By Joseph Martinez and Walen Ngo, United Way of Greater Los Angeles The EITC, or Earned Income Tax Credit, has been known for over thirty years to be one of the more successful anti-poverty programs in the nation. The tax relief program is geared toward only workers earning income below a certain income threshold and [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Poverty’
What Tax Time can do for the Working Poor
Posted in Data, Economy, Employment, General, Los Angeles, Poverty, Working poor, tagged Earned Income Tax Credit, EITC, Employment, Poverty, Public benefits on March 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
New Homeless Numbers for L.A. What did we expect?
Posted in Data, Homelessness, Los Angeles, Poverty, tagged Homelessness, Los Angeles, Poverty on October 28, 2009 | 1 Comment »
We’ve been suffering through the worst economic recession since the Great Depression over the past year, leading many of us to assume that social conditions have been worsening. Poverty and unemployment, and foreclosures have clearly been on the rise, and certainly we’ve expected that homelessness – the most extreme expression of poverty and insecurity – [...]
Rise in Poverty in the U.S.
Posted in Health, Poverty, tagged health insurance, Poverty, Poverty measurement on September 10, 2009 | 2 Comments »
The U.S. Census Bureau released new data on income, poverty and health insurance today and as expected the new isn’t very good. The number of people living in poverty rose from 37.3 million in 2007 to 39.8 million in 2008, and the poverty rate rose from 12.5% to 13.2%, the highest level in eleven years. [...]
Inequality and insecurity, Latin American style
Posted in General, Poverty, tagged crime, Ecuador, inequality, insecurity, Latin America, Poverty on July 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I am currently visiting family and friends in Ecuador, where I cannot help but be confronted daily with poverty and inequality. Having lived here in the early 1990s and returning at least every couple years since then, I’ve been able to observe the changes occurring – some positive but many negative – in this country [...]
Humanizing homelessness
Posted in Homelessness, Los Angeles, Poverty, tagged Homelessness, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Times, media, Nathaniel Ayers, Poverty on June 28, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The Los Angeles Times is largely a shell of its former self, part of an overall downturn in the quantity and quality of newspapers. However, the paper is developing quite a niche in reporting on homelessness (which I guess makes sense because Los Angeles is home to more homeless persons than any other city in [...]
Trends in LA and CA over the next few years
Posted in Data, Economy, Employment, Health, Homelessness, Los Angeles, Poverty, Working poor, tagged Economy, Employment, Homelessness, Poverty on June 21, 2009 | 2 Comments »
A common problem in trying to discern trends in poverty and inequality is that the data that we often have at hand are usually not particularly recent. The lag between when data are collected and publicly available can be significant, especially in a rapidly changing economy like we’ve been in over last several months. Also, [...]
The high cost of poverty
Posted in Poverty, Working poor, tagged Economy, Poverty on June 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Washington Post ran an article by DeNeen Brown last month that began with the seemingly contradictory statement, “you have to be rich to be poor.” How can that be? As the article explains, the poor often pay higher prices for goods and services in their neighborhoods, and, perhaps more importantly, they pay much more [...]
Who are the most generous among us?
Posted in General, Poverty, tagged Philanthropy, Poverty on May 27, 2009 | 2 Comments »
There was an interesting article in the Philadelphia Inquirer today reporting on analysis of the 2007 BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey that shows that the poor are in some respects the most generous in charitable giving. The poorest fifth of America’s households (and we’re talking here about households with an average income of less than $11,000) [...]
