Category: $2.00 A Day – Edin & Shaefer

Poverty & Prophecy

Poverty & Prophecy

Posted on by jabittan

My wife and I have been listening to the Harry Potter books on Audible so I have been reminded of one of the key ideas from the series – the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy. A prophecy is made about Harry Potter, the big bad guy, Voldemort, hears part of the prophecy and acts on it, ultimately fulfilling the prophecy and bringing about his own doom. The question, which is asked directly in the book, is whether any of the events of story would have happened if the prophecy had not been overheard. If the bad guy hadn’t been afraid of the prophecy to try to prevent it, would the prophecy have been meaningless?

This idea came back to me when thinking about a quote from Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer in their book $2.00 A Day. When I think about the poor and about the way they are treated, I often fall into a similar mindset as I do when I think about the prophecy from Harry Potter or any other story about a self-fulfilling prophecy. I find myself asking if the way we treat the poor effectively tells them they are not worthy and valuable, effectively creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that they realize. When we tell someone they are not good enough, not worth the time and attention of society, do they begin to believe it, and do they give up on themselves?
“Research shows that the intrusive treatment people typically receive at the welfare office can undermine their confidence in government and erode political participation,” write Edin and Shaefer. Their book shows that research on how people in poverty are treated finds that the treatment of poor people directly influences how they understand their position in society, how they understand whether they are supported, valued, and whether they should even try to participate in democracy to improve  their lives and fight for what they need to live better. Edin and Shaefer continue, “it stands to reason that this kind of treatment could also erode the very confidence that is so necessary for pulling yourself out of a $2-a-day poverty.”
This is where my ideas about self-fulfilling prophecies reconnects with poverty. Shaefer and Edin demonstrate that what we tell poor people becomes the reality they live within. We set up systems to aid the needy, but we treat them terribly when they seek to access such systems. We tell them they are not worthy, that they are failures, and that they don’t deserve the assistance legally provided. As a result, poor people believe they are not meant to participate in society, they may truly believe they are not good enough to improve their situation, and they may give up and accept that they are not deserving of a better life. The way we treat the poor effectively creates a prophecy that they live out, preventing them from meaningfully participating in our democracy, and limiting their chances of doing the things necessary to be seen as worthy of more help and assistance to escape deep poverty.
TANF

TANF

Posted on by jabittan
“TANF has become welfare for the states rather than aid for families in need,” write Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer in their book $2.00 A Day. In the United States we don’t like the idea of giving direct aid to poor people. We want to make sure that people who receive social aid and assistance deserve the help they get, and as a result we have put restrictions, limits, and qualifications on the aid that the government provides to poor people. We also tend to prefer in-kind benefits rather than cash benefits, believing that cash benefits will be wasted and abused, and believing (whether we admit it or not) that we know what is better for poor people than they do. Providing the thing we think poor people need is our preference rather than providing poor people cash to acquire the thing.
This is how TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) came to exist in its current form. TANF is a block grant from the federal government to states. That means that the federal government provides a certain amount of money to the states for them to use in assisting the poor. Obviously, this means there is an incentive for states to put restrictions and limits on the aid they give to families so that they don’t expend all of the money from the grant. Any money not spent on needy families can be redirected to other purposes for which states may need additional funding.
Work requirements, drug screenings, complicated forms, long lines, and life-time limits reduce the total expenditures that states have with their TANF programs. Instead of focusing on what would be the most beneficial for the needy, programs utilizing such restrictions focus on what would be best for the states coffers. This is why the authors describe TANF as welfare for the state instead of aid for families.
A Double Housing Squeeze

A Double Housing Squeeze

Posted on by jabittan
A big focus on unaffordable housing is on the price of homes and the cost of rent. However, wage stagnation is another important factor that contributes to unaffordable housing. In $2.00 A Day, Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer write, “rising rents are certainly a big part of the problem, but the concurrent fall in renters’ incomes has outstripped the rise in prices by a factor of more than two to one.” There is a double housing squeeze being felt across the nation as the price of housing increases while wages either stagnate or decrease, especially when considered relative to general inflation indexes.
Rising home costs are often attributed to zoning regulations the prevent building sufficient housing to meet the needs of a city or population. Zoning laws restrict the building of duplexes and apartment complexes. Some zoning laws require ample parking space, cutting down on potential living space. And some zoning prevents infilling with more high density housing that would allow more people to move to the area. The results are limited housing options and higher prices for sought after units.
As wages stagnate, this becomes a serious problem. People search for sectors with higher wages and more opportunities for advancement. Such opportunities are often found in cities, however that is where the highest competition for housing exists. So individuals seeking higher wages have to contend with higher housing prices. The alternative is often accepting a stagnant wage and living further away from work than one would like, because that is the only place affordable housing can be found.
This double squeeze creates a lose-lose situation for low income individuals. If they  move to a city they may find better work opportunities, but they will pay more for less space. But if they don’t move, they will either face a very long commute or a job closer to their home that pays less and has no opportunities for advancement. Housing is a major issue, and unaffordable housing has a whole cascading series of negative consequences.
Wage Theft

Wage Theft

Posted on by jabittan
$2.00 A Day by Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer looks at individuals in the most dire poverty in the United States to understand their history, experiences, and lives with almost no income. They provide a humanizing look at a group that is often dehumanized, and often taken advantage of. In the book, the authors discuss wage theft, what researchers use to describe violations of labor standards that harm the lowest wage workers who have no avenues for complaints or legal action against employers or gig hirers.
“If one tallied all of the losses suffered by victims of robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and motor vehicle thefts combined,” the authors write, “the figure wouldn’t even approach what is taken from hardworking Americans’ pockets by employers who violate the nation’s labor laws. And the victims are generally the most vulnerable among us.”
The claim in this quote is seems pretty huge to me and potentially a bit hyperbolic. But I believe the idea holds even if the claim itself overstretches. The lowest income people in the nation are easy to take advantage of. They are often desperate for any money or aid they can receive, with the alternative being to put up with unfair work or go with hungry stomachs or no place to sleep. This leaves the poor in a position where it is easy for someone who has hired them for a formal or informal job to make unreasonable demands on their time, effort, or wage that they cannot push back against.
Edin and Shaefer explain that wage theft can take the form of simply not paying someone the wage that was originally offered or paying below minimum wage. However, it can be even more severe, such as forcing an individual to work overtime without paying overtime rates or forcing them to work off the clock and not paying them at all. For the lowest income individual in the country, even being hard working doesn’t help them receive a fair wage, and can be a losing situation for them.
The simple answer to extreme poverty is hard work and getting a job. It is easy to tell the person on the street that they just need to work harder, need to be more persistent, and need to stick out the terrible job they can get in order to work their way up. In reality though, for those low wage individuals, the work they can find can be demeaning and can take more from them than what it gives in terms of wages. They may not get the full amount they should be owed, they may be taken advantage of in a situation that deliberately keeps them from advancing to make more money. Wage theft can create a cycle where the only work for the poor makes them worse off, leading to more spells of unemployment followed by further wage theft and exploitation. When we think about wage theft as Edin and Shaefer present it, we see that the simple answer of getting a job and working hard is not enough for many of the poorest among us to improve their situation.
Integrating the Poor

Integrating the Poor

Posted on by jabittan
In $2.00 A Day, Kathrin Edin and H. Luke Shaefer write the following about working to improve the lives for the poorest people in the Untied States, “the primary reason to strive relentlessly for approaches that line up with what most Americans believe is moral and fair is that government programs that are out of sync with these values serve to separate the poor from the rest of society, not integrate them into society.” Shaefer and Edin explain that most Americans think we should be doing more to help the poor, but that they also dislike the idea of giving free aid to the undeserving. Consequently, any programs that are designed to help the poor, the authors argue, should be generous, but should match what Americans believe is moral and fair, otherwise it will leave the poor as an undeserving separate class, and keep them from integrating with society.
This is an important idea to consider. We want to do more to help the poor, and many would argue that we have an obligation to help the poorest among us live dignified lives with a reasonable floor set for their income, healthcare, education, and access to opportunities to advance. At the same time, giving aid and benefits to those who are not seen as deserving, particularly in America where we constantly judge ourselves and others on measures of hard work and moral character, will create problems and schisms within society. The result would be a form of economic segregation, cutting the poorest off from the rest of society, perpetuating and reinforcing the existing problems that we see among the poorest individuals in the nation.
The authors continue, “the ultimate litmus test we endorse for any reform is whether it will serve to integrate the poor – particularly the $2.00-a-day poor – into society. It is not enough to provide material relief to those experiencing extreme deprivation. We need to craft solutions that can knit these hard-pressed citizens back into the fabric of their communities and their nation.”
One of the great failings of our current society is our de facto acceptance of economic segregation in the United States.  For a few decades the poor were stuck in dense and ignored city centers while the middle class fled to suburbs to live out the American Dream and the wealthy locked themselves within gated communities to keep their vast wealth to themselves, away from the prying eyes of everyone else. The poor were cut off from any real or meaningful interaction with the middle and upper classes.  Zoning regulations and the way we developed neighborhoods meant that people in certain areas all had similar incomes. The rich were grouped among the rich, the middle class among the middle class, the poor among the poor, and the poorest of the poor amongst only themselves. Real community connection for each group dissipated, with no group fully comprehending the struggles, fears, and problems of the others.
The poorest of the poor were the ones most hurt by this economic segregation, and it is one of the first things the authors suggest we address to begin to help the poor. Their first suggestion is a jobs guarantee, to ensure that everyone can do some sort of work to earn money and be seen as deserving for further aid. In the end, however, I think the authors would agree that we need to find ways to better integrate society and rebuild community organizations and institutions that help bring people together, not keep them separated in their own homes and neighborhoods, where everyone else that they interact with in a meaningful way is like they are. We cannot address the worst poverty in our country if we don’t find a way to overcome economic segregation and to better integrate the poor into society in a meaningful way.
Poverty & Law Breaking

Poverty & Law Breaking

Posted on by jabittan
In $2.00 A Day Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer explore the connection between illicit activity and poverty in an interesting way. The authors go beyond the trite idea that law breakers lose trust and opportunity for good jobs and advancement and end up poor because of their own actions and behaviors. This is the standard story we tell in the United States, but the reality is that poverty and crime are connected in complex ways and that poverty can often drive people to crime out of desperation or out of a lack of other viable options. This is something we all know, but don’t really like to acknowledge or think too deeply about.
Edin and Shaefer write, “to put it simply, not having cash basically ensures that you have to break the law and expose yourself to humiliation in order to survive.” The authors write about young and single mothers who have trouble finding stable jobs that will allow them to earn enough money to care for their children and families. These young mothers, often regardless of how hard and how many hours they work, are unable to fully provide for their family and face difficult trade-offs such as the choice between purchasing food with food stamps or selling food stamps for cash to pay electrical bills.
Selling food stamps is illegal and those who do sell them often end up with far less cash then what their food stamps are worth. However, when the choice is between electricity, gas for a vehicle, and food stamps, sometimes engaging in illegal food stamp bartering is necessary, even if it means there may be hungry stomachs in the house.
The authors also write about the ways in which poverty drives these women to provide sexual favors in exchange for money, breaks on rent, or help when things go wrong, like a car breaking down. Not only is this illegal for the women involved, it is also humiliating and potentially harmful and dangerous for the women’s health.
Edin and Shaefer present these examples and stories because they reflect a failure and painful reality in the United States that most of us try to ignore or pretend that we are not connected to. Our country has decided that what is more important than dignity and aid to the needy is an external measure of deservingness. We have decided that we will only help those who do what we deem necessary to receive aid. We have decided that there is no floor, whether $2.00 a day poverty or lower, that is too low for an individual if they are not either capable or willing to work and do what we deem necessary to be worthy of assistance. This is a choice we have made across the nation, and within each state and region the dynamics are different, but the outcomes are often the same. People face homelessness, are driven to illicit activity, and must expose themselves to shame and harm if they cannot do what society decided is necessary for them to receive help when they are poor. We are more worried in our country about laziness and dependence on government aid than we are worried about the harms that are associated by poverty and about the potential for a downward and self-reinforcing cycle of poverty.
Guaranteed Jobs

Guaranteed Jobs

Posted on by jabittan
About a year ago I read a series of books focused on homelessness and poverty in the Untied States. One take-away I had from the reading was that we need a federal guaranteed jobs program. A guaranteed jobs program would certainly be looked down upon, would not be well respected, would be criticized, but would make a huge difference in addressing deep poverty across the nation.
In their book $2.00 A Day, Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer explore the lives and realities of people living on an average of $2.00 a day in the United States. There are people in our country living a poverty so severe that many of us cannot imagine it exists within our country, yet the number $2.00 a day poor has increased recently and results from a complex set of factors that the authors explore.
One factor explored by the authors is a lack of quality and meaningful jobs for people at the lowest end of the socio-economic scale. Jobs for these individuals are often unreasonable in multiple ways. Schedules are often set at the last minute, with unpredictable and often unworkable hours. They are also often part-time, temporary, and likely to be cut at the slightest misstep. Better jobs may be available, but they may be further away than an individual living in poverty can reasonably and reliably commute to. Jobs, in other words, are not as easy to obtain and maintain as people higher up the socio-economic scale might imagine, and getting a foothold with a job to propel oneself is often next to impossible for individuals whose work future is hanging in the balance with every tiny misfortune.
Jobs provided by a government, jobs that are always available and make an effort to meet people where they are, simply do not exist. For the nation’s poorest, a job in government is almost impossible to find. The authors write, “a small group of low-skilled individuals find work at municipal buildings or in schools (perhaps as cafeteria workers or bus drivers), but prison inmates are sometimes used for maintenance and janitorial services in these places [specifically referring to the Mississippi Delta region].”
Our nation’s poorest compete for very few low wage public jobs. Part of their competition comes from prison labor, where inmates are paid less than minimum wage to work. I think these prison programs are a good thing, though I have never studied or considered them in depth. But it is notable that those in deep poverty have to compete against prisoners who make less than the minimum wage.
The only things stopping our country from developing a guaranteed jobs program is a lack of interest and stigma against the poorest of the poor. It is likely that we would not be able to find truly meaningful work for everyone who wanted and needed a job at all times, but we should make an effort to find something to do to employ the poorest among us in one way or another. There is no reason we cannot develop a program that would help meet people where they are and find something for them to do for which a wage can be provided. We have diminished the social safety net programs that help support the poorest among us, often with the argument that people should only receive such support if they are productive members of society, but we don’t make any efforts to help people become productive members of society. We don’t offer guaranteed jobs and we don’t do a lot to work with people who have not been employed for a long time to get them back into the swing of work. While some programs exist, generally we don’t find flexible ways to let people work and find pride in being part of society.
Instead, we marginalize people, criticize them for being failures, and push them to the side while blaming them for their failure. Companies and businesses are then unwilling to hire such people, reinforcing in their own minds that their failure is something inherent in who they are, driving a vicious cycle of failure, poverty, apathy, and despair. It is not a welfare program itself that drives this cycle, but the entire system and way in which we act toward such people. A guaranteed jobs program would not be perfect and would not solve every problem for every individual, but it would start to make a difference and offer some people a real way out of $2.00 a day poverty.
Informal Economies

Informal Economies

Posted on by jabittan
My last post was about the high costs of work and how we often fail to fully consider the high costs of work for people in the deepest poverty when we criticize them for relying on government aid for survival. This post looks at what people living in poverty do to make money when they don’t engage in formal economies or work traditional jobs. For the individuals chronicled in Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer’s book $2.00 A Day, informal work is how most of them make any money, as the costs of formal employment can make working in the formal sector prohibitive.
“The more employment in the formal labor market proves perilous – with low pay, too few hours, and crazy schedules – the more untenable it is for a parent trying to raise kids. And the weaker the government safety net, the more the informal work described here will proliferate.”
Informal work can be dangerous, hazardous, and unpredictable, but often it is one of the only options available to people in poverty who can’t get a foothold in more traditional labor markets. If you can’t afford to live near a job, if that job changes its schedules unpredictably, and if you are generally taken advantage of in a low-wage work situation that doesn’t ensure you won’t go hungry or without water or power, then why risk putting in the effort to find and maintain a job in the formal economy? Why not fall back on what little social support and government aid there is and hope for odd jobs in the informal economy instead? At least those jobs will provide some measure of autonomy, can be done close to home or with reasonable transportation provided, and at least they will pay quick cash.
This is the calculation many living in poverty face each day, but there are long term costs to relying on an informal economy. The authors write, “the replacement of a formal economy with an informal one – unregulated and unpoliced – may have a self-perpetuating effect of pushing the $2-a-day poor further and further out of the American mainstream.” Informal jobs are not enough to help people escape poverty, build skills or a resume for the future, or find stable and solid footing. Informal economies meet the immediate needs of the day sometimes better than formal jobs, but they don’t provide the stability and support necessary to plan for a future and build a road toward success.
However, as my first few paragraphs show, we cannot simply blame the individual for opting out of the formal economy for informal jobs that don’t provide long-term benefits. The formal economy can also be unpredictable, can deliberately schedule too few hours or change hours last minute, and also may not provide many long-term benefits to help someone live with any stability. These are large structural issues with the way our economic system has developed. Forces beyond an individual’s work ethic and self-control are shaping the environment, the cost/benefit calculations, and the opportunities for both formal and informal work. All of this creates a self-perpetuating cycle between informal economies and formal work for the poorest people in our country. Removing the little support that exists for the poor and criticizing them for not having a formal job and for engaging in informal economies will never be enough to improve the situation for more than a minimal percent of those living in deep poverty.
The Costs of Work

The Costs of Work

Posted on by jabittan
One argument that is popular against welfare and social support programs is that they discourage work by encouraging people to sit at home collecting a welfare/disability/unemployment check rather than being a productive member of society. This is an argument that is picking up steam as we start to move away from the COVID-19 pandemic, as enhanced unemployment benefits run out, and as companies have trouble hiring back employees who seemingly don’t want to return to work.
To me, as I have heard people make this argument, I think that people make a mistake in who they think are the primary beneficiaries of welfare/disability/unemployment benefits and I think they make a mistake in how they imagine people receiving such benefits actually live. I think people imagine their own lives and living standards, and transpose those onto benefits recipients, except with money coming from the government and not from a job. They see people who are just like them, enjoy the same living standards, but choosing to be lazy instead of making the sacrifices that work requires. With this vision it is understandable that people get angry and want to tear down such social support systems.
I recognize that fraud, waste, and abuse of social support systems occurs. I know there are people cheating the system to get disability insurance and that they would find a way to go back to work if their checks ran out. I also know there are people abusing food stamps programs, and I generally believe it is better for people to be working productively than watching the price is right and not trying to do something valuable for themselves and others. However, I think these arguments are often more anecdotal than factual, and I think tearing down the whole system because a few people cheat is dangerous and misguided. I think the statistics demonstrate that the programs are necessary, and I think that additional considerations regarding the cost of work should also be made to help us better understand why there are “lazy cheats” out there.
Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer do a good job examining the real costs of work and the pressures these costs place on families and individuals to rely on social support systems rather than their own industriousness. Regarding welfare in 1996, the year it effectively died to be replaced by a new system, the authors write, “Work paid only a little more than welfare but cost a lot more in terms of added expenses for transportation, child care, health care, and the like. It was more expensive to go to work than stay on the welfare rolls.”
20 years later we still have this problem, especially in large cities where economic opportunities seem to be located. The costs that people face when trying to work rather than when accepting social support program benefits add up and are impacted by many factors beyond the wage than an individual can earn. Many cities are too expensive to live in, and as a result people have to commute very long distances to get to work, and that commuting adds up in terms of time, vehicle maintenance, or transportation fares. While working and commuting, children need to be watched by someone, adding child care costs into the equation. Time spent in a car or sitting on a bus also takes away from any chance to be physically active to help ones health, potentially increasing health care costs because an individual doesn’t have time to cook a healthy meal and doesn’t have time to go to a gym or get out on a walk.
Individuals who might be prone to laziness don’t have a hard decision to make when faced with these calculations. They can lose all their time, have to pay for child care, and end up with poor health and few extra dollars to spend if they pursue work. The alternative is to accept poverty, accept government aid, and at least reduce the costs, time demands, and stress that work adds to their lives. However, I don’t think most people enjoy or want this life, and I don’t think it is anything to be jealous of.
I don’t think the answer here is simply that employers need to pay more and that the minimum wage needs to be raised. I think that can certainly be part of the equation, but we clearly also need to help people live closer to their jobs, have better affordable access to healthcare, and afford quality child care that will help their kids and keep them safe. This is an idealistic and possibly unrealistic set of policy desires, but I think that is because we have misperceptions about who uses aid, and about our roles and responsibilities as individuals within society. I think that years of focusing on ourselves as individuals has in part contributed to the erosion or lack of development of social supports that would help tip the balance for those prone toward laziness away from staying home and toward working. As it is now, we accept the high costs of work and then criticize those who opt out.
Adverse Childhood Experiences

Adverse Childhood Experiences

Posted on by jabittan
In $2.00 A Day, authors Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer write about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and how they can contribute to and create a reinforcing cycle with poverty and homeless. Citing a study from the late 1990s the authors write, “When … researchers surveyed more than 17,000 people from San Diego – most of whom were middle-class and had gone to college – they found alarmingly high rates of ACE exposure. Sixty-four percent reported at least one adverse childhood experience; more than a third had experienced two or more such events.”
This finding is alarming, and one that I would expect to have either remained constant since the late 1990s or increased. People across the United States, the research suggests, are living with past traumas that they may or may not have fully worked through and processed. The majority of people in the United States have suffered at least one ACE (if you extrapolate to the whole population), and over a third had experienced more than traumatic event as a child. Edin and Shaefer go on to write, “exposure to jut one ACE seems to negatively affect a child’s life chances, but what about the effect of multiple and repeated occurrences? The ACE researchers reported that ACEs were not only unexpectedly common, but their effects were found to be cumulative.”
ACEs negatively impact an individuals life as they grow older. This can be seen in individuals who have trouble managing daily stress, have trouble forming trusting relationships, or in those who develop dangerous addictions. All of these negative consequences can impact the economic, social, physical wellbeing of the individual, and can have impacts of the lives of their family, friends, and communities. As the number of ACEs in an individual’s life increases, the consequences also seem to increase, creating deeper problems.  An individual with relationship and financial problems could find themselves in an insecure living arrangement, and if they have children, that could increase the ACE risk for that child, potentially recreating the cycle.
It is important that we as a society recognize the seriousness of ACEs. Children can hardly be blamed for the situations they find themselves in, but these situations can have life-long impacts on their behaviors, psychologies, and life outcomes for which we may blame them as adults. Failing to truly address ACEs and improve the lives of children by reducing the numbers of ACEs that any child may face, means that we will be living in the ongoing cycle of ACEs leading to worse life outcomes, increasing the chances of more ACEs for children in the future, leading to still more negative life outcomes in an ACE doom loop. Its clear that we cannot put the responsibility on individuals who have faced multiple ACEs to right their lives and stop this cycle on their own. It will take compassion, concern, and effort from those who were lucky enough to grow up without debilitating ACEs to make a difference.