Low-Income Families

Yesterday, the National Institute for Early Education Research released the latest version of its annual report, The State of Preschool 2012, and it contained very discouraging news. Between the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school years, total state prekindergarten funding fell by $548 million and spending per child dropped by $442 (after adjusting for inflation). Enrollment in state prekindergarten had virtually stalled; as in the previous year, just 28 percent of four-year-olds and 4 percent of three-year-olds were served in state prekindergarten programs in 2011-2012. Only five states (Alabama, Alaska, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Rhode Island) had prekindergarten programs that met all ten of NIEER’s quality standards benchmarks. Ten states—Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming—had no prekindergarten program in 2011-2012 (although just this month, Mississippi approved legislation establishing a prekindergarten program).

Given the importance of prekindergarten in giving children a strong start, clearly more needs to be done to ensure that adequate resources are provided to support prekindergarten, that strong standards are in place to provide children with high-quality learning experiences, and that prekindergarten is widely accessible to children who need it—particularly low- and moderate-income children. Read more »

Once upon a time (last year), I taught 4th grade at a Title I school in rural Louisiana.  We went to school Tuesday through Friday.  Yes, that’s right – only 4 DAYS A WEEK. In 2006 the underfunded and low performing school district desperately needed to find a way to save money, so the school board had to cut out Mondays.

Last week Paul Ryan released his budget and guess what - in FY13 it CUTS $15.8 million in funding from Title I schools (schools where over 75% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch) in Louisiana alone!  In FY14 it adds a whopping $54.9 million in additional cuts to Louisiana schools.  By the end of 2014, under Ryan’s plan, over 4 million of the most vulnerable children across the country would lose access to education services. 

According to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan this is the “The Path to Prosperity.”  Is that a joke?  Read more »

Sheryl Sandberg is telling women to “lean in.” She's encouraging us to strive for bigger and better jobs. She's telling us to resist “leaving before we leave” in anticipation of having families. Through her “lean in circles,” women will have opportunities to share success stories about how leaning in to their careers, while also having families, worked for them.

Here’s the problem: “Leaning in” any further is not an option for most low-wage working women, any more than choosing to leave their jobs is an option. They’re already leaning in, with all their might.

In families with children in the bottom 20% of the income distribution, nearly 70% of working wives are either the primary breadwinners for their families or share that responsibility equally with their husbands [PDF]. But the hourly wages that women at the bottom of the labor market earn are often simply not enough to get by – nearly two-thirds of workers earning the minimum wage are women. Many women in low-wage jobs are working more than one job to sustain their families, since they can't get enough hours at a single job to make ends meet. Read more »

$7.25 an hour. Imagine feeding a family on that. That’s the magic trick low-wage working women – who make up 2/3 of those earning minimum wages or less – have to perform on a daily basis.

As Kate Gallagher Robbins pointed out yesterday, an hourly wage of $7.25 leaves a person working full time year round with just $14,500—or $3000 below the poverty line for a mom with two kids.

But where does that $7.25 an hour leave workers who can’t get a full-time job? Involuntary part-time work is a huge problem for low-wage workers in today’s labor market. BLS data from 2011 (PDF) show that 8.5 million people were in part-time work for economic reasons like slack work, only being able to find a part-time job or seasonal work.

Instead of multiplying $7.25 by 40 hours a week, for these workers the math looks more like $7.25 x 20 or 25 hours (and in many cases, even fewer hours). In other words, workers earning minimum wages in involuntary part-time jobs are hit much harder by the painfully low minimum wage. Read more »

The tremendous challenge families confront in trying to move off welfare and gain self-sufficiency without stable, affordable child care is powerfully illustrated in a recent article in the Huffington Post. The article tells the stories of mothers in California who are doing everything they can to support themselves and take care of their children, yet are losing ground due to lack of help paying for child care.

Many low-income families in California are unable to receive child care assistance due to long waiting lists. The unmet need has only grown in recent years due to cuts in funding—and the governor is proposing additional cuts that could result in 62,000 more children losing access to child care and early education programs. Read more »