Minnpost Community Voices | Wed, Feb 3 2010
By Steve Cramer |
As the calendar turned to 2010, commentators were still debating an identity for the just passed “aught” years.
A recent Brookings Institution study may provide an apt if discouraging option: the “More Poor” decade. According to the report, “Over the course of this decade two economic downturns translated into a significant rise in poverty nationally, and in many of the country’s metropolitan and non-metropolitan communities.”
The Twin Cities were not immune. During this time, poverty in Minneapolis and St. Paul rose to 20.1 percent or 122,000 people. Outside the inner cities, poverty rose to 5.6 percent or 143,000 individuals, the first time period in which more people who were poor lived outside the core.
These figures are bad enough, but an additional 390,000 people lived with income at or below 200 percent of poverty. Consider the choices facing a family of four with an income of no more than $44,000, facing the rising costs of housing, food, medical care, school supplies, transportation and other necessities. All told, 654,000 of our neighbors — one in every five of us across the region — face exactly that daunting challenge, a stunning figure in a metro area generally seen as affluent and economically strong.
With the More Poor decade in our rearview mirror, what will the next 10 years hold? Can we turn this tide in a more favorable direction? Yes, although there are no silver bullets. But nor are the conditions under which more people can succeed a mystery.
Economic philosophy and tax policy matter
First and foremost, if the More Poor decade teaches us anything it is that economic philosophy and tax policy matter. The prevailing approach, nationally and in our state, delivered economic Armageddon for record numbers, stagnation for most, and unprecedented gains for a very few. A corollary trend to rising poverty has been concentration of wealth to a degree not seen since the 20s. Not many boats have been rising! It’s time to say those results are unacceptable and change course in a dramatic way. The economy of the ’90s resulted in more jobs and reduced poverty, and offers a better prescription to turn the tide by emphasizing success for the many as a primary goal.
Turning the tide will also require prioritizing and investing in activities close to home that make a difference in the lives of people struggling day to day as well as those striving to build a better future for their children. My list of such activities includes:
A need to focus and mobilize
In the effort to turn the tide of the More Poor decade, we have a great deal going for us. People who live here, along with our companies and foundations, are incredibly generous. Institutions across the government, business, community and religious sectors work well together far more often than not. When we focus and mobilize, great things can happen.
Shaping larger economic trends from here in the hinterland is a tall order, although it’s a start to listen most closely to those policy makers who recognize more of the same is not the correct path forward if we expect different results. But when it comes to what we can control — our commitment to act in response to the disturbing results of the More Poor decade — the opportunity, if we seize it, is to look back 10 years from now at a period of time when more people prospered and our prospects as a state and region brightened.
Steve Cramer is the executive director of Project for Pride in Living.