The top quarter of American income earners can expect to live a decade longer than the bottom quarter, medical research shows. This health disparity seems downright cruel. Not only do those in poverty have to pay more for things like credit and insurance, they also pay more years to the Grim Reaper.
Unlike income inequality, transferring years of life from the rich to the poor is not a feasible option. To find a real solution, we must know what drives the inequity.
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As COVID-19, violent conflicts, and natural disasters persist around the world, an increasing number of people face an additional crisis: food insecurity. Although food insecurity existed in many low- and middle-income countries prior to 2020, it is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic has escalated this global challenge.
Today, according to the United Nations World Food Program Live Hunger Map, an estimated 870 million people live on insufficient food consumption. This figure has increased since 2019, when an estimated 821 million people did not get enough food to eat.
Within the 79 countries in which the World Food Program operates, the number of people suffering from acute malnutrition or worse has doubled to 270 million people since 2019.
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Virginia’s Health Equity Leadership created two new dashboards displaying equity data in a style similar to pandemic metric dashboards. The dashboards display data on current conditions in Virginia and on mitigation efforts.
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If Joe Biden gets his way, the federal minimum wage will soon more than double, from the current $7.25 to $15 per hour. To quote our commander in chief, “if you work for less than $15 an hour and work 40 hours a week, you’re living in poverty.”
To rehash the minimum wage debate would be redundant. Anyone with business experience should see what’s going to happen. Many small independent businesses, retail stores, and restaurants that pay minimum wage will go under.
Meanwhile, major corporate chains will automate, shedding workers and raising prices, consolidating their grip on every market sector where they’re active. Unionized government workers will automatically get raises because their wages are indexed to the minimum wage—putting even more pressure on government budgets and taxpayers. People in the private sector who have spent decades learning a skill—and as a result can command wages upwards of $25 or $30 an hour—will become justifiably disgruntled, because they will no longer be making much more than minimum wage. The underground economy will explode.
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The guaranteed income movement – which advocates for providing cash to low-income families with no restrictions on how they can spend it – is coming to Florida.
This year the Gainesville City Commission voted to implement a guaranteed income pilot program slated to begin in October. Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe has been part of a national initiative, “Mayors for a Guaranteed Income,” to supply monthly, direct cash payments to people who are struggling. The Gainesville pilot program would begin by giving cash to people with criminal records and who are looking to rehabilitate their lives.
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The U.S. poverty rate saw its sharpest increase since the 1960s as the coronavirus pandemic devastated the economy in 2020, according to a recent study.
The poverty rate increased 2.5 percentage points from 9.3% in June to 11.8% in December, according to the study released Monday by economists Bruce Meyer, of the University of Chicago, and James Sullivan, of the University of Notre Dame, Bloomberg reported. In total, 8.1 million Americans were added to ranks of the poor, according to the researchers.
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One way of understanding California is simply to invert traditional morality. What for centuries would be considered selfish, callous, and greedy is now recalibrated as caring, empathetic, and generous. The current ethos of evaluating someone by his or her superficial appearance – gender or race – has returned to the premodern values of 19th-century California when race and gender calibrated careers. We don’t pay medieval priests for indulgences of our past and ongoing sin, but we do tweet out displays of our goodness as the penance price of acting amoral.
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A groundbreaking study by Just Facts has discovered that after accounting for all income, charity, and non-cash welfare benefits like subsidized housing and Food Stamps – the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries. This includes the majority of countries in the prestigious Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including its European members. In other words, if the U.S. “poor” were a nation, it would be one of the world’s richest.
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For many low-income Ohioans who have lost their drivers licenses for minor or unintentional offenses, there is no greater frustration than paying your debt to society, only to be denied your ability to drive legally because you can’t afford a government fee. Thankfully, relief is in sight for thousands of these…
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by Rev. Ben Johnson She was the brightest girl in her class, and 13-year-old Maureen dreamed of an education that would get her out of the poverty that bogged down her hometown of Mudzi, Mashonaland, Zimbabwe. Her parents promised to pay her tuition – but her family hit hard…
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Public education is not “broken.” Public education policy is “broken,” and neighborhood public schools are suffering the consequences. Here are nine of the most critical and challenging issues in public education we should address in 2019 in Tennessee.
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Tennessee is increasingly adopting “a two-generation approach” to fighting poverty, which combines the focus on parents and children when it comes to food stamps and other cash assistance programs. The approach may indeed pay off and is being implemented across more and more states, yet, it still appears to be…
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Media giant Gannett has compiled a list of what it says are the 50 worst cities to live in, and some of the top locations are towns where it operates newspapers, including two in Tennessee. USA TODAY compiled the list using data from 24/7 Wall Street, a website that publishes…
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Poor and starving people are not particularly appealing news stories, but fighting poverty is and should be a moral imperative for citizens in our cities, state and nation. Educators are often on the frontlines.
Read More All children in Tennessee deserve an exceptional education. School improvement is only possible when accompanied within a framework of collaboration and support.
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Our economy goes hand in hand with quality education. A strong educational system is essential not only to the successful functioning of a democracy, but also to its very future.
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Today, with inclusion being the norm, a teacher is given the unenviable task of teaching all students with individualized lessons appropriate for them. In some schools, there may be support from teacher aides or education specialists, but society demands (and rightly so) that each student be given the same opportunities.
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An engaging and challenging education is the proven path to prosperity and a life-long love of learning. Teachers consistently tell us that “testing” and “preparing students for a test” are among their top concerns in our internal surveys.
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More than 16 million children are growing up in poverty, meaning that 22% of all children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level of $23,550 a year. Research has shown that children living in poverty have a higher number of absenteeism and dropout rates than those coming from middle class or higher.
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Bill O’Reilly has gone on quite a killing spree. I think he should also write one called Killing Public Education. Let’s not wait until the autopsy or until Bill O’Reilly writes another book to explain that educators must be given a more active role in determining the policies that concern their students and the teaching profession.
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