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 andContinue reading “What Tax Time can do for the Working Poor”
Category Archives: Working poor
Trends in LA and CA over the next few years
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,Continue reading “Trends in LA and CA over the next few years”
The New and Already Poor
Barbara Ehrenreich is perhaps the best popular writer on issues of poverty, inequality and increasing financial insecurity in the U.S., chiefly through books such as Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America and Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. In a recent New York Times op-ed, “Too Poor toContinue reading “The New and Already Poor”
The high cost of poverty
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 moreContinue reading “The high cost of poverty”
Layoffs increase the ranks of the uninsured
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in the U.S. went up 1.6 points from September 2008 to January 2009, which would mean according to these estimates that the number of people without health insurance increased by about 1.7 million. Clearly, the economic meltdown is affecting all sectors of our society and placing strains on already-overburdened safety net systems.
Bill Pitkin 