I got an email today from Women's Way reminding me about something one of their grantees had done:
Last month, PathWays PA released the 2008 Self-Sufficiency Standard for Pennsylvania which measures how much money a family needs to earn in order to meet their basic needs without public or private assistance. The report found that a family of four (two adults, one preschooler and one school age child) must make $53,611 annually to sustain itself, and a family of two (one parent and one preschooler) needs to take in $36,208 a year. Both minimum earning standards far exceed the Federal Poverty Level.
Now those are the dollar figures for a statewide average. But digging deeper you find that a single parent in Philadelphia with a preschooler and a school-age kid needs to earn $48,528 a year just to make it. (You can look at data in even more depth here.)
Anyone want to venture a guess on current Philadelphia median wages? (Hint: they are way below $48 k).
This is very useful data, but also depressing. Luckily for City Council members looking to take initiative on their own, or looking for things to discuss to with state legislators, Pathways does include some useful recommendations:
STRATEGIES TO CLOSE THE GAP
There are two basic approaches for individuals to close the income gap: reduce costs or raise incomes. The first approach, modeled and discussed in the previous section, reduces costs through subsidies and supports, such as child support, food stamps, and child care assistance. Strategies for the second approach, raising incomes, are detailed below. Note, however, that reducing costs and raising incomes are not mutually exclusive, but can and should be used sequentially or in tandem. Some parents may, for instance, receive education and training leading to new jobs, yet continue to have their incomes supplemented by work supports until their wages reach the self-sufficiency level. Whatever choices they make, parents should be able to choose the path to self-sufficiency that best safeguards their families’ well-being and allows them to balance work, education, and family responsibilities.
How the Standard is defined
Again, from the Pathways report found on their website:
This is why I have problems
Family of three (two adults, one infant), not even close to 48K. And what you find is that the benefits drop off drastically right around this level of income: you no longer qualify for subsidized child care, food stamps, reduced eligibility for SCHIP, pre-K, etc. There are perverse incentives as well; if I or my wife gave up full-time work and took a part-time or lower-paying job instead, our purchasing power would actually increase.
And compared to many, many people in Philadelphia, I think we live awfully well: safe neighborhood, decent standard of living, relatively little debt.
Collectivity
You ever notice that reports like this always emphasize job training and education as means of raising family income? As if, if everyone had a graduate degree, no one would be needed to clean the floors, drive the taxis and prep the food. Philadelphia is a poor city. Beyond speculation about what training may bring low-waged workers, we can point to another, proven way to raise family incomes. That is, "collectivity. " Workers who are in unions or collective associations earn more, and it requires zero student loans. Being brave enough to join with your co-workers and demand justice from an employer is a skill that you can apply in any work place, regardless of shifts in the economy versus reskilling which, since the rise of the service economy, has consistently connected workers with jobs that paid less that the ones that left for other shores.
Increasing Wages
The single best way to increase wages and reduce crime is high quality early childhood learning experiences. This is so well documented by now that even Police Chiefs and Distric Attorneys recommend this route as the way to go. So why aren't we doing it!