claiming that the President is “buying votes” by keeping millions of Americans on the SNAP rolls despite the “full economic recovery.” That statement is demonstrably false and racially tinged.

Here’s why it’s false:

First, whether or not an individual person is enrolled in SNAP is ultimately the responsibility of state governments, most of which are now run by conservative Republican governors. The federal government sets broad SNAP eligibility guidelines but states actually “enroll” people.

Second, the President isn’t running for office again. As he noted in his recent State of the Union address, he’s already won two campaigns and is finally free to carry out the remainder of his term focused on substance over politics. So, the claim that he’s keeping people on the SNAP roles to buy their votes is absurd on its face.

Third, out of the 20 states with the highest rates of SNAP participation, 16 voted for Governor Mitt Romney in the 2012 Presidential race and the same states overwhelmingly voted for Senator John McCain in 2008.

Fourth, the SNAP rolls rose during the presidencies of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama because poverty rose during both presidencies, even in times that the stock market was soaring. The FOX segment also fails to take into account the great lengths individuals have to go to in order to enroll in the SNAP program, which by the way, has a fraud rate of about 1 percent (about half the criminality rate of the U.S. House of Representatives). The implication that signing up for SNAP is easy just isn’t true. It’s far easier for billionaires to get their tax refunds than for hungry Americans to get SNAP.

Hunger is a massive problem in America. Despite growth at the top of the economy, in 2013 there were 49 million Americans who were food insecure. The reason 46 million Americans are now on SNAP is not because the President is attempting to buy votes or persuade people with handouts. It’s because hunger is a huge problem, which our government has failed to take on to the extent necessary to adequately fix the problem. Because child nutrition programs are also inadequate, 16 million American children live in households that lack sufficient food. (See: http://billmoyers.com/2015/01/26/ending-child-hunger-in-america/)

It’s far easier for billionaires to get their tax refunds than for hungry Americans to get SNAP.

It’s also offensive and false to imply that hungry Americans and SNAP recipients don’t want to work. USDA has found that—with regard to families with children suffering from food insecurity and hunger—68 percent contained at least one adult working full-time, 10 percent had at least one adult working part-time, 7 percent had an unemployed adult actively looking for work, and 7 percent were headed by an adult with a disability. The main problem is low wages and few jobs, not laziness.

Here’s why the FOX segment is racially tinged:

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney and much of the right blamed their 2012 loss on higher minority turn out and the supposed gifts that Obama gave to minority voters. This Fox broadcast is playing off similar racial stereotypes, despite the fact that the plurality of SNAP recipients are white.

The largest reason for hunger in America today is conservative policies that reduce wages and slash social safety nets. The very conservatives who pushed the policies that sunk our economic ship shouldn’t complain when we are forced to provide life preservers in the form of food for the drowning. It’s no wonder the most conservative states are also the hungriest.

The reality is that all of us, including every employee at Fox News, relies on government sometimes. Fox News Founder and head Roger Ailes majored in radio and television while at Ohio University; this government-run – arguably socialist institution – provided a vital push to Ailes’ career.

Shame on FOX for perpetuating race-baiting, victim-blaming lies and half-truths to the American people. They deserve more, including a government that doesn’t allow its people to go hungry.

A Glimmer of Positive News: Wages Rose for Bottom 10 Percent (Unlike for Everybody Else)

REACH: Stories of Black Men and the Communities that Shaped Them

We Don’t Need to Be a “Voice for the Voiceless”

Fact-Checking FOX on SNAP

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