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Save The Date! December 9

Governor Corzine will spend the morning with us listening and talking about poverty in New Jersey.

We received this important update from our friends at the Anti-Poverty Network of New Jersey about their December 9th Annual Conference. We encourage everyone to attend this event and help to make poverty history.

December 9, 2008

War Memorial
Trenton, New Jersey
9 a.m. - 3 p.m.

Please hold the date of December 9, 2008 for the APN conference in Trenton.

The afternoon will feature action-focused workshops.

There is no registration fee for the conference.

Come and be part of making poverty history.

To view a flyer for the event click here.

Yesterday our friends at Legal Services of New Jersey’s Poverty Research Institute released Not Enough To Live On: Characteristics of Households Below the Real Cost of Living in New Jersey. The report documents that “one of every five New Jersey families does not earn enough to afford the basic necessities — housing, food and child care — though most households have at least one breadwinner, according to a study released yesterday.”

To read the full report click here.

This report discusses the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of New Jersey residents with inadequate incomes according to research on the Real Cost of Living (RCL) in New Jersey. The report builds on the RCL report series that was Read the rest of this entry »

Yes they do but the situation for children in New Jersey remains bleak at best. The Association for Children of New Jersey released their Kids Count 2008 report. According to the report:

New Jersey children are in some important ways better off than five years ago. More 3- and 4-year-olds are enrolled in high-quality, publicly funded preschool, for example. On some other measures, children are worse off. The proportion with no health insurance has risen, despite increased enrollment in government-subsidized insurance programs.

But the most striking - and troubling - fact evident from the data in this book
is that too little has changed. The rate of child poverty, a contributing factor to
many problems for young people, has not budged. Even as the state’s median
income rose and unemployment dropped, the percentage of children whose parents
lack stable employment and the percentage living below the federal poverty
line stayed about the same. New Jersey families also continue to pay some of the
highest housing costs in the nation: One in four of the state’s renters spent more
than half their income on rent in 2006.

Top read the full report click here. For more information click here.

Yesterday our friends at Legal Services of New Jersey’s Poverty Research Institute released “The Real Cost of Living in 2008: The Self-Sufficiency Standard for New Jersey.” According to the report one in five New Jerseyans — 1.68 million adults and children — cannot afford to live without some kind of public assistance. In addition, the report provides a detailed analysis of the cost of living in New Jersey for working families based on the true cost of basic household expenses including housing, child care, health care, and food. It also provides a comparison of the Real Cost of Living to other benchmarks of income including the federal poverty level, welfare income, and minimum wage income. Several policy implications flow from the report’s themes and the report includes information on key action the state could take to help New Jersey families meet their basic needs given the high cost of living.

To read the full report click here.

To view a printable version click here.

To view data by county click here.

Among the reports findings were:

Nowhere in New Jersey can anyone live on the state’s $7.15-an-hour minimum wage. The lowest hourly wage at which a single person can be self-sufficient in New Jersey is $8.58, in Camden County. The wage would provide an annual income of $18,115 with $8,844 a year going for low-quality housing at $737 a month.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a question that many of us ask on a regular basis. This week a study by the Working Poor Families Project, New Jersey Policy Perspective, and the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers published “CLIMBING THE LADDER: How to Invest in New Jersey’s Working Families.” This report is a shocking reminder of how New Jersey is really two states - one rich and one poor. This is a must read report. To read the full report click here.

According to the report “a two-parent, two-child family in New Jersey requires a yearly income of between $49,572 and $57,144 just to make ends meet, depending on where in the state it lives. That is more than double the national poverty threshold. The discrepancy is attributable to the fact that the poverty threshold was created in the 1960s and while it is updated to keep pace with inflation, fails to take into account the fact that such costs as housing and health care are larger shares of a family budget than they used to be. This measure of economic well being needs to be revised to more accurately define
the problem.” To view county by county numbers see page 10 of the report.

The following is a brief summary from the report.

From a distance, New Jersey appears to be an economic powerhouse. On such indicators as median household income and educational attainment the state is a national leader. But upon closer examination, New Jersey turns out to be, in essence, two states. In one, people are well educated, highly skilled and prosperous. In the other New Jersey, people work hard but find themselves under equipped in terms of education, training and support in the struggle to make it in a state that has a cost of living a third above the national average.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Ending Homelessness, poverty, Supportive Housing

Legal Services of NJ released “Poverty Benchmarks 2008″ on February 19th. The report continues to paint a bleak picture for NJ. According to the Star-Ledger “Between 2004 and 2006, 9 percent of the state’s 8.5 million citizens lived below the federal definition of poverty, earning no more than $16,000 a year for a family of three. Children fared even worse, making up nearly 12 percent of the poverty class. The state also has the 13th-highest foreclosure rate in the nation.” The full report details low cost or no cost policy actions that New Jersey could take to ameliorate this problem. When will we learn that it is better to solve a problem than ignore it. To read the Star-Ledger story click here.

To read the full report click here.

For more information on Legal Services of New Jersey’s Poverty Research Institute click here.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has released an overview of poverty and hardship in America. According to the CBPP’s new report on the state of poverty in the United States, today’s poverty rate is higher than it was during the last recession. Roughly one in eight Americans - 36.5 million - live in poverty, the report says. Some 12.6 million households, containing 35.5 million people, lacked access to adequate food at some point during the year, while 16 million low-income households either paid more for rent and utilities than the federal government says is affordable, or lived in overcrowded or substandard housing.

To read the full report click here. To view the appendix that reviews all of the data sources click here.