Progressive News, Opinion, and Analysis
With one and five Rhode Island children living in poverty, we discussed why this week on NBC 10 Wingmen.
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Most of Rhode Island’s poverty is concentrated in four cities: Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls and Woonsocket, according to Kids Count’s annual fact book. So much so that the annual Factbook on children, the economy and health always breaks down its report to compare the “four core cities”* with the rest of the state for emphasis.
Here are some examples:
For more great info from Kids Count click here. But suffice to say, more tax cuts aren’t going to do much at all (and virtually nothing in the short term) to fix the poverty problem in Providence, Pawtucket, Woonsocket and Central Falls.
*Governor Chafee calls these “distressed communities” but you may know them better as places that used to have manufacturing economies or places hit hardest by Carcieri cuts to cities and towns and sometimes they are referred to as ‘communities in need of a public sector haircut, if not a beheading.’
There are two economies in Rhode Island. And they are very different from each other.
There’s the one found in East Greenwich, where everyone has pretty good and probably high-paying jobs and our public schools perform well and prepare our children for college and beyond. Our real estate might be worth a little bit less, but our retirement funds have largely rebounded. The state of the suburbs in Rhode Island is good.
Then there’s the one in Woonsocket. Unemployment is high, and average income is low. The schools are failing financially and academically. Most residents don’t own, they rent and many need assistance just to make ends meet; saving for retirement is an unaffordable luxury. The state of the cities in Rhode Island is abysmal.
You’ve read this theme often on this blog. But this year’s Kids Count Factbook reinforces the point.
Children most at risk of not achieving their full potential are children in poverty. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Rhode Island’s poor children live in just four cities. These communities (Central Falls, Pawtucket, Providence, and Woonsocket) are the four core cities highlighted throughout this Factbook. Children in poverty live in every community in Rhode Island, but these four communities deserve special attention because they are where child poverty is most concentrated.
More than one of every three children from the four core cities – 35.3 percent – live below the federal poverty level. Across the entire state there are 17.9 percent of children live in poverty but only 9.4 percent outside of the four core cities.
More children from the four core cities receive SNAP food assistance – 39,292 – than the entire rest of the state – 23,934. And there are more homeless children and those living in shelters from the four core cities – 1,042 – than the rest of the state, too: 950.
There are some 65,000 students from low income families in Rhode Island and more than half come from only four of the state’s 39 cities and towns.
Income inequality was also flagged as a growing issue in Rhode Island.
The income gap between Rhode Island’s richest and poorest families is growing, and Rhode Island is among the top ten states with the fastest growing income inequality. The wealthiest 20% of families in Rhode Island have average incomes that are 7.5 times larger than the average incomes of the poorest 20% of families.
While the average income in Rhode Island for families with children is $68,507. In the four core cities it is $35,946. Conversely, it’s $128,888 in the four most affluent suburbs – East Greenwich, Barrington, Little Compton and Portsmouth. That means three people earning the median income for a family with kids in the four core cities wouldn’t earn what one person earning the median income in the most affluent suburbs earns.
As Anthony Gemma prepares to ramp up his primary campaign against David Cicilline, election experts handicap his path to victory. We’d like to know why Democrats should vote for an abortion-deploring, trickle down economist? Answer: they shouldn’t. We’d prefer Gemma run as a independent as we’re not really sure what it is that makes him a Democrat.
Speaking of Republicans, it seems Rhode Island can expect visits from both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum before the presidential primary on April 24.
Management and labor alike should appreciate Education Commissioner Deborah Gist’s efforts to eliminate the “redundancies” in the teacher evaluation process, which some principals said was taking as long as 20 hours per teacher.
Once you factor in the politics of what’s practical, it seems Obama’s budget proposal would actually reduce the deficit more than the House GOP version. Here’s more on this phenomenon.
Not a good trend for Rhode Island: “Concentrated poverty is becoming more concentrated.”
Seems the U.S. has been training Iranian opposition forces in the Nevada desert. If history is any indicator, look for these same guys to be our sworn enemies in the future.
Michael Riley, a Republican, officially launches his campaign for Congress, seeking to unseat Jim Langevin.
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For years, a staple of talk radio hosts and budget hardliners has been the argument that Rhode Island public policy on welfare and public assistance has made the state a magnet for families, particularly immigrants, seeking its juicy benefits.
But the recent release of the Rhode Island Kids Count 2011 annual report pokes some neat holes in that meme.
Along with a comprehensive statistical analysis of issues including poverty rates of Rhode Island’s families with children, education, school lunch and breakfast eligibility and state aid (with emphasis on the urban core communities of Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls and Woonsocket) comes an under-reported nugget from the 2010 Census: the number of R.I. children dropped 10 percent last year, from 247,822 to 223,956, the third-biggest decrease by state in the nation.
Couple that with the state’s 11 percent unemployment rate and high rental average, and the state’s not exactly a major draw for needy families who are seeking jobs, reasonable living costs and social services.
“That 10 percent drop is telling,” says Elizabeth Burke Bryant, executive director of RI Kids Count. “People tend to move because of extended family, or to be close to where the jobs are.”
“While there’s a significant decline in the caseload of children and families receiving assistance, it’s due to time limits and other indicators, and is not reflective of the number of poor children in the state,” she adds.
An Urban Institute state-by-state study of immigrant children from 1990 to 2009 also finds immigrant families, documented or undocumented, aren’t exactly flocking to Rhode Island.
From 1990 to 2009, the number of immigrant children in the state grew from 40,000 to 52,000, with the percentage of the state’s total number of children rising from 18 to 24 percent. That growth rate of 30 percent in raw numbers, however, ranked only 47th in the nation.
The difficult housing market is another reason families requiring social services aren’t overwhelming the state, says Stephanie Geller, RI Kids Count policy analyst.
The average monthly cost of rental housing in the state has risen from $748 in 2000 to $1,150 by 2011, according to the Kids Count report, with about 25 percent of Rhode Island’s families spending 50 percent or more of their income on housing costs.
“There’s a feeling overall that the price of housing is going down, but there’s more demand for rentals because of people losing their houses. We’re one of the few states that doesn’t have a dedicated source of funding for affordable housing.” Geller says.
Some of the pending General Assembly legislation Kids Count is keeping an eye on, Geller says, includes increases in co-payments for child care assistance and cuts in dental care assistance for both young adults and adults 21 and over.
