Steaks and cricket, starvation and poverty: diary of a surreal week in Zimbabwe

from The Times Online

This week President Mugabe will claim international legitimacy when he sits down with world leaders at the EU-Africa summit. He will probably not be talking about the chaos he has created at home

Martin Fletcher in Harare

From the air you see thousands of acres of abandoned farmland reverting to nature. Our Air Zimbabwe flight lands in Harare at 9.30am, the only plane at a shiny new airport built in 2001 for non-existent tourists.

Foreign journalists face imprisonment if caught here. Heart thumping, I approach the visa desk with a passport full of stamps for places like Iraq and Somalia. If asked, I will claim to be an academic specialising in conflict resolution. Happily, I am waved through. This may be a brutal police state, but it is an incompetent one.

Surprisingly, you can still rent cars. Maps of Harare are unobtainable, however, as there is no paper left to print them on. I rely on memory to find the safe suburban guest house where I plan to stay, the capital's hotels being infested with government informers. I arrive to find it has no electricity and not a drop of water.

I also need cash, but it is in desperately short supply. The Government cannot print enough to cope with inflation. Banks offer only the official rate of Z$30,000 per US dollar. A friend rescues me with a brick-sized wad of Z$20 million at the black market rate of Z$1.1 million to US$1. The official rate exists only for Mugabe's cronies, enabling them to buy US dollars at a fraction of their real value and amass enormous wealth. The friend also finds me alternative accomodation with a white professional couple in a suburb less crippled by power cuts.

Outwardly Harare appears unchanged. Handsome homes in avenues with names like Argyll Street and Bath Road are ablaze with jacaranda, bougainvillea and brilliantly-coloured flamboyant trees. Then you notice the telltale signs of economic meltdown: the paucity of cars, empty petrol stations, broken traffic lights, blank billboards, legions of hitchhikers, roadside hawkers selling pathetic piles of firewood.

You also see great snaking queues outside banks and supermarkets. Cash-starved banks restrict withdrawals to Z$5 million per person, but Zimbabweans with jobs are desperate to cash and spend their weekly salaries before they lose their value. Supermarket shelves have been almost empty since draconian price controls made it impossible for producers to cover their costs, so occasional deliveries of bread or sugar cause frenzied excitement.

Over dinner my friend has to go into the neighbouring restaurant to light his cigarette because matches are hard to find. He pockets the sugar sachets that came with coffee. Even toilet paper is scarce. He has a fine line in black humour. “What did Zimbabweans have before candles?” he asks. “Electricity!” He occasionally drives 1,400km to Botswana and back to buy a carful of provisions.

Friday, November 16

Richard Mills, the Times photographer, flies in clutching a fishing rod and posing as a tourist. I spend the day meeting contacts who will pass us on to opposition activists around the country. That is the only way foreign journalists can operate. You assume telephones are tapped; you snatch surreptitious pictures. It is dangerous for people to talk to you, even anonymously, but they do so because they want the world to know what is happening.

A contact has organised a dinner in a restaurant. One guest arrives late — he had found eggs and a chicken being sold on the black market. Another discovers the restaurant has tonic water, so snaps up a dozen bottles. “We've become a nation of scavengers,” a third observes. And of broken families. The diners have 13 children between them. Eleven have emigrated, and the last two intend to.

Money dominates the conversation, and Zimbabweans have of necessity become proficient mental mathematicians. Someone produces a Zimbabwean one cent note printed in August 2006 and calculates that it is worth 0.0000007 of a US cent — the world's most worthless banknote. The dinner costs Z$102,950,000 — US$34,000 at the official rate. I can just see it on my expenses form.

Saturday, November 17

Most whites have access to foreign currency, enabling many to buy generators, water storage tanks, and food on the black market. Most blacks do not and live on crumbs, with the conspicuous exception of the few thousand who enjoy Mugabe's patronage.

We spend the morning in Mbare, a Harare slum, with two plucky black church workers who introduce us to destitute women who are forced into prostitution knowing that Aids will kill them. They show us parentless children living alone in brutal, run-down housing projects. They trick a cemetery official into opening his voluminous register by saying we are priests. In one week there were 244 funerals, mostly of 20 and 30-year-olds.

We offer our guides lunch. They order T-bone steaks. We realise they are half-starved. They tell us they scratch a living by making 16-hour bus rides to South Africa and buying soap or cooking oil to sell on the black market at a tiny profit. Later my friend ropes us into a cricket match on the well-tended, sunlit grounds of Prince Edward's School, a colonial legacy. Surreal.

Driving home, we swing past Garvin Close, a suburban cul-de-sac guarded by armed soldiers. This is the home of Mugabe's “special guest”, Mengistu Haile Mariam, the former Ethiopian President responsible for 1.5 million deaths during a 14-year reign of terror. Do he and Mugabe ever meet for a dictators' dinner, I wonder?

Sunday, November 18

Out to the township of Mabvuku where women dredge muddy water from the bottom of deep holes because their taps have been dry for months. A local doctor says cases of diarrhoea and dysentry are soaring. He also says that of the 65 doctors he trained with 50 now work abroad, and that he no longer sends patients to government hospitals because there are no doctors or drugs to treat them.

We leave for Bulawayo, 450km away. Outside Harare we pass endless barren fields. The Government is predicting the “mother of all agricultural seasons” on every radio bulletin, but there is a woeful shortage of fertiliser, seeds and irrigation. Nowadays, snorted a farmer in Harare, a “bumper crop” is one that reaches the height of a car's bumper.

Monday, November 19

We need more fuel and cash. Our hosts direct us to a suburban bungalow where two middle-aged white men siphon petrol from a plastic container. They visit Botswana twice a week and bring back 3,000 litres a time to sell to trusted customers. We also change US$100 into a carrier bag full of notes. The unofficial rate has risen to Z$1.3 million. It jumps towards the end of the month as the central bank buys up black market dollars to pay Zimbabwe's electricity and other foreign bills.

An English friend asked me to bring out a food parcel for his sister-in-law. We find her in a rundown area of north Bulawayo, one of the last whites still living there. Her spartan bungalow is ringed by wire fencing and padlocked gates. “Hallelujah!” she cries when she opens the bag.

Her story is sad and absurd. She and her husband, a farmer, lost all their savings to hyperinflation. They have no source of foreign currency. For weeks she has lived largely off porridge. “We have no water, no power, no food. You name it, we haven't got it,” she says. They still have land outside the city, but they grow nothing on it because it would be seized the moment they did.

We are shocked by Bulawayo. Once Zimbabwe's industrial hub, its factories are mostly now silent. Its power station is shut. Four of its five reservoirs are empty. The Government has ordered shops to stay open, but they have nothing to sell. “You'd think you were in shops that sell shelves,” our hostess remarked.

There is hardly any newsprint for the local paper, or bottles for beer. Pius Ncube, the city's outspoken archbishop, has left for Rome after being caught with a woman in a government sting. A hospital doctor we knew has left in disgust after a patient died for lack of saline drips.

A cavernous supermarket offers seasonings but no meat; jams but no bread; cereal but no milk; food for pets but precious little for humans. The manager says he must stay open or lose his licence. He cannot dismiss any of his 40 staff. He doubles their pay every month, but that fails to counter inflation. On the rare occasions he gets a delivery of sugar or cooking oil he gives each employee a small allocation to sell on the black market. “Customers used to come to buy whatever they needed. Now they buy whatever they can get,” he says.

For his own needs he visits South Africa once a month, or buys black market goods outside his shop at five times the official price. He has just put up Christmas decorations: “Although there's nothing to buy at least the spirit is there.”

Tuesday, November 20

The Bulawayo mayor, a member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, gives us an interview. He has hung the statutory portrait of Mugabe behind his desk so he always has his back to the man.

A cleric takes us out to the bush where 500 families whose homes were destroyed by the Government live in abject poverty and rudimentary shelters unfit for animals. The children are barefoot, dressed in rags and play soccer with a ball made of rolled-up plastic bags.

Back in town, we watch policemen running from a supermarket, clutching packets of sugar, while several hundred people queue outside. They have free rein to supplement their pathetic salaries through plunder and extortion.

In the afternoon we visit a secondary school whose headmaster faces what he calls “challenges”. He has lost 6 of his 27 staff since February, and expects 5 more to leave when term ends in December. Some simply vanish overnight. They cannot survive on their US$11 monthly salary, he says. 200 of his 600 students are orphans; he reckons 100 are HIV-positive. Despite the risk, girls are selling their bodies to get food. How many of them? I ask “Almost the whole school.”

The day ends bizarrely. We dine at Nesbitt Castle — a Scottish baronial castle built by a local magnate in 1904 and now a hotel. It is full of stuffed animals, fading pictures of 1930s cricket teams, suits of armour. We eat minestrone soup, roast lamb and pear crumble in a magnificent candlelit dining room. The black staff sing happy birthday to a white guest at the only other occupied table. After dinner we drink scotch and play snooker. We could be back in Rhodesia.

Wednesday, November 21

At a rural clinic way out in the bush we find children who are literally starving. Most of the adult patients have Aids, and half are seriously malnourished. The doctor says the clinic sends the terminally ill home before they die because it is cheaper to send a live body on a bus than a dead corpse on a donkey cart.

Returning to Bulawayo we stop at a farm seized by Mugabe's henchmen a few years ago. The main house is now a roofless, windowless shell stripped of everything except the bathtub and a lavatory. Fetid black water sits in the bottom of the swimming pool.

The land around is littered with broken farm machinery, rusting silos, empty water tanks and fallen trees. Fields that once rippled with maize and wheat lie abandoned. Where the drive rejoins the road, a couple of ladies hawk a pathetic bowl of onions and tomatoes.

Back in Bulawayo we visit Ascot, the old racecourse. People cannot feed themselves now, let alone horses, and it has not been used in five years. The racetrack is overgrown, the rails broken, the stands empty and forlorn. Faded hoardings advertise the Castle $150,000 Classic and the 100,000 Guineas — prizes worth less than ten US cents each today.

On the edge of town we also find the old Formula One motor-racing course. There are no locks on the gates. The tyres that formed the crash barriers have been burnt. But the starter's podium survives, the grids are still visible on the track and the surface is fine. Nobody is around. The temptation is too great. I'll wager our Avis rental car has never moved so fast.

Thursday, November 22

Before dawn we drive 30 miles south. As the sun rises, we climb a vast dome of smooth rock. On top is a low granite tomb with a plaque inscribed: “Here Lie the Remains of Cecil John Rhodes”.

Surveying the spectacular panorama of rocky, bush-covered hills stretching away in all directions, I wonder what the 19th-century adventurer from Bishop's Stortford would make of today's Zimbabwe.

How long will it be before the European structure he imposed on this beautiful bit of Africa vanishes altogether?

“Mugabe,” Richard remarks as we leave, “is in serious danger of giving colonisers a good name.”

New SCHIP Legislation Makes Significant Changes From Vetoed Bill to Focus More Heavily on Poor Children

from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Changes Answer Criticisms of Earlier, Vetoed Bill
By Edwin Park and Judith Solomon

On November 30, Congress sent the President a revised version of bipartisan legislation to strengthen children’s health coverage (H.R. 3963). The bill includes substantial changes from the bill the President vetoed in October (H.R. 976) that directly address a number of concerns raised by the earlier bill’s opponents. Despite these changes, however, the President is expected to veto the new legislation as well.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the new bill would cover nearly 4 million uninsured children by 2012, at a cost of about $35 billion over five years, fully offset by an increase in federal tobacco taxes.[1] Key changes in the second bill include:

1. The second bill focuses even more on covering the lowest-income uninsured children.

Arguing that any legislation to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) should “cover poor kids first,” opponents of the first bill suggested that it would primarily cover middle-class children.[2] CBO estimates clearly indicate, however, that the vast majority of the uninsured children who would have received coverage under the first bill have low incomes.[3]

Nevertheless, the second bill makes two significant changes to further target the increased coverage on the lowest-income uninsured children.

* It would prohibit any state from extending SCHIP coverage to children in families above 300 percent of the poverty line. (The one state that already covers children above that level — New Jersey, which covers about 3,000 children from 300 to 350 percent of the poverty line — would be allowed to continue doing so.)[4] This provision is significantly more restrictive than the original bipartisan bill. The first bill would have allowed states to continue to expand SCHIP above 300 percent of the poverty line, as under current law, although at a reduced federal matching rate and only if the state met new requirements for participation in Medicaid and SCHIP among eligible low-income children.

* Also of considerable significance, the second bill further targets the financial incentives for enrolling eligible but uninsured children on those with the lowest incomes. The second bill would provide incentives to states only for enrolling uninsured children who are eligible for Medicaid and would increase the size of those incentives. It would drop the incentives included in the original bipartisan bill for enrolling somewhat higher-income children eligible for SCHIP.

According to CBO estimates, the result of these changes is as follows:

* By 2012, the second bill would cover a total of 3.9 million children who would otherwise be uninsured, a 100,000 increase over the original bill.

* Of these 3.9 million children, 3.4 million — or 87 percent — would have incomes below states’ current eligibility limits. (This is 200,000 more than under the original bill.)

* 1.9 million — or essentially half — of these children would be eligible for Medicaid, and most of them would be poor. (This is a 200,000 increase in coverage among the lowest-income uninsured children compared to the original bill.)

* Only 500,000 of the 3.9 million otherwise-uninsured children who would gain coverage under the bill would do so as a result of state actions to broaden their SCHIP eligibility criteria. (This is 100,000 fewer than under the original bill.) All of these 500,000 children would be below 300 percent of the poverty line.

2. The second bill tightens the citizenship documentation option; it would ensure that ineligible undocumented immigrants are not enrolled in Medicaid and SCHIP, without reducing enrollment among eligible citizen children.

Opponents of the first bill falsely claimed that it would somehow extend Medicaid and SCHIP to undocumented immigrants or otherwise allow many ineligible undocumented immigrants to enroll.[5]

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 imposed a new citizenship documentation requirement on citizens eligible for Medicaid. The requirement has proved onerous and prevented many poor citizen children who are eligible for Medicaid from enrolling. (A recent survey for the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured determined that the requirement was a key reason why Medicaid enrollment has declined for the first time in nearly a decade.[6]) The first SCHIP bill gave states a new option to comply with the requirement: for individuals who have already signed a sworn declaration that they are U.S. citizens, state Medicaid agencies could match individuals’ names and Social Security numbers with information in the Social Security Administration (SSA) database to ensure that the name and Social Security number were accurate. The bill also extended the citizenship documentation requirement to SCHIP for the first time.

The second bill includes changes that fully address opponents’ charges in this area:[7]

* Opponents claimed that some people who are not citizens can have Social Security numbers and that proving the numbers are valid does not prove these people are citizens. The second bill responds to this concern by tightening the new data matching option, requiring states to verify not only names and Social Security numbers with information in the SSA database, but also citizenship. States that use the new option would have to submit to SSA the names and Social Security numbers of all Medicaid applicants who declare they are U.S. citizens. SSA would check this information against the SSA database and determine not only whether the name and Social Security number match, but also whether the SSA database shows that the applicant is a citizen.

* If SSA could not confirm the accuracy of the applicant’s name, number, and citizenship, the individual would have to provide the state with original documents, such as a birth certificate or passport, to prove his or her citizenship, as is required under the citizenship documentation requirement now in place.

3. The second bill accelerates the elimination of SCHIP coverage of childless adults.

Opponents of the first bill criticized it for allowing states to use SCHIP funds to cover adults through waivers.[8] This criticism ignores the fact that the bill would have significantly curtailed SCHIP coverage of adults: it barred the federal government from granting any new waivers to states to cover parents, required states to move SCHIP-covered parents out of SCHIP after two years, and reduced the federal matching rate for such coverage. It also eliminated SCHIP coverage of adults without children after two years.

The second bill would take the further step of eliminating SCHIP coverage of childless adults by the end of calendar year 2008, nine months earlier than under the first bill.

4. The second bill takes additional steps to limit “crowd-out.”

Opponents of the first bill have incorrectly claimed that it would not produce much of a gain in coverage but instead would primarily lead children who now have private insurance to be switched to public programs.[9] CBO analysis showed this charge was incorrect: nearly two-thirds of the children who would gain SCHIP or Medicaid coverage under the bill by 2012 (3.8 million out of 5.8 million) would otherwise be uninsured. Only slightly more than one-third (34 percent) would otherwise have some form of private coverage.[10]

Moreover, as CBO director Peter Orszag and leading health experts have explained, virtually any effort to cover more of the uninsured — including tax deductions or credits for the purchase of insurance in the private market — would result in some “crowd-out.” In discussing the first SCHIP bill passed by the House, which also had a crowd-out rate of about one-third, Orszag noted that he “has not seen another plan that adds 5 million kids to SCHIP with a 33 percent crowd-out rate. This is pretty much as good as it is going to get” (except for approaches that would impose mandates on employers, individuals, or states).[11]

The second SCHIP bill includes changes to further reduce the risk of crowd-out.

* It requires all states to adopt best practices developed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in consultation with states, on limiting crowd-out. The original bill only required states that expand coverage above 300 percent of the poverty line to adopt such practices.

* As discussed above, the second bill further increases the focus on the lowest-income children. Because such children are highly unlikely to have other access to health insurance, there is less risk of crowd-out at those income levels.

* The bill also encourages states to take up an existing “premium assistance” option, under which states can enroll SCHIP-eligible uninsured children in employer-sponsored health insurance — if their families have access to such coverage — by using SCHIP funds to help families pay the required premiums. The first SCHIP bill included provisions to make it easier for states to implement premium assistance. The second bill goes further, adding a fiscal inducement for states to institute the premium assistance option.[12]

CBO estimates indicate that the second bill produces a slightly lower crowd-out rate than the first, one, of just under 33 percent.

End Notes:

[1] Congressional Budget Office, “CBO’s Estimate of Changes in SCHIP and Medicaid Enrollment of Children Under the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007,” October 24, 2007 and Congressional Budget Office, “CBO’s Estimate of the Effects on Direct Spending and Revenues of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007,” October 24, 2007.

[2] See Robert Greenstein, “Poor Children First — Or Last?,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, October 17, 2007.

[3] See Edwin Park, “CBO Estimates Show SCHIP Agreement Would Provide Health Insurance to 3.8 Million Uninsured Children,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Congressional Budget Office, “CBO’s Estimate of Changes in SCHIP and Medicaid Enrollment of Children Under the House Amendments to the Senate Amendments to H.R. 976, the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007,” September 24, 2007. See also Genevieve Kenney et al., “SCHIP Reauthorization: How Will Low-income Children Benefit Under the House and Senate Bills?” Urban Institute, as updated on November 8, 2007 at http://www.urban.org/publications/411545.html.

[4] Jocelyn Guyer, “Coverage of Uninsured Children in Moderate-Income Families under SCHIP,” Center for Children and Families, Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, October 2007.

[5] See “Charge that Bipartisan SCHIP Compromise Bill Aids Undocumented Immigrants Is False,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, September 25, 2007.

[6] Vernon Smith et al., “As Tough Times Wane, States Act to Improve Medicaid Coverage and Quality,” Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, October 2007. See also Government Accountability Office, “States Reported That Citizenship Documentation Requirement Resulted in Enrollment Declines for Eligible Citizens and Posed Administrative Burdens,” June 2007; “Medicaid Citizenship Documentation Requirements Deny Coverage to Citizens And Cost Taxpayers Millions,” Majority Staff, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, July 24, 2007; Donna Cohen Ross, “Medicaid Requirement Disproportionately Harms Non-Hispanics, State Data Show,” Center On Budget and Policy Priorities, July 10, 2007, and “New Medicaid Citizenship Documentation Requirement Is Taking A Toll,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 13, 2007.

[7] For a comprehensive analysis of how the second SCHIP bill ensures that ineligible undocumented immigrants do not enroll in Medicaid and SCHIP, see Judith Solomon and Allison Orris, “New Children’s Health Legislation Would Not Allow Any Undocumented Immigrants to Enroll in SCHIP or Medicaid,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, December 3, 2007.

[8] See, for example, White House, “Press Briefing Via Conference Call by Senior Administration Officials on SCHIP Reauthorization,” October 17, 2007.

[9] See “The President’s Comments on Congress’ SCHIP Plan,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, September 20, 2007 and Robert Greenstein, “The Administration’s Dubious Claims about the Emerging Children’s Health Insurance Legislation: Myths and Realities,” Revised July 20, 2007.

[10] It is also important to note that this CBO estimate is widely misunderstood. A large share of the SCHIP “crowd-out,” as estimated by CBO, involves children who are uninsured now but who eventually would obtain private coverage if SCHIP coverage were not available. These are not children who had private insurance which their families voluntarily dropped for public program coverage. See Leighton Ku, “’Crowd-Out’ Is Not the Same as Voluntarily Dropping Private Health Insurance for Public Program Coverage,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, September 27, 2007.

[11] “SCHIP: Governors, Health Officials, Seek Withdrawal of CMS Rules Targeting ‘Crowd-Out’ by SCHIP,” BNA Health Care Daily, August 31, 2007.

[12] To qualify for incentive payments for enrolling more of the eligible but uninsured children, states would have to adopt for their Medicaid and SCHIP programs at least five of eight enrollment and retention strategies listed in the bill, one of which is premium assistance. This should result in more states implementing premium assistance programs.

Public no longer perceives poverty as most urgent problem

from The Jerusalem Post

Ruth Eglash ,

For the first time in five years the Israeli public no longer perceives poverty as the country's greatest problem or even the second most urgent issue after security, according to the annual Alternative Poverty Report released Wednesday by humanitarian aid organization Latet.

In a telephone survey of 500 Israeli adults, the nonprofit organization, which provides supplies and services to more than 120 smaller aid organizations throughout the country, found that for the first time since starting its Alternative Poverty Report five years ago, 50 percent of the general public considered education the most urgent issue that should be addressed by the government.

"This demonstrates erosion in public awareness to the urgency of addressing the problem, even though poverty rates and scopes have not in fact diminished," the organization said in a statement. The survey was carried out two weeks after the current school strike started, it said.

"It seems like people have had enough of hearing about poverty or being asked to donate," Latet general manager Eran Weintraub told The Jerusalem Post . "There has been some growth in the Israeli economy and maybe some people believe the most critical problems have been solved."

However, he added, the findings of the report, which is also based on questionnaires filled out by more than 500 needy people utilizing Latet's services and by heads of all the charities linked to the umbrella organization, indicate that this is not the case.

"I don't know if the number of cases has increased, but what I do know is that this problem is much wider and deeper than ever before," Weintraub said. "There is a huge gap between the needy public and the general population, and we are very concerned about that."

This year's National Insurance Institute annual poverty report said 1.65 million people were living below the poverty line.

The Latet document said demand for food among the country's needy over the past year had risen 103%. It said 78% of the needy were unable to provide their children with school supplies, up from 53% in 2006, an increase of 47%.

There was also a 22% increase in the number of parents who could not afford to have their children take part in extracurricular school activities.

Ninety-five percent of the needy said they were unable to independently afford dental care, compared to 19% among the general public, up 12% from 2006.

"Out in the field we see that poverty runs very deep and that for thousands of Israelis it is hard to fulfill even the basic needs of their families," Weintraub said.

According to Latet and the other organizations that see poverty on a day-to-day basis, government assistance is needed to address the problem. The report said 89% of the general public believe the government should take care of the problem.

"We have already called on the government to set up a national body to fight poverty," Weintraub said. A petition signed by various NGOs had already been presented to the High Court of Justice earlier this year and the government had responded by setting up an interministerial committee to look into ways of tackling poverty on a national level," he added, but the committee had refused to make any concrete commitments.

"Emergency aid should come from the government," Weintraub said. "It should not depend on the goodwill of the people or the efforts of NGOs. We can help, but it should be under their control."

NJ Group Asks for Anti-Poverty Programs

from The Houston Chronicle

By ANGELA DELLI SANTI

TRENTON, N.J. — Though the challenges of alleviating poverty in costly New Jersey are many, and money is tight, advocates for the poor, homeless and disabled hope to push lawmakers to direct limited state funds to programs that do the most good.

The advocates, known collectively as the Anti-Poverty Network of New Jersey, paint a grim picture of low-income families fighting to stay solvent in a state where affordable housing is scarce, health insurance is hard to come by, and minimum-wage workers seldom break out of their low-wage rut.

Advocates say even limited state aid can make a big difference to the poor if directed to the right programs, like one that lowers the tax liability.

During its annual conference Wednesday, APN urged its members to pressure lawmakers to fund programs that truly help the poor.

Melville D. Miller, president of Legal Services of New Jersey, points to $37.5 million in rental assistance that he said surely would have been cut from the current state budget but for eleventh-hour lobbying by APN.

"Our only stock in trade at APN is to shine a light on poverty, to bring to light in a transparent way the terrible challenge it is for folks to live in poverty and to then use that information to demand that something be done about it," he said.

Serena Rice, director of the Poverty Research Institute of Legal Services of New Jersey, said it's a myth that poor don't do enough to help themselves.

She said nearly three-quarters of people living in poverty in New Jersey are working; welfare payments have not risen in 20 years; and Medicaid reimbursement rates are so low, it's tough to find doctors willing to treat the poorest patients.

Department of Human Services Commissioner Jen Velez called the snapshot jarring, but said the data helps state agencies like hers shape its priorities.

News Neediest: Lining up each day for a meal

from The Buffalo News

Salvation Army’sLockport soup kitchenprovides meals for200 people daily
By Bill Michelmore

LOCKPORT — Lunch begins early at 50 Cottage St. People start lining up inside the Salvation Army soup kitchen at 11 a.m. every day for a meal they might not otherwise get.

The center is a sanctuary for Laura Yeates, 32, a single mother with four daughters from ages 3 to 12 and a 14- month-old son.

Without a car and pushing a baby stroller, Yeates walks several blocks from her house to the Salvation Army Family Center every day for lunch.

“I’m very thankful for this place,” she said, as she sat down to a steaming plate of chicken and vegetables. “I might have enough money to buy a sandwich for me and my baby, but there’s nothing like a hot meal.”

In Niagara County, 18.5 percent of families live below the poverty level, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey. That number jumps to 44.7 percent in households of single mothers.

There are no specific figures for Lockport’s 22,000 residents, but more than 17,500 people in Niagara County receive food stamps through the county’s Social Service Department, said Pam Gatto, the department’s director of eligibility.

The Salvation Army in Lockport provides meals for 200 people each day at its center on Cottage Street, said Maj. John Wheeler, who heads the center with his wife, Maj. Martha Wheeler. On Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, food is delivered to another 800 people in the city.

The center is also one of many food-distribution sites that will receive donations during the holiday season, thanks to the collaboration between The Buffalo News Neediest Fund and the Western New York Holiday Partnership.

The Neediest Fund and Holiday Partnership will provide food and toys to more than 12,000 needy families in Erie and Niagara counties this holiday season.

The center provides needed nourishment for the soul, as well as the body. Counselors advise struggling and troubled people on a wide range of matters, including mental health, finances and spousal abuse. Afterschool sports and educational programs are provided for youngsters from poor families. “These are neighborhood kids,” said Chris Gresart, the director. “By coming here, they keep off the streets.”

Donald Weed, chaplain of United Methodist Church in Olcott, shows up at lunchtime to cheer people up with holiday songs and offer prayers to feed the spirit.

“A lot of people need that,” he said. “They need the food, no doubt about that, but they also want to hear that God is with them.”

Added Wheeler: “To do what we have to do here, we’d need eight more employees, but we can’t afford to hire anybody.”

Volunteers try to fill that staff shortage. Karen Sennett has been working in the kitchen for 15 years. Donna Glena, retired after 25 years with Delph i Thermal Systems, has been in the kitchen for six years.

“Helping out here makes me feel very fortunate,” Glena said. “I’ve got a home, and, thank God, I don’t have to worry about having my heat cut off.”

That’s what Laura Yeates had to look forward to when she left the soup kitchen one day last week. The utility company cut off her heat and electricity because she owes $400 in back payments.

“It’s cold at night. We snuggle up together to keep warm,” she said, referring to baby, Shay.

Her daughters, Cierra, 12; Jasmine, 9; Kyla, 4; and Samarra, 3, are staying with her parents in Sanborn until her situation improves.

“I try to stay positive,” she said. “I figure I’m at the bottom and the only way now is up.”

After lunch at the soup kitchen, she walked a half-dozen blocks to St. John’s Outreach clothing center on Chestnut Street to get some blankets to keep her and the baby warm in a house without heat or electricity.

As Laura Yeates set off for the clothing center, people kept filing into the Salvation Army soup kitchen for lunch.

23% percent of Those in Poverty have Contemplated Suicide

from Y Net News

Alternative Poverty Report shows ongoing decline in poor individuals' ability to provide for their needs in terms of education, health, nutrition and housing; some 35% cannot pay for medicines, 20% are chronically ill

Yael Branovsky

Some 23% of the poor in Israel contemplated ending their life due to their dire financial situation, the Alternative Poverty Report, published by the Latet humanitarian aid organization, revealed Wednesday. According to the National Insurance Institute, in 2006 the number of poor individuals in Israel stood at 1,650,000, nearly half of them children.

Data for the report was collected by 120 aid groups that operate in 80 communities across the country, and is also based on three studies and a survey among 500 respondents.

The authors of the report noted that statistics indicate an ongoing decline in poor individuals' ability to provide for theirs and their families' needs in terms of education, health, nutrition and housing.

According to the report, over the last five years the demand for food donations among the needy rose by 104%, meaning that their number has doubled. Furthermore, half of the poor do not believe they will ever be able to get out of the cycle of poverty.

Can't pay for drugs

In the area of health, the report showed the 25% of needy individuals know someone who died because he was unable to pay for medical care. An astounding 95% of the poor cannot pay for dental treatments, a 12% increase compared to last year. Moreover, about 20% of them suffer from a chromic illness, and 35% need regular medicinal treatment, but cannot afford to buy the drugs.

The report also found that some 78% of the poor in Israel cannot afford to buy school supplies for their children, a 47% increase in comparison to last year. Additionally, 89% of the poor are unable to pay for their children's extracurricular activities, including private tutoring. Only 6% said that they could afford to fund their children's academic studies.

Latet also revealed that 68% of the needy reported that their gas, phone, water or electricity supply had been cut off in the last year, a 19% rise compared to 2006. Eighty-one percent of the poor have never been abroad, and more than half have never been on a vacation in Israel.

To conclude, the report found that despite the common assumption that many of the poor prefer to receive a state pension rather than work, 76% of those surveyed said they would have preferred to work and not get a stipend.

Bulgaria's Pensioners Risk Poverty

from Sofia Echo

The risk of poverty among people above 65 years was 18 per cent, while for those over 75 it was 27.4 per cent, Labour and Social Policy Ministry Expert Dragomir Draganov said at a conference on the ageing population.

In comparison, in 2005, the risk for people aged over 65 was 17.5 per cent and for those over 75, 20.3 per cent.

Meglena Vesselinova from the Ministry said that a quarter of Bulgaria's pensioners were over 75-years-old. Effective care for the ageing population of the country was needed, she said. In 2008, nearly two billion leva would be allocated from the state budget to cover shortages in state public insurance.

Bulgarian Red Cross head Hristo Grigorov said there were 2.5 million pensioners in Bulgaria, most of them lived under the existence minimum and needed help.

Andrew Humphreys, expert in the HelpAge International organisation, said that the quick ageing of the population was a general problem in the EU. Most of the EU population was aged between 45 and 65. The longer life-expectancy was something that people should be proud of, but it made them face new challenges, he said. Ageing would disappear as a phenomenon, but it would take years.

Until 2050, the number of people between 70 and 80 years-old in the EU would grow and pensioners would make up 30 per cent of society, Humphreys said.

Government accused on child poverty

from the Guardian

Press Association

The Government's commitment to halving child poverty by 2010 appears in doubt because it has failed to explain what is doing to meet the target, MPs have said.

A Treasury select committee report said it was worried "that the Government may have drawn back from a whole-hearted commitment to meeting this target".

And it warned any backtracking would represent a "conscious decision to leave hundreds of thousands of children in poverty for longer than is necessary or desirable".

The committee said the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review - setting out long-term budgeting - did not explain how the 2010 mark would be met. It conceded that there were potential "trade-offs" between the short-term target and increasing employment to meet a longer-term aim of eradicating child poverty entirely by 2020.

But it demanded the Treasury either open a public debate about that or "rededicate itself to meeting the 2010-11 target".

Labour MP John McFall, who chairs the committee, said: "The 2010 child poverty pledge should not be seen as an optional extra in the Government's programme for the remainder of this Parliament. The simple consequence of failing to meet it is that many children will continue to live in households in poverty for too long.

"The Government must do more to make clear how it is to meet its target to halve child poverty by 2010, or face growing concerns that its commitment to the target is being watered down.

"The 2020 target to eliminate child poverty remains of paramount importance, but the Comprehensive Spending Review does not help us in understanding how the Government is seeking to reconcile any tension between the 2010 and 2020 targets."

The report criticised the fact that responsibility for meeting the 2010 and 2020 targets had been given to different Whitehall departments.

Poverty Role playing

from WEEK

Public health crisis in Iraq

from the Gulf Times

Published: Wednesday, 5 December, 2007, 02:39 AM Doha Time

By Cesar Chelala
IT is the kind of news that everybody had been dreading. An outbreak of cholera in Iraq, which started in two Northern provinces, has already reached Baghdad and has become Iraq’s biggest cholera outbreak in recent memory. “This frightening and dangerous situation,” as stated by Bahktiyar Ahmed, a Unicef emergency health facilitator, serves to underscore the unrelenting threat to their lives of people already affected by a devastated health care system.

Statistics from the WHO indicate that there have already been more than 3,300 cases of cholera in the country, and more than 33,000 cases of watery diarrhoea –which could be a milder form of the disease. The cholera epidemic aggravates what is, under any measure, a most serious humanitarian and public health emergency.

According to Jeremy Hobbs, director of Oxfam International, “The terrible violence in Iraq has masked the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Malnutrition amongst children has dramatically increased and basic services, ruined by years of wars and sanctions, cannot meet the needs of the Iraqi people. Millions of Iraqis have been forced to flee the violence, either to another part of Iraq or abroad. Many of those are living in dire poverty.”

It is estimated that 28% of children are malnourished, compared with 19 percent before the 2003 invasion. In 2006, more than 11% of newborn babies were born underweight, compared with 4% in 2003. Malnutrition contributes to death from other conditions such as intestinal and respiratory infections, malaria and typhoid.

The lack of food is affecting not only children. It is estimated that 4mn Iraqis - 15% of the total population- regularly cannot buy enough to eat, and are now dependent on food assistance.

Children’s suffering doesn’t end there. Last year, the Association of Psychologists of Iraq (API) released a report which states that the US-led invasion has greatly affected the psychological development of Iraqi children. The Association’s spokesman, Maruan Abdullah, stated, “It was incredible how strong the results were.

The only things they [the children] have in their minds are guns, bullets, death and a fear of the US occupation.” What can one say to those that are responsible for the destruction of children’s lives and hopes?

Those unable to resist the situation any longer have fled in terror to other parts of the country or to neighboring countries, which have seen their health and social services totally overwhelmed by the sudden influx of millions of refugees.

Presently, 70% of the population in Iraq is without adequate water supplies and 80% lacks adequate sanitation. Dr Abdul-Rahman Adil Ali of the Baghdad Health Directorate has warned about the serious consequences of a defective sewage system. “In some of Baghdad’s poor neighbourhoods,” he said, “people drink water which is mixed with sewage.”

Hospitals are unable to respond to people’s needs. 90% of hospitals lack essential resources such as basic medical and surgical supplies. Most international aid agencies have left the country, a situation compounded by the emigration of qualified personnel, particularly medical personnel. Of 34,000 doctors living in the country in 2003, 12,000 have emigrated and over 2,000 have been murdered.

The war is not only affecting Iraqis. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has issued a report to lawmakers stating that the war could ultimately cost the US government well over a trillion dollars –at least double of what has already been spent. That will happen even under the best conditions –an immediate and substantial reduction of troops- and impact American taxpayers for at least the next following decade.

U.S. soldiers have psychological wounds to last for a lifetime. A 2004 study of 1,300 Fort Bragg paratroopers who participated in the war showed that 17.4% had Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. In addition, may soldiers have suffered so many injuries that the term “polytrauma” is being increasingly used by military doctors.

To adequately respond to this emergency situation facing most of the country’s population, it is crucial to improve the mechanism of distribution of food and medicines, and to support the work of non-governmental agencies that continue working in Iraq. The Association of Psychologists of Iraq has urged the international community to help establish centers specialised in child psychology and programs devoted to children’s mental health, which is a most urgent need.

It is imperative to lower the climate of hatred and distrust now reigning in Iraq. Improving Iraqis’ health at all levels could indicate to them that they have not been forgotten and disregarded. Because of their reputation for their devotion to improving people’s health throughout the world, a task force should be constituted with both Unicef and World Health Organisation officials to address Iraqis’ most pressing health needs and plan future actions. Improving people’s health can be the key to breaking a vicious circle of negativity and distrust and give Iraqis a renewed sense of hope.

* Cesar Chelala is an international public health consultant and a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights. He is the foreign correspondent for Middle East Times International (Australia).

How Rising Heat Traps Millions in Poverty

from All Africa

The Nation (Nairobi)

By Jeff Otieno

Gains made in human development in Africa may be reversed if climate change is not checked, the UN now warns.

A document published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says the increasing global warming, threatening to average more than two degrees centigrade before the end of the century, may compromise gains made in developing countries, mainly African states.

It provides a stark account of the threat posed by global warming and argues that the world is drifting towards a 'tipping point' "that could lock the world's poorest countries and their poorest citizens on a downward spiral".

If this happens, the document warns, it will leave hundreds of millions facing malnutrition, water scarcity, ecological threats and a loss of livelihoods.

"Ultimately, climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor, a constituency with no responsibility for the current ecological debt, who face the immediate and most severe human costs," says UNDP administrator Kemal Dervis after the launch of the Human Development 2007/08 entitled: Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World.

Low human development

Focusing on the 2.6 billion people surviving on less than two dollars a day, UNDP warns that forces unleashed by global warming could stall and then reverse progress built up over generations.

Kenya is one of the countries that would lose heavily if global warming, caused by massive pollution originated from the developed world, is not addressed.

The country is currently ranked 148, out of 177, on human development, meaning that it belongs to the category of those that have achieved medium human development.

However, it might be pushed to the low human development category if the aftershocks of global warming prevail.

The document ranks Seychelles the top African country with the highest human development score, occupying the 50th position. The researchers use the Human Development Index (HDI) to rank the UN member countries.

HDI measures achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income.

Libya comes second in position 56, followed by Mauritius at the 65th position.

All developed countries, some of them the biggest polluters, belong to the high human development category, occupying the top 20 positions.

Overall, Iceland tops as the best country in providing basic necessities to its population.

The island country is followed by Norway, which has also made tremendous progress in human development.

Australia occupies the third position, followed by Canada with Ireland.

Sweden takes the sixth position, followed by Switzerland, Japan and The Netherlands, with France occupying the 10th position.

The world's only superpower, the USA, takes the 12th position, behind Finland, while UK is ranked 16th.

Is the best overall

In the medium human development category where Kenya belongs, Tunisia is the highest ranked African country at 91, followed by Cape Verde at 102 and Algeria at 104.

Egypt is ranked 112th ahead of Gabon and Africa's economic powerhouse of South Africa at 119 and 121 respectively.

Other African countries that are placed above Kenya are Ghana, Mauritania, Lesotho, Congo and Swaziland.

Also performing better than Kenya are Madagascar, Cameroon, Papua New Guinea and Sudan at 147th position.

Kenya is the best, overall, in the East African Community (EAC), meaning it has achieved more in health, education and income levels. Uganda is the only other EAC member country in the medium human development category.

The remaining member countries, namely Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, occupy the low human development tier, where all countries with the poorest human development standards are grouped.

The low human development category is occupied by African countries, some of which are the poorest in the world, and scientists believe that climate change will push them further down the ranks.

Among the threats to human development, that African countries may have to deal with, is breakdown of agricultural systems due to increased exposure to drought, rising temperatures and more erratic rainfall, leaving up to 600 million more people facing malnutrition.

Global warming also poses health risks, with an additional population of up to 400 million people threatened with malaria, which is one of the leading killers in the tropics.

Semi-arid areas of sub-Saharan Africa, with some of the highest concentrations of poverty in the world, face the danger of potential productivity losses of 26 per cent by 2060.

The document warns that if the status quo prevails, an additional 1.8 billion people in Africa and other areas will face water stress by 2080, a trend that is worrying considering the fact that water scarcity has been one of the limiting factors to agricultural production.

It is not only Africa that is in problems, areas of South Asia and northern China face a grave ecological crisis as a result of glacial retreat and changed rainfall patterns, which are partly attributed to global warming.

Up to 332 million people in coastal and low lying areas also face displacement through flooding and tropical storm activity.

In fact, more than 70 million Bangladeshis, 22 million Vietnamese, and six million Egyptians could be affected by global warming-related flooding, considering the typography of the areas.

Despite the evidence showing that all is not well, the authors of the report argue that the human costs of climate change have been understated.

The researchers involved in the publishing of the document say that climate shocks, such as droughts, floods and storms, which will become more frequent and intense with climate change, are already among the most powerful drivers of poverty and inequality-and global warming will strengthen the impacts.

"For millions of people, these are events that offer a one-way ticket to poverty and long-run cycles of disadvantage," say the researchers.

In Ethiopia, for example, the report finds that children exposed to a drought in early childhood are 36 percent more likely to be malnourished - a figure that translates into two million additional cases of child malnutrition.

"For millions of people, these are events that offer a one-way ticket to poverty and long-run cycles of disadvantage," says the report.

Going by the immediate threats on the world's poor, the scientists behind the publication of the report warn that failure to tackle climate change could leave future generations facing an ecological catastrophe.

They single out the possible collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheets, the retreat of glaciers, and the stress on marine ecosystems as systemic threats that cannot be wished away.

The UN warning comes at a time when the world is preparing to forge a new multilateral agreement for the period after 2012, the year when the current commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end.

The major concern is that African countries, which are the least polluters, will be the most vulnerable, unlike the Western countries, which are technologically prepared to deal with the effects of climate change.

To minimise the mega-catastrophes, the UNDP document is now advocating for a twin track approach that combines stringent mitigation to limit the average warming in the current century to less than two degrees centigrade, with strengthened international cooperation and adaptation.

UNDP urges developed countries, to demonstrate leadership by cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050.

Though the world's major polluters, apart from the US, made commitments to reduce global pollution, many are yet to fulfil their commitments.

To ensure that the developed world keeps its promise, the document proposes a mix of carbon taxation, more stringent cap-and-trade programmes, energy regulation and international cooperation on financing for low-carbon technology transfer to update Africa's preparedness.

If the proposals are not considered, UNDP warns that inequalities in ability to cope with climate change will emerge as a powerful driver of wider inequalities between and within countries in the near future.

The document calls on rich countries to put climate change adaptation at the centre of international partnerships on poverty reduction.

"We are issuing a call to action, not providing a counsel of despair. Working together with resolve, we can win the battle against climate change. Allowing the window of opportunity to close would represent a moral and political failure without precedent in human history," says the lead author Kevin Watkins.

Mr Watkins describes the forthcoming talks on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, scheduled for next week, as a unique opportunity to put the interests of the world's poor at the heart of climate change negotiations.

The world will be waiting to see whether the developed world will this time round not only commit itself, but do more to fight the dreaded climate change.

Poverty persists in SA, despite boom

from The Australian

John Wiseman

THE number of people living in poverty in South Australia has doubled since the mid-1990s, a study has found.

The South Australian Council of Social Service said 12.3 per cent of the State’s population - almost 200,000 thousand people – were living in poverty in 2005-06 up from 6.7 per cent in 1993-94.

A report released by SACOSS today said poverty remained a persistent feature of South Australian society.

“Despite the economic boom there are now two South Australias: one group of people who have largely done well in the good times and one group for whom poverty and disadvantage remained entrenched,” the report said.

It also reported that census data confirmed that nearly a quarter of all families in South Australia are living on low incomes.

SACOSS Executive Director Karen Grogan said the State needed to develop specific anti-poverty strategies.

“A successful society is one that enables all its members to enjoy its benefits, not just some,” she said.

Peru GDP to Expand on Gas Plant, U.S. Trade Accord, Toledo Says

from Bloomberg

By Karla Palomo and Alex Emery

Peru's economy, which may expand as much as 8 percent in 2007 on surging mining and agricultural exports, will receive an additional boost from a $5 billion natural gas plant and a U.S.-Peru trade agreement, the Andean country's former president, Alejandro Toledo, said.

The Hunt Oil Co.-led gas project will add 2 percentage points to gross domestic product growth by 2010, Toledo said in a Nov. 30 interview in New York. The free-trade agreement, scheduled for a final vote in the U.S. Senate today, will add 1.5 percentage points, he said.

During Toledo's 2001-2006 administration, Peru reduced debt, trimmed annual inflation to a region-low 1.5 percent, tripled exports and pushed annual economic growth to 5 percent. Peru has created jobs by diversifying away from traditional commodity exports to added-value products such as asparagus, grapes and salmon, he said.

``This makes us less vulnerable to external factors such as changes in mineral prices,'' said Toledo, 61, currently a professor at Stanford. ``The economy is on auto-pilot.''

A project to build 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) of roads to link the Atlantic and Pacific coasts will spur trade by providing rural communities with access to markets, he said.

In Latin America, 210 million people live on less than $2 a day, Toledo said.

That level of poverty will require over $220 billion a year in investment to ensure 8 percent average growth and cut unemployment by 2.5 percent in 15 years, the former president said, citing a World Bank report.

``Latin America has reduced its poverty in recent years, but the figures remain high,'' he said. ``The region isn't the poorest in the world, but it is the most unequal.''

The resurgence of populist governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua has slowed regional integration efforts and curtailed freedom, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Emery in Lima at aemery1@bloomberg.net ,/span>

Politics, poverty, immigration entangle Texas health care

from The Dallas Morning News

Texas' health care entangled in politics, poverty, immigration

By JASON ROBERSON / The Dallas Morning News
jroberson@dallasnews.com

Miles Brooks was born in 2002 with end-stage renal disease, or kidney failure, and immediately placed on dialysis. Every night, the DeSoto boy gets hooked up for 10 hours to a machine in his bedroom – his mom, Chinea, connecting the tubes to a catheter in his tummy.

As a child with chronic kidney disease, Miles qualifies for Medicare, but there is still a premium charge for his medical insurance through the federal program. So, on top of what dad Michael Brooks pays at work for the family's health policy, the couple must also come up with $290 every three months for Medicare. They've borrowed from relatives and been late on their mortgage in order to send a check to the government program.

The Brooks family, like a lot of others dealing with a chronic or pre-existing condition, and those without employer-provided coverage, hope the government will step in with a plan to provide universal health coverage or make insurance simpler and cheaper. But in Texas, the state with the largest percentage of uninsured residents in the nation, such sweeping change isn't likely to come soon, unless it arrives from Washington.

Politics, poverty and illegal immigration intersect here to make health care a thornier issue than in most states.

And Texas, with legends of independence and gritty self-reliance, has rarely been at the forefront in creating government entitlements.

The state Legislature isn't set to meet again until January 2009. In the last session, earlier this year, lawmakers voted to spend more on Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provide health care for the poor.

But they sidestepped a more wide-ranging proposal to guarantee coverage to all of the state's 23.5 million residents.

More ideas

A grassroots coalition, Health Care for All Texans, presented a proposal to lump all Texans into a single insurance plan, to be administered by a nonprofit authority set up by the state. Employees, employers and the self-employed would contribute differing amounts to keep it going.

The group outlined the plan at a Texas Legislative Workshop in September 2006. But no legislation was introduced.

Another group, the Texas Health Institute, an Austin-based nonprofit think tank, presented a 12-proposal plan designed to cut the state's uninsured numbers in half (from 5.4 million to 2.7 million). It was projected to cost the state $1.6 billion a year, with another $1.7 billion thrown in by the federal government.

Lawmakers approved some of the 12 proposals, voting to increase Medicaid and CHIP spending enough to extend care to another 300,000. (The federal government, which co-funds the program, has yet to approve the increase.)

Gov. Rick Perry opposes universal coverage but backed two of the proposals that passed.

The first is designed to cut Medicaid waste.

The second, dubbed the "Three-Share Program," is meant to boost coverage among working families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but struggle to pay for private insurance. Under Three-Share, the state kicks in $150 a month toward a family's policy, with the employer and worker sharing the rest of the cost.

Reducing barriers

State Rep. Sylvester Turner, a Democrat from Houston, authored a bill to reduce barriers to CHIP coverage.

He says he would have liked doing more: "Basically, what people like myself and many of the Democrats believe is that if you want a more productive Texas, we have to attend to the human services side of the budget."

"The elected statewide leadership is at best ambivalent about health care," said Kimble Ross, an Austin-based health care consultant who works with Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

Jacqueline St. Hilaire, president of the Dallas Association of Health Underwriters, may come close to expressing the Texas consensus on universal health coverage.

"It sounds noble and terrific," Ms. St. Hilaire said. "However, the reality is there's a limited amount of funds that can be spent on health care.

"Forcing people to take insurance, that's kind of un-American," she added. "Even with mandatory auto insurance, everybody still doesn't have it."

U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, who is an obstetrician and gynecologist, has a more upbeat opinion of the Legislature's efforts.

"Sometimes we don't seem like the most agile," he said. "But the reality is, we do get the work done and will get the work done."

Even if Texas legislators were a more liberal bunch, it would be hard to make rapid progress here, Mr. Ross said.

Blaming immigrants

Resentment from people who blame the state's immigrants – fairly or not – for draining charity medical coffers lessens support for any new plan that might boost public spending on the uninsured, Mr. Turner said.

Of course, Texas is not alone in its immigration battle. California – second in the percentage of residents without insurance – has more such immigrants. In 2006, it led the nation, with an estimated 2.8 million, compared with 1.6 million in Texas (No. 2 among the states).

But the continuing flood into Texas is more pressing. From 2000 to 2006, 92,000 illegal immigrants crossed into the state, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Illegal immigration and the high rate of uninsured are key differences between Texas and a state like Massachusetts, which kicked off a statewide health care plan in June. More than 94 percent of Bay Staters already had insurance through their jobs, Medicaid or Medicare, according to the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy. That dwarfs Texas' 74 percent.

Poverty counts

And then there's poverty. About 3.7 million Texans live below the poverty line – $16,090 for a family of three in 2005.

If you add in those considered low-income (anyone who earns less than twice the poverty line figure, or $32,180), a full one-third of the state's adults under age 65 were either poor or low-income in 2005.

Low-income workers typically have earnings too high to meet Medicaid's adult income cap in Texas, but not high enough to afford comprehensive health insurance, which cost an average $11,480 for a family of four last year.

At the same time, the state has a disproportionate share of the small companies that often don't provide insurance for employees. (Even people whose employer offers health plans are increasingly deciding they can not afford the employee share.)

Of course, the poorest of the poor can turn to Medicaid.

Individual states set the limit on how much someone can earn and still be covered, as well as what doctors and hospitals will be paid, subject to federal approval.

In Texas, Medicaid only covers parents with incomes below 22 percent of the poverty line, which works out to $308 a month for a working parent with two children. Such a parent toiling only 14 hours a week at the current minimum hourly wage of $5.85 would make too much to qualify.

The nation's third-largest publicly traded hospital system, Tenet Healthcare, is based in Dallas. It operates hospitals in 12 states, including Texas and California.

Tenet CEO Trevor Fetter speaks highly of California's Medicaid plan, dubbed Medi-Cal.

"Texas, on the other hand, tries not to cover people and has a stingy program," Mr. Fetter said in a recent interview.

In the upcoming presidential election, health care has emerged as a major issue, so perhaps something will change on the national level after 2008, although many think the first action will come from the more progressive states.

Meanwhile, the Brooks family will struggle to pay for two insurance policies.

Questioning deductible

And folks like Gloria Newton will go without coverage.

Ms. Newton, a 48-year-old cook living in Mesquite, says she could probably handle the $35 weekly paycheck deductions for the plan offered at her job as a full-time cafeteria worker in Dallas County's Head Start program for preschoolers. But the plan's $1,500 deductible gives her pause. How much use would the policy even be, she wonders, if she has to pay $1,500 in costs before the policy's full benefit kicks in?

Instead, she avoids going to the doctor and pins her hopes on charity care should an emergency arise. She gets her high blood pressure pills at a neighborhood Wal-Mart.

If it weren't for the store's discount drug program, which provides a month's worth of her medicine for $15, she says, she'd be in trouble.

"I'd have to do what I'd have to do to get it," said Ms. Newton, a mother of two grown children working 72 hours a week at two jobs – she puts in 32 hours more at a Sears store. "I'd have to keep working harder to pay for it."

HEALTH CARE ELSEWHERE

Massachusetts, in June, became the first state to mandate universal health care. Residents must sign up for health insurance by Nov. 15 and be covered by Dec. 31. If residents do not comply, they face losing their personal income tax exemption the following year or penalties of up to half the premium cost of the most expensive private health insurance certified by the state. Massachusetts worked with private insurance companies to offer a variety of plans, including some that are subsidized or free to low-income residents.

California's state senate president and the assembly speaker both unveiled proposals last December to expand health care coverage and reform the state's health care system. In January, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a sweeping reform plan that would bring coverage to all of the state's uninsured. None of these measures have been passed into law.

Colorado established a Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform during its 2006 legislative session. The commission is required to make comprehensive health care reform recommendations to the legislature by January 2008. It is sifting through 19 comprehensive proposals received from the public and is to select three to five for further evaluation.

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski announced a plan last fall to cover all the state's children under age 19. Three other groups, the Oregon Health Policy Commission, the Senate Commission on Health Care Access and Affordability, and the Archimedes Movement, are developing health coverage reform plans.

Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell released a reform proposal in January known as Prescription for Pennsylvania, which includes making a basic health insurance plan available to eligible small businesses and uninsured residents through the private insurance market.

SOURCES: Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services; Families USA; Prescription for Pennsylvania

Hanky-Panky is Out As Fair Trade Kicks in

from All Africa

Business Day (Johannesburg)

By Amy Brooke
Johannesburg

ASK any sales assistant in the coffee aisle at your local supermarket where you might find Fairtrade products, and you're likely to be greeted with a blank stare.

Try the same in the UK, and you'll be spoilt for choice -- market research has shown that eight out of 10 Britons recognise the Fairtrade label and believe it is an effective means of helping the world's poorest people.

Such is the support for the movement that Marks & Spencer, one of the largest food retailers in the UK, has switched its entire range of house-brand coffee to Fairtrade. In the US, Fairtrade coffee sales have increased by 70%. And in Switzerland, half of all bananas sold are sold under Fairtrade labels.

Global sales of FLO (Fairtrade Labelling Organisation) certified products reached $600m last year. And with the demand estimated by the UK's Fairtrade Foundation to be growing by 40% year on year, the opportunities for farmers and small businesses in disadvantaged communities here and elsewhere in Africa are endless.

Up to now, it's a market that local producers have only touched on -- but that's about to change.

There are only 31 South African FLO-certified producers who offer mostly fruit, wine and rooibos tea to foreign markets. Now an international drive is under way with the aim of at least doubling that number and, most importantly, selling the goods locally.

"This represents for us at Fairtrade SA the culmination of years of solid groundwork -- a fair trade dream coming to life," says chairperson Noel Oettle.

In addition to the establishment of the Southern African Fairtrade Network (previously fair trade producers operating here have fallen under the broad African Fairtrade Network, which represents 170 fair trade farmers across the continent), two other significant initiatives have been launched to support poor African farmers: Fairtrade for Development in Africa, and Empowerment of Emerging Farmers through Fair-trade Development in SA.

The former project has received a cash injection of £5m over five years from British charity group Comic Relief. "This is the biggest financial support the Fairtrade movement has received to date, and gives a real chance to producers in Africa. It will trigger meaningful opportunities for African producers to lift themselves out of poverty and create sustainable livelihood for themselves, their families and their communities," says Fairtrade Foundation executive director Harriet Lamb.

The funds will be used for various Fairtrade developments across Africa, but a large part of the money will be pumped into securing SA's Fairtrade licence. "This means we will finally be able to put South African Fairtrade products on shelves in local supermarkets," says Oettle. "Until now SA has been a Fairtrade producing country only, exporting all our goods to the UK, Europe, the US, Canada and Japan. We are finally coming of age in terms of Fairtrade and can also become consumers of Fairtrade products."

Once licensed, producers can display the FLO seal and logo on their products, and while we'll pay a slight premium for Fairtrade goods, South African shoppers can be guaranteed that workers are getting a fair price for their labour, that they're working under fair conditions, and that a portion of the profits is being invested back into community development. The system is continually audited by FLO officers.

The rest of the grant will be used to provide substantial training for African producers about Fairtrade implementation procedures, quality management, technical assistance, and market access. The Fairtrade Foundation also hopes the sponsorship will act as a driver to help get other funders involved.

A second initiative was launched in Stellenbosch in October: the EU-funded Empowerment of Emerging Farmers through Fair-trade Development in SA. It has a 10-step plan of action to boost Fairtrade production in Africa by enabling access to markets, stimulating the development of links into supply chains and also involving the private sector.

Oettle says while SA's FLO licensing initiative will only be finalised in May next year, there are interim measures in place that will allow Fairtrade goods to be on the shelves from the beginning of the year.

New Children's Health Legislation Would Not Allow Any Undocumented Immigrants to Enroll in SCHIP or Medicaid

from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

By Judith Solomon and Allison Orris

President Bush has said he will veto the second bipartisan compromise bill passed by Congress (H.R. 3963) to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The Administration claims, in part, that the bill “continues to allow SCHIP to cover ineligible individuals,” namely undocumented immigrants.[1] Some members of Congress and the Heritage Foundation have made similar charges.

This claim is false. The second bill contains significant changes that close the door on the possibility that undocumented immigrants could be found eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP. It would require clear proof that all children, parents, and pregnant women applying for Medicaid and SCHIP who declare that they are U.S. citizens are indeed citizens: either the state would check the applicant’s Social Security record to see that it contains a Social Security Administration-verified indicator of U.S. citizenship, or the applicant would have to provide the state with a document such as a birth certificate. To ignore this fact and incorrectly claim that undocumented immigrants would receive coverage under the bill is not valid justification for vetoing the extension of health coverage to nearly 4 million uninsured children.

Background: The Citizenship Documentation Requirement

Undocumented immigrants have never been eligible for SCHIP or Medicaid (other than for some emergency medical care). Legal immigrants applying for Medicaid have always had to submit documents proving that they meet the federal eligibility requirements that apply to legal immigrants. In addition, states have always been able to require individuals whose claim to U.S. citizenship appears questionable to submit documents proving their citizenship. In 2005, Dr. Mark McClellan, then-administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, wrote that this policy “allows states to enroll eligible individuals while preserving program integrity.”[2]

Nevertheless, in the Deficit Reduction Act passed in 2006, Congress enacted a new requirement that every U.S. citizen child, parent, and pregnant woman applying for (or receiving) Medicaid prove his or her citizenship by providing an original birth certificate, passport, or similar document. States have reported that the new rule has kept thousands of children who are U.S. citizens from receiving the coverage for which they would otherwise qualify, because their parents lacked ready access to a birth certificate or passport.

Supporters of the citizenship documentation requirement claim that it is intended to keep undocumented immigrants from fraudulently enrolling in Medicaid. Thus far, however, virtually no undocumented immigrants have been identified under the rule. (See box.) Instead, as Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Peter Orszag recently stated, the available evidence “suggests that virtually all of those who have been unable to provide the required documentation are U.S. citizens.”[3] Director Orszag has also said, “even before the Deficit Reduction Act, we did not believe there was any significant problem with unauthorized immigrants in either [SCHIP or Medicaid.]”[4]



New Bill Would Further Tighten Citizenship Rules While Improving Verification Procedures

The second children’s health bill passed by Congress is tougher than current law: it retains the citizenship documentation requirement in Medicaid and extends it to SCHIP. At the same time, it gives states a new way to meet the requirement that would cause far less disruption and harm for eligible U.S. citizens.

The first children’s health bill (H.R. 976) would have permitted states to allow Medicaid and SCHIP applicants and beneficiaries to meet the documentation requirement by having the state match their name and Social Security number (SSN) with information in the Social Security Administration (SSA) database. Opponents argued that this would not show whether an individual is a U.S. citizen and that the bill would therefore allow undocumented immigrants to enroll in the program. In particular, they relied on a letter from SSA commissioner Michael Astrue to Congressman Jim McCrery stating that matching an individual’s name and SSN with SSA would not verify whether an individual is a citizen.[5]

The new bill addresses this problem by significantly modifying the proposed state option in the earlier bill:

* Any state adopting the option would be required to use the SSA database to determine not only whether an individual’s name and Social Security number match (as in the earlier bill), but also whether the applicant is a citizen. SSA records for individuals who have received SSNs since 1981 contain an indicator showing whether the individual is a U.S. citizen. Since 1978, any individual applying for an SSN has been required to provide evidence of age, identity, and immigration status, so this citizenship indicator is based on evidence of citizenship and identity that was verified by SSA.[6]

By relying on the citizenship indicator, SSA can easily verify citizenship for Medicaid and SCHIP applicants who received their SSN after 1981. Most of the people subject to the documentation requirement will have received their SSNs after 1981 and thus can have their citizenship verified in this manner.[7]

* If SSA cannot verify an individual’s citizenship by checking its records, or if there are unresolved discrepancies between the information provided by the individual and the information in the SSA database, the individual must provide the state with an original document, such as a birth certificate or passport, to prove his or her citizenship.

By allowing states to verify citizenship in a way that will be less costly and burdensome, the new children’s health bill responds to the appeal by governors of both parties for increased flexibility in this area. (California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, has stated that the current rules have “created a situation where U.S. citizens actually have fewer rights than non-citizens when applying for Medicaid benefits.”) The bill would not allow undocumented immigrants to enroll in either Medicaid or SCHIP.



Provision Would Allow More Eligible People to Get Health Care and Cut Administrative Costs

CBO estimates that the citizenship provision in the new bill would enable an additional 500,000 people who are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP to enroll in the program in 2008; another 200,000 eligible people would enroll in subsequent years, because most states would use the new SSA matching option to verify citizenship. The new enrollees would all be U.S. citizens or qualified legal immigrants.

The improved verification procedures also would reduce federal and state administrative costs, by allowing states to use more cost-efficient methods to ensure that undocumented immigrants do not receive Medicaid. States report that the current documentation requirement is imposing millions of dollars in increased administrative costs, particularly by increasing the need for staffing.[8]

Citizenship Documentation Requirement Has Kept Thousands of U.S. Citizens
From Receiving Health Coverage

Numerous states have reported that U.S. citizen children have been removed from, or denied entry into, Medicaid because of the 2006 citizenship documentation requirement. The Government Accountability Office, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have reported these results based on data that the states have collected.[1]

The six states that have examined this issue in greatest detail found they had spent $17 million so far to administer the burdensome requirement, had denied health insurance to tens of thousands of needy children and parents as a result, and had identified a grand total of eight undocumented individuals (some or all of whom they may have caught under their previous procedures).[2] For example, the number of low-income children insured through Medicaid dropped by 11,000 in Virginia and 14,000 in Kansas due to the new requirements; each state identified one applicant who incorrectly claimed to be a citizen.[3]

The three states that collected data by racial/ethnic group found that the children losing coverage due to the requirement are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks. Hispanic children have been affected far less. In Virginia, for example, enrollment has fallen significantly among white and black children since the requirement took effect, while it has climbed among Hispanic children. This would not be occurring if the provision were actually affecting undocumented immigrants, since an estimated 78 percent of undocumented immigrants are from Mexico, Central America, or South America, according to the respected Pew Hispanic Center.[4]

A recent study by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured confirms that Medicaid application processing delays under the new citizenship documentation requirements are the main reason why Medicaid enrollment dropped in 2007 for the first time in a decade. According to Kaiser, 37 states reported that the new documentation requirements had a negative impact on enrollment, and 45 states reported that the new requirements increased administrative costs.[5]

[1] Government Accountability Office, “States Reported That Citizenship Documentation Requirement Resulted in Enrollment Declines for Eligible Citizens and Posed Administrative Burdens,” June 2007; “Medicaid Citizenship Documentation Requirements Deny Coverage to Citizens And Cost Taxpayers Millions,” Majority Staff, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, July 24, 2007; Donna Cohen Ross, “Medicaid Requirement Disproportionately Harms Non-Hispanics, State Data Show,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, July 10, 2007, at http://www.cbpp.org/7-10-07health.htm; and Donna Cohen Ross, “New Medicaid Citizenship Documentation Requirement Is Taking A Toll,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, revised March 13, 2007, at http://www.cbpp.org/2-2-07health.htm.

[2] Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, op. cit.

[3] Donna Cohen Ross, “Medicaid Requirement Disproportionately Harms Non-Hispanics, State Data Show,” op. cit.

[4] An estimated 13 percent are from Asia, and 9 percent are from Europe, Africa, and other areas. Jeff Passel, “The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the United States,” Pew Hispanic Center, March 2006.

[5] Vernon Smith et al., “As Tough Times Wane, States Act to Improve Medicaid Coverage and Quality: Results from a 50-State Medicaid Budget Survey for State Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008,” Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, October 2007, at http://www.kff.org/medicaid/upload/7699.pdf.

In sum, the new children’s health bill contains strong new safeguards to prevent undocumented immigrants from obtaining health benefits while also reducing the barriers that are denying coverage to thousands of eligible U.S. citizen children. The claim that the bill would enable undocumented immigrants to obtain health care — like the claim or implication that it represents no change from the first, vetoed bill — is inaccurate.

End Notes:

[1] “Just the Facts: Top Five Reasons the Democrats’ ‘New’ SCHIP Bill Is Actually More of the Same,” White House Office of the Press Secretary, October 25, 2007. Some in Congress have repeated this claim, such as Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who stated that the bill “would provide free taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrants.” Robert Pear, “8 Democrats Pose Hurdle for Children’s Health Bill,” New York Times, November 15, 2007.

[2] Memorandum from Mark B. McClellan to Daniel R. Levinson, Acting Inspector General, April 8, 2005, printed as Appendix D in Office of Inspector General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Self-declaration of U.S. Citizenship for Medicaid,” June 2005.

[3] Letter from Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag to the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, October 25, 2007, “Additional Information on CBO’s Estimate of the Budgetary Impact of Section 211 of H.R. 3963, the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007.”

[4] Manu Raju and Jonathan E. Kaplan, “Reid Looks to Buy Time on SCHIP,” The Hill, October 31, 2007.

[5] Letter from Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue to Congressman Jim McCrery, September 24, 2007.

[6] Office of the Inspector General, Social Security Administration, Congressional Response Report A-08-06-26100, December 2006 at http://www.ssa.gov/oig/ADOBEPDF/audittxt/A-08-06-26100.htm.

[7] For some applicants who obtained their SSNs before 1981, citizenship could be verified through information in the SSA database showing that they were born in the United States. When this is not possible, the legislation would require these applicants to provide documents such as a birth certificate or passport to prove their citizenship.

[8] Donna Cohen Ross, “New Medicaid Citizenship Documentation Requirement Is Taking a Toll,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, revised March 13, 2007, at http://www.cbpp.org/2-2-07health.htm.

Thousands suffer 'fuel poverty' in Yorkshire

from the Yorkshire Post

More than 160,000 households in Yorkshire and the Humber are suffering from fuel poverty, a new report has revealed.

The Yorkshire and Humber Assembly report also claimed that another 120,000 households are in danger of falling into the same trap.

Fuel poverty occurs when a household needs to spend more than 10% of its income on fuel. Severe fuel poverty is if this figure is more than 20%.

According to the report, Yorkshire and the Humber currently has 163,000 households deemed to be in fuel poverty, which is 7.7% of households in the region.

The report, which complements the Regional Affordable Warmth Action Plan, uses data from across the region and UK to analyse information on fuel poverty.

To discuss solutions to the problem, the launch of the region's Warmth Conference at Sheffield City Hall will take place on December 12.

Councillor Peter Box said: "Yorkshire and Humber is suffering from a critical fuel poverty problem. Failure to tackle this sustainably will lead to serious health consequences among the region's most vulnerable households.

"It is essential to target these households in order to meet the Government's objective of eliminating fuel poverty in England.

"The report will provide a base to monitor performance in tackling fuel poverty and to ensure that responses are targeted correctly."

Study: More children living in poverty

from Traverse City Record Eagle

By Lindsay VanHulle
lvanhulle@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY -- Children in northwest Lower Michigan increasingly lived in poverty during the first half of this decade, new state health data show.

The 13 counties in the Record-Eagle's coverage area all posted increases in the number of children from birth to 17 years of age who lived at or below the poverty level from 2000 to 2004, according to the 2007 Kids Count in Michigan Data Book.

The data, to be released today, show gains still are needed to improve children's well-being across the state.

The annual survey, conducted by the nonprofit Michigan League for Human Services, compares Michigan's data to a set of national benchmarks established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Regional immunization rates assessed last year largely bettered both the state average and U.S. goals, and all 13 local counties' teen pregnancy rates in 2005 were below the national benchmark of 43 percent per 1,000 teen girls ages 15-17.

But the findings aren't all good. Although Michigan has improved in most areas surveyed, the gains often are small. And in some cases -- such as low birth weights, which rose from 2000 to 2005 throughout nearly the entire region -- the situation in fact has worsened.

"We're not making the same kinds of improvements in basic care and basic needs as these children are growing up," said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, a senior research associate with the league.

Children's health depends not only on access to medical care, but also on the conditions of their families, neighborhoods and communities, she said. She added that studies have shown childhood poverty can lead to high-risk behaviors and other poor health conditions.

"If you're below poverty-level income, you're living in really desperate circumstances," she said. "These are very difficult times for families."

Locally, Crawford County has the highest rate of children living in poverty, at 21.5 percent, the data show. Leelanau County has the lowest, at 10.5 percent, while Grand Traverse County is at 11.6 percent. The statewide rate is 17.3 percent.

The Grand Traverse/Leelanau Department of Human Services has seen a greater number of people seeking assistance in recent years, director Mary Marois said.

Although more people were living in poverty in 2004 than in 2000, Marois said she thinks the region avoided a significant upswing due to a community-wide, poverty-reduction initiative that tries to help people find work and other opportunities.

Kids Count report paints grim picture of life for county's children

from The Flint Journal

Posted by Shantell M. Kirkendoll

GENESEE COUNTY -- Tough times in Genesee County are having a huge impact on children, who are increasingly living in poverty and signing up for free meals, according to an annual report.

The newest findings in Kids Count in Michigan, a report on the well-being of children from their health to how they do in school, points to some gains in local children's math skills, but by and large shows a grim picture of what life is like at home.

About 26,000 children age 17 and under lived in poverty in 2006, a 22 percent jump since 2000, and 35,199 get free or reduced-cost lunch. To qualify for the meal program, a family of three must make no more than $31,000 a year.

Living in poverty may literally be tearing families apart. In 2006, slightly more than 12 percent of Genesee County children lived in out-of-home care because of abuse or neglect. That's one of the worst rates in Michigan.

"When you look at the stresses families have, financial worries are up there," said Gail Stimson, president and executive director of Priority Children, a Flint-based child advocacy group.

"This doesn't mean every poor family is abusive, but (financial worries) start to be a tipping point. Poverty and abuse is not a cause and effect, but there's certainly a connection."

Poverty among children is not surprising considering the area's unemployment rate was 8.2 percent in 2006. The Kids Count report showed some progress despite the financial challenges.

Figures show a significant increase in the number of children tested for lead poisoning -- an average of 5,211 in 2003-2005 compared to 2,231 in 1998-2000 -- and fewer of them had high lead levels.

A national trend of dropping teen pregnancy is apparent in Genesee County where pregnancies among girls, ages 15-19, fell 22 percent, but it's not the case for low birthweight babies.

Low birthweight continues to be an issue in Genesee County and one in 10 babies born weighs 5 1/2 pounds or less. It could reflect being born premature or the health of the mother, such as whether she smoked.

In spite of gains, Genesee County children still lag behind the rest of Michigan in math skills. In 2006-2007, 16.4 percent of fourth-graders did not meet math standards. Statewide15.4 percent of fourth-graders missed the mark.

During the 2002-2003 school year, half of eighth graders underperformed on math tests, and in 2006-2007, it had improved to 38.2 percent. But across the state, only 31.9 percent missed math standards.

Poverty may also have an impact on how well children do in school, said Terri Stangl, executive director of the Center for Civil Justice.
Impoverished families have more mobility as they search for affordable housing, and along with missed meals, contribute to poorer performance in classroom.

"Genesee County has challenges ahead of it," she said. "Education is part of the long-term process of getting out of poverty."

The Kids Count report is put together by groups including the Michigan League for Human Services and Michigan's Children.

The report was funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Skillman Foundation, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation and local United Ways.