[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Working for a Pittance

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Working for a Pittance

October 8, 2004
 By BOB HERBERT 



 

Reality keeps rearing its ugly head. The Bush
administration's case for the war in Iraq has completely
fallen apart, as evidenced by the report this week from the
president's handpicked inspector that Iraq had destroyed
its illicit weapons stockpiles in the early 1990's. 

Coming next week are the results of a new study that shows
- here at home - how tough a time American families are
having in their never-ending struggle to put food on the
table and keep a roof over their heads. The White House, as
deep in denial about the economy as it is about Iraq,
insists that things are fine - despite the embarrassing
fact that President Bush is on track to become the first
president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss
of jobs during his four years in office. 

The study, jointly sponsored by the Annie E. Casey, Ford
and Rockefeller Foundations, will show that 9.2 million
working families in the United States - one out of every
four - earn wages that are so low they are barely able to
survive financially. 

"Our data is very solid and shows that this is a much
bigger problem than most people imagine," said Brandon
Roberts, one of the authors of the report, which is to be
formally released on Tuesday. The report found that there
are 20 million children in these low-income working
families. 

For the purposes of the study, any family in which at least
one person was employed was considered a working family.
Very wealthy families were included. 

The median income for a family of four in the U.S. is
$62,732. According to the study, a family of four earning
less than $36,784 is considered low-income. A family of
four earning less than $18,392 is considered poor. The 9.2
million struggling families cited by the report fell into
one of the latter two categories. And those families have
one-third of all the children in American working families.


Not surprisingly, the problem for millions of families is
that they have jobs that pay very low wages and provide no
benefits. "Consider the motel housekeeper, the retail clerk
at the hardware store or the coffee shop cook," the report
said. "If they have children, chances are good that their
families are living on an income too low to provide for
their basic needs." 

Neither politicians nor the media put much of a spotlight
on families that are struggling economically. According to
the study, one in five workers are in occupations where the
median wage is less than $8.84 an hour, which is a
poverty-level wage for a family of four. A full-time job at
the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour is not even
sufficient to keep a family of three out of poverty. 

Families with that kind of income are teetering on the edge
of an economic abyss. Any misfortune might push them over
the edge - an illness, an automobile breakdown, even
something as seemingly minor as a flooded basement. 

For the families in these lower-income brackets, life is
often a harrowing day-to-day struggle to pay for the bare
necessities. According to federal government statistics,
the median annual rent for a two-bedroom apartment in major
metropolitan markets is more than $8,000. The annual cost
of food for a low-income family of four is nearly $4,000.
Utility bills are nearly $2,000. Transportation costs are
about $1,500. And then there are costs for child care,
health care and clothing. 

You do the math. How are these millions of poor and
low-income families making it? 

(A lot of those families are going to get a shock this
winter as price increases for crude oil get translated into
big jumps in home heating bills.) 

The economy relies heavily on the services provided by
low-wage workers but, as the report notes, "our society has
not taken adequate steps to ensure that these workers can
make ends meet and build a future for their families, no
matter how determined they are to be self-sufficient." 

Mr. Roberts said he hoped the study, titled "Working Hard,
Falling Short," would help initiate a national discussion
of the plight of families who are doing the right thing but
not earning enough to get ahead. "Seventy-one percent of
low-income families work," he said. More than half are
headed by married couples. But economic self-sufficiency
remains maddeningly out of reach. 

Even in a presidential election year, these matters have
not been explored in any sustained way. We're quick to give
lip service to the need to work hard, but very slow to
properly reward hard work. 

E-mail: bobherb at nytimes.com 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08herbert1.html?ex=1098257873&ei=1&en=0ba58694a0640d93


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