STAR's Efforts to Reduce Poverty Rates By Marilyn Simpson-Johnson, L.G.S.W, Family & Community Development Specialist

Increasingly, Extension staff is expected to deliver concrete measurable outcomes that have qualitative and quantitative impacts for various audiences across the state. Over the past five years, we have identified needs in our service areas that lend themselves to advanced Extension practice in urban settings with intercommunity, interdisciplinary, intercollegiate, and intergenerational implications. Higher demands for results must yield more measurable outcomes with documented transformative impacts. These impacts should include an emphasis on community capacity-building, organizational growth and regeneration, and family and individual development that contribute to poverty reduction in Alabama.

Too often the organizational focus on outcomes and impact is directed at agency viability and/or governmental monitoring and oversight. These are very important reasons for expecting high performance results from public-funded organizations. But is there another compelling reason? The most recent data coming from the United States Census Bureau revealed a disturbing rise in poverty among racial and ethnic groups since 2001, including those involved in the labor market. University of Michigan researchers Brian Cadena and James Sallee reviewed this data in an article featured in the Fall 2005 issue of Poverty Research Insights.

According to Cadena and Sallee, the nation's poverty rate rose from 12.5 to 12.7 percent between 2003 and 2004. "In 2004, 37 million Americans lived in families with incomes below the poverty line, 1.13 million more than 2003. Both the poverty rate and the number of poor have risen each year since 2001," they report.

Even more glaring is the stark difference in incidence of poverty in 2004 across racial and ethnic groups. Cadena and Sallee further state that, "In 2004, less than 10 percent of non-Hispanic whites and Asians were poor. In contrast, nearly one quarter of African Americans and more than one fifth of people of Hispanic origin lived below the poverty line. Of all those living in poverty, about 45 percent are non-Hispanic whites. About one quarter of the poor are African American and another quarter are of Hispanic origin."

The greatest poverty concentrations were among non-Hispanic white native-born Americans 18-64 years-of-age with full-time employment. Yet, African Americans and other people of Hispanic origin have the highest levels of poverty relative to their overall population numbers (Cadena & Sallee, 2005).

Furthermore, according to a report published by the Urban Institute (UI) (2005), "parents and children in low-income families are more financially vulnerable than those in higher-income families." The report further indicates that low-income families are more likely to:

• Work hourly jobs without fringe benefits, including healthcare
• Experience greater housing, food, and childcare hardships
• Attain less education and work low salary jobs
• Contain a household with children (a quarter of America's children lives in poverty)

Business Week writer Aaron Bernstein (2004) stated that, "More than a quarter of the labor force, about 34 million workers, is trapped in a low-wage, often dead-end job The result has been an erosion of one of America's most cherished values: giving its people the ability to move up the economic ladder"

Mirroring the stark national landscape for low-income families are statistics from the National Center for Children in Poverty that reveal a steady rise in total poverty levels from 2003 thru 2005. For 2006, the federal poverty level for a family of four is $20,000. Based on that figure, 24 percent of Alabama's children now live in poverty. Thirty-eight percent of these children live in urban areas compared to 25 percent that live in rural communities. Thus, the centuries-old poverty cycle in Alabama continues.

Unfortunately, poverty produces many adverse effects, including malnutrition or starvation, infectious diseases, mental illness, drug dependence, depression, and crimes like domestic violence that are evident throughout our communities. For example, the United Health Foundation ranked Alabama 45 among America's healthiest states in 2005. State Health Officer Don Williamson attributes this rating to socioeconomic factors that influence unhealthy lifestyles. Five of the most significant cited by Williamson are smoking rates, obesity, high school graduation, children in poverty, and premature deaths. To remediate the situation, he supports dramatically improving Alabama's educational system in order to increase incomes and overall health.

Another adverse effect is reflected in the 2005 Domestic Violence in Alabama report prepared by the Statistical Analysis Center of the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center that reveals the following data:

• Of the 19,486 violent offenses (excluding simple assaults) reported in 2005, 11 percent were domestic violence incidents. Domestic violence was reported in 2,159 of the overall violent offenses, including 27 homicides, 204 rapes, 70 robberies, and in 1,858 aggravated assaults.
• A total of 26,051 domestic simple assaults, which represent 34 percent of all simple assaults reported in 2005.
• Seventy-seven percent of the victims were females and 23 percent were males. Fifty-five percent of the victims were African Americans and forty-five percent were white. In 59 percent of the offenses, the offender was African American, and in 79 percent the offender was male.

Saving Towns Thru Asset Revitalization (STAR) is rooted in ETP 602: Trapped by Poverty, Trapped by Abuse, and Trapped by Poor Health, an Urban Affairs initiative from 1998-2002, which clearly demonstrated the connection between poverty and female abuse and economic co-dependency. One of the underlying embedded objectives of STAR is to provide low-wealth municipalities the opportunity to improve their investment marketability and economic appeal through participation in Tree City USA of the National Arbor Foundation.

Other adverse effects of poverty that are significant to STAR are indicated in the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Duke University collaborative study, Ranking States Based on Improvements in Child Well-Being During the 1990s, as follows:

In closing, the Alabama Cooperative Extension System's Urban Affairs & New Nontraditional Programs Unit is dedicated to serving the poor, particularly in Alabama's metropolitan areas. You could say that these audiences make up "the bread-and-butter" of most of our programmatic initiatives. Therefore, impacts generated from outcomes should be deliberate in their design in order to progressively move through various stages of complexity, with attention devoted to achieving advanced urban Extension practice within a broad-based system framework.

References
Bernstein, Aaron. (December 1, 2004). Commentary: Waking up from the American dream. Social Issues. Business Week.

Cadena, Brian C. and Sallee, James M. (Fall 2005). Why did poverty rise in 2004?: A preliminary analysis of the U.S. census bureau's poverty report. Poverty Research Insights. National Poverty Center, University of Michigan.

National Center for Children in Poverty. (2006). Alabama: Demographics of poor children. Retrieved September 14, 2006.

The Urban Institute. (August 25, 2005). Low-income working families: Facts and figures. Retrieved September 14, 2006.

Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center. (2005). 2005 domestic violence in Alabama. Statistical Analysis Center. Retrieved September 14, 2006.

United Health Foundation. (2005). America's health rankings: Alabama, (2005 ed.). Retrieved September 14, 2006.

Acknowledgment: Wendi Williams, technical and research assistance

---

If you do not have the latest version of Adobe Acrobat and wish to view the
PDF publication on this site, click here to download: