What kind of people are poor

COVID, together with climate change and enduring conflicts, is reminding us of the importance of investing in preparedness and prevention measures comprehensively and proactively.

Expanding cooperation and coordination Contributing to and maintaining public goods requires extensive cooperation and coordination. This is crucial for promoting widespread learning and improving the data-driven foundations of policymaking, and for forming a sense of shared solidarity during crises and ensuring that the difficult policy choices by officials are both trusted and trustworthy.

The World Bank Group works to end poverty in several ways: Funding projects that can have transformational impacts on communities Collecting and analyzing the critical data and evidence needed to target these programs to reach the poorest and most vulnerable Helping governments create more inclusive, effective policies that can benefit entire populations and lay the groundwork for prosperity for future generations. Some examples: Grow Cambodia has achieved remarkable progress in reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity, but key reforms are needed to sustain pro-poor growth.

Mexico has experienced high income inequality and concentration of poverty in a few states. Invest A pilot program in Ecuador used text messages to relay information and encouragement to caregivers in an impoverished region of the country and saw a significant improvement in the nutrition and health of children.

Since , a team of experts from the World Bank has been helping Kenya strengthen statistical capacity by reshaping its National Bureau of Statistics. In-depth maps in countries such as Afghanistan , Bangladesh , Croatia , Republic of Serbia , and Vietnam show where economic diversity and gaps in services exist within a country.

This, as part of the poverty assessment process, helps policymakers better target policies and programs to reach and benefit the poor.

The Emergency Crisis Response Project gives pregnant women and women with children under the age of five money to buy food and teaches them about child nutrition.

It has been able to reach more than , pregnant or lactating women and , children so far. Conflict-affected communities in Mindanao are among the poorest in the Philippines, suffering from poor infrastructure and lack of basic services. The World Bank along with other partners have aimed to enhance access to services and economic opportunities and build social cohesion. These projects have help build water systems, community centers, sanitation facilities, access roads, post-harvest facilities, and farming and fishing equipment, benefiting , people in villages in a decade.

An innovative series of rapid survey methodologies were pioneered in Somalia, one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The surveys overcame significant security and implementation obstacles to yield the most comprehensive analysis of the welfare of the Somali people in decades and is now being used in other countries. Nearly 1. Number of people who have escaped extreme poverty since Source. In Depth. In , 18 percent of children were in poverty, 2 percent points below the thirty-year average of 20 percent.

Senior citizens are decreasingly likely to be in poverty—9 percent of seniors were in poverty in compared to 12 percent in —but due to population growth and aging, there are more poor seniors today.

Senior citizens now make up a larger share of those in poverty than they have in over 30 years and the number of seniors in poverty was the second highest behind at 4. The number of seniors in poverty has continued to increase even as the total number of those in poverty has declined.

As seen in figure 2, growth in the number of people living in poverty has largely come from working-age adults. Over the past 30 years, a growing number of working-age people were poor from 16 million in to Since , more than half of those living in poverty have been of working-age with the share The official poverty measure is imperfect, but is valuable as a consistent benchmark for tracking poverty over time and is relevant because it determines eligibility for some programs.

There are two other prominent measures of poverty: the supplemental poverty measure and the consumption measure, which differ from the official poverty measure on every dimension. The supplemental poverty threshold is based on expenditures on food, clothing, shelter, and utilities, and is geographically adjusted. While the official poverty measure only counts pre-tax income as the resources available to a family, the supplemental poverty measure additionally counts refunded taxes and noncash benefits that can be used for food, cloth, shelter, and utilities, like SNAP benefits.

A third way to measure poverty is by consumption: if a family were to consume less than an adjusted poverty threshold, excluding certain expenditures, they would be considered poor. Both the consumption measure and the supplemental measure are improvements on the official poverty measure because they address whether tax and transfer policies and programs affect poverty. Using data from , the most recent year for which we have data on all measurements, we look at how the analysis differs between the three measures.

In figure 3, we compare the characteristics of individuals living in poverty by the official against the supplemental poverty measure SPM for , the most recent year of available data for both. Acknowledging that survey respondents underreport benefit receipt, this SPM is likely to overstate the number in poverty. Nevertheless, there were almost three million fewer children in poverty by the SPM than by the official poverty measure in For a complete treatment of the status and trends of children in poverty, see a recent report by Isaac Shapiro and Danilo Trisi at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

There were more working-age adults and senior citizens in poverty by the SPM than the official poverty measure in While we cannot reproduce the working-age classifications as we report in figure 3 for the consumption measure, Bruce Meyer and James Sullivan report rates of consumption poverty in the same age-based categories as ours. By their calculation, rates of consumption poverty in were 5. By the official poverty measure in , 20 percent of children, 12 percent of working-age adults, and 9 percent of seniors were poor in By the supplemental poverty measure, 16 percent of children, 14 percent of working-age adults, and 14 percent of seniors were poor in Returning to the official poverty measure, we take a deeper look at the characteristics of the working-age poor.

The working-age poor are a diverse group figure 4. More than 40 percent of the working-age poor were working or actively seeking work in In September , it reached 1. These include: Closing the gender wage gap: Congress must pass comprehensive legislation such as the Paycheck Fairness Act to begin to tackle the complex and nuanced gender wage gap.

Closing the gender and racial wealth gaps: It is crucial that policymakers pursue efforts to close the gender and racial wealth gaps alongside investments in efforts to build wealth among women—particularly women of color.

To begin to close racial wealth gaps resulting from centuries of structural racism in American public policy, policymakers must pursue a combination of bold strategies such as, but not limited to, strengthening the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau so that officials can better combat predatory lending; canceling student loan debt and making college debt free; and supporting and analyzing reparations as a viable policy solution.

States that have eliminated the subminimum wage for tipped workers have significantly lower poverty rates among tipped workers. Lawmakers must significantly boost federal funding for VAWA grants as well as enact vital improvements to the law, such as those included in the bipartisan reauthorization bill 72 passed by the U. House of Representatives in April These measures would better protect those most vulnerable to violence—including low-income survivors.

Expanding access to UI: The recession brought on by the coronavirus pandemic has reaffirmed the importance of UI to help families experiencing job loss and financial hardship. Protecting and expanding Medicaid coverage: Lawmakers must safeguard Medicaid against attempts to limit coverage and should prevent and dismantle harmful work requirements that exclude women with caregiving responsibilities and women whose low-wage jobs with inconsistent hours may not meet work requirement standards.

In addition, policymakers should expand Medicaid coverage to include a range of birth options, including doulas and midwives; telehealth services to ensure access to sexual and reproductive health services for people living in family planning and reproductive health care deserts; and an extension of pregnancy-only Medicaid coverage to at least one year postpartum to ensure that no one loses coverage just two months after birth.

Improving tax credits: Lawmakers must expand tax benefits, such as the EITC and CTC, to ensure that they provide the critical support needed for families with children—particularly those living in poverty. Congress should pass legislation such as the Working Families Tax Relief Act 79 and the American Family Act, 80 which propose necessary improvements such as disbursing benefits monthly rather than once a year through tax refunds, increasing the maximum benefit per young child with a new monthly young child tax credit, and making the CTC fully refundable to help the lowest-income families.

The Working Families Tax Relief Act also includes essential provisions to better help individuals and families without children, by expanding EITC eligibility and increasing the maximum benefit for childless workers. Social Security Disability Insurance should also be reformed to expand eligibility beyond its current stringent criteria.

Such improvements should include incentivizing states to better target TANF funds to help families in need. Rather than directing funding elsewhere, the focus should be on increasing funding levels while tying them to inflation; adjusting state allocations based on present need rather than historic spending levels; expanding and boosting cash assistance; easing work requirements; lengthening lifetime use limits; establishing better performance measures; and reestablishing TANF as a reemployment program.

Raising or eliminating asset limits would allow those in need to be able to save money and accept additional supports, without losing access to crucial benefits such as health care or nutrition programs. Andrea S. Allen St. Kellan Baker, Laura E. Kevin Miller and Deborah J. This comparison assumes that a woman is the sole breadwinner in the family of four. As of July 30, , 36 states have adopted and implemented Medicaid expansion.

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