Brack: Caveat on new measure of child poverty

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher

A recent news brief was so buried that I went back a couple of days later to make sure I read it right.

Child poverty, according to a new report, in South Carolina affects 17 percent of children — about half of what typically is reported.

“How can this be?” I wondered, thinking how visible poverty is in a journey through the Corridor of Shame or some of the state’s more down-and-out metro areas. Poverty and South Carolina often go together like hand and glove or good barbecue and loaf bread.

So I tracked down the original four-page report, “Measuring access to opportunity,” by the respected Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Sure enough, it says a new measure more accurately reflects child poverty in South Carolina as affecting one in six children, not 31 percent. That 14 percent drop represents 152,000 children — which is a pretty big deal.

But there’s a caveat with the report that policymakers and news junkies have to accept before they think the War on Poverty is over. The lower number, it seems, reflects the impact of state and federal intervention programs on the poverty rate. In other words, it shows that programs like food stamps, housing assistance, the federal Earned Income Tax Credit for working families and other social interventions are working. Without them, the true child poverty rate would be about one in three kids — approximately the same level as has been reported for years.

“Tax credits alone have decreased the child poverty rate by nearly one-third. Social Security, SNAP (food stamps) and housing subsidies also have contributed to significantly fewer children living in poverty,” the report said.

What brought all of this on is that the standard, outdated Federal Poverty Level (FPL) used for years as a basis for distributing aid came under fire when conservatives complained that the nation’s 50-year battle with poverty had done little to cut the poverty rate. So in 2011, the Obama Administration set out to measure the impact of assistance programs on people receiving help. This new measure, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, found that aid programs really do make life better for people — not by giving them cell phones or microwaves, but by providing help with housing or food or credits for working.

All of this means there’s a challenge for today’s policymakers in using the results of the new SPM data. The results don’t mean they should start cutting anti-poverty programs. If they do, the rate will go back up to around 30 percent. The new measure reflects how well anti-poverty efforts are working — and that there’s more work to do. In fact, the new measure indicates that politicians need to make bigger investments in social welfare programs if they want to curb the scourge of poverty across the nation.

Fighting poverty is not and won’t continue to be easy, notes Melissa Stompolis, coordinator of impact assessment and evaluation at the Children’s Trust of South Carolina.

“It can’t be as simple as going to the doctor and getting a flu shot and you’re done,” she said. “This   requires long-term, multi-term investments. If we keep up this fight, in the long term we’ll have a much better result.”

Sue Williams, her boss at the Children’s Trust, reflected on the new report, “This is a good litmus test to say, hey, we’re on the right track.”

Tim Ervolina, head of the United Way Association of South Carolina, said the new SPM measure could be better because it doesn’t reflect geographical differences of the cost of living in a metropolitan area versus a rural area. A moldy head of lettuce in a rural area might cost three times what can be bought fresh at a big metro grocery store, for example. The SPM doesn’t take that into account.

“Anti-poverty programs are not meant to move the poor to the middle class,” he said. “Anti-poverty programs are only meant to make the poor a little less poor.”

The Casey report shows how poverty hasn’t been eliminated despite government interventions. Rather, interventions are working but still have some way to go. To even consider cutting them now would be throwing away years of investments.