Working Anything but 9 to 5 by Jodi Kantor and Sam Hodgson (New York Times)

Last month, she was scheduled to work until 11 p.m. on Friday, July 4; report again just hours later, at 4 a.m. on Saturday; and start again at 5 a.m. on Sunday. She braced herself to ask her aunt, Karina Rivera, to watch Gavin, hoping she would not explode in annoyance, or worse, refuse. She vowed to somehow practice for the driving test that she had promised her boyfriend she would pass by the previous month.

Thanks to campaigns in San Francisco and across the country, more people are aware that irregular, part-time work hours and poverty go hand in hand. Kantor and Hodgson provide a window into the dizzying schedule of Janette Navarro, a Starbucks barista and single mother. It’s easy to see how Navarro’s schedule creates “logistical puzzles” that strain family relationships, jeopardize her son’s spot in daycare, and even cause her to become homeless. Kantor and Hodgson explain why erratic scheduling has become so widespread. One huge culprit is new technology adopted by corporations like Starbucks to keep staffing levels at utmost efficiency, at the expense of worker wellbeing.

Michael Brown and Black Men by Charles M. Blow (New York Times)

Brown had just finished high school and was to start college this week. […] But it is clear even now that his killing occurred in a context, one that we would do well to recognize. Brown’s mother told a local television station after he was killed just weeks after his high school graduation: “Do you know how hard it was for me to get him to stay in school and graduate? You know how many black men graduate? Not many. Because you bring them down to this type of level, where they feel like they don’t got nothing to live for anyway […]”

As Blow states, a key reason why 18-year-old Michael Brown’s shooting is so devastating is that it has a “sense of tragedy too often repeated.” The killings of unarmed black and brown youth like Michael Brown are not just random accidents. These tragedies are rooted in our racially biased institutions and power structures. According to Blow, we need to take a step back and examine the data on how America criminalizes people of color, beginning in school and leading to prison. As early as preschool, black and Latino students are suspended at much higher rates than white students. These disparities continue throughout the life course, shaping “truly horrific” high school graduation rates, arrest rates, and imprisonment rates.

American Mayors Pledge to Fight Income Inequality, Low Wages by Erin Carlyle (Forbes)

The numbers underscore what seems to be constant news these days: despite record levels of corporate profitability, American wages remain stagnant. That is one of several factors creating a growing income gap between the poor and the affluent: tax policy is another big one. “When we go back 30 years, we lost our way,” said Paul Soglin, mayor of Madison, Wisc. “Mistakenly we thought that tax breaks to export jobs overseas was the way to build this country’s economy.”

As Neil Irwin reported last week, business forecasters recognize that America’s rising inequality is hindering economic growth. Big city mayors, from Michael Nutter of Philadelphia to Anise Parker of Houston, have arrived at the same conclusion. On Monday, the U.S. Conferences of Mayors released grim findings on income inequality. Jobs created during the Recovery pay an average of $47,171, a far cry from $61,637—the average wage of jobs lost during the Recession. 36 mayors signed a pledge to address income inequality. Of course, the million-dollar question is how?

Get TalkPoverty In Your Inbox

How Obama Suddenly Became Pro-Worker by Dave Jamieson (Huffington Post)

“This outside agitation has really helped push the president to do the right thing,” Paco Fabian, a spokesman for Change to Win, which includes the Service Employees International Union, said recently. “And he certainly deserves credit. For the first time in a long time we have a president taking executive action to help workers.”

American workers saw some significant wins in the past year. In 2014, President Obama signed executive orders to raise the federal contractor minimum wage to $10.10, protect federal contractor employees from LGBT discrimination, and require that federal contractors report labor law violations to crack down on wage theft. While these measures are important first steps, they only reach one segment of the workforce—about 1-in-5 workers. Jamieson analyzes the strengths and weaknesses inherent in Obama’s use of executive orders. One pro: policy reforms can still be enacted in a time of Congressional gridlock. One con: these reforms can be rolled back with a new president.

A Tale of Two Maternity Leaves by Darlena Cunha (Washington Post)

Rebecca Carparros works for the Federal Government. “I have to work, and I was only able to stay home with my first daughter five weeks,” she said. “For my second, I managed to get six weeks. I could have used FMLA and gotten eight weeks, but I can’t afford weeks off unpaid.” Contrast this with dual-citizen Tiffiny Rossi’s experience in Finland. She had a baby in April 2013, and is still on maternity leave. In fact, her paid leave will last until January 2015.

The United States “prides itself on its family values,” yet stands as an extreme outlier in its lack of guaranteed paid family leave. Only 11% of American workers receive paid family leave. Cunha details the ways that working mothers in the majority are forced to cope, such as returning to work when their babies are not ready, attempting to go on short-term disability, and even Internet crowdfunding.  At the same time, Cunha reminds us that better models are available. New mothers and fathers in Finland are guaranteed paid leave until their baby is 9 months old, and one parent can stay on home leave until the child is 3, without fear of losing their job. And yes, Finland’s businesses and taxpayers are doing just fine.

To keep up with our reading list throughout the week, like TalkPoverty on Facebook and follow us on Twitter (@TalkPoverty). You can also sign up for weekly emails on the TalkPoverty.org homepage.

Black, Asian Residents Unite to Save Low-Income Building Near Chinatown, by Robert Samuels (Washington Post)

Saving their D.C. apartment building seemed impossible, but the tenants association president resolved that he would try. So Kevin Rogers and fellow board member Vera Watson set out on a Saturday to knock on every door in the egg-yolk-colored halls of Museum Square. The problem: More than 70 percent of their neighbors were Chinese. Most were elderly and spoke little English. Rogers and Watson needed to convey the urgency of the matter, a complicated confluence of community development, tenant rights and city law.

It’s a disturbingly common tale: neighborhoods revitalize, only to push out the lower income residents who stuck with them through the rough times. Washington, D.C. is no exception to growing displacement, but it does have a unique tool to fight it. The Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act gives tenants the first right to make an offer when their building goes up for sale. So far the policy has preserved at least 1,500 affordable units across D.C. But what happens when a building owner sets the price impossibly out of reach? That’s exactly what is unfolding in Chinatown, where over 200 low-income residents have banded together in attempt to save their home. The added complication? The majority are elderly Chinese immigrants who will face extreme challenges living anywhere else. So far, the tenants have secured one more year in their building, but the story is far from over.

A New Report Argues Inequality is Causing Slower Growth. Here’s Why It Matters. By Neil Irwin (New York Times)

The fact that S.&P., an apolitical organization that aims to produce reliable research for bond investors and others, is raising alarms about the risks that emerge from income inequality is a small but important sign of how a debate that has been largely confined to the academic world and left-of-center political circles is becoming more mainstream.

If you do not believe low income people or progressive advocates when they say that rising income inequality is bad for the economy, maybe you’ll believe your forecasting firm. S&P recently released a report stating that “the current level of income inequality in the U.S. is dampening GDP growth.” To explain why this is so groundbreaking, Irwin situates S&P in the world of economics research. The firm does not aim to advance political ideology or social policy; they simply aim to give practical business advice. Thus, their report could signal a paradigm shift in the way that the business community views income inequality and increase the imperative to address it.

Get TalkPoverty In Your Inbox

Minnesota Café Charges 35 Cent ‘Fee’ To Protest Minimum Wage Hike, by Alexander C. Kaufman (Huffington Post)

Minnesota raised its minimum wage by 75 cents to $8 last week — the first increase in the state since 2009. An owner of the café claimed the 35-cent fee was a way of “thumbing my nose at the law change,” according to CBS-affiliate WCCO. “Shame on your protest over a small increase in pay required by law,” wrote Facebook user Terry Edgar in a one-star review. “Hopefully customers will not continue to patronize your cheapskate establishment.”

If you find yourself at the Oasis Café in Stillwater, MN, your huevos rancheros are going to cost a bit extra. The management believes an extra “minimum wage” fee is a clever way to protest the state’s new $8 minimum wage. The customers think differently and have stormed social media in protest. Even more appalling, another local chain, Blue Plate Co., actually pledged to start taking back money from servers’ tips.

Rich Kid, Poor Kid: For 30 Years, Baltimore Study Tracked Who Gets Ahead, by Juana Summers (NPR)

Monica Jaundoo didn’t have an easy life growing up in Baltimore in the early ’80s. “I remember being so immune to death, so immune to shootings, killings. I just remember wanting them to rush, like, get the body out the way so we can get back to playing hopscotch or dodgeball,” she says […] And so her story raises a question: How can a child with the deck stacked against her get out and get ahead?

Johns Hopkins researchers recently published the results of a study that tracked about 800 low-income Baltimore children all the way through adulthood. Their goal was to discover which factors truly impact a child’s life chances. The ultimate conclusion is disheartening: they found that, “a child’s fate is in many ways fixed at birth — determined by family strength and the parents’ financial status.” Only 33 subjects moved into the high income bracket after 30 years.  Summers illustrates the findings by profiling two subjects, Monica and John. She also unpacks employment and incarceration rates, underscoring how racial discrimination also plays a huge role in shaping life outcomes.

This is How Rural Poverty is Changing, by Lydia DePillis (Washington Post)

“I think it’s more of a place-based poverty than it is demographic,” says Tracey Farrigan, an economist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture who is studying how rural poverty has spread. “People are moving to areas where they can afford to live, which are areas with less support for them. It’s kind of a cycle. So the places are poor, and the people are poor.”

Las Animas, Colorado has lost almost a third of its population since the late 1990s, along with many of its factories, farms, restaurants, and hospital jobs. Dairy Queen is the most successful restaurant in town, and the county commissioner believes there wouldn’t be enough demand for another chain like it. What happens to the people who stayed when the economy went south—those who can’t leave, or who don’t want to leave their community? What happens to their children? DePillis provides an in-depth profile of residents, revealing tough realities about the state of rural poverty today.

I Tried to Live on the Minimum Wage for a Week, by Ted Strickland (Politico)

Washington is in a bubble that keeps our representatives away from the experiences of those they actually represent. We need to understand the challenges faced by Americans who are being left behind in our economy. That’s why I joined members of Congress and dozens of organizations in taking the Live the Wage challenge […] and asking those in Congress to actually try living on the minimum wage for a week before opposing an increase that would help millions of Americans who currently live in poverty.

Former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland describes his past week participating in the Live the Wage Challenge, calling attention to the fact that it’s been 5 years since the federal minimum wage was last raised to $7.25/hour. Spoiler alert: $77 per week is not enough to live on. Strickland reminds us that a lot can change in five years, like gas prices. On average, it costs $13.20 more per week to fill the tank than it did in 2009, which makes a sizable dent in a minimum wage budget. As Strickland recounts his struggles—from skipping meals, to getting sick, to eventually running out of money—we can’t help but think that we’d see faster progress if more policymakers stepped up to the plate and “lived the wage.” Want to hear more about Strickland’s experience? Catch him on Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Why “Can’t Make Ends Meet” Trumps “Poverty,” by Karin Kamp (Moyers & Company)

First, Americans who are struggling do not see themselves in abstract language like “the poor” or “poverty.” This is partly because such language is seen as quite pejorative in America. To be poor is to have failed in pursuit of the American Dream. In too many ways, people who are poor are reviled. The first thing we need to do is stop blaming people and start talking about their real lives. Second, we need to stop talking about the economy in ways that make it seem like the weather. The economy is a result of the rules we create and the choices we make.

What if anti-poverty advocates are using the wrong words? Kamp interviews Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, which recently performed “the most robust scan available of attitudes toward poverty” by surveying 700 Americans living below 200% of the poverty line. The results? Many people living in poverty ignore political debates that impact their lives because they do not identify with the language used. Interestingly, many social movements gain power by uniting people around shared identities—from race, to gender identity, to sexual orientation. However, Bhargava explains, most people are not eager to claim the identity of being poor—for good reason. The key conclusion is that we need to move from nouns to verbs, meaning that describing families’ lived experience—from living paycheck to paycheck to working irregular hours—is much more empowering and mobilizing than calling them “low-income” or “poor”.

Get TalkPoverty In Your Inbox

History Suggests Ryan Block Grant Would Be Susceptible to Cuts, by Richard Kogan (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)

Ryan says that the block grant would maintain the same overall funding as the current programs.  But even if one thought that current-law funding levels were adequate, they likely wouldn’t be sustained over time under the Ryan proposal: history shows that block grants that consolidate a number of programs or may be used for a wide array of purposes typically shrink — often very substantially — over time.

Have you heard the expression, “don’t feed the trolls”? That’s what we fear we’re doing when we keep Rep. Paul Ryan’s recent poverty plan in the spotlight. As many experts in the poverty field have argued, it’s not a serious, evidence-driven attempt to address poverty. Instead, it’s largely a repackaging of old ideas—including block grants (which he now calls “Opportunity Grants”)—that have failed in the past. Still, it’s important to recognize how harmful consolidating 11 programs into a single block grant would be for low-income families. Therefore, this short-and-sweet Center on Budget and Policy Priorities post is a must-read. One look at Kogan’s table, titled “Most Major Low-Income Block Grants Have Shrunk Significantly over Time,” is enough to make anyone doubt the “opportunity” in Opportunity Grants.

U.S. Paid Family Leave Versus the Rest of the World, In Two Disturbing Charts, by Bryce Covert and Adam Peck (ThinkProgress)

In the United States, new parents aren’t guaranteed any paid time off. Instead, if they have worked for a certain amount of time at a company with 50 or more employees, they are guaranteed the ability to take 12 unpaid weeks off for the arrival of a new child. That leaves us in lonely company. Out of 185 countries, the United States is one of just three that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave, the others being Oman and Papua New Guinea. Over half of the countries that provide leave give at least 14 weeks off.

There is nothing a policy wonk enjoys more than a good infographic. Covert and Peck’s piece features two, illustrating how the United States is an extreme outlier on the world stage with regard to paid maternity and paternity leave policies.  Covert and Peck pair the graphics with shocking facts about the state of family leave across the country, and show how California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island are leading the way towards progress.

To keep up with our reading list throughout the week, make sure to like TalkPoverty on Facebook and follow us on Twitter (@TalkPoverty)! You can also sign up for our weekly emails on the TalkPoverty.org homepage.

Here are our top 5 picks this week:

Paul Ryan and His Poverty Prophet, by Charles M. Blow (New York Times)

But, make no mistake: “opportunity” is the new “block.” And, block grants to states don’t have a great track record where poor people are concerned. First, let’s set the stage: Some of the poorest states in the country consistently vote for Republican presidential candidates, have Republican governors and Republican control of the statehouses. Many of these are the same states that refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which would have extended health care to more low-income Americans. What could possibly go wrong?

After months of anticipation, Paul Ryan unveiled his new anti-poverty plan on Thursday. Blow reminds us to “look beyond the catchphrase dance” and analyze Ryan’s big reveal—a proposal to consolidate various safety net programs into “Opportunity Grants.” As Blow explains, Opportunity Grants are repackaged block grants, and this strategy mirrors 1996 welfare reform, which made low-income families worse off. Ultimately, Blow reminds us that behind the smoke and mirrors of carefully-crafted speeches is “a particular strand of tough-love, up-by-the-bootstraps, stop-helping-poor-folks-so-much-because-you’re-hurting-them thinking.”

We’re Arresting Poor Mothers for Our Own Failures, by Bryce Covert (The Nation)

Whose fault is it that these children were put in these situations to begin with? […] They were both mothers trying to hold down jobs to provide for their children while stuck swirling in a Catch-22. Can’t work or interview without childcare, but can’t afford childcare without a job that pays enough to cover the ever-increasing cost. Taylor and Harrell are both holding up their end of the deal: don’t rely on public assistance, go out and get work to provide for your children. Our country has reneged on its end of that deal: we’ll help you pay for someone to watch your children if you go to work.

Shanesha Taylor is a homeless mother arrested for leaving her kids in the car while she went on a job interview after her babysitter had cancelled. Debra Harrell was arrested for leaving her daughter to play alone in a park with a cellphone while she worked shifts at McDonald’s. According to Covert, Taylor and Harrell’s heartbreaking stories are a symptom of massive social policy failure. In the 1996 welfare reform process, President Clinton promised to protect necessary family supports like subsidized childcare. Covert presents some truly jarring data, such as how childcare spending has plummeted, to prove how “we broke that promise.”

Get TalkPoverty In Your Inbox

The New Face of Hunger, by Tracie McMillan (National Geographic Magazine)

To witness hunger in America today is to enter a twilight zone where refrigerators are so frequently bare of all but mustard and ketchup that it provokes no remark, inspires no embarrassment. Here dinners are cooked using macaroni-and-cheese mixes and other processed ingredients from food pantries, and fresh fruits and vegetables are eaten only in the first days after the SNAP payment arrives.

McMillan provides an eloquent overview of modern American hunger.  Not only has the hunger evolved, but it’s grown fivefold since the 1960s and a staggering 57% since the late ‘90s.  Her piece is visually stunning with maps, infographics, and photo galleries that document hungry families in rural Iowa, suburban Texas, and urban New York. McMillan begins by asking us to picture what hunger looks like, and then details how many hungry families, like the Driers of Iowa, do not fit common stereotypes: they are “white, married, clothed, and housed, even a bit overweight.” McMillan asserts that the root issue is the widespread decline of living wage jobs.

When Poverty Makes You Sick, a Lawyer Can Be the Cure, by Tina Rosenberg (New York Times)

Being poor can make you sick. Where you work, the air you breathe, the state of your housing, what you eat, your levels of stress and your vulnerability to crime, injury and discrimination all affect your health. These social determinants of health lie outside the reach of doctors and nurses.

Mold, infestations, and overwhelming heat. In our worsening housing affordability crisis, many low-income families are forced to live in rental units that are poorly maintained and toxic to their health. Rosenberg details the rise of medical-legal partnerships to advocate for patients in poverty, as many now recognize the links between poverty and poor health. At last count, 231 medical-legal partnerships exist across the country, and these innovative models are producing real gains for both people in poverty and the hospitals themselves.

Fight Inequality – Schedule Fair Work Hours, by Eric Mar and Samantha Adame (SFGate)

Many retail workers aren’t living paycheck to paycheck, they’re living hour to hour, subject to erratic scheduling practices that make it impossible to set a budget, let alone schedule medical appointments or arrange for care for their loved ones, or even work a second job or upgrade their skills by going back to school. On top of their irregular and ever-changing schedules, workers find themselves kept on call, thrusting their lives even further into precarious situations.

Mar and Adame assert that simply raising wages is not enough to ensure that workers can make ends meet; we also must address the fact that roughly 8 million of us are forced to work irregular, part-time hours. Mar and Adame explain how irregular, part-time work exacerbates poverty, and highlight ongoing efforts in San Francisco to improve labor standards.

Check out our top reads of the week:

Three Steps We Can Take to Solve Poverty, From Someone Who Knows Firsthand, by Tianna Gaines-Turner (Moyers & Company)

When my son was sick, I had to stay at the hospital with him, so I couldn’t go to work; my husband had to stay home with our twin babies, so he couldn’t work. Here’s the problem: neither of us had paid sick leave, so we lost hours on the job, and we lost pay, too. The result was we could not afford to pay our rent on time, nor our light bill. From there, we became homeless.

As to be expected, Paul Ryan’s most recent War on Poverty hearing included stale, demeaning rhetoric from some members of Congress about poverty. For instance, according to Representative Tom Rice of South Carolina, “the only way out of poverty is to be self-reliant and find yourself a job.” Lucky for the American people, we had a game-changer: Tiana Gaines-Turner, the first person actually living in poverty to testify. This week, our first-must read comes from Ms. Gaines-Turner, who published a list of policy recommendations to alleviate poverty that she had included in her testimony. As Gaines-Turner states, “It’s time to call in the experts. My family, my neighbors and people like me know the solutions.” We couldn’t agree more.  Her recommendations are comprehensive and strikingly commonsense, because they are informed by real experiences.

Want to hear more from Ms. Gaines-Turner about her experience testifying before the House of Representatives? Check out her interview with Melissa Harris Perry on MSNBC:

It is Illegal for Homeless People to Sit on the Sidewalk in More than Half of U.S. Cities, by Scott Keyes (ThinkProgress)

Criminalization is an ineffective approach for the simple fact that it does “nothing to address the underlying causes of homelessness.” These laws do not provide housing to poor people, or help alcoholics with their disease, or provide childcare to struggling parents. They simply trap homeless people in a cycle that criminalizes their very existence.

In 9% of U.S. cities, it is against the law to share your food with a homeless person. Yes, you read that correctly. This is just one of many kinds of anti-homeless ordinances that have been cropping up across the United States in recent years. Keynes presents data from a recent National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty study that found sharp increases in laws criminalizing homelessness since 2009. These measures are not just cruel; they’re lousy policy. Keynes explains that tax payers spend millions of dollars each year to jail homeless men and women for “quality-of-life” offenses. As it turns out, this policy approach is three times more expensive than an alternative that actually addresses the root issue: giving the homeless a place to live.

Obama Should Set His Sights Higher, by Katrina vanden Heuvel (The Washington Post)

The U.S. government is the largest employer of low-wage workers in the nation, with the $1.3 trillion it spends on purchasing goods and services. The president, standing in the proud tradition of Roosevelt, could issue a Good Jobs Executive Order that would reward companies who pay their workers a living wage, allow them a voice at the workplace without having to go on strike, adhere to federal workplace safety and fair labor standards and limit the pay of their chief executives to some reasonable ratio to that of their average workers.

How should President Obama react to Republican threats to sue over his use of executive orders? According to vanden Heuvel, he should “double down and raise the stakes” by enacting a Good Jobs Executive Order, which could put 21 million Americans on the road to the middle class through measures like living wages. Vanden Heuvel contextualizes the need for a Good Jobs Executive Order by linking the historical decline of unions to today’s staggering inequality. Of course, she recognizes that low-wage worker protections will not come without furious pushback from corporate and conservative forces. However, vanden Heuvel asserts, “well-paid, productive workers aren’t simply an idle luxury; they are a vital necessity to any prosperous economy.”

Should Housing Policy Support Renters More? The Opinion Pages: Room for Debate (New York Times)

In many of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, buying a home again looks like a risky investment, and in places like Boston, Miami and Washington prices have risen enough that buying is no longer the bargain it seemed to be a few years ago. That perhaps explains why the American public is now divided on whether homeownership is a good long-term investment, and a majority now see homeownership as less appealing than it once was. Should housing policy be more balanced, supporting rental housing and homeownership on a more equal footing?

Smart housing policy is essential to our goal of cutting poverty in half in the next decade. Only when we have a secure home, are we able to truly thrive and benefit from other poverty-reducing measures like quality jobs and schools. Because housing policy debates can get complicated, this week’s New York Times Opinion feature is helpful in unpacking the tough issues. It features op-eds from six housing policy experts, each weighing in on a key issue—the fact that American housing policies disproportionately benefit homeowners over renters. As former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros writes, “About two-thirds of [federal] spending subsidizes home ownership, while just one-third supports affordable rental housing.” Sure, homeownership may be viewed as part of the “American Dream,” but it’s not the reality for many of us, especially low-income families. These conversations are essential in a time of skyrocketing rents and rising inequality, as critical programs like Section 8 are on the chopping block.

Get TalkPoverty In Your Inbox

One Storm Shy of Despair: A Climate-Smart Plan for the Administration to Help Low-Income Communities by Cathleen Kelly and Tracey Ross (Center for American Progress)

Only 6,800 people arrived at shelters, even though 375,000 New Yorkers—including 45,000 public housing residents—lived in the mandatory evacuation zone hit hard by the hurricane. Workers eventually discovered the nightmare lurking behind low shelter turnout. Many low-income elderly and disabled residents of New York City’s public housing complexes were stranded in their dark and cold apartments without heat, backup generators, emergency boilers, or working elevators, the latter preventing many of these residents from descending multiple flights of stairs. Others endured these conditions because they had no other affordable place to stay or no reasonable means of leaving their neighborhoods because mass transit was shut down, among other reasons. 

For many, Superstorm Sandy was a tragic reminder that climate change is indeed happening, and that its effects will be costly. President Obama recently announced a final task force meeting to help state, local, and tribal leaders prepare their communities for climate change. Kelly and Ross present a critical perspective that leaders and policymakers must keep in mind when planning for disaster: our most vulnerable citizens often face the greatest environmental hazards and risks, yet they have not been a strong focus of federal recovery efforts. Kelly and Ross cover key climate change-related risks for low-income communities, from extreme heat, to food insecurity, to deep poverty. We need to do better in the face of our changing climate, and these policy recommendations are a wise step.

Here are our top picks this week:

Paying Employees to Stay, Not Go, by Steven Greenhouse & Stephanie Strom (New York Times)

“If we really wanted our people to care about our culture and care about our customers, we had to show that we cared about them,” Mr. Pepper said. “If we’re talking about building a business that’s successful, but our employees can’t go home and pay their bills, to me that success is a farce.”

We’ve heard the refrain from conservative pundits and musty Intro Economics textbooks: raising the minimum wage will cause widespread job loss and hurt the economy overall. In practice, however, we often see the exact opposite outcome. In fact, states that raised their minimum wages this year saw higher levels of job growth. How can this be? Greenhouse and Strom show how employers who pay higher than the minimum wage actually benefit. Specifically, the article examines fast food chains like Boloco and Shake Shack, which offer workers competitive wage and benefit packages and yield positive returns like reduced turnover and enhanced customer service.

I Clean High School Bathrooms, and My New $15/Hour Salary will Change Everything, By Raul Meza (Washington Post)

I feel fortunate for what I have. I also feel tired a lot, from all the work and from lack of sleep; sometimes I get as little as two hours a night. But what I miss most is time with my son. He’s always asking, “Daddy, where are you going?” Leaving breaks my heart every time. When I think about making $15 an hour, I think mostly of the time that money could buy with my son.

A critical piece often left out of minimum wage debates are the stories of the workers and families who will benefit from a raise. Raul Meza is one such worker whose life is about to change, as his union just negotiated a contract that will raise the wages of 20,000 school workers to $15/hour by 2016. Because Meza has never made more than $10/hour, he’s constantly forced to forego time with his son to work evenings and weekends. As Meza anticipates what life will be like at his new wage, we’re reminded of how raising the minimum wage not only strengthens bank accounts, but also strengthens families.

Get TalkPoverty In Your Inbox

50 Years After Civil Rights Act, Many Households of Color Still Struggle to Get Ahead, by Alicia Atkinson (CFED)

Many want to believe the injustice is over, yet we see over and over again how these factors compound and leave households of color with significantly lower amounts of wealth compared to white households. Specifically, the average African-American and Latino household still owns only six and seven cents, respectively, for every dollar in wealth held by the typical white family. At CFED, we know that income alone is not enough to succeed in the American economy. Having wealth and owning assets like a house or car can improve families’ lives by providing a stable place to live and reliable transportation to get to work.

July marks the 50^th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. While it’s important to celebrate how far we’ve come in combatting systemic racial discrimination, Alicia Atkinson of CFED reminds us how far we still need to go, specifically in addressing the persistent racial wealth gap. As Atkinson explains, today “we face a quieter, more insidious discrimination” that erects barriers to building savings and wealth in communities of color. It’s important to look closely at the research Atkinson presents on how the financial market is currently serving communities of color in order. To best honor the Civil Rights Movement’s legacy, we must keep fighting to ensure that equal opportunity is not an unfulfilled promise.

This is What Happened When I Drove my Mercedes to Pick Up Food Stamps, by Darlena Cunha (Washington Post)

“We didn’t deserve to be poor, any more than we deserved to be rich. Poverty is a circumstance, not a value judgment. I still have to remind myself sometimes that I was my harshest critic. That the judgment of the disadvantaged comes not just from conservative politicians and Internet trolls. It came from me, even as I was living it.”

Cunha details what it’s like to turn to social safety net programs like WIC and Medicaid as a white, college-educated woman from an affluent background. A constellation of factors led her to apply for assistance, including the housing market crash, a sudden layoff, and the unexpected birth of twins with serious medical needs. Cunha’s story underscores the fact that poverty is much more common and fluid than many realize; in fact, research shows that more than 40% of American adults will be poor for at least a year of their lives. Cunha relates to the stigma that so many people who receive public assistance face, detailing the judgment she experienced in the grocery store while using her food stamps. Of course, what sets Cunha apart from many other WIC recipients is that her story has a happy ending: she recovers financially and is able to keep her Mercedes. The article suggests the role of social privilege in helping people like Cunha regain financial footing.

Meet the First Poor Person Allowed to Testify at Any of Paul Ryan’s Poverty Hearings, by Bryce Covert (ThinkProgress)

Gaines-Turner certainly knows what it means to struggle. She and her husband have weathered two bouts of homelessness together and two of her children suffer from epilepsy while all three suffer from asthma, afflictions that mean they all have to take medication daily. “I know what it’s like to be homeless and to couch surf, to miss meals so my children can have a nutritional meal,” she said. “I know what it’s like to wake up every day wondering where the next meal will come from or how to pay the bills today or will someone come today and cut off the water. I’ve been through all of that.”

As the title suggests, Covert profiles Tianna Gaines-Turner, who testified at Paul Ryan’s fifth hearing on poverty on Wednesday. Of course, it seems commonsense that those who actually have turned to America’s safety net programs would be the most important people to listen to about how they work and can be improved. However, Covert explains how it has not been an easy road to ensure that voices like Ms. Gaines-Turner’s are included in the hearings. Ms. Gaines-Turner now has a chance to tell her powerful story about struggling to make ends meet while faced with serious obstacles. The question is, will lawmakers listen?

To keep up with our reading list throughout the week, make sure to like TalkPoverty on Facebook and follow us on Twitter (@TalkPoverty)! You can also sign up for our weekly emails on the TalkPoverty.org homepage.

Authentic stories and good reporting play an essential role in the fight to dramatically reduce poverty in America, because silence and misinformation are among the biggest barriers to progress. When the media is not reporting the real data, or when low-income people do not have the opportunity to share their real experiences, then the vacuum is filled with the same old lies and stereotypes, and poverty solutions continue to be ignored.

Each week, we will share five must-read articles that contribute to a stronger antipoverty movement. These are works that grapple with critical issues, inspire us to action, challenge us, and push us to see both problems and solutions from new angles.

Here are this week’s five stories:

Let Them Eat Cash, by Christopher Blattman (New York Times)

“Midway through a meal of sesame-crusted tuna and filet of beef, some 200 homeless people discovered that they would not be getting money. Instead, the Rescue Mission would accept $90,000 on their behalf. You can imagine the anger and humiliation. ”

Blattman tackles the issue of cash transfer programs to the very poor, specifically Americans’ resistance to a model that has proven successful in reducing poverty in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. If you give a homeless person in New York City a lump sum of cash, will it help to lift them out of poverty or be exchanged for drugs and alcohol? What does the evidence show? As Blattman states, “We must be skeptical of stereotypes of those we purport to help.”

Don’t Call Them Dropouts: A Report on the Nation’s Nongraduates, by Linda Shaw ( The Seattle Times)

“The Alliance titled its report “Don’t Call Them Dropouts” because many of the 200 young people it interviewed asked it to stop using that term. They may not have graduated, the interviewees said, but they haven’t given up. Many are enrolled in high-school completion programs or have returned to school.”

Shaw highlights data on students who do not graduate high school on time, both in Washington State and across the nation.  Importantly, she raises the issue of how we as a society label these students and why the “drop out” label denotes preconceived notions. While many people have faced serious hardships that have kept them from school, it does not mean that they have given up on their education.

The South is Essentially a Solid, Grim Block of Poverty, by Mark Gongloff (Huffington Post)

“This should not be much of a shock, as Southern states consistently lag the rest of the country in good things like wages, economic mobility and access to health care, while leading it in bad things like poverty, obesity and general unhappiness. Another thing Southern states have in common is Republican political leaders that have spent the past decade shrinking the social safety net.”

Gongloff breaks down some of the more troubling data from a new U.S. Census report, released this week, which found that over 25% of Americans now live in “poverty areas.”  As the graphics reveal, the rise in people living in poverty areas from 2000 to 2010 was not evenly distributed throughout the country.

Top Restaurant Industry CEOs Made 721 Times More than Minimum-Wage Workers in 2013, by Lawrence Mishel, Ross Eisenbrey, and Alyssa Davis (Economic Policy Institute)

The current minimum wage is $15,080 if earned full-time, while the average pay of top restaurant CEOs in 2013 was $10,872,390—721 times more than minimum-wage workers. These corporate CEOs earn more on the first morning of the year than a minimum-wage worker will earn over the course of a full year.

We can count on Economic Policy Institute for hard-hitting data on labor market inequalities, and this snapshot is no exception. Just look at the spike in the Restaurant CEO-to-minimum wage worker pay ratio from 2006 to 2013. This piece adds an enlightened and needed perspective to ongoing debates about raising the minimum wage and economic inequality.

Get TalkPoverty In Your Inbox

Beating the Odds by Kavitha Cardoza (WAMU 88.5)

“During that summer, the bills were so high so it was either, we wouldn’t have any food or we had to get rid of our electricity and our water for some time. At home, it was really bad because it was hot, the food was going bad. We all slept in a bed in our basement because it was the coolest room in our house. We couldn’t take showers in the house.”

Our final must-read is a series of ten stories from education reporter, Kavitha Cardoza. Each profiles a young D.C. area student who has overcome massive challenges in pursuit of a high school diploma. These deeply moving stories put a face on a range of poverty-related issues, including incarceration, immigration, disability, homelessness, and the death of a parent. Ultimately, we’re struck by each student’s resilience, and their hopes for the future.

To keep up with our reading list throughout the week, make sure to like TalkPoverty on Facebook and follow us on Twitter (@TalkPoverty)! You can also sign up for our weekly emails on the TalkPoverty.org homepage.