How We Can Greatly Reduce Poverty

“What do the people of America want more than anything else? To my mind, they want two things: work, with all the moral and spiritual values that go with it; and with work, a reasonable measure of security - security for themselves and for their…children. Work and security – these are more than words. They are more than facts. They are the…true goals toward which our efforts of reconstruction should lead.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932

We know the major causes of poverty in Milwaukee:

  • A shortage of jobs;
  • Many low-wage jobs;
  • Inadequate minimum disability and Social Security payments.
  • Inadequate health insurance, and the high cost of health care, child care, energy and transportation;
  • Inadequate early childhood education.

The solution is to (1) focus on these major causes of poverty, (2) identify the creative evidence-based initiatives that, by tackling these problems, have proven effective in reducing poverty; and (3) implement these effective anti-poverty programs on a broad scale — across Milwaukee and across Wisconsin — so that every low-income adult or child has the opportunity to take advantage of one of these “ladders” out of poverty.

We need to follow a five-part strategy that’s based on the evidence about what actually succeeds in lowering poverty.

1. Move the Unemployed Poor Into Jobs

First, we must implement effective work-based policies that move the unemployed poor into jobs.

To do this, we need to:

  • Offer the unemployed transitional jobs if they do not quality for or have exhausted their Unemployment Insurance (UI), and cannot find regular full-time employment after a reasonable search because of the job shortage;
  • Ensure that excellent training and placement programs are in operation to help many of the unemployed qualify (despite the overall job shortage) for the significant number of job vacancies, demanding higher levels of skill, that certain employers have available; and
  • Reduce the major barriers to employment — ranging from inadequate transportation to missing drivers’ licenses to racial discrimination — that impede qualified workers from filling available job openings.

2. Make Work Pay

Second, we must “make work pay” by ensuring that full-time work employment always produces an income well above the poverty line.

To do this, we need to:

  • Raise and index the minimum wage;
  • Expand and reform the state and federal EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit), as well as other federal earnings-based tax credits, so that full-time, year-round employment at even the minimum wage — when supplemented by Wisconsin’s EITC, the much bigger federal EITC, other federal tax credits, and federal Food Stamp benefits — put workers far above the poverty line;
  • Guarantee affordable child care, so working parents’ concern about the cost of their children’s safety while they work is not an obstacle to employment; and
  • Guarantee affordable health insurance, so that job-seekers’ and workers’ health problems (including addiction and mental health problems) that impede employment are addressed.

3. Supplement Low Disability Income and Social Security Payments

Third, we must ensure that individuals whose severe disabilities preclude them from working in the regular labor market, or who have reached age 65, receive — if necessary — a supplement to their SSI, SSDI or Social Security payments that's large enough to life them above the poverty line.

4. Lower the Working Poor’s Cost of Living

Fourth, we need to implement both short-term and long-term strategies that reduce the burden of energy and transportation costs.

5. Invest in Early Childhood Education

Fifth, we need to break the long-term cycle of poverty (often called "intergenerational poverty") by ensuring that the children of today’s poor get the early childhood care and education they need, as well as effective K-12 education they need, to become the kind of productive workers that employers will easily hire – and whose productivity will stimulate economic growth.