As many of you know, every morning I help teach a class at Mission Waco geared towards preparing the underworked, underpaid, and/or parents hoping to wean themselves off of welfare for full-time employment. The class is designed so that there are 3-4 workshops each day on specific topics, such as interviewing, having the right attitude, what employers are looking for, etc. On top of that, each student is expected to make at least 3 job contacts each day, as well as take part in "personal devlopment" time, where they work on a skill that they could improve to help their chances at finding job--such as typing, computer skills, or studying for a GED.

I'm primarily involved with teaching some of the workshops since I'm only employed part-time. One of my workshops is entitled "Barriers to Employment"...and it's a long one, almost 2 hours! During that time, we identify certain "barriers" (lack of education, no childcare, bad attitude, etc.) that may keep us from landing the job we want. At the end of the workshop, we discuss the importance of having a vision and setting goals for ourselves. It is at this time that I introduce the concept of the povery level, or the Federal Poverty Guidelines.

When I first started incorporating the Federal Povery Guidelines into my class discussions, I found myself confused and shocked because noone had ever heard of the poverty level. And to this day, I haven't had a student know what it is before I introduce it. For some reason, I assumed that these single parents, homeless men, and temp workers realized they were living below the poverty level set by the government. I now recognize such guidelines as middle and upper class institutions that we use to label the poor.

Anyways, so I define the poverty level and tell the class what it is. It's based on 40 hours/week, 52 weeks/year of employment. For one person, it is $9,570/year. For a household of two people, it is $12,830/year. For a family of four, it is $19,350/year. In other words, starting w/ $9570 as your base annual income for a person living alone, you add $3,260/year per person in the household. As we discuss these numbers in class, we look at how much one needs to make to live above the poverty level. Typically our students are single mothers with at least 2-3 children, which means the U.S. Census Bureau says they need to be making between $16,000 and $19,350/year to live above poverty. By the end of the workshop, the students are both angry and motivated. Angry at the fact that if they are lucky enough to find a full-time job at minimum wage, they'd be making approximately $10,000 less annually than they need to suppor their family. This in turn motivates them to aim high when it comes to choosing a career plan.

However, I came across an article this week published by the Center for Public Policy Priorities. In the article, the CPPP defined poverty with more depth. It also gave some interesting stats. The most intriguing part though was reading about how the poverty level is calculated. Come to find out, "the poverty guidelines were originally designed to reflect the minimum amount of income American households need to subsist." Makes sense to me. Makes sense to private organizations and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as well, since they use the poverty guidelines to determine eligibility for aid.

But things get interesting when the CPPP reveals the Census Bureaus methods. This "minimum amount of income" reflected in the poverty guidelines is derived by multiplying by three the projected cost of food for each family size. This method, established over 40 years ago in the early 1960's, is based on the assumption that the cost of food for each household accounts for 1/3 of all spending. The only changes that occur to the formula are slight updates that take inflation into consideration. The CPPP notes that otherwise, the same formula has remained unchanged for decades, despite the fact that there have been "significant shifts in household expenses". The article points out that the cost of housing has increased greatly since the 1960's. On top of that, potential costs of childcare have skyrocketed with the rise of single-parent homes and homes with both parents working. Yet food costs remain the only expense considered in determining how much income families today need. To make matters worse, except in the case of Alaska and Hawaii, the poverty guidelines take no account whatsoever for geographical differences in the costs and standards of living. So the poverty level is the same between tiny towns of western Texas and New York City.

The CPPP, with the support of the National Research Council, has recently been developing and looking at more accurate ways for measuring economic need. By looking at additional needs on top of food costs, such as housing, transportation, child care, clothing, and health insurance, they were able to come up with wages necessary to meet cost of living within various cities. For example, for a family of three in Houston the CPPP projected that the annual income required to meet basic living costs is $33, 859. That's more than twice the federal poverty level for a family of three, which is set at $15,670 annually!

What does all this mean???

First, as I approach the workshops at Mission Waco now, I feel as if I've been shortchanging the students. For I've been encouraging them to aim well below a level that they can probably live at.

Second, what does that say about our country and it's concern for the poor? We've likely been using outdated methods for determining the poverty level for quite some time now, thus causing millions of people to not qualify for benefits and aid due to low income.

So what do we do?

As Christians, and supposed advocates for the poor, what steps do we take in order to initiate change? I'm not sure I have many, if any answers. But staring at the blazing evidence of the plight of the working poor must institute some change. Right?