[Pennsylvania] More families slip into poverty and out of fiscal self-sufficiency

from The Pittsburgh Post Gazette

By Ervin Dyer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Nearly 50 workers who provide services for the poor gathered to discuss new priorities for their clients at a Downtown forum yesterday.

They came from Erie and from Philadelphia to focus on assistance to working families, more of whom are slipping into poverty.

According to PathwaysPA, a Philadelphia-based group that aids low-income women and families, there are 300,000 families in the state who are among the working poor. In fact, the group said, 66 percent of those who are poor in Pennsylvania work and one-third of the poor in the state are high school dropouts, making it likely that without further education or training they are likely to work in jobs where salaries move little beyond minimum wage.

Every other year, working with university economists and government data, PathwaysPA calculates a self-sufficiency standard, a measure of the wages it would take for families to meet basic needs without private or public assistance.

The standard is drawn to accommodate 70 different family types in each of the state's 67 counties. It ranges from single-parent families with one infant to a two-parent family with three teenagers.

In one example, the PathwaysPA standard for a family of one adult, a school-age child and one pre-schooler says the household needs to earn $39,200 a year, or $18 an hour on a full-time job to meet the family's home, food, health care and transportation costs.

The figure is calculated to include tax benefits. Extras, such as movie tickets and nights out, are not included in the figure.

The PathwaysPa standard is typically out of sync with the federal poverty guideline standards, which assume the greatest cost to a family is its food budget.

In its report, PathwaysPA finds the food burden shifts severely according to family size, children's ages and gender and where the family lives. Conditions which are not accounted for in the federal measurement.

"The government's [standard] is not targeted for what it takes for people to live self-sufficiently," said Carole, "but rather what it takes for people to live in poverty."

The agency believes generating its own information on what it takes for a family to live self-sufficiently can educate politicians and anti-poverty advocates, who can then help change policies that impact the poor.

Carole said the work of PathwayPa and others has modified some TANF regulations to make them less punitive to the poor.

The agencies at the forum were also encouraged to discover creative outreach to inform clients of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, a 30-year-old policy that benefits lower-wage workers.

Once only for families with children, now single wage earners can apply for the benefit.

In Allegheny County in 2003, there were 69,000 people who made claims for the tax benefit, drawing nearly $107 million in returns.

This is money that offers low-income workers a helping hand, said Carole Goertzel, director of PathwaysPa.

However, people who have done temporary work and have not filed regular tax returns do not know they can still seek the tax credit.

"It can pay the past-due electric bill. It can pay for a college course. It can pay the rent," she said. "It is so important because what happens is that families with the lowest income apply for it the least."

Agencies were also encouraged to shift their thinking from being just service providers to being advocates for change and to see their clients as citizens who could be partners in calling for policy changes.

Being poor, said Bob Feikema, head of the Parental Stress Center, is a barrier to being free.

"Without resources, being poor becomes an obstacle to reaching your capabilities."